Moe Sorrentino, 61, spent 22 years as a touring cattle auctioneer before settling down to run a 1,200 square foot feed store outside Fredericksburg, Texas, still carrying the same fast, rolling drawl that could get a room full of hardheaded cowboys to bid 30% over market value for a skinny heifer if he felt like leaning into the bit. His biggest flaw? He’d shut himself off from any sort of casual romantic connection after his ex wife left him for an Austin-based SaaS bro 14 years younger, back in 2011. He refused to own a smartphone, kept all his feed inventory scrawled in a grease-stained spiral notebook, and turned down every half-hearted set-up his sister tried to arrange, convinced every woman his age was either looking for a free handyman or a retirement account to drain.
The July street fair was the last place he wanted to be, but his niece had begged him to set up a booth selling the spicy smoked jerky he made from his small herd of Angus, said he’d make enough cash to cover the new barbed wire fence he needed for the west pasture. The air reeked of fried Oreos, cotton candy, and diesel fumes from the rusted ferris wheel at the end of the block, sweat sticking the brim of his straw cowboy hat to his forehead as he handed a bag of extra-hot jerky to a giddy kid in a neon soccer jersey.
The booth next to his was run by Clara Hale, 58, the county librarian, selling used library books and homemade peach preserves to raise money for the library’s new senior literacy program. He’d seen her at his feed store a handful of times, buying sunflower seed for the bird feeders outside the library branch, but he’d never talked to her longer than it took to ring up her purchase. She leaned over the rickety wooden divider between their booths when a gust of wind blew a stack of her event flyers into his pile of jerky bags, her elbow brushing his sun-warmed bicep when they both reached for the top sheet at the same time. He noticed the smudges of blue ink on her fingertips, the faint scar across her left knuckle, the way she smelled like jasmine hand lotion and ripe peaches, no heavy perfume, nothing performative.
He handed her the flyers, mumbled a quick thanks, and turned back to his customer, but he couldn’t stop glancing over at her between transactions. That familiar, gruff voice in the back of his head was yelling as loud as an auction crowd, warning this was a bad idea, that she’d just laugh if he tried to make conversation, that he was better off keeping to himself. But 20 minutes later, she walked over holding a half-eaten bag of his extra-hot jerky, her eyes watering, fanning her face with one hand. “Moe, right?” she said, grinning even as she coughed a little into her elbow. “You weren’t kidding when you called this fire grade. I think my tongue’s gone permanently numb.” He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he didn’t hear escape his throat very often, and handed her a cold bottle of sweet tea he’d stashed under the table for himself. She traded him for a jar of her peach preserves, still warm from being canned the night before, the glass smooth against his cowhide-calloused palm.
They talked for the next three hours, stealing bits of conversation between customers. She told him she’d been widowed for six years, her husband had been a small-town high school football coach who’d died of a heart attack on the sidelines during a playoff game, that she’d started the senior literacy program because so many men his age came into the library embarrassed to admit they couldn’t read well enough to fill out their own prescription forms. He told her about his dad, who’d been a legendary cattle auctioneer in the 70s, how he’d quit touring after the divorce because he couldn’t stand being in rooms full of people who only ever asked him if he was half as good as his old man. She lit up when he said that, pulled a crumpled old black and white photo from her tote bag, said she’d found it in the town archives when researching the town’s 150th anniversary: it was his dad winning the 1978 Texas state auction contest, holding a giant blue ribbon and grinning like he’d just won the lottery. Moe had never seen the photo before; his mom had thrown out all his dad’s old memorabilia after he died when Moe was 22.
The sun went down fast, and a sudden thunderstorm blew in out of nowhere, fat raindrops slamming into the awning over their booths hard enough to make a racket that drowned out the fair’s speaker system. They scrambled to pull their merchandise under cover, huddling close against the back of his booth when the wind picked up, their shoulders pressed tight together, her knee brushing his through her frayed denim cutoff shorts, cold rain spattering the cuffs of his scuffed work boots. She looked up at him, her eyelashes dotted with raindrops, cheeks pink from the sharp wind, and said she’d been coming into his feed store every other Saturday for three years just to hear him do that little half-joking auctioneer drawl when he rang up customers, even though she only needed sunflower seed once a month. His chest went tight, that annoying, skeptical voice in his head finally going quiet for the first time in 12 years. He leaned down slow, gave her plenty of time to pull away, and kissed her, tasted peach jam and the faint burn of his spicy jerky on her lips, her hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck, calloused from turning thousands of book pages, warm against his sunburnt skin.
The rain slowed to a soft drizzle 10 minutes later, the fair crew yelling over each other as they started tearing down booths and loading equipment into trucks. He helped her load the remaining boxes of books and jars of jam into the bed of her beat up Ford Ranger, tucking the old photo of his dad into the breast pocket of his faded flannel shirt so he wouldn’t crumple it. He told her he’d bring her a batch of mild jerky, the kind he made for his niece’s young kids, tomorrow afternoon, and she promised to bring him the rest of the old newspaper clippings she’d found about his dad’s career. She grinned, tapping the bumper sticker on the back of her truck that read “I <3 Grumpy Old Cowboys” before she climbed into the driver’s seat, waving as she pulled out of the fair parking lot. He tucked the jar of peach preserves under his arm, adjusted his damp, lopsided cowboy hat, and walked to his own pickup already counting down the minutes until he could see her again.
