Cole Henderson, 58, retired first-class lineman for Auglaize County Power, 36 years on the job, still wears the frayed canvas work jacket with his name stitched above the pocket even though the left cuff is torn and the quilted lining peeks out the bottom hem. He’s camped at the county fair beer tent at 7:30 PM on a late August Thursday, the air thick enough to sip, heavy with fried dough and diesel fumes from the tractor pull roaring 100 yards away. He just finished judging the amateur peach pie contest, still has a crumb of buttery crust stuck to the corner of his mouth, holds a cold Pabst draft in one calloused hand, the thick scar across his left knuckle bleached white where he’s gripping the plastic cup too tight. He hasn’t spoken to Lila Marlow in 15 years, not since the screaming match at his 40th wedding anniversary party where he’d accused her of intentionally spilling red wine on his wife’s new silk dress, and she’d called him a stubborn old jackass who’d rather pick a fight than admit what he really wanted. He’d thrown a slice of chocolate cake at the drywall that night. His wife hadn’t spoken to him for three days after.
She walks in ten minutes after he sits down, same lopsided gait she’s always had from breaking her ankle senior year of high school cheer, wearing a blue floral sundress that hits just above her knees, scuffed white canvas sneakers, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid that falls over one shoulder. He freezes when he spots her, half expects her to turn and head for the other end of the tent, but she locks eyes with him, pauses for half a second, then heads straight for his table. The guy in the folding chair between them grabs his corn dog and wanders off to watch the tractor pull right as she gets there, so she slides into the empty seat, her elbow brushing his bicep when she sets her own beer down on the sticky plastic table. The contact sends a jolt up his arm, hot and sharp, and he shifts away half an inch, guilt coiling tight in his chest. He’d spent 15 years telling himself he hated her, that she was a reckless troublemaker, that the flicker of hungry attraction he’d felt the first time they met was a sin he needed to bury so deep he’d never find it again.
She doesn’t say anything for a minute, just sips her beer, watches a group of kids run past the tent screaming with cotton candy stuck to their cheeks and hair. Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee” hums through the tinny speakers strung across the tent poles, and she huffs a laugh, turns to look at him, her brown eyes bright, crinkled at the corners the exact way his wife’s used to be when she was teasing him about something stupid he’d done. “You still judge the pie contest?” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the roar of the crowd and the tractor engines, her shoulder pressing against his now, her hair smelling like coconut sunscreen and the vanilla perfume his wife used to wear on their anniversary dates. He nods, wipes the pie crumb off his mouth with the back of his hand, feels his face heating up like he’s 16 again, not a grown man who’s buried a wife and fixed over a thousand downed power lines in the middle of ice storms and tornadoes. “You still can’t hold your beer without spilling it down your shirt?” he says back, and she snorts, pokes his arm with one deep red-painted nail, the contact soft, playful, not angry at all.
They talk for an hour, first about the fair, then about her mom, who’s in the nursing home on the edge of town with early onset dementia, the reason she moved back from Tampa last month after 12 years away. She brings up the anniversary party halfway through, says she knew back then why he’d picked the fight, that he was scared of the way he looked at her when he thought no one was watching, that she’d felt the same pull, but would never have crossed a line while his wife was alive. The words hang between them, thick as the humid fair air, and he feels sick for a second, disgusted with himself for wanting his wife’s cousin, for carrying that want around for 15 years like a dirty secret he couldn’t shake. But then she brushes her thumb across the scar on his left knuckle, the one he got fixing her power line after a 2009 tornado, the one he’d never told his wife about, and the guilt softens, melts into something warm and bright he hasn’t felt since the day his wife took her last breath.
He admits it then, tells her he was a coward, that he picked the fight to push her away so he wouldn’t have to face how much he wanted her, that he’d spent the last three years since his wife died feeling like half a person, like the best parts of him died with her. She nods, doesn’t call him stupid, doesn’t tell him he’s a bad person, just laces her fingers through his, her hand small and soft against his calloused, work-worn one, and says she knows what it feels like to carry a secret you’re scared to say out loud. The tractor pull ends right then, a roar of cheers going up from the stands, and the sky is dark now, lit up by the fairy lights strung across the top of the tent and the neon glow of the Ferris wheel behind them.
He stands up first, pulls her up with him, doesn’t let go of her hand. They walk past the cotton candy stands, past the ring toss booth, past the group of VFW guys he usually sits with, who whistle and wave when they see them. He doesn’t care. He’s spent 58 years doing what everyone expects of him, being the good husband, the good worker, the good friend. He walks her to his beat up 2018 Ford F-150, opens the passenger door for her, waits until she’s settled inside before he closes it. He walks around to the driver’s side, climbs in, turns the key, the radio cutting on to an old George Strait song. He looks over at her, her face lit up soft by the blue dashboard lights, and she smiles, reaches over to rest her hand on his thigh as he pulls out of the fair parking lot, heading for the 24-hour diner five miles down the road where he and his wife used to get chocolate milkshakes after date nights. He presses his foot lightly on the gas, the cool night air blowing through the open window carrying the faint, sweet smell of her coconut sunscreen.
