Manny Ruiz is 62, spent 38 years as a union ironworker walking high beams across Portland’s bridge projects, now fills his weekdays carving cedar bears and salmon for local park districts with a chainsaw he’s had since 1998. His wife passed eight years back, and he’s spent most of the time since avoiding block parties, neighborhood mixers, and any event where a well-meaning local might ask him if he’s “seeing anyone yet.” He only showed up to this one because his 12-year-old granddaughter begged him to enter the amateur carving contest, pestering him for three straight weeks until he caved.
He’s leaning against a splintered picnic table wiping sawdust off his faded Carhartts, sipping a lukewarm Pabst pulled from a cooler full of melted ice, when he spots her walking over. He recognizes her immediately: Lena Marlow, 47, the new city council rep who pushed through the public land use fee hike that would have doubled his cost to carve in city parks last month. He’d circulated a petition against it, left 12 angry voicemails with her office, and fully planned to tell her exactly what he thought of that stupid vote if she got within ten feet of him.
She stops right next to his table, leans her hip against the edge, and the bare skin of her forearm brushes his when she reaches for a crumpled napkin next to his beer. He smells coconut sunscreen and the faint sharp tang of pine sol, like she’d been cleaning her garage before she showed up, and her Pearl Jam tee is faded enough that the logo is almost worn through at the edges. “That bear you carved is pretty good,” she says, nodding at the three-foot cedar piece propped against the table leg, holding eye contact for two beats longer than casual conversation requires. He grunts, takes a sip of beer, doesn’t say anything. She laughs, low and warm, and shifts closer, so their knees are almost touching under the table. “I saw your petition, by the way. You got 427 signatures. Pretty impressive for a guy who I heard refuses to use a smartphone.”
He blinks, caught off guard. He hadn’t expected her to know that. He’d figured she’d just tossed the petition in the trash, same as every other politician he’d ever dealt with. “I proposed an amendment at the last council meeting,” she says, picking a french fry off his paper plate, not even asking. “Waives all use fees for carvers who donate at least one piece a year to the city’s public art program. Passed unanimously. You would’ve known if you’d showed up to the meeting instead of leaving all those voicemails.”
He stares at her, the irritation he’s been carrying for three weeks melting fast, replaced by a warm, fluttery thing he hasn’t felt since his wife first asked him out for milkshakes in 1983. She’s got a charcoal smudge on the left side of her jaw, probably from taking notes at the meeting, and a thin scar running up her left forearm from a mountain bike crash she mentioned in a local news profile he’d read last month. When she leans forward to swat a mosquito off her ankle, her shoulder presses against his, and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of his flannel shirt.
The emcee announces the contest winners a few minutes later, and Manny’s bear takes first place. The prize is a two-night cabin rental up at Mount Hood, fully stocked with firewood and a $100 gift card to the local brewpub off the highway. He’s about to say he doesn’t want it, that he never goes anywhere overnight anyway, when Lena turns to him, her knee pressing firm against his under the table, and says, “My hiking buddy bailed on our trip up there this weekend. I’ve been dying to do the trail to the waterfall, but I don’t want to go alone. You in?”
He hesitates for half a second, the old guilt creeping in, the voice in his head saying he’s too old, too set in his ways, that he shouldn’t be doing this eight years after his wife died. Then she reaches up, brushes a fleck of cedar sawdust off his cheek, her palm warm and calloused from gripping hiking poles, and the guilt vanishes. “Yeah,” he says, and he’s surprised at how easy it comes out, how good it feels to say yes to something for the first time in years.
