Rudy Voss is 53, a minor league scout for the Midwest League, spends 10 months of the year crisscrossing Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin in a dented 2019 Ford F-150 with a Cardinals decal peeling off the rear window. His biggest flaw, if you ask his sister who calls once a month to nag him about dating, is that he’s spent the seven years since his wife Linda died of breast cancer actively avoiding any interaction that doesn’t involve pitch speeds, exit velocities, or whether a 17-year-old lefty can keep his curveball in the strike zone with runners on second and third. He tells himself he’s too busy for small talk, too set in his ways to learn how to date in a world of apps and algorithm-driven matches, too scared to let anyone get close enough to leave him again.
He’s at the Jones County Fair on a humid July Tuesday, fresh off scouting the same lefty pitcher at the local high school, when the whole mess starts. He’s grabbing a cold pale ale from the craft beer tent, turns too fast to avoid a kid carrying a stack of cotton candy, and spills half the 16-ounce cup down the front of a stranger’s cream linen button-down.
He sputters an apology, grabs a handful of rough paper napkins from the stack on the counter, and freezes when he gets a good look at her. She’s 49, sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, a thin silver scar slicing through her left eyebrow, three chunky turquoise rings on her right hand, and a smirk on her face like she’s been waiting for something stupid to happen all day. Her name is Clara, she tells him, runs the mobile used bookshop trailer parked by the livestock barns, and she’s the ex-wife of the high school’s head baseball coach, the same guy Rudy badgered for three hours that afternoon for game footage of the lefty. Everyone in town knows they split nine months prior, after she caught him cheating with the varsity cheerleading coach at an away game in Cedar Rapids. It’s the worst kept secret in the county, and Rudy knows better than to get within 10 feet of her, not if he wants to keep getting access to the school’s players for the next few years.
He dabs at the wet spot on her shirt anyway, his knuckles brushing her collarbone when he leans in, and she doesn’t flinch. She leans in closer, actually, so close he can smell the cedar and peach perfume on her skin, can hear the faint laugh in her voice when she says he owes her a new shirt, or at least a refill of her own beer that he also knocked over when he spun around. He buys her a hazy IPA, they sit at a splintered picnic table in the shade of the tent, and her knee brushes his under the table every time she shifts to get a better look at a group of teens walking past with fried Oreos. She teases him about his faded Cardinals hat, says her ex hates the Cardinals with a passion, says she always rooted for them on the sly just to annoy him. He tells her about Linda, about how they used to come to this same fair every year before she got sick, about how he’s avoided it for seven years until he had to come scout the lefty. She doesn’t give him that pitying look everyone else does when he mentions Linda, just nods, says she gets it, that grief feels like wearing a coat that’s too heavy, that you forget you can take it off sometimes if you want to.
The sun dips below the cornfields by 8:30, the fair’s main stage band wraps up their set, fireflies blink on in the grass between the picnic tables. He walks her back to her bookshop trailer, the gravel crunching under their boots, and she stops halfway to adjust the strap on her leather sandal, her hand brushing his wrist when she stands back up. She says she has a first edition of *The Old Man and the Sea* inside, that she heard him tell the beer tent worker earlier that it was his favorite book as a kid, that he can come in and look if he wants. He hesitates, his brain running through all the reasons he shouldn’t: the coach will hear, he has a 6 a.m. drive to Des Moines to scout another pitcher, he hasn’t kissed anyone since Linda died, he’s scared he’ll mess it up. The conflict sits hot in his chest, half frustration at himself for even considering breaking his own rule, half sharp, bright desire he hasn’t felt in years, the kind that makes his hands sweat a little, that makes him lean in when she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
He follows her up the three wooden steps to the trailer, the inside smelling like old paper, vanilla candles, and the faint, sweet tang of the peaches she has in a wicker basket on the counter. She pulls the book off an oak shelf by the window, hands it to him, and when he opens it, there’s a faded note scrawled in blue ink on the inside cover, from her grandma who gave it to her when she was 12. She leans against his chest, and he can feel her heartbeat through the thin fabric of her shirt, slow and steady, matching his own. He kisses her slow, no rush, the sound of crickets chirping outside the trailer the only noise, no expectations, no pressure, no lists of things he’s supposed to say or do.
He leaves an hour later, the book tucked under his arm, a smudge of her cherry lipstick on the corner of his jaw, and doesn’t even think about the coach’s possible reaction as he turns the key in his truck’s ignition, rolls the windows all the way down, and pulls out of the fairground parking lot, the warm summer air tangling in his hair as he drives toward his motel.
