Rudy Galvan is 62, spent 38 years climbing power poles for Central Texas Energy, retired three years back, still walks with a slight limp from the time a transformer blew on him west of Seguin in 2019. His biggest flaw? He holds grudges like they’re vintage hunting rifles, polished, locked away, never to be unloaded. He’d sworn off the town’s annual tamale festival for 18 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a feed store manager and her whole family took her side, called him a lazy good-for-nothing who spent more time at the bait shop than at home. This year, his old line crew buddy talked him into coming, said the new pork tamale vendor smoked his meat for 12 hours over mesquite, worth driving 40 minutes for, so he caved, wore his faded Aggies cap, beat-up steel-toe boots, the same oil-stained leather work jacket he’s had since 2007.
The air smells like masa, slow-smoked pork, and cinnamon sugar from the churro stand down the block. A conjunto band blares off the back of a flatbed trailer, accordion notes wrapping around the chatter of families chasing toddlers with sticky tamale sauce on their cheeks. Rudy’s leaning against the dented aluminum side of a tamale truck, cold horchata in one hand, half-eaten pork tamale in the other, the corn husk crinkling between his fingers, when he sees her. Marisol Cruz. 58, his ex-wife’s younger sister, runs the native plant nursery on the edge of town, widowed six months back when her husband had a heart attack out by their pecan orchard. He hasn’t spoken a single word to her since the divorce papers were signed.
She’s standing two feet away from him, waiting for her order, wearing a faded red flannel shirt over a ribbed white tank top, jeans cuffed at the ankle, work boots caked in dark clay from digging cactus holes earlier that day. Her dark hair is pulled back in a thick braid, streaked with silver at the temples, a smudge of potting soil on her left cheek. He freezes, almost drops his tamale into the dirt, tells himself to turn around and walk away, but his feet won’t move. She turns, catches him staring, blinks, then smirks. The same lopsided smirk she used to give him back when he was married, when she’d sneak him extra sweet tamales at family cookouts when no one was looking, when she’d laugh at his terrible dad jokes even when the rest of the family rolled their eyes.
They both reach for the stack of rough brown paper napkins on the counter at the same time. Their hands brush. Her skin is calloused, rough from hauling 50-pound potted oak saplings and turning compost piles, warm even through the thin paper. He yanks his hand back like he touched a live 120-volt wire, feels his neck flush all the way up to his ears. He’d spent 18 years telling anyone who’d listen that the Cruz family was nothing but trouble, that he’d rather eat roadkill than speak to any of them, but right now, all he can smell is the jasmine perfume she’s wearing, mixed with the steam curling off the tamale pot next to them, and all he can hear is the low, honeyed lilt of her voice when she says, “Rudy Galvan. I’d know that stupid, sun-faded Aggies cap anywhere.”
He huffs a laugh, can’t help it, the horchata in his cup sloshing over the edge a little onto his wrist. “Thought you lot were banned from talking to me, per my ex’s very explicit rules.” She snorts, leans against the truck next to him, now only a foot apart, their shoulders almost touching, the soft fabric of her flannel brushing his leather jacket every time she shifts her weight. “Please. Half of what my sister said about you was total bull, and I told her that to her face at the time. You think I forgot how you drove three hours in the 2017 ice storm to bring my kid to the ER when he had a 104 fever? When my husband was out of town working on the oil rigs?” He’s surprised, didn’t think she remembered that. He’d buried that memory under 18 years of anger, all the ugly things her family yelled at him during the divorce mediation, all the times he’d driven past her nursery and forced himself to look straight ahead.
They talk for 20 minutes, first about the tamales, she teases him about still dousing everything in enough habanero hot sauce to make a grown man cry, he teases her about still burning the edges of her homemade tamales, a quirk he noticed at every family cookout back in the day. She keeps glancing at his mouth when he talks, her silver hoop earrings catching the golden late afternoon sun, he keeps staring at the small dark freckle just above her left lip, the one he’d always thought was pretty, even when he was married, even when he told himself he had no business noticing things like that about his sister-in-law. No one they know has walked past this far corner of the festival, the band is too loud for anyone to overhear their quiet conversation, the crowd is thick enough to hide them from prying eyes.
She twists a loose strand of her braid between her calloused fingers, tilts her head at him, her dark eyes glinting. “I got a batch of pineapple sweet tamales cooling on my kitchen counter right now. The kind you used to beg for at Christmas, said they were the only good thing about our family gatherings. You wanna come try ‘em?” He freezes again. The logical, grudge-holding part of his brain screams no, that if anyone sees them driving to her place together, the whole town will be gossiping by sundown, that his line crew buddies will tease him for breaking his 18-year grudge for a pretty woman and a plate of tamales. But the other part of him, the part that’s been lonely since he retired, the part that’s tired of carrying anger around like a 50-pound tool belt digging into his hips every single day, wins out. He nods.
They walk to her beat-up dark green Ford F-150 parked a block away, the crunch of fallen pecan leaves under their boots, the accordion music fading soft behind them. She opens the passenger door for him, their hands brush again when he grabs the door handle to pull himself up, his bad leg making him huff a little as he climbs into the vinyl seat, still warm from sitting in the sun all day. She slides into the driver’s seat, turns the key, an old Ramon Ayala CD blares to life from the crackling speakers. The cab smells like pine sap and jasmine, and she grins over at him as she pulls out onto the country road, the sun dipping low over the gnarled oak trees on the horizon. He rests his arm on the open window, feels the cool October air on his face, and for the first time in almost two decades, he doesn’t feel the weight of the grudge digging into his shoulders.
