Elroy Voss, 62, retired floodplain surveyor, picks at grease-crusted walleye at the VFW Friday fish fry, work boots propped on the empty chair across from him. He’s spent six months yelling at county commission meetings about the new senior co-housing development going in on the west end, the plot he mapped in 2009 as a 20-year flood zone, no matter how the county fudged numbers to call it 100-year. His quiet flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s hidden behind that anger for eight years, ever since his wife Lois died of ovarian cancer, turning down every invitation to fish, golf, even grab a beer with former coworkers, because letting anyone new in felt like cheating.
The chair across scrapes back before he can reach for his second cream soda. He’s ready to snap, tell them there’s a dozen empty tables, when he looks up and sees Marisol Ruiz, 58, the project’s lead contractor, holding a tattered manila folder with his name scrawled across the front in blue Sharpie. She wears faded Carhartt overalls over a navy thermal, silver hoops that catch the hum of the neon Pabst sign behind the bar, work boots caked with the same red clay he used to scrub out of his socks for days after surveying that west end plot. She sits without asking, sets the folder between their paper plates, and the smell of pine cleaner and cherry lip balm hits him before she speaks.
He crosses his arms, leans back as far as the vinyl booth allows, ready to rant about drainage, storm surges, and the county cutting corners, but she flips open the folder first, pointing to a hand-scrawled note he’d written in the 2009 survey margin, the one the county tried to redact from public records. “Fought the board for three months to get foundations raised 18 inches higher than their initial plan,” she says, leaning in so her elbow brushes his on the table, her voice rough like she smokes half a pack of menthols a day, which he guessed from the crumpled pack peeking out of her overall pocket. “Used your note as evidence. They couldn’t ignore it when the guy who mapped the land wrote the low spot by the oak floods every time we get more than three inches of rain.”
His first instinct is to push her away, say it’s too little too late, that the whole project should be scrapped, but her knee brushes his under the Formica table then, warm through both their thick denim jeans, and she doesn’t yank it back like she’s embarrassed. She holds eye contact, dark brown eyes crinkled at the corners like she laughs often, and he realizes no one’s listened to a word he’s said about that plot in 14 years, not even Lois, who used to tease him for caring more about flood elevations than dinner. He uncrosses his arms, leans forward a little, taps the margin note with his index finger, tells her about 2008, when he got stuck in muck up to his thighs surveying that lot, had to call Lois to pull him out with their old F-150.
She laughs loud enough that a few regulars at the bar glance over, and he knows they’re wondering what the guy who’s screamed about that development for six months is doing sitting with the woman building it, and for the first time in years, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. She pulls out her menthol pack, nods toward the door, and he stands before he can overthink it, follows her out into crisp October air, the smell of fallen oak leaves mixing with the cherry lip balm scent stuck in his nose. He pulls a beat-up Bic from his flannel pocket when she fumbles for a lighter, holds it up to her cigarette, his hand shaking a little when her cheek brushes his knuckle as she leans in to light it.
They lean against the tailgate of her beat-up silver work truck, and she tells him she’s building the co-housing for her mom, who has bad arthritis and can’t do stairs, that she grew up in this town, didn’t want to build something that would wash away in the next storm. She passes him her cigarette, and he takes a drag even though he quit 10 years ago, coughs a little, and she grins, her shoulder pressing into his as she laughs. When she asks him to walk the site perimeter tomorrow, to make sure they didn’t miss any low spots staking foundations, he almost says no, almost falls back into the anger he’s hidden behind for so long, but then she brushes a fried potato crumb off his flannel sleeve, her calloused hand lingering on his forearm for half a second, and he says yes before he can overthink it.
She hands him a cold root beer from her truck cooler, twists the cap off for him, their fingers brushing when he takes it. The sun’s gone down completely now, the parking lot streetlight casting orange light over her face, and he realizes he hasn’t felt this light, this interested in anything that wasn’t a fishing reel he was fixing or an old survey map, since the day Lois died. He takes a sip of the root beer, cold and sweet on his tongue, and when she leans her head on his shoulder for a quick, casual beat before pulling back to ask what time she should pick him up tomorrow, he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t lean away. He tells her 9 a.m. is fine, and when she drives off a few minutes later, he stands in the parking lot holding the empty root beer bottle, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth he hasn’t felt in years.
