Roland Voss, 53, has made a science of avoiding Traverse City’s annual Winterfest for eight straight years. The vintage snowmobile restorer lives and works out of a drafty converted barn 10 miles outside town, keeps a flip phone that only three people have the number to, and would rather spend three hours prying a rusted carburetor loose from a 1971 Ski-Doo than make 10 minutes of small talk with neighbors who still whisper about his ex-wife leaving him for a real estate developer from Grand Rapids. The only reason he’s standing ankle deep in slush now, next to his fully restored 1972 Elite that he spent 18 months rebuilding from the frame up, is that his high school buddy Jake, who runs the town’s auto parts store, begged him to enter the vintage vehicle showcase, offered him free beer for a month if he showed up.
The chili cookoff tent is set up 10 feet from his display, and the first time she wanders over, he’s pretending to tinker with the Elite’s throttle to avoid making eye contact with a couple that used to be friends with him and his ex. She’s wearing a red and black flannel under a puffy navy vest, curly auburn hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheek that she doesn’t seem to notice. “You the guy who rebuilt this thing?” she asks, nodding at the snowmobile, and her voice is lower than he expects, rough around the edges like she smokes a half pack a day, no high, performative perkiness he’s come to hate from people who are only talking to him to be polite. He nods, and she leans in, so close he can smell cinnamon and pine soap on her coat, no cloying floral perfume like his ex wore, and runs a gloved finger along the custom paint job, the deep metallic blue he mixed himself to match the lake on a clear January day. “My dad had one just like this when I was a kid,” she says. “Wrecked it trying to jump a sand dune up by Sleeping Bear. Still won’t talk about it.”
He finds himself talking before he can stop himself, telling her about tracking down the original engine from a junkyard in Marquette, about spending three weekends sanding the frame down by hand, about the way it hits 60 miles an hour on fresh powder like it’s flying. She listens, doesn’t check her phone, doesn’t interrupt to tell him about some unrelated thing her cousin did. When she hands him a paper bowl of chili, their fingers brush through the thin plastic of their gloves, and he feels a jolt go up his arm, sharp and warm, like he touched a live wire. The chili is spicy, has a sharp kick of smoked paprika that burns just right going down, better than any he’s had since his grandma died 12 years prior, and he tells her so. He’s spent so long telling himself he doesn’t want anyone in his space, that dating in a small town is just a fast track to everyone knowing every detail of your business, that he’s almost forgotten what that little spark feels like. He tries to talk himself out of it, tells himself she’s probably just being nice, that the last thing he needs is the whole town gossiping about the reclusive snowmobile guy hooking up with the new librarian, that it’s not worth the hassle, the questions, the inevitable let down when she realizes he’d rather work on engines than go to dinner parties.
The snow picks up as the afternoon goes on, big wet flakes sticking to his hair and the collar of his coat, the carnival crowds thinning out as families head home to warm up. She helps him stretch a heavy blue tarp over the Elite, holding the edges down while he ties them to the stakes he hammered into the slush earlier. A gust of wind hits them hard, and she stumbles forward, her shoulder slamming into his chest, and he catches her by the elbows to keep her from falling. She laughs, breath coming out in white puffs, and looks up at him, her eyes hazel, flecked with gold, a little flake of snow stuck to her eyelash. She lifts a hand, brushes a fleck of slush off his jaw, her bare skin warm even through the cold air, and he doesn’t pull away. All the excuses he’s been telling himself all day, all the reasons he should just pack up and go home alone, vanish like the smoke from the fire pit at the center of the carnival grounds.
He asks her if she wants to come back to his barn, tells her he has a pot of venison stew simmering on the wood stove, and a bottle of good bourbon he’s been saving for no particular reason. She grins, wipes the smudge of chili powder off her cheek now that he’s pointed it out, and says yes. He helps her load her coolers of leftover chili into the back of her beat up Subaru, tells her to follow him up the road, the snow coming down so thick he can barely see the taillights 50 feet in front of him. When he pulls into the driveway of the barn, the porch light is on, the one he always forgets to turn off, and the windows are fogged from the heat of the stove inside. He holds the barn door open for her, and for the first time in almost a decade, he doesn’t dread the quiet that comes after the door clicks shut behind them.
