Moe Pritchard is 62, a retired Kentucky highway maintenance foreman who spent 38 years patching potholes, plowing ice off winding backroads, and talking down overconfident drivers who thought they could outrun flash flood warnings. His biggest flaw, the one his daughter nags him about every Sunday dinner, is that he’s spent the three years since his wife Linda died stubbornly avoiding every local community event she’d dragged him to for four decades, calling them all “a waste of good beer and mosquito repellent.” The only reason he’s at the county summer street fair on a sweltering July Thursday is his 8-year-old grandson’s Cub Scout troop is running the kettle corn booth, and he’d promised the kid he’d buy three bags and stick around for at least 20 minutes.
He’s leaning against the rough wooden support beam next to the scout booth, wiping sweat off his brow with the back of a grease-stained navy work shirt, when he notices the hot sauce stand three feet to his left. The woman running it is wiping down a stack of frosted glass bottles with a frayed rag, silver streaks cutting through her dark curly hair pulled back in a faded red bandana, a worn Willie Nelson cutoff tee stretched over her shoulders, chipped cherry-red nail polish on her fingers. She catches him staring, lifts one sharp eyebrow, and smirks. “You gonna stare all day, or you gonna try something that’ll clear out those sinus cavities you’ve been blowing into that ratty handkerchief all afternoon?”
He huffs, pushes off the beam, and ambles over, already mentally kicking himself for even walking in her direction. A sharp twinge of guilt nags at him, like Linda’s watching from somewhere, rolling her eyes at how easily he’s baited by a pretty woman with a smart mouth. “Got any that won’t make me cry like a kid who dropped his ice cream in the dirt?” he says, nodding at the rows of bottles labeled with silly, folksy names like “Hell’s Front Porch” and “Grandma’s Secret Revenge.” She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the tinny country music blaring from the fair’s crackling speakers and the high, sharp screams of kids on the nearby tilt-a-whirl. She picks up a bottle of amber habanero sauce, holds it out to him. When he reaches for it, their fingers brush for half a second. Her hands are warm, dotted with tiny pepper burns along the knuckles, and he can smell lime and smoked paprika on her skin, under the faint scent of sweat and coconut sunscreen.
He pays for the bottle, shoves it in his jeans pocket, and tells himself he can just walk back to the scout booth, go home after he gets the kettle corn, forget he even talked to her. But she leans against the Formica counter, tilts her head, and nods at his work boots caked in motor oil and driveway gravel. “You fix cars for fun, right? My sister’s old F-150 has been sputtering for two weeks, none of the local mechanics will get to it for a month. I’d pay you in all the hot sauce you can eat and a six pack of that bourbon barrel ale you guys brew up the road here.” He freezes. He hasn’t had a woman ask him for anything that isn’t a favor for a neighbor or a family member in three years. Half of him is disgusted with himself for even considering it, like he’s betraying the memory of the woman he was married to for 39 years. The other half is thrumming with a stupid, giddy excitement he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and worked up the nerve to ask Linda to the senior prom. He tells himself it’s just a favor, no big deal, but he can feel his face heating up, and he knows she sees it, because that smirk of hers gets wider, less teasing, warmer.
He agrees to look at the truck the next morning, scribbles his cell number on the back of a crumpled old highway maintenance receipt he has stuffed in his wallet. She tells him her name’s Rita, she’s a traveling culinary consultant from Nashville, in town visiting her sister for two weeks, filling in at the hot sauce booth because her sister’s 10-year-old came down with strep throat. She dabs a drop of the extra hot ghost pepper sauce on a saltine cracker, holds it out to him across the counter. “C’mon, brave guy. Prove you’re not all talk.” He takes the bite, chews, and for a second it’s fine, then the heat hits, crawling up his throat, stinging his eyes, and he coughs so hard his shoulders shake. She laughs so hard she snorts, grabs a cold can of limeade from the cooler under the counter, and hands it to him. When he leans in to take it, their faces are six inches apart. He can see the tiny sun freckles across her nose, the fleck of gold in her left eye, and her breath is warm on his cheek, still smelling like lime. For half a second he thinks about kissing her, right there, in front of all the fairgoers and the scout leaders and the group of old ladies selling homemade jams two booths over. He doesn’t, but she must see it in his face, because her smile softens completely, no more edge, no more teasing. “I knew you were a good sport,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear.
He stays at the fair for two more hours, long after he’s bought the kettle corn and his grandson has left with his mom. They talk about everything: her trips to Oaxaca to source rare dried peppers, his years plowing snow in the middle of blizzards, Linda, the way she used to hide hot sauce in all his food to “jazz up his boring meat and potatoes diet.” He doesn’t feel guilty talking about her, not like he thought he would. When the fair starts closing down, vendors folding up their booths, string lights flickering on along the sidewalk, she asks him if he wants to come to her sister’s backyard barbecue on Saturday, says all her sister’s friends are boring middle school teachers and she needs someone who can tell good stories about dumb drivers trying to outrun floodwaters. He says yes, no hesitation, no second guessing.
He walks back to his beat up 2004 Silverado parked three blocks away, the hot sauce bottle heavy in his front pocket, her number saved in his phone under “Rita Hot Sauce” so he doesn’t mix it up with his daughter’s or the auto parts store’s. He twisted the key in the ignition, the radio flicked on to a Patsy Cline track Linda used to blast while they washed the truck on weekends, and he smiled for the first time in three years without feeling like he had to apologize for it.
