Moe Rotolo, 62, retired long-haul truck dispatcher, had avoided the VFW Friday fish fry for four straight years. Ever since his wife Linda collapsed mid-bite of her favorite fried cod, slumping into his side before the paramedics even pulled into the rutted gravel lot, he’d written the whole event off as too loaded with memories to bear. He’d spent most of those four years puttering around his overgrown backyard, fixing old CB radios for the few local drivers still left running regional routes, and talking more to his floppy-eared hound dog Mabel than any human within a ten mile radius. His biggest flaw, as his oldest son had pointed out on his last Christmas visit, was that he’d convinced himself any small spark of joy was a deliberate slap in the face to Linda’s memory.
He only showed up this particular Friday because Mabel had chewed through his last pair of steel-toe work boots, and the VFW was selling gently used work gear for five bucks a pop, no questions asked. He grabbed a cold lager and a paper plate of greasy cod first, mostly out of muscle memory, and claimed the farthest picnic table from the stage, the one half-hidden by a gnarled stand of oak trees that blocked most of the crowd’s line of sight. He was three bites in, already mentally mapping the easiest way to sneak out with a pair of size 11 boots without exchanging small talk with anyone he knew, when a woman dropped her own plastic plate across from him so hard a crumb of fried hushpuppy bounced onto his wrist.
All the other tables were packed, she explained, nodding at the crowd of rowdy retirees and sunburnt local farm hands shouting over each other around the fold-out tables. Her name was Elara, 58, she said, she’d moved into the old dilapidated dairy farm three miles down his rutted dirt road two months prior, ran a small mobile native plant stand out of the back of her beat-up forest green Subaru. She wore a faded denim work shirt dotted with grass stains and tiny paint splotches, silver hoops that caught the golden hour sun, and she smelled like lavender shampoo and freshly turned soil, not the heavy rose perfume Linda used to douse herself in for every VFW event. When she reached across the table to grab the glass bottle of apple cider vinegar for her runny coleslaw, her elbow brushed his sunburnt bicep, warm and solid, and he jumped like he’d been zapped by a faulty CB wire.
She teased him about it, dry and warm, not mean, said she’d been told she gave off weird static electricity more than once, and he snort-laughed before he could stop himself. He hadn’t laughed like that, loud and unplanned, since before Linda got diagnosed with lung cancer. They fell into easy conversation: she complained about the local herd of deer eating half her stock of milkweed before she could sell it to local pollinator gardeners, he told her about the time a rookie driver got stuck in a ditch on that very farm back in 2007, when it was still owned by a cantankerous old dairy farmer who’d threatened to shoot the truck’s tires if he didn’t get it off his property by sundown. Every time she leaned in to hear him over the band’s twangy cover of old Johnny Cash songs, her denim-clad knee brushed his under the rough splintered table, and he fought the stupid urge to pull away, fought the shrill voice in his head screaming that he was doing something wrong, that he didn’t get to have this anymore.
When the band switched to a slow, crooning Patsy Cline track, half the crowd stood up to shuffle around the patch of mowed grass they were using as a dance floor, and she nudged his scuffed work boot with hers under the table, asked if he knew how to two step. He hesitated for a full ten seconds, told her he hadn’t danced since Linda’s 50th birthday party, that he was probably rusty enough to step on her toes hard enough to bruise. She shrugged, held out her hand, and said she wore steel-toed boots to the fry for a reason. Her palm was calloused from digging in dirt all day, warm when he laced his calloused dispatch-worn fingers through hers, and when they stepped onto the dance floor, she rested her other hand light on his shoulder, so close he could feel the heat of her arm through his thin faded flannel shirt. He did step on her toe, twice, and she laughed each time, her breath warm against his neck, and for the first time since Linda died, the heavy guilt in his chest didn’t feel like it was crushing his ribs. It felt small, quiet, like it was finally letting go.
They danced two more songs, until the band took a break and the sun dipped all the way below the tree line, painting the sky streaks of pale pink and tangerine. He remembered the quart jar of wild blackberries he’d picked that morning, sitting in an ice-filled cooler in the back of his beat-up Ford F-150, he’d planned to make jam like Linda used to can every summer, but he offered them to her instead, said she could make a pie out of them if she wanted. She invited him over to her place tomorrow night to help her bake it, said she made the flakiest crust this side of the Ohio River, but she hated pitting sticky berries alone. He said yes before he could overthink it, before he could talk himself out of it.
He walked her to her Subaru, the pair of work boots he’d come for slung over his shoulder completely forgotten, and when she squeezed his wrist before pulling open her driver’s side door, he didn’t flinch, for the first time in four years he was looking forward to tomorrow instead of replaying yesterday.
