Ray Voss, 58, retired power lineman with a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 storm repair, has carried the same petty grudge for 18 months. The local school board voted to rename the old Westfield High football field, where he’d started as defensive tackle in 1982, after a C-list country singer who’d graduated two decades after him, instead of his former coach, a man who’d bailed him out of three underage drinking charges and talked him into the lineman apprenticeship that paid for his house, his kid’s college, his wife’s final cancer treatments. Widowed seven years, he fills his weekends at The Tap Shack, a draft bar off Main Street, and volunteers at the county fair every August, mostly to get out of the quiet, empty house.
He’s nursing a hazy IPA at the fair volunteer orientation when she slides onto the stool next to him, denim jacket brushing the scuffed toe of his work boot, and he tenses immediately. He recognizes her. Marisol Ruiz, 54, the newest member of that same school board, the one who’d been quoted in the local paper talking about “forward-facing community legacy” when the rename was announced. He’d rolled his eyes so hard he’d gotten a headache that day. The bar smells like fried cheese curds and malt vinegar, the jukebox spitting John Mellencamp deep cuts at a volume low enough to let conversation carry, and when she passes him a printed copy of the volunteer schedule, her knuckles brush his, calloused and warm. He pulls his hand back like he’s touched a live wire.
She doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she teases him about it, dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Relax, I don’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.” She’s wearing faded cutoff jeans and a threadbare Westfield softball hoodie, silver streaks in her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, and he can smell citrus hand soap and a faint whiff of Camel menthol on her clothes. The schedule says they’re paired for ticket booth duty the first three nights of the fair, and he almost flags down the fair coordinator to switch, but then she nods at the old lineman’s ring on his right hand, the one engraved with his 1983 state championship year. “You played for Coach Hale, right? My dad was his assistant JV coach for 12 years.”
The words catch him off guard. He blinks, takes a long sip of his beer, and doesn’t snap back the retort he’d had ready. They talk for the next hour, and she admits she’d voted against the field rename, lost 4-3, and the board made her sign a stupid public unity clause so she couldn’t say anything about it, even when angry alumni left nasty notes on her front porch. She builds custom backyard sheds for extra cash, has a 26-year-old son who plays minor league baseball in Ohio, and she’s been coming to the fair since she was 7, when her dad would sneak her fried Oreos behind her mom’s back. He finds himself leaning in, elbows on the bar, closer than he’s gotten to anyone who wasn’t a family member in years, and when she laughs at his terrible story about dropping a power line in a cow pasture in 2007, her shoulder bumps his, and he doesn’t pull away.
The first night of the fair is sweltering until 8 PM, when a thunderstorm rolls in out of nowhere, rain pouring so hard it bounces off the asphalt, the ticket booth’s tin roof rattling so loud they can barely hear each other. The power cuts out 10 minutes later, the entire fairground going dark except for the faint glow of cell phone flashlights, and they huddle under a clear plastic tarp someone had taped to the booth’s awning to block the sun, shoulders pressed tight together, rain dripping off the edge of the tarp onto their jeans. She’s shivering a little, and when he passes her the extra flannel he keeps in his work bag, her hand wraps around his for two full seconds before she takes the shirt.
She admits she’s seen him at The Tap Shack at least a dozen times over the last year, always sitting in the same corner booth, always ordering the same IPA, and she was too nervous to say hi because she’d heard how mad he was about the field rename. He admits he’s been an idiot, holding a grudge against an entire board for a vote she didn’t even support, and when he says it out loud, it feels like a weight he didn’t know he was carrying lifts off his chest. Their knees are touching under the tarp, and when he brushes a strand of wet hair off her face, she doesn’t flinch, just holds eye contact, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half smile. The lights come back on two minutes later, but neither of them moves apart for the rest of the shift.
When the fair closes at 11, the rain has slowed to a fine mist, the air smelling like wet grass and cotton candy and diesel from the fair rides. They walk to his beat-up 2017 Ford F-150 parked in the grass lot, boots squelching in the mud, and he stops at the passenger door, fumbling with his keys for a second before he asks if she wants to stop at the 24-hour diner off the interstate for pancakes and coffee. She nods, grinning, and when she pauses before climbing into the truck, she brushes a stray raindrop off his cheek with the pad of her thumb.
