Ray Ruiz, 62, spent 28 years as a Border Patrol canine handler before retiring to run a 10-acre native plant nursery outside El Paso. His biggest flaw, as his oldest son liked to tease him every Thanksgiving, was that he’d spent so long scanning for rule breaks he couldn’t turn the hyper-vigilance off, even when the only thing he was “patrolling” was a row of prickly pear cacti. He’d been widowed seven years, hadn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since his wife’s funeral, and spent most Friday nights drinking cheap beer on his porch with Mila, his 10-year-old German shepherd and former patrol partner.
He’d booked a booth at the West Texas County Fair that October mostly to sell small potted succulents and agave starters, not expecting the booth right next to his to be run by the El Paso Reproductive Access Fund. For the first two hours of the fair, he’d avoided even glancing that way, stuck in the decades-old habit of writing off anyone associated with causes he’d long been told were “not his people.” That changed when she leaned over the wooden rail separating their spaces, one calloused hand outstretched, and asked if he had a spare paper towel to wipe chile powder off her cash box.
Her name was Clara, 57, retired high school biology teacher, silver hair braided down her back, wearing a faded 1980s Willie Nelson tour tee and scuffed work boots caked in dust. When their arms brushed as he handed her the roll of paper towels, he felt the rough ridge of a scar across her wrist, from a lab accident with a beaker when she was 24, she’d later tell him. She smelled like pine-sol and roasted pecans, held eye contact for half a beat longer than was strictly polite, and grinned when she glanced down at the display of cacti behind him. “You sellin’ spiky little things that bite if you get too close?” she said, nodding at a barrel cactus dotted with tiny thorns. He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months.
For the next four hours, they talked between customers. She told him about the 19-year-old daughter of a former student who’d had to drive 12 hours to Albuquerque for care six months prior, couldn’t afford gas or a hotel room, so the fund had raised the money for her in 48 hours. He told her about Mila, how the dog had saved his life when a smuggler tried to stab him just outside of Sierra Blanca in 2017, how he’d adopted her as soon as she retired from the force. He felt the old familiar twist of disgust in his gut at first, the voice in his head that sounded like his old supervisor yelling about sticking to your own lane, warring with the warm buzz in his chest every time she smiled, every time her knee brushed his when they both leaned over the rail to watch a kid ride past on a pony.
The rain hit without warning, fat, cold drops that soaked through his flannel shirt in 30 seconds. The fair organizers blared over the loudspeaker that they were closing early for the night, everyone needed to pack up their booths immediately. He watched Clara struggle to lift a heavy box of donation jars, her boots slipping on the mud that was already forming on the grass, and moved without thinking to help her. He grabbed one end of the box, his fingers brushing hers, and they carried it across the fairground to her beat-up 2004 Ford F-150. When she stepped up on the bumper to set the box in the bed, her left foot slipped, and she fell backward right into his arms.
His hands landed on her waist, the fabric of her tee damp and warm under his palms, and she tilted her head up to look at him, rain dripping off the end of her braid onto the collar of his shirt. She kissed him first, soft, tentative at first, like she was waiting for him to pull away, and when he didn’t, she deepened it, one hand coming up to rest on the back of his neck, her nails scraping lightly against his skin. He’d forgotten what it felt like to kiss someone who wanted to be there, forgotten the way a woman’s hand could feel like it burned right through his clothes, forgotten that someone could taste like root beer and mint gum and feel like home all at once.
When they pulled apart, she was grinning, a smudge of rain and mascara under her left eye. He walked back to his booth, grabbed one of the small potted prickly pears he’d been saving for his niece’s birthday, the one with the tiny pink blooms just starting to open, and handed it to her. “For your kitchen windowsill,” he said, and then added, before he could talk himself out of it, “I got $500 I want to donate to your fund. And if you’re free tomorrow, I know a diner on the east side that makes the best chilaquiles in the whole state.”
She laughed, took the cactus from him, and pulled a crumpled donation flier out of her pocket, scribbled her phone number on the back in blue ballpoint, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing his chest through the fabric. Mila, who’d been curled up under his booth the whole time avoiding the rain, trotted over and nuzzled her free hand, tail wagging slow, like she was giving her stamp of approval.
He stood there in the rain, watching her pull out of the fairground parking lot, the sound of her truck’s muffler fading into the distance. The rain slowed to a light drizzle, the air smelling like wet dirt and leftover roasted chiles, the fair workers already taking down the Ferris wheel behind him. He tugged the flier out of his pocket for the third time in five minutes, ran his thumb over the smudged digits, and smiled so wide his cheeks hurt.
