Roy Pacheco, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher from Fresno, has lived in the tiny Oregon coast town of Newport for 11 months, and has successfully avoided Clara Bennett for 10 of them. He heard the gossip his first month at the local diner: she left her wealthy Portland surgeon husband two years prior for a 28-year-old organic farm hand, had broken up two long-term local couples since moving to town, was “bad news for any man over 50 who doesn’t want his life turned upside down.” His own hang-up ran deeper, anyway. His wife Linda had died of ovarian cancer seven years earlier, and he’d spent every year since convinced any romantic attention to another woman was a betrayal, even the fleeting kind. He’d turned down three separate setups from the ladies at the church potluck, had never once so much as bought a woman a drink at the bar he frequents after farmers markets.
He’s leaning against the scarred oak bar of The Salty Pelican on a rainy October Saturday, sawdust still crusted in the cuffs of his Carhartts and the sleeve of his red flannel, fresh off selling three large driftwood sculptures for more than he’d budgeted to make all month. The air smells like fried pickles, pine, and the briny draft coming through the screen door. The jukebox spits out Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” at a volume just low enough to let people hold conversations without yelling. He’s halfway through his second hazy IPA, wiping a fleck of foam off his gray mustache, when the door swings open and Clara walks in.
She shakes rain off her faded canvas garden jacket, drops a wicker tote full of seed packets on the floor next to the bar stool beside him, and waves before he can pretend he didn’t see her. He tenses up, half-ready to grab his wallet and bolt, but she’s already sliding onto the stool, her knee brushing his under the bar, warm even through the thick denim of his jeans. “That blue heron sculpture you had today? I almost bought it three separate times before I talked myself out of it,” she says, flagging down the bartender and ordering a cider. Her voice is rough, like she spends half her days yelling over wind and dirt, which she probably does—she runs the town’s community garden a block from his bungalow.
He doesn’t mean to respond, but it comes out before he can stop it: “I’ve got a smaller one half finished in my garage, if you really want it. No charge.” He cringes right after he says it, already mentally scolding himself for crossing the line he’d drawn so firmly in his head. She grins, the corners of her hazel eyes crinkling, and passes him a paper napkin when a drop of beer drips off his bottle onto his wrist. Their fingers brush when he takes it, her skin calloused at the fingertips, warm, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that he hasn’t felt since he was 17 and kissed Linda for the first time at a drive-in movie.
For the next 45 minutes, he alternates between wanting to lean in closer to hear her talk about the heron that visits the pond at the community garden every morning, and wanting to run out the door and never come back. He’s disgusted with himself, half convinced Linda is watching him from somewhere, shaking her head at how quick he is to fold for a pretty woman who smiles at him. But then she laughs at his story about a 16-year-old student who glued his own hand to a birdhouse during final exams, loud and unselfconscious, and her shoulder presses against his, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this light.
She leans in when she asks him the question that makes his chest go tight, her breath smelling like mint gum, rain still damp in the ends of her light brown hair brushing his cheek. “I’m building raised beds for the new senior plot at the garden, and every handyman in town wants to charge me double what I can afford. You know your way around a saw, right? I’ll pay you in fresh tomatoes all summer and a jug of my homemade peach pie moonshine.”
For three full seconds, he can’t speak. The voice in his head is screaming to say no, to tell her he’s busy, to keep his quiet, empty routine exactly as it is. Then he remembers the last conversation he had with Linda, three days before she died, when she grabbed his hand and told him if he ever met someone who made him forget how sad he was for even five minutes, he better not be a stubborn jackass and push her away. He nods before he can overthink it. “I’ll be there at 10 tomorrow. Bring the cedar, I’ve got all the tools and extra screws in my garage.”
She whoops quiet enough to not draw attention from the other patrons, taps her cider bottle to his beer, and her fingers linger on his wrist for a beat longer than necessary. They stay for one more round, talking about the upcoming oyster festival, her plans to add a bee colony to the garden next spring, his plan to drive down to California next month to visit his grandkids for Christmas. She teases him about the neon “World’s Okayest Woodworker” sticker she saw on his toolbox sitting on his porch last week, and he finds himself teasing her back about the patch on her jacket that says “I <3 Dirt” that he’d thought was dorky until he saw her wearing it.
When she leaves, she gives him a quick, firm hug, and he can feel the outline of her seed packets through her jacket pressing against his chest. He stands at the bar for 10 more minutes after she’s gone, finishing his beer, and realizes his cheeks are sore from smiling for the first time in years. He pulls out his beat-up old iPhone, sets an alarm for 9:30 the next morning, and adds a note to grab the pair of work gloves he keeps in his truck that are a size too small, just in case she doesn’t have her own. When he stands to leave, he tucks the napkin she used to wipe a smudge of barbecue sauce off her thumb into the front pocket of his flannel, and doesn’t feel even a little bit guilty about it.
