Moe Sorenson, 53, makes his living restoring vintage snowmobiles out of a cinder block garage 12 miles outside Duluth, and his most persistent flaw is holding grudges longer than he keeps the sleds he fixes up. He’s avoided the town’s annual Winter Beer & Sled Festival for 30 straight years, ever since he lost the 1994 amateur cross-country race by 12 seconds to Jake Carter, a guy he still swears tampered with his fuel line the night before. His only part-time employee practically shamed him into showing up this year, saying he spent too much time breathing exhaust fumes and talking to 50-year-old engine parts instead of actual humans, so he’d stuffed his feet into insulated boots, pulled on a frayed flannel over a down vest, and drove in, fully planning to leave after one beer.
The air stings his cheeks the second he steps out of his truck, thick with the smell of pine, fried cheese curds, and spiced rum cider wafting from the food trucks lined along the snow-packed main street. Portable space heaters hum every 10 feet, and the crowd’s laughter mixes with the low rumble of sleds idling in the parking lot at the end of the block. He grabs a vanilla stout from a local brewery’s stand, leans against a heater pole, and is just scanning the crowd for Jake so he can duck the other way when he turns too fast, his shoulder slamming into someone’s chest, his gloved hand brushing the curve of their hip.
It’s Lena Carter. Jake’s younger sister. He freezes, ready for a snarky comment about being a sore loser, the same ones he heard for years after the race, but she just laughs, a warm, rough sound that cuts through the noise around them. She’s got a streak of silver in her dark brown hair pulled back in a braid, a tiny scar above her left eyebrow he recognizes from the same 1994 race, when she flipped her sled into a snowbank 2 miles from the finish line. Her flannel is unbuttoned at the top, showing a silver pendant shaped like a snowmobile, and she doesn’t step back, even though they’re standing close enough their boots are almost touching.
“Whoa, easy there,” she says, and she’s smiling, her eyes crinkling at the corners, holding his gaze longer than a casual stranger would. “You gonna knock my cider out of my hand before I even get a sip?”
He stammers out an apology, already reaching for his wallet to offer to buy her another, but she waves him off, says it’s fine, she hadn’t even opened it yet. He expects her to walk away, but she leans against the heater pole next to him, her sleeve brushing his bicep through the layers of their coats, and says she’s seen his restoration posts on the local vintage sled Facebook group, that the work he did on a 1972 Ski-Doo Elan last month was the best she’d ever seen. He blinks, surprised, because he’d spent 30 years assuming every Carter thought he was a hack who couldn’t handle a race.
She teases him about the 1994 race first, before he can think to change the subject, and he tenses up, ready to argue, until she leans in even closer, her voice dropping so only he can hear it over the crowd, the peppermint of her lip balm cutting through the cold air around them. “Jake cheated, you know,” she says, and he blinks again, his brain going quiet for a second. “I caught him siphoning half the gas out of your sled the night before. Was 16, scared he’d ground me for a month if I told, so I kept my mouth shut. Felt like garbage about it ever since.”
That’s the thing about grudges, he thinks, after a minute of just standing there processing. They feel like they’re made of steel, until someone gives you one little crack, and the whole thing crumbles faster than a snowbank in April. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound, because he’s wasted 30 years avoiding half the town, avoiding all the events he used to love, over a race he never had a shot at winning fair and square. He finds himself telling her about his wife, Carolyn, who died 8 years before from breast cancer, who loved snowmobiling more than he did, who used to tease him for being such a baby about losing that race. She nods, says she knew Carolyn, used to buy homemade jam from her at the farmers market every summer, thought she was one of the kindest people in town.
They stand there for another hour, sipping their drinks, talking about old sleds, about the time she crashed that 1994 race and had to get 7 stitches for that scar, about the 1968 Arctic Cat he’s got half-restored in his garage right now, that he’s been thinking of entering in next year’s amateur race. She says she’s signed up for it too, and teases him that she’ll beat him fair and square, no cheating required, and he smirks, says he’d like to see her try. Every so often their shoulders brush, or their hands knock together when they reach for their drinks, and he finds himself leaning in closer every time she talks, like he’s scared he’ll miss a word over the noise of the crowd.
When the festival starts wrapping up, the heaters getting turned off one by one, the vendors packing up their stands, she nods toward the parking lot, says her food truck’s parked by the entrance, she’s got a cooler full of leftover cheese curds and a case of hard cider in the cab, if he wants to follow her back to her place and watch old race footage. He doesn’t even hesitate. He picks up her heavy cooler of leftover supplies without asking, his hand brushing hers when she tries to grab half of it to carry, and even through the thick wool of their gloves, he can feel the warmth of her skin seep through. He follows her across the crunching snow, the cold biting at his ears and the tip of his nose, and for the first time in 30 years, he doesn’t even glance around to see if Jake’s nearby.
