Marlon Rourke, 62, retired telephone line splicer, had only showed up to the county summer fish fry because three of his old line crew had cornered him at the hardware store two days prior and threatened to hide all his vintage radio parts if he bailed again. He’d spent most of the last three years holed up in his garage restoring vintage tube radios, only leaving for grocery runs and the occasional hike up the reservoir trail. He leaned against the rough bark of a 100-year-old oak, paper plate piled high with crispy catfish, vinegar sloshing in the coleslaw, a sweating styrofoam cup of sweet tea in his left hand. The lineman’s folding knife he’d carried for 28 years hung heavy on his belt, scuffed brass handle peeking out from the waistband of his faded denim jeans. He’d already turned down three invitations to sit at the group tables, hated the way folks’ smiles softened into pity the second they recognized him, the quiet “how you holdin’ up, Marlon?” that always felt like a punch to the gut.
He was halfway through his second piece of catfish when she stepped into his orbit. Elara Voss, 58, the new part-time librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, was the subject of every small-town gossip’s favorite rant: she’d worn a sleeveless dress to Easter service, she’d turned down the mayor’s invitation to join the historical society, she’d even had the nerve to tease the local pastor about his terrible tie collection after Sunday service once, earning her a reputation as “too much for a quiet town like this.” Her blue sunflower-patterned sundress hit just above the knee, scuffed white sneakers on her feet, a line of freckles across her nose that looked like they’d been dusted there by the summer sun. She was holding her left palm out, a thin wooden splinter sticking out of the meat of it, when she stopped three inches from his boot.
“Heard you’re the only guy within five miles who always carries a sharp knife,” she said, voice low and warm, like she was sharing a secret instead of asking for a favor. She was close enough that he could smell lavender shampoo mixed with the faint sweet tang of fried dough she must have eaten earlier, the sound of the bluegrass band playing the main stage fading a little at the edges. He nodded, pulled the knife off his belt, flipped it open with a flick of his wrist that he’d practiced a thousand times climbing telephone poles in rain and snow. When he handed it to her, their fingers brushed, and he felt the rough callus on her index finger, the kind you only get from turning thousands of book pages over decades. She didn’t yank her hand away like he expected, just held the contact for a beat longer, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
He’d pulled hundreds of splinters out of his own hands and his crew’s over the years, so when she winced trying to dig it out herself, he nodded at the picnic table bench next to him. “C’mon. I’ll get it. You’ll just push it deeper, messin’ around like that.” She sat so close her bare knee pressed against the side of his jeans, warm through the thin denim, and he had to fight the urge to shift away. Gossip had already linked her to half the single men in town, and he knew if any of the church ladies saw them sitting this close, they’d be whispering about him disrespecting Carol’s memory by sundown. The thought made his jaw tight, half disgust at how small and mean the town could be, half unnameable desire, sharp and bright, that he hadn’t felt since Carol got sick.
He wrapped his left hand around hers to hold it steady, his thumb brushing over her knuckle by accident, and she made a soft, quiet sound, not from pain, that sent a jolt up his arm. He looked up, and she was holding eye contact, no teasing smirk now, just soft dark eyes, like she could see right through the grumpy hermit act he’d been hiding behind for three years. He got the splinter out in ten seconds flat, wiped the tiny dot of blood off her palm with a napkin he pulled from his pocket, and closed the knife with a click that sounded too loud in the quiet space between them.
“You’re the guy who checked out that first edition of *The Searchers* last week, right?” she said, not pulling her hand away from his yet. “Saw your name on the checkout slip. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it. Most folks around here only check out romance novels or self-help books, not 60-year-old westerns.” She nodded toward the edge of the parking lot, where a beat-up rust-colored Ford pickup sat with a “Support Your Local Library” bumper sticker on the back window. “Got a bottle of 12-year-old bourbon my brother sent me from Kentucky back at my place. We could talk about it, if you don’t care what the town busybodies have to say.”
For half a second, he hesitated, thought about all the things people would say, the way they’d tsk at the grocery store, the comments on the local Facebook group. Then he thought about Carol, the week before she died, holding his hand and telling him he’d be an idiot to spend the rest of his life sitting alone in their empty house, that she’d haunt him if he didn’t go out and have some fun for once. He stood up, slipped the knife back onto his belt, and laced his fingers through hers, calluses scraping against each other. The group of church ladies at the next table went quiet, staring, and he winked at Mrs. Henderson, the worst of the gossips, just to watch her jaw drop.
They walked past the bluegrass band, past the fried dough stand, past the group of his old line crew who whooped and waved when they saw them holding hands, and climbed into the cab of her pickup. The screen door of her truck creaked shut behind them, and for the first time in three years, Marlon didn’t feel the urge to look over his shoulder to see who was watching.
