Ronny Voss, 62, spent 38 years as a freight train conductor out of Pittsburgh, before a bad knee and a company buyout pushed him into early retirement eight years prior, two weeks after his wife lost her six-year fight with breast cancer. His biggest flaw, the one his sister nags him about every Sunday dinner, is that he refuses to let anyone new into his orbit—he’d rather spend his nights sanding rust off the 1952 caboose he’s restoring for the town historical park than make small talk at community events, and he’s carried a petty, burning grudge against the new mayor for three months, ever since the guy sliced the park’s budget so deep Ronny almost couldn’t afford the new brake lines for the caboose. He only showed up to the fall harvest festival at the fire hall that night because his old rail crew was playing bluegrass in the back, and he snuck in through the side door to skip the mayor’s opening speech, grabbing a cold Yuengling off the bar before he found an empty spot against the cinder block wall out of the spotlight.
The air smells like fried dough and pine, the sawdust on the floor sticks to the scuffed soles of his work boots, and the fiddle player is sawing through a cover of *Rocky Top* so loud the beer in his can buzzes against his palm. He’s halfway through his second drink, watching a group of kids chase each other around the cake walk table, when she steps up next to him to order a black cherry seltzer, close enough that her shoulder almost brushes his bicep. She’s the mayor’s wife, 48, he’s seen her at town meetings, always sitting in the back row, scrolling through her phone while her husband rants about “fiscal responsibility.” Her elbow knocks his forearm when she reaches for a stack of napkins, and he feels the soft wool of her cream cardigan against the calloused, grease-stained skin of his arm, a jolt that runs all the way up to his jaw. She apologizes, leaning in a little closer so he can hear her over the music, and he catches the scent of apple cider and cinnamon on her sweater, the faint, sweet tang of her lip gloss.
She says she saw him duck the speech, smirks, and calls her husband a walking press release who spends more time picking out his hair gel than he does reading the town budget requests. Ronny snorts, before he can stop himself, and tells her about the caboose budget cut, the way he had to dip into his late wife’s birthday gift fund to pay for the brake lines. She nods, leans in even closer, her shoulder now pressed fully to his, and says she’s been nagging her husband for weeks to reverse the cut, that she thinks the caboose project is the only cool thing the town has going for it. He’s torn between the sharp, familiar anger he feels at the mention of her husband, and the warm, fizzing buzz in his chest he hasn’t felt since his first date with his wife, 40 years prior. He keeps waiting for himself to make an excuse and leave, but he can’t look away from the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes, the way she bites the corner of her lower lip when she laughs at his story about the time his train hit a flock of wild turkeys outside of Altoona.
The overhead lights flicker once, twice, then cut out completely, and the whole room cheers, someone yelling that the popcorn machine must have blown a fuse. For ten seconds, the only light comes from the glow of cell phones scattered across the room, and in the dark, her hand finds his, lacing their fingers together tight. Her palm is soft, a little cold from holding the seltzer can, and he can feel the thin, raised scar across her index finger, the one she told him she got last week burning herself baking apple pies for the festival bake sale. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t even move, just holds her hand, his heart hammering so hard he can hear it over the whoops of the crowd. When the lights kick back on, she doesn’t let go for three full beats, then squeezes his hand once before slipping hers away, sliding a crumpled paper napkin into his palm before she turns to walk toward the bake sale table.
He waits ten minutes after she leaves to walk out to his beat-up Ford F-150, sipping his beer slow, making sure no one he knows sees him leave with a dumb grin on his face. He climbs into the driver’s seat, turns the key so the heat kicks on, then unfolds the napkin in his palm. Her cell number is scrawled in sparkly purple ink, with a tiny, lopsided drawing of a train next to it, and a note scrawled underneath that says I can get you that budget money. And maybe coffee too. He sits there for a minute, the faint sound of the fiddle still drifting through the open window, the grease still crusted under his fingernails, and pulls his beat-up old flip phone out of his flannel shirt pocket. He types out a one-line text, asks if she likes pumpkin pie, and presses send before he can talk himself out of it.
