Moe Sorrentino, 62, retired first-class lineman for the Auglaize County electric co-op, sat at his usual Formica table at the VFW Friday fish fry, crumbs of hush puppy dusting the thigh of his worn Carhartt jeans. He’d shown up alone like he did every week for the past eight years, ever since his wife Linda passed from ovarian cancer, and he’d made a point to keep to himself, convinced any man his age sniffing around for company was just a sad old creep making a fool of himself. It was a stupid rule, he knew, but he’d stuck to it, even when the ladies from the church guild tried to set him up with their widowed friends, even when the bartender joked he’d turn into a hermit if he didn’t talk to someone who didn’t wear a work boot.
The room hummed with the usual noise: the crackle of the deep fryer in the back, Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* warbling from the beat-up jukebox by the bar, the roar of a group of Vietnam vets arguing over a game of euchre in the corner. The rain started lashing the windows around 7, and the place filled up faster than usual, every table taken within 10 minutes, so when the woman he’d never seen before held up a paper plate of cod and raised an eyebrow, nodding at the empty seat across from him, he just grunted and waved her down.
She was 58, he’d learn later, the new county extension agent who’d moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of town three weeks prior, here to help local farmers transition to no-till crops. Her name was Clara, she said, holding out a calloused hand to shake, and when their palms brushed, Moe’s throat went dry. He noticed the faint scar slicing across her left knuckle, the smudge of dirt under her fingernail, the way her flannel shirt fit snug across her shoulders like she spent most of her days hauling bags of soil or climbing fence posts, not sitting behind a desk. She smelled like lavender and cut grass, a sharp, nice contrast to the greasy fried fish and stale beer hanging in the air.
They talked about the rain first, then the lousy winter they’d just had, how the ice storms had taken out three whole rows of power lines back in January, Moe’s last big job before he retired. When he mentioned he restored vintage work boots in his garage workshop in his spare time, she leaned in across the table, elbow brushing his, eyes bright, and he had to fight the urge to lean back, to shut down, to tell her he wasn’t looking for anything. That stupid, stubborn part of his brain screamed that he was being ridiculous, that a woman like her wouldn’t be interested in a beat-up old lineman with a bad knee and a scar across his forehead from falling off a pole in ’98, that everyone in the room was staring at them, judging him for even holding a conversation with a woman who wasn’t Linda.
He was half ready to make an excuse and leave when she reached across the table for the tartar sauce, and their knuckles brushed again, this time slower, intentional, not accidental. Her knee bumped his under the table a minute later, and she didn’t pull away, just kept talking about the community garden she was trying to start down by the high school, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Moe’s face felt hot, his palms sweaty, the old war between wanting to run and wanting to stay waging so loud in his head he almost missed what she said next: she had a pair of 1972 Red Wing work boots her dad had left her when he died, cracked along the soles, caked with old farm dirt, and she’d been looking for someone who could fix them right, not just glue them together and charge her 50 bucks.
He almost said no. Almost told her to take them to the shoe repair shop over in Wapakoneta. But then he looked at her, the way she was biting her lower lip like she was nervous he’d turn her down, the flecks of gold in her green eyes catching the fluorescent light over the table, and he blurted out that he could fix them, if she wanted to bring them by his place the next afternoon.
She smiled so wide her cheeks crinkled, and wrote her phone number on the back of a napkin, sliding it across the table to him, her fingers brushing his again when she let go. By the time they left, the rain was coming down so hard you could barely see three feet in front of you, the parking lot a muddy puddle of slush and gravel. Moe offered to walk her to her beat-up Subaru, and halfway across the lot, her boot slipped on a patch of wet asphalt, and he grabbed her around the waist to steady her, their faces inches apart, he could feel her breath on his cheek, the heat of her body through his flannel shirt, and for a second he thought he was going to pass out. She didn’t pull away. Just looked up at him, smiled, and said “Thanks, Moe.”
She showed up at his place the next afternoon at 2, like she said she would, the Red Wings slung over her shoulder, a tin of homemade peach pie in her other hand. He fixed the boots while she sat on a stool in his workshop, watching him work, asking questions about the different glues, the leather conditioners he used, how he’d gotten into restoring boots in the first place. When he handed them back to her, polished, resoled, good as new, she ran a finger along the leather, looked up at him, and took his hand in hers.
He didn’t pull away. He laced his fingers through hers, calluses scraping against calluses, and led her out to his back porch, where the sun was breaking through the clouds, and the smell of the daffodils he’d planted along the fence line was drifting through the air. She set the pie tin on the rickety wooden table between them, and poured him a glass of sweet tea she’d brought with her, and when she leaned over to kiss him, soft and slow, he kissed her back, no hesitation, no stupid rules, no voice in his head telling him he was too old for this.
He reached across the table, took a bite of the peach pie, and smiled when she laughed at the crumb stuck to his chin.
