Moe Vargas, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against the dented stainless beer cooler at the town fire department’s annual summer barbecue, condensation soaking through the back of his faded ash-gray Carhartt work shirt. He’d been dragged there by his next-door neighbor, who’d threatened to leave bags of overripe zucchini on his porch every week until he stopped acting like a hermit who only talked to his table saw. He whittled a cedar sparrow with the pocket knife he kept on him at all times, the sharp edge gliding over soft, fragrant wood, a buffer against small talk he had zero patience for. Three years out from his wife Linda’s death from ovarian cancer, he still hadn’t figured out how to be around people without a task to hide behind.
He heard a laugh he’d recognize anywhere, warm and rough around the edges, like she spent too many years yelling over the roar of a fishing boat engine. He looked up, and there was Elara Hale, standing two feet away reaching for a black cherry seltzer from the cooler beside him. Her son Javi had been in his 2016 woodshop class, almost flunked after skipping eight weeks to help his then-stepdad repair the family commercial fishing boat out in Newport. Moe had cut him slack, let him build a custom tackle box for his final project instead of the required Adirondack chair, and Javi still sent him Christmas cards every year with photos of his own toddler daughter, Lila. Elara’s dark hair was streaked with silver, pulled back in a loose braid that fell over one shoulder, sun spots dusting the bare skin of her arms where her cutoff denim shirt had rolled up. Her nails were chipped bright cherry red, and he spotted the tiny fish hook scar on her left wrist he’d heard Javi joke about a hundred times, from a deep sea trip when she was 19.
Her arm brushed his when she leaned in further to grab the seltzer from the bottom of the ice chest, and he flinched so hard he dropped his whittling knife, the clatter loud enough to make a group of teen volunteers glance over. They both bent to grab it at the same time, their foreheads bumping soft enough that it didn’t hurt, and she laughed again, the sound mixing with the crackle of the tri-tip grills 20 feet away and the yells of firemen spraying each other with a garden hose. “Sorry,” she said, handing the knife over, her fingers brushing his calloused palm for half a second longer than necessary. He smelled coconut sunscreen and charcoal smoke on her, and for a second he forgot how to speak.
She said she’d finalized her divorce in March, left her ex in Ketchikan and moved back to town to help Javi and his wife with Lila, since they both work long hours at the auto shop downtown. She said she’d been meaning to track him down for years, to thank him for not failing Javi, that that last-minute pass had let him graduate, get the apprenticeship that turned into the job he still has now. He shifted his weight against the cooler, the damp fabric of his shirt sticking to his back, fighting the stupid, old twinge of guilt that he was even talking to her like this—she was a former student’s parent, for Christ’s sake, he used to send home progress reports to her address. But she leaned in closer when a group of kids ran past screaming, chasing an ice cream truck, her shoulder pressing firm against his, and she didn’t move away.
She said she’d seen his cedar carvings at the monthly craft fair, loved the little songbirds he left on the discount table for $5 each, had been wanting to ask him to teach her how to whittle for months. She was fixing up the old cottage she’d bought on the edge of town, had a pile of cedar scraps from tearing down a rotting fence in the backyard, didn’t want to throw them away. He held the half-finished sparrow in his hand, the edges smooth from his thumb rubbing over them a hundred times, and for a second he almost made up an excuse, almost said he was too busy, almost retreated back to his empty workshop where he didn’t have to risk feeling stupid or out of line.
She reached over before he could speak, plucked the sparrow from his grip, ran her thumb over the carved edge of the wing, the same calloused rough texture as his own hands from years of reeling in fishing lines and hauling crab pots. “This is the prettiest thing I’ve seen all summer,” she said, tucking it into the front pocket of her cutoff jeans, the fabric frayed at the hem. He didn’t overthink it after that. He said he had a whole stack of cedar blocks and extra sharp knives in his workshop, she could come by tomorrow at 2 if she wanted, he’d walk her through the basics, they could drink iced tea on his back porch after. She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and said she’d bring the peach pie she baked that morning, she’d made two by accident and had no one to give the second one to.
Lila yelled from across the lawn, waving her tiny hand to get Elara’s attention, pointing at the open cab of a fire truck the firefighters had pulled out for the kids to climb on. Elara waved back, then turned to Moe, tapped the pocket where she’d tucked the sparrow to make sure it was still there. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, before turning to walk toward her granddaughter. Moe stood there for another minute, sipping the lukewarm beer he’d grabbed from the cooler an hour earlier, no longer feeling the urge to fidget with his whittling knife to fill the silence. He watched Lila throw her arms around Elara’s legs when she reached her, Elara bending down to lift the toddler up onto her hip, the sun catching the silver streaks in her braid as she walked toward the fire truck.
