Javi Mendez is 57, makes his living sanding rust out of 1960s travel trailers and rewiring their fridges to run off solar, and he hasn’t let anyone sit in the passenger seat of his old Ford F-150 since his wife packed her bags and moved to Portland eight years ago. He’s got a scar slashing across his left eyebrow from a trailer frame that slipped off a jack last year, and a bad habit of walking away from any conversation that even hints at personal vulnerability, convinced any good thing that sticks around long enough to get comfortable will only rust through and leave him holding the repair bill. He’s at the Umatilla County Fair beer tent on a sticky August Saturday mostly to avoid the guy who’s been blowing up his phone begging for a discount on a Shasta restoration, not to socialize.
The tent hums with the kind of lazy chaos small towns do best: old men arguing over 4H steer results, teen girls sneaking sips of their older brothers’ IPAs, the faint tinny twang of a cover band playing Garth Brooks covers drifting over from the main stage. Javi’s halfway through his second draft beer when a woman squeezes past the folding chair next to him, her hip brushing his denim-clad thigh hard enough that he almost sloshes beer down his hoodie. She mumbles an apology, and when he looks up he recognizes her immediately: Lena Hale, ex-wife of the county sheriff who got arrested three weeks prior for embezzling funds meant for the local search and rescue team. Javi’s hated her ex since high school, when the guy tripped him right before the homecoming football game and broke his wrist, but he’d always thought Lena was far too sharp, far too quick to laugh at dumb jokes, to be stuck with a prick that spent most of his tenure pulling over teenagers for going two miles over the speed limit and pocketing cash from local business owners looking for preferential treatment.
She’s wearing a gingham work dress dusted with rabbit fur from running the 4H rabbit show all day, cowboy boots caked in sawdust, and when she leans against the bar next to him to order a hard seltzer, he catches a whiff of lavender hand soap and cut alfalfa. She catches him staring, smirks, and nods at the faded logo on his hoodie that reads Mendez Vintage Camper Restorations. “Drove past your shop last week,” she says, raising her voice just enough to be heard over the crowd. “Saw that 1988 demolition derby trophy on your shelf by the front window. Still haven’t polished the dent out of the side, huh?” Javi blinks, surprised she even remembers that trophy, let alone the dent from when her ex rammed his car right before Javi crossed the finish line. He shrugs, takes a sip of beer. “Figured the dent’s part of the story,” he says. She laughs, and when she does, her hand brushes his forearm, calloused from hauling rabbit cages around all day, warm enough that he feels the heat travel up his arm and settle in the back of his neck.
He spends the next 45 minutes fighting the urge to leave. Small town gossip moves faster than a wildfire in July, and he knows if anyone sees him talking to Lena, it’ll be all over the local Facebook group by morning, people making jokes about her moving on from the disgraced sheriff before the ink is even dry on her separation papers. He’s disgusted with himself for even enjoying the conversation, for leaning in a little closer when she talks about how she’d found the sheriff’s hidden cash stashed in the false bottom of their gun safe, for the way his chest tightens when she says she’s been sleeping on a friend’s couch for two weeks and just bought a beat-up 1972 Airstream to fix up and live in on five acres she inherited from her grandma. He tells himself he should go home, that this is nothing but trouble, that he’s too old to be chasing thrills that’ll only end with him getting his feelings hurt. But when she leans in so close her mouth is inches from his ear, the citrus from her seltzer fizzing against his jaw, and asks if he wants to walk with her down to the fair campground to look at the Airstream’s busted water heater, he doesn’t say no.
The walk to the campground is lit by neon from the Tilt-A-Whirl and string lights strung between oak trees, the distant sound of kids screaming on the roller coaster fading behind them. She brushes her hand against his twice, slow, like she’s testing to see if he’ll pull away, and when he doesn’t, she laces their fingers together, her palm rough and warm against his. He can feel the faint indent of a ring on her left finger, the band she must have forgotten to take off when she left her ex, and for half a second he thinks about letting go, about walking back to his truck and driving home to the quiet of his empty shop. But then she squeezes his hand, nods at a skunk waddling across the path ahead of them, and snorts so loud he laughs out loud, the kind of deep, unplanned laugh he hasn’t had in years. The Airstream is parked at the far end of the campground, strings of fairy lights strung around its awning, a plastic foldable chair next to the door holding a half-empty bag of rabbit treats. She pulls her hand away to fumble for her keys, and when she unlocks the door, she steps inside, turns, and looks up at him, the light from inside gilding the edges of her hair. He steps over the threshold after her, and doesn’t look back.
