Roland Voss, 59, leans against the tank of his fully restored 1978 Kawasaki KZ1000, swirling a lukewarm Pabst Blue Ribbon in a dented plastic cup. The air at the county fire department chili cook-off reeks of smoked paprika, burnt hot dogs, and the diesel fumes of the old ladder truck parked by the entrance. He’s been coming to this thing for 22 years, ever since he moved to this tiny western North Carolina mountain town, and he’s taken first place in the meat chili category four times running. A kid from the local 4-H club stops by to gawk at the Kawasaki, and Roland gives him a quick rundown of the work he put into the engine, calloused fingers tapping the chrome valve cover like he’s patting a dog’s head.
He’s halfway through explaining how he sourced the original carburetor from a junkyard outside Knoxville when a woman steps into his line of sight, holding a paper bowl of chili in one hand and a can of sparkling water in the other. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts that show off sun-freckled thighs, a faded John Prine tee, and a red flannel tied around her waist, a strip of sunburn blushed across the bridge of her nose. He doesn’t recognize her at first, not until she smirks, and that little dimple in her left cheek pops, the same one she had when she was 16 and showed up at his shop with a busted dirt bike, begging him to fix it for cheap so she could race in the local youth motocross circuit.
It’s Lila Mae Carter, his late wife Elara’s goddaughter. The last time he saw her, she was wearing a park ranger uniform, writing him a $20 ticket for parking his trailer too close to the trailhead at Cade’s Cove. He’d grumbled about it, called her a tyrant, but slipped her a tin of Elara’s famous peanut butter cookies when she wasn’t looking. He’s always thought of her as a kid, a loud, reckless teen who’d climb trees and sneak sips of his beer at family cookouts, so the jolt of heat that shoots up his spine when she leans in to sniff the pot of chili sitting on the folding table next to him makes him flinch, guilt curling hot in his gut. He’s 21 years older than her, for Christ’s sake. He should know better.
“Smells better than the batch you burned two years ago,” she says, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she leans further in, and he can smell pine soap and coconut sunscreen on her skin, undercut with the faint, earthy scent of the trail she must have been on earlier. “You finally stop trying to smoke the chili over hickory for three hours straight?”
He snorts, rolling his eyes. “Some people appreciate a little depth of flavor, Lila Mae. Not everybody eats that kale and bean slop you call chili.”
She holds up her bowl, mock-offended, and when she passes him a spoon to try it, their fingers brush. The contact is tiny, accidental, but he feels it all the way up to his elbow, his throat going dry for half a second. He takes a bite, and it’s actually good, spicy and tangy, and he admits it, grudgingly, which makes her laugh so hard she snorts. They talk for 40 minutes, about the coyote pack that’s been hanging around her cabin on the edge of the national park, about the 1968 Triumph he’s restoring for a 14-year-old kid with cerebral palsy who’s been saving up allowance for two years to pay for it. She gets his dry, dark jokes, the ones that usually make his neighbors change the subject, and she asks about Elara, not the polite, awkward “how are you holding up” questions most people ask, but specific ones, about the road trips they used to take on the Kawasaki, about the way Elara used to cheat at cornhole at these cook-offs. He hasn’t talked about Elara this much to anyone in years, and the tight band around his chest he’s carried since she died feels a little looser, like someone finally cut a notch in it.
The rain hits without warning, fat, cold drops that splatter against the hot asphalt, sending up steam, and everyone at the cook-off scrambles for cover. Roland grabs Lila Mae’s wrist without thinking, pulling her under the awning of the fire station bay, and they’re pressed together shoulder to hip, his heavy work jeans rough against her bare leg, the rain drumming so loud against the metal roof they have to lean in to hear each other. She looks up at him, her dark eyes glinting, and she says she’s had a crush on him since she was 17, when he fixed her dirt bike for free and taught her how to change the oil herself, even when Elara teased him for spoiling her. The guilt that’s been niggling at him all afternoon melts fast, because he can tell she’s not kidding, not with the way her hand rests on his chest, right over the faded patch of Elara’s old motorcycle club he sewed to the front of his flannel. He doesn’t pull away.
The rain lets up after 20 minutes, the sun peeking through the clouds, painting a faint rainbow over the ridgeline behind the fire station. Lila Mae tugs a crumpled chili contest entry slip out of her back pocket, scribbles her cell number on the back in blue ballpoint, and tucks it into the front pocket of his work jeans, her fingers brushing the soft hair on his hip when she does. “I still have that dirt bike,” she says, biting her lower lip a little. “Carburetor’s been busted for three months. You can come over later and take a look at it, if you want. I got that peach pie Elara taught me to bake in the fridge.”
Roland hesitates for half a second, the old voice in his head screaming that he’s being unfaithful, that he doesn’t deserve to feel this light, but he nods anyway. He watches her walk to her beat-up Subaru, the hem of her cutoff shorts flapping against her thighs, and pulls the slip out of his pocket, running his thumb over the smudged ink of her phone number. He waits until he’s loaded his chili pot and the Kawasaki into his trailer, until he’s sitting in the cab of his truck, staring at the patch on his flannel, and he hits send on a message that says I’ll bring the wrenches.
