Elias Voss, 53, makes his living restoring vintage snowmobiles out of a converted 1950s dairy barn 12 miles outside Duluth. He’s got a scar slicing through his left eyebrow from a 1998 snowmobile crash, a habit of wiping motor oil on the thigh of his Carhartts even when he’s not working, and a seven-year streak of skipping every local community event. He only caved on the fire department chili cookoff because his 16-year-old nephew begged him to enter the venison chili he makes every hunting season, said the $500 grand prize would cover parts for the Ski-Doo the kid was building himself.
The October air stung his cheeks when he hauled his dented stock pot to the folding table assigned to him, the scent of cinnamon and smoked paprika curling up over the crowd of flannel-clad locals, country music tinny from a speaker propped on a fire truck bumper. He was halfway through scribbling a dumb “WORLD’S BEST VENISON CHILI” sign on a scrap of cardboard when he smelled lavender over the chili fumes, warm and sharp against the cold pine and burnt hot dog scent hanging over the field.
Maren Hale had moved to town three months prior to run the county’s tiny public library, and the whole town had been gossiping about her nonstop since: she’d turned down the sheriff’s date request three times, she kept a tarantula in a tank behind the checkout desk, she’d left a six-figure marketing job in Chicago to move to a town where the biggest news was a cow escaping the local dairy. She was leaning in over his chili pot, elbow brushing his forearm where his flannel was rolled up, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, when she looked up at him and held eye contact longer than casual politeness called for.
“Smells better than the entry the mayor brought. His tastes like canned tomatoes and regret,” she said, grinning, and Elias realized he’d been staring, his mouth half open like an idiot. He hadn’t talked to a woman who wasn’t his sister or a customer’s wife in close to four years, and his brain short-circuited for a second, all the snappy lines he used to pull off back when he was coaching youth hockey vanishing into the cold air.
He mumbled something about using venison he’d shot himself the previous fall, and she held out a paper bowl, her fingers brushing his when he handed it to her, her skin cold as Lake Superior shore water in early spring. He watched her take a bite, her eyes widening, and he felt a stupid, giddy flutter in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking into the drive-in with his high school girlfriend. He almost made an excuse to leave right then, half convinced he was reading too much into it, half scared the whole town was watching and would start gossiping that he was hitting on the “untouchable” new librarian, but she nodded at the tree line 20 yards away and said her feet were sore from standing on the frozen grass, asked if he wanted to walk with her to her truck.
The maple leaves crunched under their scuffed work boots as they walked, the noise of the cookoff fading behind them. She was telling him about the stack of 1970s snowmobile magazines she’d found in the library’s basement when she dropped the paper bowl she’d been holding, chili spilling a little on the dirt. They both bent to pick it up at the same time, their foreheads knocking softly, and Elias laughed, the sound coming out rougher than he meant it to. He brushed a strand of windblown silver hair out of her face, his knuckle grazing her cheek, and she didn’t pull away, just looked up at him, her eyes dark in the fading sunset.
She told him she’d noticed him at the hardware store two weeks prior, when he’d been buying varnish for the wooden skis on a 1968 Polaris he was restoring for a customer, that she’d asked the clerk who he was. He told her he’d skipped every town event for seven years because after his wife left, he’d hated how everyone looked at him like he was a broken thing that needed pity. He didn’t mean to say it out loud, it just slipped, and she didn’t look at him like he was pathetic, just nodded, like she got it, like she’d had her own share of people looking at her like she was damaged after her 20-year marriage ended.
He asked her if she wanted to come by his barn the next day, see the sleds he was working on, maybe try the peach pie he baked every Sunday when he wasn’t wrenching. She said yes, leaned in, kissed his cheek, her lips warm against his cold wind-chapped skin, before she pulled open the door to her beat-up forest green Subaru. She rolled the window down as she pulled away, yelled that she’d bring the stack of snowmobile magazines with her, and he waved, standing there with the half-eaten bowl of chili she’d left in his hand.
He stood there until her taillights disappeared around the curve of the dirt road, the cold air nipping at his cheeks, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t feel the urge to rush back to the quiet, empty barn to hide.
