Clay Bennett, 58, sun-cracked hands crisscrossed with faint scarring and calluses thick as nickels from 32 years climbing power poles across the Southeast, leaned against a splintered pine picnic table outside The Rusty Spur’s pop-up tent at the county harvest festival, swirling warm bourbon in a chipped plastic cup. He’d driven 20 minutes into town that morning only because his niece had badgered him for three weeks straight to enter his brisket in the annual cookoff, and he’d hated to let the kid down—she’d been the only person who’d bothered checking in on him regularly after his wife Linda died seven years prior, back when he’d spent six months sleeping on the couch and eating nothing but frozen burritos and black coffee. The brisket had taken second place, lost to a 72-year-old retired teacher who’d been cheating with liquid smoke for as long as Clay could remember, but he didn’t care. The air smelled like burnt sugar, cut hay, and fried green tomatoes, the crowd’s low hum mixed with the twang of a bluegrass band playing off by the corn maze, and for the first time all month, he didn’t feel like hurrying back to his empty 40-acre property on the hill.
He was half considering bailing anyway, already reaching for the keys in his flannel shirt pocket, when he heard a laugh he recognized, sharp and warm, over the noise. It was Margot Hale, 54, the county librarian, ex-wife of his old foreman Rick, who’d been arrested six weeks prior for embezzling $120k from the local union fund, a scandal that had been the only thing anyone in town had talked about for a month. Clay had avoided her for 18 years, ever since Rick had chewed him out for “flirting too hard” at a company Christmas party when all he’d done was compliment her pecan pie. He’d always written her off as off-limits, even after the rumors started that she’d left Rick three years before the arrest, even after he’d seen her shelving westerns at the library last spring and tripped over a stack of children’s fiction on his way out, too flustered to say hello. She was walking toward him now, work boots crunching on crumpled orange maple leaves, holding a paper plate stacked high with funnel cake, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of powdered sugar on her left cheek.
She stopped a foot away, close enough he could smell vanilla lotion and the cinnamon on her breath, and tilted her head at his half-empty cup. “Heard your brisket got robbed today,” she said, grinning, and he blinked, surprised she even knew who he was, let alone that he’d entered the cookoff. He mumbled something about the old lady with the liquid smoke and a grudge against anyone who didn’t use her grandma’s rub recipe, and she laughed again, leaning in a little like she didn’t want anyone else to hear when she said Rick had used that same trick at three different company cookoffs back in the 2000s, and everyone had let him win because they were scared he’d cut their hours the next week. Clay snorted, shifting his weight so their shoulders brushed, the rough flannel of his shirt catching on the soft knit of her cream sweater, and he found himself telling her about the time Rick had made him climb a 60-foot pole in the middle of a thunderstorm just because he’d forgotten to bring Rick his extra-sweet iced coffee that morning. She sat down on the bench across from him, their knees brushing under the table when she crossed her legs, and told him she’d left Rick the day she found a receipt for an $800 hunting rifle he’d bought with union money, that she’d had no idea how much he’d stolen until the cops showed up at her door asking questions, that she’d been working double shifts at the library to pay off the joint credit card debt he’d left her with.
He felt a twist of something in his chest, half roiling disgust at Rick, half something warmer he hadn’t felt in years, when she brushed a fleck of brisket rub off his jaw with her thumb, her skin soft against his three-day stubble, and held his eye for three beats longer than she needed to. He’d spent seven years telling himself he didn’t need anyone, that dating at his age was just a hassle, that any woman who showed interest was either after his pension or the land he’d inherited from his dad, and for half a second he almost made an excuse to leave, almost grabbed his keys and drove home to his quiet empty house and the game rerun he’d planned to watch alone. But then she took a bite of funnel cake, powdered sugar sticking to her bottom lip, and asked him if the story he’d told at the union meeting ten years back about rescuing a skittish calico cat from the top of a power pole was true, and he knew he couldn’t leave. He told her he had a jar of dill pickles he’d canned last month in the cab of his truck, that they paired better with bourbon than funnel cake, that if she wanted, they could drive up to the overlook on his property, watch the sunset paint the valley pink. She didn’t even hesitate, just grabbed her canvas purse off the bench, and said she’d been wanting to see that view ever since he’d mentioned it at the library book sale last summer, that she’d been hoping he’d ask her eventually.
They sat on the tailgate of his beat-up 2008 F150 20 minutes later, the oak trees around them rustling in the cool October wind, passing the jar of pickles back and forth, watching the sky bleed tangerine and lavender over the rolling hills. She rested her hand on his knee, her fingers warm through the thick denim of his work jeans, and he didn’t pull away. He didn’t say anything about Linda, didn’t say anything about Rick, didn’t overthink what would happen next, didn’t worry about the town gossip that would start before the sun even came up the next day. He just took a slow sip of bourbon, watched the last sliver of sun dip below the horizon, and when she leaned in to kiss him, he tasted cinnamon and powdered sugar and the quiet possibility of something he’d thought he’d lost forever. He brought his calloused hand up to brush the stray silver strand of hair off her face, his knuckles grazing her soft cheek, and kissed her back.
