Ray Voss, 58, retired TVA lineman, had only agreed to show up to the county fire department chili cookoff because his 16-year-old nephew had begged him to enter his famous venison chili, the recipe his late wife had tweaked for him over 27 years of marriage. He’d been avoiding public events for four years, ever since Linda’s lung cancer took her, convinced small town gossip and well-meaning but intrusive questions about his bad knee or his love life were more trouble than they were worth. He wore the same faded gray flannel he’d had since his last day on the job, steel-toe boots still scuffed from climbing power poles, the faint scar snaking up his left calf aching a little in the crisp October air.
He was leaning against the tailgate of his beat-up 2008 F150, debating if he could sneak out before the awards were announced, when a woman carrying two bowls of chili stumbled over a loose cinder block at his feet and spilled a dollop of five-alarm across his sleeve. He jumped a little at the burn, then froze when he looked up and recognized her: Clara Bennett, 54, the new part-time librarian at the town branch, ex-wife of his old crew foreman Jake, who’d been arrested three weeks prior for embezzling $120k from the local union hall, the story splashed across the front page of the county paper like a cheap scandal sheet.
Clara’s face flushed pink, and she stepped in close enough that Ray could smell lavender hand cream mixed with the smoky chili on her clothes, her silver hoop earrings brushing the edge of her auburn hair as she leaned in to dab at the stain with a crumpled napkin from her jeans pocket. “I am so sorry,” she said, her voice low and warm, the same way he remembered it from 10 years prior, when Jake would bring her to crew barbecues and spend the whole night yelling at her for taking too long to get him a beer. She didn’t step back when she finished dabbing the stain, held his gaze for two beats longer than polite, her brown eyes crinkling a little at the corners when she noticed the old TVA logo stitched on his flannel pocket. “You’re Ray, right? Jake used to complain about you all the time, said you refused to climb poles in thunderstorms even when he ordered you to.”
Ray laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months. “Smartest call I ever made. That’s why I only busted my knee once, instead of ending up dead at the bottom of a 60 foot pole.” He gestured to the empty spot next to him on the tailgate, and she sat, her denim-clad knee brushing his through his work pants, the contact light but electric enough that he felt the hair on his arms stand up. He could hear a group of old union guys snickering by the beer cooler, glancing over at them, and he saw her flinch a little, her shoulders tensing. “Ignore those idiots,” he said, passing her a cold can of root beer from the cooler at his feet, his fingers brushing hers when she took it, the cold of the can seeping into both their skin. “Jake was an asshole long before he got caught stealing. Nobody blames you for that.”
She relaxed, leaning back against the truck bed, the sun catching the silver streaks in her hair as she tilted her face up to the light. They talked for 40 minutes, first about the chili, then about fly fishing, when she mentioned she’d been driving up to the Tellico River twice a month to fish alone since her divorce two years prior. Ray’s chest tightened a little; he’d been going to that same spot for 30 years, had only gone alone since Linda died, had always thought it felt too empty without someone to pass a beer to when the trout weren’t biting. The old voice in his head piped up, loud and familiar: this is wrong, she’s Jake’s ex, you’re still married to Linda, you don’t get to want this. He ignored it, or tried to, until she turned to him, her knee pressing a little firmer against his now, and said, “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get to that hidden pool up past the rapids for months. I heard you know that stretch better than anyone. You wanna come with me next Saturday? I’ll bring the beer.”
He hesitated for three full seconds, the back of his neck hot, the ghost of Linda’s laugh in his head, the memory of her telling him before she died to stop being so stubborn and go live his life. “Yeah,” he said, surprising even himself. “I’ll bring the extra fishing rod. And don’t bring that cheap light beer Jake used to drink. I got good stuff, brewed down at the new brewery in town.”
She grinned, pulling her phone out to swap numbers, her fingers brushing his again when she handed him her phone to type his contact in. She left 10 minutes later, waving from her beat-up Subaru as she pulled out of the fairground parking lot. Ray stood there for another 15 minutes, sipping his root beer, watching the last of the sun dip below the tree line, his knee not aching nearly as bad as it had when he’d first showed up. He pulled his phone out to text his nephew that he’d be staying for the awards, and when he hit send, he realized he was still smiling.
