Elroy Voss, 62, custom fly rod builder out of Traverse City, hadn’t set foot in the VFW’s annual trout opener fish fry in three years. Not since his wife Lois had her stroke mid-bite of a hushpuppy right at the same Formica table he’d just slid into, a paper plate of fried walleye and vinegar coleslaw heavy in his hand. His best buddy had badgered him into coming for weeks, said moping in his garage sanding rod blanks until his knuckles cracked wasn’t a life, and Elroy had caved mostly because he’d run out of excuses. A smudge of amber epoxy glistened on his left wrist, leftover from finishing a 7-weight for a client that morning, and his worn flannel still smelled like cedar shavings and lemon oil.
The only empty seat in the whole hall was across from him, and he was half tempted to throw his work gloves on it to ward off chattering neighbors, before a woman slid into it without asking first. She was around his age, maybe a few years younger, scar slashing pale across her left eyebrow, chipped cherry red polish on the nails that curled around a plate stacked twice as high as his with fish and fries. “Sorry,” she said, nodding at the empty space next to his elbow where he’d almost set the gloves. “Every other table’s got some guy cornering people to brag about the 20-inch brown they caught at 6 a.m. I’ve heard that story three times already this week.” Her name was Mara, she said, new part-time park ranger at the state forest 10 miles west, moved up from Indianapolis last fall after her divorce went final. She smelled like pine soap and vanilla lip balm, and when she reached across the table to grab a napkin from the stack next to his soda, her forearm brushed his, callus rough against the thin skin of his wrist where the epoxy hadn’t dried fully.
He froze. For three years, the only physical contact he’d had was a quick handshake from the guy at the bait shop, or a hug from his granddaughter when she visited for Christmas. The guilt hit fast, sharp enough to make him take a too-big bite of walleye that got stuck in his throat. Lois would’ve laughed at him, he thought, for panicking over a stray brush of an arm. She’d been the one who told him on her deathbed to stop being a hermit the second she was gone, to go fishing, to dance, to stop acting like his life ended when hers did. But it had felt like betrayal, every time he’d even glanced at a woman who wasn’t her, like he was cheating on a promise he’d never actually made.
Mara noticed the epoxy smudge before he could wipe it off on his jeans. “You build rods?” she asked, leaning forward a little, elbows on the table, and he didn’t lean back. Her eyes were hazel, flecked with green, and she didn’t look at him like she felt sorry for him, like everyone else in town did when they saw him alone, like they were all waiting for him to go back to being the quiet widower who never left his garage. He told her about his business, about the custom grips he carved from reclaimed barn wood, about the time he’d built a rod for a guy who’d caught a 30-pound salmon out on Lake Michigan with it, and she asked questions, real ones, not the polite small talk he was used to.
The band started playing a wobbly cover of Merle Haggard’s “That’s the Way Love Goes” right as she finished her last fry, and she wiped her hands on her jeans, held out one palm to him across the table. “C’mon,” she said. “I haven’t danced since my cousin’s wedding last year, and all the other guys here smell like beer and fish guts.” He hesitated, his palms sweating, said he hadn’t danced since Lois’s 50th birthday, when he’d stepped on her feet three times in a row. She laughed, loud and warm, and wiggled her fingers a little. “I wear steel toed boots. You can’t hurt me.”
He took her hand. She was taller than she looked sitting down, her shoulder brushing his when they stepped onto the makeshift dance floor in the middle of the hall. They didn’t dance too close, but close enough that he could feel the heat off her hoodie, feel the callus on her palm where she held her trail axe every day, hear her laugh when he did step on her boot, just like he’d warned he would. No one stared, no one whispered, and for the first time all night, he didn’t feel like everyone was watching him to see if he was grieving hard enough.
The song ended a few minutes later, and they walked out into the parking lot together, the air cool enough to make his nose run, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the edge of the lot. She leaned against her beat up Ford Ranger, fished a pack of spearmint gum out of her pocket, offered him one. “You ever teach people to tie flies?” she asked, chewing slow, and he nodded, said he had a spare vice on the workbench in his garage. “Cool,” she said, grinning, and reached out to tap the epoxy smudge on his wrist with one finger, her nail just barely catching his skin. “I’ll bring a six pack of that hazy IPA everyone around here raves about next Saturday. Don’t bail on me.”
She got in her truck, waved as she pulled out of the lot, and he stood there for a minute, holding the unopened stick of gum in his hand, watching her taillights fade down the county road. The gum was still warm from her pocket, and he smiled, slow, popped the spearmint stick into his mouth, and turned toward his own truck, already making a mental list of fly tying supplies to lay out on the spare workbench come Saturday.
