Manny Ruiz, 62, retired high school football referee, had avoided the annual Wilson County Tamale Festival for 14 straight years. He’d skipped it the year his ex-wife left him for a ranch hand she’d met sampling brisket at the 2009 event, skipped it when his buddies begged him to come judge the chili cookoff, skipped it even when his granddaughter begged him to take her on the carnival rides. His biggest flaw, he’d admit if pressed, was holding a grudge like a dog with a raw bone, no matter how much time passed. He’d spent the week before patching fence on his 40-acre spread outside town, boots caked with red clay, knuckles scraped raw from barbed wire, and when his best friend showed up at his door at 11 a.m. Saturday with a six-pack of Lonestar and a threat to drag him out by his belt, he caved.
The festival smelled like mesquite smoke, steamed corn husks, and sweet horchata, the air thick enough to taste the cumin on every breeze. He kept his faded Dallas Cowboys cap pulled low, scanning the crowd for faces he’d rather avoid, when a whiff of roasted garlic and habanero hit him square in the chest, sharp enough to make his eyes water. He followed the scent to a tiny booth draped in a hand-painted orange banner, stacked with jars of hot sauce in every shade of red and orange, and looked up to meet the eyes of the woman behind the counter.
Lena Mendez, 58, recognized him immediately. She leaned across the rough pine booth, one elbow propped on a stack of sample cups, and smirked, the scar along her left eyebrow crinkling at the corner. Manny froze. She was the younger sister of the ranch hand his ex had left him for. He’d spent over a decade badmouthing her entire family to anyone who’d listen, had sworn he’d never say a civil word to any of them, and now he was standing in front of her booth, mouth dry, like a kid caught stealing candy from the general store. He turned to leave, but she laughed, low and warm, and called after him. “Don’t you run off, Manny Ruiz. I don’t bite. Hard, anyway.”
He stopped, half-embarrassed, half-curious, and turned back. She held out a tiny plastic sample cup of bright red sauce, her wrist brushing his when he took it, her nails painted the same burnt orange as her booth banner. Her hands were calloused at the palms, he noticed, like she worked with them every day, a smudge of paprika on her left thumb. “Made this one with mango from the tree in my backyard,” she said, nodding at the cup. “Won first place at the San Antonio hot sauce expo last month.” He tossed the sample back, and the heat hit him immediately, searing across his tongue, down his throat, making his eyes water and him cough so hard his shoulders shook. She handed him a cold cup of horchata before he could ask, their fingers lacing for half a second when he took it, and he felt a jolt shoot up his arm that had nothing to do with the habanero.
They talked for 20 minutes, him leaning against the booth, her leaning across it, close enough that he could smell vanilla and cinnamon in her perfume, hear the faint twang of the Tejano band setting up on the main stage over the hum of the crowd. She told him her brother and his ex had gotten divorced three years prior, had split for the exact same reason Manny and his ex had: she couldn’t stop chasing the next shiny thing, no matter how good she had it. No one in her family had even liked the relationship, she said, had thought Manny got a raw deal from the start. He sat with that for a minute, the grudge he’d carried for 14 years feeling suddenly heavy, stupid, like he’d been carrying a brick in his pocket for no reason. He’d spent all that time angry at people who hadn’t even been on her side, for a fight that had been over before he even knew it started.
The band struck up the first notes of an old Ramón Ayala track, the accordion wailing over the drum beat, and she wiped her hands on her faded jeans, stepped around the booth, and held out her hand. “Come dance with me,” she said, no hesitation, no awkwardness, like she’d been waiting to ask him for years. He hesitated, glancing over her shoulder to see a few of his old referee buddies watching from the food truck line, grinning like they knew something he didn’t. For half a second he wanted to say no, to stick to the grudge, to keep the walls he’d built up around himself intact. But her hand was warm, her smile was easy, and he’d spent 14 years being angry. He was tired of being angry.
He took her hand, let her pull him to the open dance area between the food trucks and the carnival rides. They danced slow, her hand on his shoulder, his hand on her waist, their hips brushing every time they shifted their weight, her head tilted up so she could look him in the eye. She told him she’d had a crush on him since she was 20, when he’d umpired her senior year softball game and thrown her brother out for yelling at him over a bad call. She’d thought he was handsome then, she said, thought he was fair, even when the call went against her team. He felt his face get hot, the same way it did when he was 30 and a pretty woman smiled at him, like he was a kid again, fumbling through his first date.
They left the festival an hour later, walking down the dirt path to the creek that ran along the edge of the fairgrounds, her carrying a jar of her award-winning mango habanero sauce for him, him carrying the leftover pork tamales they’d picked up from a booth near the exit. The sun was dipping low over the oak trees, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the sound of the band fading behind them as they walked. He leaned against the thick trunk of a gnarled live oak, and she stepped close, her shoulder pressing against his, the heat of her body seeping through the thin cotton of his flannel shirt. She tilted her chin up, and he leaned down to kiss her, the faint taste of habanero and vanilla on her lips, the crickets chirping soft and steady in the grass at their feet.
