Earl Hackett, 62, spent most of the annual Trigg County Fire Department fish fry propped against the rusted beer cooler at the edge of the park, avoiding small talk the same way he’d avoided potholes on backcountry roads for 38 years as a high-voltage transmission line inspector. His worn steel-toe boots caked in hay dust from that morning’s fence mending, calloused fingers wrapped around a styrofoam plate heaped with fried catfish, coleslaw, and three hushpuppies still hot enough to steam through the thin white foam. He’d turned down three separate offers to pull a chair at the crowded picnic tables already, had grunted so sharply at the church ladies trying to set him up with their widowed sister the last time he’d come to one of these that they hadn’t bothered him since. The guilt sat heavy in his chest most days, the kind he couldn’t outwork even when he was putting in 12 hour days repairing downed lines in ice storms: he’d missed his wife Ellie’s final call 8 years prior, stuck on a tower 80 feet in the air when her heart gave out, and he’d spent every day since convinced he didn’t get to have any more good things, not when he’d missed the one that mattered most.
He was halfway through his second beer when Marnie Carter stepped up beside him, so close the shoulder of her faded 1998 Reba McEntire tour shirt brushed his flannel sleeve. He’d known her for three years, had fixed her split rail fence for free back in March when the tornado took out half the west side of town, knew she was 47, newly divorced from his old crew chief’s son, knew every gossip in the county had spent the last six months speculating about who she’d be seen with first. She held two cold cans of his favorite cheap lager out to him, condensation dripping down her wrist to the silver bracelet on her left hand, and when their fingers brushed as he took the can, a static jolt ran up his arm so sharp he almost dropped his plate. He told himself it was just old habit, the tingle he got handling live wires, but he knew better. She smelled like coconut shampoo and the dill pickles she’d been eating from the concession stand, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of fryer grease on her left cheek. She teased him about hiding by the cooler instead of joining the cornhole tournament, and for the first time in months he laughed, a rough, rusty sound he barely recognized as his own.
He didn’t overthink it, didn’t run through the list of reasons everyone in town would have a problem with them, didn’t linger on the voice in his head saying he was betraying Ellie by feeling this way. He asked her if she wanted to ditch the fry, drive up to the lake overlook he went to most nights to watch the sunset. She grinned so wide the corners of her eyes crinkled, laced her fingers through his, and didn’t let go when they walked past the table of his old line crew, who hooted and wolf whistled loud enough to turn half the park’s heads. They climbed into his beat up 2002 Ford F-150, the seat covers stained with coffee and line grease, and when he turned the key the same slow country song came on the radio, quiet enough to hear the crickets through the open window. He pressed his boot a little heavier on the gas, the cool lake air blowing in the open window carrying the faint, sweet scent of her coconut shampoo.
