Rafe Mendez, 52, has spent the last 16 years as a minor league baseball scout covering north Georgia and the western Carolinas, logging 30,000 miles a year in his dented 2008 Ford F-150, his backseat perpetually stacked with radar guns, crumpled scouting reports, and half-empty packs of spearmint gum. His biggest flaw, per his only cousin who still talks to him, is that he’s turned “avoiding human connection” into a competitive sport ever since his ex-wife left him for a flashy Atlanta real estate broker eight years prior. He doesn’t argue with the assessment. He eats most of his meals at gas station delis, only frequents one bar 20 minutes outside the small town he calls home to avoid nosy small talk, and has never once attended the annual fall harvest festival that shuts down Main Street every October. Until this year, when his cousin bribed him with a free case of his favorite small-batch bourbon to man the rec league baseball booth for two hours.
He’s counting down the last 12 minutes of his shift, leaning against a splintered wooden post by the fried pie stand, when it happens. He reaches for the last warm peach fried pie on the tray at the exact same time as the woman he’s only ever exchanged awkward head nods with at the downtown Chevron. Their hands brush, and he freezes. Hers is cool, calloused on the index finger from what he later learns is years of holding 4-H livestock show clipboards, and she smells like pine sap and spiced apple cider, not the cloying, heavy perfume most women his age wear to town events. She holds eye contact longer than polite, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and says she’s seen him at the gas station at 6 a.m. three times a week for three months, always grabbing a black coffee and a pack of gum before heading out to remote high school baseball fields.
He’s so flustered he mumbles a disjointed response about early pitcher workouts, and when she laughs, a bright, throaty sound that cuts through the twangy noise of the bluegrass band playing two booths over, he realizes he can’t remember the last time a stranger paid that much attention to him. He offers her the peach pie, she declines, says she’s got her eye on the cinnamon apple one, but asks if he wants to walk over to the hay bale seating area by the soccer field to get away from the crowd of screaming kids running around with cotton candy stuck to their cheeks. He says yes before he can think better of it.
Their shoulders brush every third step as they walk, and he notices the tiny brass cow charm on her lanyard, jangling softly with each movement, the smudge of barnyard dirt on the knee of her jeans from hauling feed that morning. She teases him about hiding in the bed of his pickup at the local high school games, says the JV players call him “the quiet scout guy” who never yells at umpires, who always leaves a pack of gum on the bleachers for the bat boys after games. He’s shocked anyone notices those little things, let alone a woman who spends most of her days working with show cattle and 12 year olds showing off their prize rabbits.
They sit down on a hay bale far enough from the crowd that they don’t have to yell to hear each other, and the sun dips below the treeline, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine. Someone sets off a string of small, low-grade fireworks over the soccer field, and she leans in close to be heard over the popping, her warm breath fanning against his ear, and says she’s been trying to work up the nerve to talk to him for months, but he always looked like he was two seconds away from bolting if anyone so much as said hello. He admits he’s been avoiding people on purpose, that he figured no one would care to get to know the guy who’s always covered in infield dirt, who rambles on about pitch velocity and slider mechanics to anyone who will half-listen. She rests her hand on his wrist, a light, deliberate hold, not accidental this time, and says she’d love to hear all about pitch velocity over a beer sometime, no rushing, no pressure.
He doesn’t overthink it, a first for him in almost a decade. He asks her if she wants to come to the varsity away game the next afternoon, says he’s got a cooler of cold root beer and orange soda in the pickup bed, they can sit on the tailgate and watch the left-handed pitcher he’s been scouting for three months throw, and she can tell him all about the 4-H calf show she’s running next weekend. She grins, takes his beat up flip phone out of his hand, and types her number in, her thumb brushing his knuckles as she hands it back. She has to leave to help the kids get their show calves settled in the barn across the field, so she gives him a quick, warm hug, her chest pressed against his for half a second before she pulls away, winks, and says she’ll bring the thermos of spiced cider.
He tucks his flip phone into the breast pocket of his faded navy flannel shirt, takes a bite of the still-warm apple fried pie she left on the hay bale next to him, and doesn’t even pretend to be annoyed when his cousin yells across the field asking if he finally stopped moping long enough to make a friend.
