Elias Voss, 53, has spent the last 18 years as a Midwest minor league scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in his beat-up Ford F-150, sleeping in roadside motels, and carrying a tattered leather notebook full of pitch velocity stats and scribbled notes on teenage hitters’ swing mechanics. His biggest flaw? He’s built his entire identity around the job, ever since his ex-wife left him 12 years prior, after he skipped their 10th anniversary dinner to drive 3 hours to watch a 16-year-old righty throw a no-hitter. He’s got a strict rule against fraternizing with anyone connected to the local baseball circuit, no exceptions, and he’s stuck to it for a decade.
He’s camped out at the county fair beer tent on a humid August Tuesday, post-scouting a 17-year-old lefty from the next town over who throws a 94 mph fastball that snaps like a rubber band. The plastic table under his bourbon and coke is sticky with spilled beer and cotton candy residue, the Tilt-A-Whirl roars 50 feet away, and the air smells like fried dough, corn silage, and burnt hot dogs. He’s just scribbled a note about the lefty’s wonky pickoff move in his notebook when someone slides into the bench across from him, so close their knees brush under the table.
It’s Clara Hale, the 38-year-old wife of the local high school’s new head baseball coach. He’s seen her at half a dozen games this season, always perched in the bleachers with a cooler of lemonade, always waving when he nods at her from the dugout fence. She’s alone, holding a paper tray of cheese curds, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a flannel shirt tied around her waist over a cut-off tank top. She says her husband’s at a coach’s clinic in Des Moines, she came to the fair alone because he hates crowds, and she spotted his beat-up scouting cap from the entrance.
He doesn’t move his knee away. He lets it press against hers, warm through the thin denim of her jeans, as they talk about the lefty he just watched, about her 8-year-old son’s Little League team that’s one win away from the state tournament, about how the fair’s lemonade stand watered down their drinks this year. When he spills a drop of bourbon on his worn work boot, she passes him a napkin, and their fingers brush for half a second. Her skin is soft, smells like coconut hand lotion and fried cheese, and he has to look away for a second to catch his breath.
He’s torn, sharp and hot, between the familiar disgust at himself for even considering breaking his own rule, for wanting something he’s convinced he doesn’t deserve, and a desire so sharp it makes his knuckles white around his beer bottle. She’s angled toward him now, not away, her elbow propped on the table, her eyes not leaving his face when he talks, and when she laughs at his dumb joke about the last prospect he scouted who couldn’t hit a curveball to save his life, her foot taps his under the table, intentional this time.
When she asks him if he wants to walk the back of the fairgrounds, away from the crowd, he doesn’t hesitate. They walk past the empty horse show barns, the sound of the fair’s main stage fading behind them, until they hit the old wooden split-rail fence that overlooks 100 acres of waist-high corn, swaying in the warm night wind. She leans against the fence next to him, her shoulder pressed to his bicep, and he can feel the warmth of her skin through his thin team t-shirt.
She turns her face up to him, and he kisses her before he can talk himself out of it. It’s slow, soft, no hurry, and he can taste the lemonade and salt from the cheese curds on her lips. She tangles one hand in the edge of his scouting cap, pulls him closer, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t think about pitch speeds or scouting reports or the rules he’s spent a decade enforcing. He just thinks about how good she feels, how long it’s been since he felt like someone was actually listening to him, not just asking him about the next big prospect.
They don’t go any further that night. They walk back to the fair, she buys him a cone of blue cotton candy that stains his fingers bright blue, and they sit on the curb by the exit for 45 minutes, watching the fireworks explode pink and green over the cornfield. She scribbles her cell number on a scrap of paper torn from his scouting notebook, tells him she and her husband are filing for divorce next month, that he’s taking a job in Texas and she’s staying here with their son, that she’s been waiting to talk to him alone for three months.
