Earl Higginbotham, 62, retired logging road surveyor with knuckles crisscrossed with old chain saw scars, leaned against a splintered picnic table at the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff and swirled warm domestic beer in a plastic cup. He’d only shown up because his old logging buddy begged him to judge the hot sauce category—no one within 30 miles had a higher capsaicin tolerance. His biggest flaw, the one even he’d admit to if he was three beers deep, was holding grudges so long he forgot the original reason he was mad, as long as the anger felt familiar. He’d avoided this cookoff for 17 straight years to skip running into Marnie Carter, his ex-wife’s cousin, the woman he’d blamed for costing him 12 acres of old-growth Douglas fir in his divorce.
The air reeked of charred ground beef, cigarette smoke, and sweet cotton candy, a cover band in the corner slurred through a worn cover of *Folsom Prison Blues*, and kids darted between picnic tables squirting each other with neon water guns. He’d just bit into a jalapeño cornbread muffin so spicy it made his eyes water when he caught a whiff of lavender and pine soap, sharp enough to cut through the cookoff chaos. He turned, and there she was, 58, dark hair braided down her back streaked with silver, a smudge of potting soil on the left side of her jaw, wearing scuffed work boots and a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a faded tank top, holding a mason jar full of glowing orange jelly. She stepped close enough that he could see the faint laugh lines fanning out from her hazel eyes, so close their elbows brushed when she held the jar out to him. “Habanero and wild blackberry,” she said, her voice lower and rougher than he remembered, like she spent half her days yelling over wind in the woods. “Dare you to taste it.”
Earl tensed, half-ready to mumble an excuse and walk to his truck, but he took the jar anyway. His fingers brushed hers when he grabbed it, and he felt a jolt run up his arm, not the static zing you get from dry Oregon summer air, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 19 sneaking his high school girlfriend into the back of his dad’s pickup. He twisted the lid off, dipped a cracker in, took a bite. It was sweet first, the blackberry bright and tart, then the heat bloomed slow, starting at the back of his throat and spreading up to his ears, warm and sharp, not the brutal chemical burn of cheap store-bought hot sauce. He coughed a little, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and she laughed, a low throaty sound that made the back of his neck feel hot. She handed him a paper towel, and her arm brushed his bicep when she did, the worn fabric of her flannel scratchy against his bare skin.
He was supposed to hate her. He’d spent 18 years telling anyone who’d listen that she’d lied under oath during his divorce, told the judge he’d hidden the 12-acre parcel from his ex-wife, which he had, to be fair. What he hadn’t known, not until she said it quiet, leaning in like she didn’t want the group of retired firemen at the next table to overhear, was that she’d also told the judge the land was held in a trust for his granddaughter, who was 2 at the time, so his ex couldn’t sell it off to pay for her new boyfriend’s terrible motorcycle parts business. “I knew you’d hidden it for the kid,” she said, picking at a loose splinter on the picnic table. “You never would’ve screwed that little girl over. Your ex would’ve, though.”
Earl sat quiet for a minute, the heat of the jelly still burning in his chest, realizing he’d spent almost two decades mad at the person who’d actually done him a favor. The sun dipped low over the pine trees, painting the sky pink and orange, the band switched to slow Merle Haggard covers, and most of the crowd had packed up and left, only a handful of stragglers lingering over coolers of beer. Their knees touched under the picnic table, neither of them moved away. He looked her in the eye, the orange glow of the tiki torches around the fairground catching the silver in her braid, and admitted he’d been an idiot for not asking her side of the story before he spent 18 years avoiding her. He rested his hand on her knee, calloused from decades of holding surveying equipment, and she didn’t pull away, just laced her fingers through his, her hands just as rough as his from digging in the dirt at the native plant nursery she ran out on the edge of town.
The announcement came over the crackling loudspeaker a minute later, that her blackberry habanero jelly had won first place in the specialty category, and she cheered, leaning into him for half a second, her shoulder warm through his flannel shirt. He walked her to her beat-up pickup truck parked at the edge of the fairground, gravel crunching under their boots, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the fence line. She stopped at the driver’s side door, turned to him, and told him he should stop by the nursery sometime, she had a batch of young Douglas fir saplings she’d grown from seeds collected off the trees on his 12 acres, he could plant them on the rest of his property if he wanted. He nodded, told her he’d be there Saturday morning at 9, brought her hand up to his mouth, and pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles, still smudged with a little dirt. She smiled, climbed into the truck, rolled the window down, and waved as she pulled out onto the two-lane highway. He stood there for another minute, sipping the last of his warm beer, watching her taillights fade into the pink and purple dusk.
