Rafe Marquez, 52, has restored 117 vintage travel trailers in the eight years he’s lived outside Baker City, Oregon. He’s got calluses so thick he can pick up a hot soldering iron without flinching, and a rule he’s never broken: he doesn’t show up to the annual neighborhood block party. Small town gossip bores him, and he’s got no interest in fielding questions about why he still lives alone, eight years after his wife packed her bags and drove to Portland with a real estate agent she met at an open house. This year, though, his 10-year-old neighbor left her neon pink BMX in his gravel driveway, and her mom showed up at his barn door with a paper plate heaped with smoked ribs and a plea he couldn’t say no to.
He’s been leaning against the splintered pine picnic table for 20 minutes, half-empty can of Pabst in one hand, half-eaten rib in the other, when she walks over. He recognizes her immediately: Clara, the new 4th grade art teacher, the one who married Sheriff Beau Hargrove three months back, the one everyone’s been whispering about since she showed up to the county fair in a tie-dye tank top and bare feet, while Hargrove stood next to her in his starched uniform scowling like he’d sucked on a lemon. She’s wearing cut-off denim shorts and a faded Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, paint splatters crusted on the toes of her white sneakers, a faint sunburn across the bridge of her nose. She sets her iced tea down on the table an inch from his beer, and their elbows brush when she leans back against the wood. He smells coconut sunscreen and turpentine, sharp and sweet, and he has to stop himself from leaning in closer.
She asks him about the neon sign hanging above his barn door, the one shaped like a 1962 Airstream, and he finds himself rambling about how he tracked it down at a flea market in Boise, how he spent three weeks rewiring it so the little running lights flickered on and off like the real thing. She laughs louder than the joke deserves, her head tipped back, and he notices the tiny silver hoop through her left nostril, the smudge of blue paint on her wrist. He keeps darting glances past her, to where Hargrove is standing by the charcoal grill, yelling at a kid who got too close to the propane tank. Rafe knows better than to talk to her. Hargrove has a temper, everyone knows that, and the gossip mill’s been spinning for weeks that he’s been sneaking off to see a dispatcher in La Grande when he’s supposed to be on overnight patrol. Talking to his wife is the kind of stupid move that gets a man’s tires slashed, or his shop inspected for every obscure code violation in the book.
But she doesn’t leave. She shifts closer, so their shoulders are pressed together, and tells him she bought a beat-up 1968 Scotsman camper last month, parked it out by the creek on Hargrove’s ranch, wants to turn it into a little art studio. She says Hargrove keeps saying he’ll fix it, but he never has time, never even looks at it when she brings it up. Her hand brushes his when she passes him a napkin to wipe barbecue sauce off his chin, and her fingers linger on his jaw for half a second, warm and soft, before she pulls them back. His face heats up, and he’s suddenly 16 again, fumbling with a girl’s hand in the back of his dad’s pickup, scared half to death someone will see.
He wants to say no when she asks if he can come look at it next weekend, when Hargrove’s in Salem for a law enforcement training. He knows it’s a bad idea, knows every neighbor within 50 feet is probably already staring, already spinning stories about the two of them. But when he looks down at her, her dark eyes wide and steady, holding his gaze like she’s daring him to say yes, he can’t make himself say no. He nods, and she grins, pulling a crumpled receipt from the craft store out of her back pocket, scribbling her cell number on the back with a purple crayon she pulls from her t-shirt pocket.
She tucks the receipt into his work shirt pocket, patting it once, before she turns to walk away to join a group of elementary school teachers standing by the cooler. He stands there for a minute, watching her walk, the paper crinkling against his chest under his shirt, the faint tingle of her fingers still on his jaw. He hears Hargrove yell his name from across the yard, and he tugs the brim of his worn Carhartt cap down a little, lifting his beer in a casual, unconcerned toast. He takes a long sip, the cold beer bitter on his tongue, and doesn’t look away when Hargrove nods back, scowling like he always does.
