Manny Ruiz, 53, is a minor league baseball scout who’s spent the last eight years living out of a dented Ford F-150, surviving on gas station beef jerky and lukewarm coffee, and convincing himself he doesn’t need anyone else around. His wife, Lena, passed from breast cancer in 2015, and since then, he’s skipped every wedding, family reunion, and small-town community event he’s been invited to, writing them off as a waste of time he could spend reviewing scouting reports or tracking left-handed pitchers across the Rust Belt. He’s only at the rural Ohio fireman’s carnival on this sweltering July evening because the 19-year-old lefty he’s been chasing for three months is working the beer tent to save for community college tuition, and Manny doesn’t want to corner the kid at his parents’ house after practice.
The air sticks to his skin like wet paper, thick with the smell of fried Oreos, diesel fumes from the rickety ferris wheel, and cheap beer. He’s leaning against a splintered wooden fence, pretending to scroll through his phone, when he hears a loud, familiar laugh over the roar of the crowd. He looks up, and his chest tightens. Jolene Carter, 49, is leaning against the dunk tank platform, wearing a cutoff fire department tee, frayed high-waisted denim shorts, and scuffed work boots, sun freckles splashed across her nose and cheekbones. She’s the ex-wife of the high school baseball coach Manny got in a screaming match with back in 2013, over the same lefty prospect who now coaches a single-A team in South Carolina. Manny had assumed everyone in the Carter family hated his guts, so he starts to turn away, but she spots him before he can slip into the crowd.
She yells his name, loud enough that a group of teen boys nearby turn to look, and waves him over. He hesitates for ten full seconds, then shrugs and walks toward her, hands stuffed in the pockets of his khaki work pants. She’s leaning against the rail of the dunk tank, and when he stops a few feet away, she doesn’t step back to create polite distance. Her shoulder is six inches from his, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and cherry Skoal on her breath, can see the faint scar across her left eyebrow from when she crashed her vintage Harley in 2018, a story he’d heard through the grapevine back when he still talked to people outside of work.
She teases him first, pointing at the faded Cleveland Guardians cap he’s had since 2016, saying he looks like he still thinks the team can make a playoff run this year. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t used around anyone who isn’t a 19-year-old pitcher in months. When he hands her a cold bottle of water he grabbed from the beer tent on his way over, their fingers brush, and he feels the thick callus on her knuckle from rebuilding motorcycle engines, a jolt of something warm shooting up his arm that he hasn’t felt since Lena died. He fights the urge to pull his hand away, fights the voice in his head that says he doesn’t get to have this, that he’s betraying Lena by even noticing how the edge of her cutoff tee rides up when she reaches for a softball a kid dropped at her feet.
They banter for 20 minutes, trading jabs about her ex-husband’s terrible temper, about the way minor league stadiums never have cold enough beer, about the lefty prospect Manny’s here to see. She holds eye contact longer than polite, tilting her head when he talks about the way a pitcher’s release point can tell you more about their work ethic than any stat sheet, and when a group of kids runs between them, she steps closer, her shoulder brushing his, and doesn’t move back. He’s supposed to drive back to Columbus that night, has a 9 a.m. meeting with the scouting director, but he finds himself not caring, buying a stack of dunk tank tickets from a kid in a fireman’s hat, teasing her that he still can throw an 88 mph fastball like he did when he played JUCO ball back in the 90s.
He hits the target on the first throw, the lever clanging loud, and she goes under the water with a shriek, coming up sputtering, her blonde hair stuck to her face, laughing so hard she snorts. The crowd around the tank cheers, and Manny grins so wide his cheeks hurt. When she climbs out of the tank, her tee is soaked through, plastered to her shoulders, and he pulls the faded gray flannel he had tied around his waist off and hands it to her. She pulls it on, it’s too big, the sleeves hanging past her wrists, and she tugs the collar up to her nose for a second, like she’s smelling it, before grinning at him. She invites him back to her place after the carnival wraps, says she’s got a fridge full of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a photo album of that 2013 prospect they fought over, who still sends her Christmas cards every year. He hesitates for half a second, then nods, shoving his scouting notebook in the back pocket of his pants, ignoring the buzz of his phone in his pocket from his boss texting him about the meeting tomorrow.
The carnival starts to wind down as they walk toward his truck, the ferris wheel lights flashing pink and blue behind them, crickets chirping in the cornfield across the street. Her hand brushes his three times as they walk, before she laces their fingers together, her calloused palm fitting against his like it was made to be there. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t spiral into guilt about Lena, doesn’t worry about how this will look to anyone else. He opens the passenger door for her, and when she leans in to kiss his cheek before climbing in, he can taste the cherry Kool-Aid she’d been sipping on the corner of his mouth.
