Ray Garza, 62, retired border patrol canine handler, swipes a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of a calloused hand, the faint scar across his knuckle from a 2019 training incident catching the south Texas sun. He’s manning the brisket table at the annual La Joya fire department cookoff, his old offset smoker still humming behind him, the air thick with hickory smoke, the sugary tang of grilled corn on the cob, and the sharp, briny scent of pickled jalapeños from the condiment table. He’s avoided the cookoff the last three years, too tired of the same old nosy questions from neighbors about when he’ll “stop moping and find someone nice,” but his 16-year-old granddaughter begged him to enter his brisket this year, said it was stupid to let his award-winning recipe die with his late wife Elaina.
He’s just slid a slice of fatty, pink-edged brisket onto a grinning kid’s paper plate when he sees her. Marisol Mendez, 58, his next door neighbor of three months, the woman who’s been leaving homemade empanadas on his porch every Wednesday since she found out he lives on frozen burritos and canned beans half the week. She’s wearing a faded linen blouse the color of sun-bleached sage, small sunflower earrings dangling from her ears, a thick streak of silver cutting through the black hair tied back in a loose braid. She’s holding a paper plate stacked high with pork tamales, her hands dusted with a little corn masa, and she’s grinning like she knows he’s been avoiding her since last week, when he caught himself staring at her through the kitchen window while she watered her rose bushes in the rain.
She stops in front of his table, and when she holds out the plate of tamales, her fingers brush his. The contact is light, accidental, but Ray flinches like he’s touched a hot stove. He hasn’t felt a woman’s touch that wasn’t a quick hug from his daughter or granddaughter in eight years, not since Elaina got too sick to hold his hand for more than a minute at a time. The smell of coconut shampoo and the cinnamon she mixes into her tamale filling wraps around him, and for a second he forgets how to speak, the buzz of cicadas and the chatter of the crowd fading to background noise.
She laughs, soft and warm, and nods at the half-empty water jug sweating next to his smoker. “Figured you’d be hungry enough to eat something that didn’t spend 12 hours in a smoke box. You look like you’ve been standing out here since 5 a.m.”
He has. He nods, takes a tamale, peels back the dry corn husk, takes a bite. It’s better than any tamale he’s ever had, even the ones Elaina used to make for Christmas Eve dinner. He’s about to say so when a fire engine blares its siren as it pulls out of the station next to the park, and Marisol steps in closer, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep to get out of the way of a group of screaming kids running for the truck. The warmth of her seeps through his thin cotton work shirt, and he can feel the faint tremor of her laugh through the point of contact when the kids whoop and wave at the firefighters hanging out the window.
They drift over to the shade of a gnarled live oak tree at the edge of the park, gravel crunching under their scuffed work boots, and Ray’s throat feels tight. He’s known Marisol was married to Rico, his old border patrol partner of 15 years, for 18 years before he left her for a park ranger in Alaska 12 years back. Everyone in town knows it. He can feel the sidelong glances from the old patrol crew sitting at the picnic table nearby, the quiet whispers, and a stupid, stubborn part of him is screaming that this is wrong, that he’s betraying Rico, that he’s betraying Elaina by even standing this close to another woman, by even liking the way her laugh sounds.
Ray blinks. He’d forgotten Marisol and Elaina were best friends in high school, long before either of them met Rico or him. That’s why she moved back to La Joya, to be closer to the friends she grew up with, after her mom passed earlier this year. The tight knot in his chest loosens a little, and he huffs a laugh, shaking his head, surprised he ever thought he could keep a secret from either of them.
“I didn’t know you two kept in touch all those years,” he says, and when they both reach for a napkin off the folding table next to them, their hands brush again, and this time he doesn’t flinch. He lets his fingers rest against hers for half a second before he pulls back, grabs the napkin, wipes a spot of tamale grease off his frayed jeans.
“Used to sneak out to the old Starlight Drive-In together on weekends,” Marisol says, and she’s holding eye contact with him, dark eyes warm, no hint of shyness, like she knows exactly what he’s been thinking for the last three months. “They’re doing a 50th anniversary rerelease of The Wild Bunch next Saturday. I was gonna go alone, but if you wanna bring that cooler of Shiner Bock you keep on your back porch, I won’t complain.”
Ray’s heart beats faster, the way it used to when he was 17 asking Elaina to prom, the way it used to when he was chasing a suspect through the mesquite brush with his K-9, Max, at his heels. He’s spent eight years telling himself he was too old for this, that he didn’t need anything other than his rescue puppies, his beat-up 1978 Ford F-150, and his brisket recipe, but standing there under the oak tree, the smell of her shampoo still in his nose, the ghost of her touch on his knuckles, he realizes how stupid that was.
He nods, and he’s grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. “I’ll pick you up at 7. Bring extra tamales.”
Marisol laughs, and she steals a bite of the brisket he’s holding in his other hand, wipes a smudge of barbecue sauce off the corner of her mouth with her thumb. He reaches out, grabs a clean napkin, dabs a spot of sauce off her chin that she missed, his thumb brushing the soft, sun-warmed skin of her jaw as he pulls away.
He walks her back to her tamale booth a minute later, his hand brushing the small of her back the whole way, ignoring the sidelong glances from the old patrol crew, ignoring the stupid voice in his head that says he shouldn’t be doing this. When he gets back to his brisket table, his granddaughter is leaning against the smoker, grinning so wide she looks like she’s about to burst.
He doesn’t say anything. He just picks up another slice of brisket, slides it onto a paper plate, and takes a bite, the taste of hickory and cinnamon still lingering on his tongue.
