Moe Korhonen is 62, a retired logging foreman who’s spent the four years since his wife’s lung cancer death holed up on his 40-acre wood lot outside Grand Rapids, Minnesota, only venturing into town for supplies and the occasional hardware store coffee with old crew members. His biggest flaw is that he’s convinced any hint of joy unrelated to his wife’s memory is a betrayal, so he turns down every invitation to fish, to hunt, to join the local veteran’s cookouts, preferring the quiet of his own company and the creak of pine boughs in the wind. He only showed up to the town’s annual summer street fair for the smoked turkey leg from the same vendor he’d been buying from since 1992, fully intending to grab it and hightail it back to his cabin before the crowd got too thick.
The beer tent was the only shaded spot between the food booths, so he ducked under the canvas awning, grabbed a lime seltzer (he quit drinking beer after his wife got sick, never picked the habit back up) and leaned against the wooden support pole, flannel sleeves rolled up to his elbows, calloused hands still scarred from a 2018 logging accident where a falling branch caught his left forearm. He was half watching the terrible cover band fumble through a Johnny Cash deep cut when a kid darted past him, slamming into his side hard enough to make him drop the seltzer can. It spilled straight down the front of the woman standing two feet away, soaking the hem of her linen skirt and splattering her white canvas sneakers.
He lunged to grab the can before it rolled under the booth, and his knuckles brushed the soft curve of her hip in the process. He flinched back like he’d touched a hot stove, stammering an apology, already digging for a handful of napkins in his pocket. She laughed, low and warm, and waved him off, brushing a strand of silver-streaked auburn hair out of her face. “Relax, it’s just thrifted. I spilled coffee on it this morning anyway, was looking for an excuse to throw it in the wash when I get home.” He recognized her immediately: Lila Marlow, the new county public health nurse everyone in town had been gossiping about for three months, the woman who left her 30-year marriage in the Cities to move up north alone, who every local matron had labeled a “loose cannon” and a possible homewrecker without a single scrap of proof.
She leaned in closer every time someone squeezed past the narrow tent entrance, her bare shoulder brushing his bare forearm, the scent of lavender lotion mixing with the cotton candy she’d snuck a bite of between curds. When the first firework exploded overhead, bright red against the pale blue dusk, the crowd surged forward, pushing her right up against his chest. Her face was inches from his, her green eyes glinting with the light from the next firework, and she didn’t pull away. He didn’t pull away either, the noise of the crowd fading to a quiet hum in his ears, the old guilt melting away fast enough to make his head spin. She said she’d seen him two weeks prior, fixing the broken swing set at the town park for the neighborhood kids when he thought no one was watching, and she’d been wanting to talk to him ever since.
He led her away from the crowd, past the food booths and the carnival rides, to his beat up 2004 F150 parked at the edge of the fairgrounds. He lowered the tailgate, and they sat side by side, their legs dangling off the edge, passing the last of the cheese curds back and forth. He let his hand rest on her knee, the rough denim of his work jeans brushing her bare calf, and she laced her fingers through his, her hand smaller than his, soft but calloused at the fingertips from years of taking blood pressure and giving shots. They didn’t talk through the rest of the firework show, just watched the bursts of blue and green and gold paint the sky over the pine treeline. When the final red firework burst faded to smoke against the dark pine treeline, she tilted her head up and kissed him slow, the faint tang of lemonade on her lips.
