Rafe Ortega, 52, makes custom leather saddles for a living out of a converted tin barn on his 12-acre spread outside Fredericksburg, Texas. His hands are crisscrossed with thin scars from awls and sharp cutting blades, the pads of his fingers stained permanently dark brown with tanning solution, and he hasn’t let anyone outside of his immediate family set foot in his house since his wife, Lila, died of breast cancer eight years prior. He’s got a mean stubborn streak, hates small town gossip more than he hates cheap leather, and only leaves his property a handful of times a month, mostly for supply runs or the annual county fair.
He’s at the fair on a sweltering late August evening, just dropping off the hand-tooled saddle he’d spent three months building for the grand champion 4-H steer showman, when he detours to the beer garden for a cold Shiner Bock. The air reeks of fried dough, cow manure, and sweet lemonade, the Tilt-a-Whirl’s rickety tracks squeal in the distance, and every picnic table is packed except for the one at the far edge, half shaded by a dying oak tree. He drops his heavy leather work bag on the bench, twists the cap off his beer, and is halfway through his first sip when someone slides into the seat across from him.
It’s Elara Voss, the new county extension agent that’s been the talk of the town for the past two months. He’s heard all the rumors: she left a six-figure corporate law job in Austin, walked out on her husband of ten years with nothing but a duffel bag and her rescue donkey, bought the run-down cottage on the edge of town no one had touched in twenty years, and did nude yoga in her backyard at sunrise. Everyone from diner waitresses to the ranch hands he sells to has warned him she’s trouble, too loud, too impulsive, too used to big city chaos to fit slow small town life, and he’d made a point of avoiding her until now.
He’s about to mumble an excuse to leave when they both reach for the paper napkin dispenser at the same time. His calloused, stained fingers brush hers, and he feels the cool press of a thin silver ring on her index finger, the soft warmth of her sun-warmed skin, for half a beat before she pulls her hand back, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She’s got a smudge of dark dirt on her left cheek, leftover from planting native wildflower seeds at the extension office community garden earlier that day, her hazel eyes flecked with gold in the fading golden hour light, and she’s wearing a faded red flannel tied at the waist over a thin white tank top, the toes of her cowboy boots scuffed raw.
He stays. He doesn’t mean to, but she asks him about the saddle slung over his arm, laughs so hard at his story about the time a baby goat chewed through a $2,000 custom bridle he’d just finished that she snorts beer out of her nose, and complains about the town’s old guard fighting her every step of the way on her plan to turn 20 acres of unused county land into a community grazing plot for small scale ranchers. He tells her about Lila, about how he stopped letting anyone get close after she died, about how scared he is of being the next subject of the town’s gossip mill, and she leans forward, elbows on the rough picnic table, so close he can smell her perfume, jasmine and cedar, and tells him she doesn’t give a single damn what anyone in this town thinks.
The sun dips below the hills, the fair crowds start to thin out, and a group of the town’s most notorious gossips walk past the table, staring so hard he’s surprised their necks don’t snap. Elara shifts closer to him on the bench, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep, and doesn’t move away even after they’re gone. She asks him if he wants to come back to her place, meet the donkey, talk about the custom leather harness she’s been wanting to get made for the animal. He hesitates for half a second, thinking about the rumors that will spread, about how long it’s been since he’s been alone with a woman who looks at him like he’s not just a quiet saddle maker who keeps to himself, and nods.
They walk to his beat up 2008 Ford F-150, gravel crunching under their boots, and he holds the passenger door open for her. She slides into the seat, her knee brushing his hip when he leans over to adjust the AC vent so it blows directly on her, and rests her hand on his scarred forearm for two long, warm beats before she pulls away. He cranks the radio up to a scratchy old George Strait track, and doesn’t even glance in the rearview mirror when they pass the cluster of town regulars loitering by the fair entrance.
