Moe Sorrentino, 58, retired electric lineman for Athens County’s rural co-op, has spent the last eight years deliberately walling himself off from any romantic connection after his wife left him for a farm equipment sales rep with a nicer truck and a less mangled left shoulder. He tells everyone he prefers his quiet double-wide, his shelf of vintage CB radios, and fixing neighbors’ wiring for free to the mess of dating, and he’s been so stubborn about it his former line crew buddies have a running $200 bet on when he’ll finally talk to a woman without grunting and walking away.
He’s at the annual county chili cookoff only because his old partner Ray practically dragged him there, insisting Moe’s five-alarm recipe—spiked with a secret splash of root beer he picked up on a 2001 job in southern West Virginia—would take first prize. He’s leaning against a splintered picnic table next to his simmering crockpot, sipping a lukewarm Pabst, ignoring the loud chatter around him, when she walks up. Clara Voss, 54, the new county extension agent who moved to town six months prior, the woman the whole town has been whispering about since she left her abusive 22-year marriage back in Columbus. Local wives have told every guy within 10 square miles to leave her alone out of “respect for her privacy,” even as half those same wives spread rumors she left because she was cheating. Moe’s avoided her every time she’s dropped off soil samples at the hardware store where he picks up parts, because he didn’t want to get dragged into small-town drama, but now she’s three feet away, leaning in to sniff his chili, her scuffed work boot knocking his by accident.
She’s wearing a faded Ohio State flannel, jeans cuffed at the ankle, a smudge of dark topsoil on the side of her left wrist, silver hoops that glint when she tilts her head against the late October sun. “That smells way better than the three sweet, tomato-heavy batches I just sampled,” she says, and her voice is lower than he expected, rough from yelling over farm equipment all week. She shifts closer, her shoulder brushing his good right arm—his left still throbs when it rains, from the falling limb that knocked him off a 20-foot pole in 2017—and he tenses up, half ready to mumble an excuse and bail. She holds out a paper sample cup, and when he reaches to hand it to her, her thumb brushes the back of his hand, calloused from decades of turning wrenches and splicing wire. He feels a jolt he hasn’t felt since he was 19, sneaking into the local drive-in with his high school girlfriend.
He’s immediately disgusted with himself for even reacting. He told himself he was done with all that, done with the fighting and the gossip and the way people in this town pick apart every little thing you do. But he can’t look away from her hazel eyes, crinkled at the corners when he admits the root beer trick to cut the habanero heat. “That’s a dirty, genius trick,” she says, laughing loud and unapologetic, nothing like his ex-wife’s tight, quiet chuckle. She takes a sip of the chili, makes a low, satisfied sound, and wipes a smudge of sauce off her chin with the back of her hand. “You’re gonna win. I’m judging, by the way. Don’t tell anyone I said that.”
An hour later, they call his name for second place, and he’s only mildly annoyed he didn’t take first, until he looks up and sees her standing by the prize table, holding the second place haul: a half case of hazy IPA from the brewery up the road, and a $25 gift card to the diner on the edge of town. He walks over, and she hands him the prizes, her fingers brushing his again. “The old guy who won first has been entering for 30 years, I couldn’t deny him,” she says, leaning in so no one else can hear, her breath warm against his ear, smelling like cinnamon gum and chili. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for months. Saw you fixing the swing set at the park last week, no one asked you to do that.” He admits he’s been avoiding her, because he didn’t want to deal with the town’s stupid gossip, and she snorts. “Me too. Everyone acts like I’m some fragile broken thing, instead of a woman who finally got sick of being yelled at for burning toast.”
They walk out of the fairgrounds together, the air cold enough that he can see their breath puffs, the crunch of orange maple leaves under their boots. He offers her a beer from the case, she takes it, pops the top on the edge of his beat-up 2006 F-150’s bumper. She asks if he wants to go get apple pie at the diner 15 miles out of town, the one where no one from the county goes after 7 PM, so they won’t run into anyone who’ll run their mouths. He nods, opens the passenger door for her, and when she climbs in, she pauses, her fingers brushing the thin, silvery scar running up his left forearm from the pole accident. “You gonna tell me that story over pie?” she says.
He gets in the driver’s seat, turns the key, and his old CB radio crackles to life, a trucker on channel 19 complaining about construction delays on Route 33. She laughs, reaches over to turn the volume up a little, her arm brushing his chest for half a second before she pulls back and settles into the seat, grinning as he pulls out of the parking lot.
