Ray Cruz, 62, retired border patrol canine handler, has avoided the annual Zapata County Chili Cookoff for eight straight years. He’d skipped it the year after his wife Gloria died, then the next, then kept skipping out of habit, mostly to dodge the well-meaning widows from his church who kept trying to foist their casseroles and phone numbers on him. He only showed up this year because Mabel Hale, his 87-year-old regular dog grooming client whose poodle he bathes every other Tuesday, begged him to haul her prize brisket entry to the tent, her knees too shot to make the walk from her trailer to the park. He’d grumbled, but he showed up, cooler of Shiner Bock slung over one shoulder, brisket wrapped in butcher paper tucked under the other, the old scar on his left hand throbbing a little from the weight. That scar was from a run-in with a stray pit bull his first year on patrol, jagged, pale, running from his knuckle to his wrist, a souvenir he’d never bothered to get fixed.
He’s leaning against a tent pole, halfway through his second beer, when she walks up. Elena Marquez, 58, the county judge he’d spent three years badmouthing to every guy at his local bait shop, the woman he’d testified against in a heated border wall funding dispute three years prior, the one he’d called a “spineless suit who’d never stepped foot in the brush south of town” to his buddies over breakfast last week. She’s not wearing a suit today, she’s in cutoff jeans and a faded UT Austin Longhorns t-shirt, cowboy boots caked in dust, her dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with silver that catches the sun. She smells like jasmine lotion and smoked mesquite, and when she leans in to get a look at the brisket he’s slicing, her bare shoulder brushes his bicep, warm through the thin fabric of his work shirt. He freezes. He’d expected to hate her on sight, same as always, but when she tilts her head up and grins at him, the corner of her mouth curved like she already knows exactly what he’s said about her, all that old anger fizzles out before he can even grab hold of it.
“Cruz, right?” she says, reaching for a paper plate he’s set out for samples, her fingers brushing that scar on his left hand when she grabs it. The scratch of her bright red nail polish against the rough raised skin makes him jump a little. “I remember that scar. From the hearing. You told the commission you got it pulling a dog off a migrant kid, right? I never forgot that.” He blinks. He’d assumed she’d tuned out every word he said that day, had written him off as just another old border patrol guy complaining about policy. He mumbles something about the brisket being Mabel’s, not his, and she laughs, the sound cutting through the noise of the mariachi band playing by the picnic tables, the kids screaming on the bounce house down the path. She takes a bite, closes her eyes, moans soft enough only he can hear, and he feels the back of his neck heat up like he’s 17 again, getting caught making out with Gloria behind the high school gym.
He doesn’t know how they end up talking for 45 minutes, leaning up against that tent pole, their shoulders brushing every time one of them shifts. She tells him she actually agreed with his testimony that day, that she’d voted against the wall funding only because the county would have had to cut funding for the local senior center to pay for it, that she’d gotten the feds to cover the cost of new pedestrian checkpoints three months later, a detail no local news outlet had bothered to print. He tells her about Gloria, about the dog grooming business he runs for low-income seniors, about the old German shepherd he adopted last year that sleeps on the foot of his bed every night. He doesn’t realize how close they’re standing until she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and her elbow grazes his waist. He doesn’t pull away.
When the first round of prizes gets announced, she grabs his wrist, tugs him toward the edge of the park, away from the crowd. They sit on the tailgate of his old white grooming van, the back windows covered in stickers of cartoon dogs, and she pulls a flask of reposado tequila out of her boot, passes it to him. Her knee presses against his the whole time they’re sitting there, warm and solid, and when he passes the flask back, her hand closes over his for a beat too long. He can taste the lime she’d rubbed on the rim of the flask when he takes a sip, can hear the distant sound of the crowd cheering for the chili winners, can feel the rough metal of the tailgate digging into the backs of his thighs. She leans in first, her hand coming up to rest on that scar on his left arm, and he doesn’t even think about pulling away. The kiss tastes like tequila and peppermint gum and the smoke from the grills floating through the air, soft, slower than he expected, no rush.
His phone dings in his pocket ten minutes later, and he pulls it out to see a text from Mabel, all caps, saying she won first place for the brisket, demanding he get her trophy to her trailer before she sends her poodle after him. Elena laughs when he reads it out loud, pushes off the tailgate, holds her hand out to him. She says she’s supposed to hand out the grand prize, asks if he’ll walk up to the stage with her, says she wants everyone to know she’s not as bad as he’s spent three years telling everyone she is. He snorts, takes her hand, tucks it into the crook of his arm, that scar on his left hand fitting right into the curve of her palm. He doesn’t even care when his old patrol buddy Javi hoots and waves from the prize stage, he just squeezes her hand a little tighter.
