Moe Hargrove is 61, has made his living restoring vintage outboard motors out of his cinder block garage outside Traverse City for the last eight years. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 1978 Mercury that seized on him mid-teardown three years back, and a habit of wiping his hands on the same grease-stained plaid flannel he’s tied around his waist every day since his wife Linda died. He avoids street fairs usually, hates the crowds, hates the way strangers stare at his calloused, grease-blackened fingers like he’s some kind of curiosity, but his nephew talked him into a booth at the Fourth of July celebration downtown, said he’d move twice as many motors as he does posting on Facebook Marketplace.
The air’s thick enough to sip, heavy with the smell of fried Oreos and charcoal from the rib booth two stalls over, and sweat’s been rolling down the back of his neck since 9 a.m. A cover band a block down is slurring through a rough rendition of “Jack & Diane,” tinny speakers crackling every time the lead singer hits a high note. He’s just finishing up a sales pitch to a kid with a dented, stickered kayak when he sees her. Clara Hale, 48, county librarian, he’s known her peripherally for 20 years, always spotted her at the grocery store, at town hall zoning meetings, always with her mild-mannered elementary school principal husband on her arm, hair pulled tight in a bun, cardigan buttoned up to her throat. Today she’s got her hair loose, sun-bleached a light honey at the ends, wearing a cutoff denim shirt unbuttoned over a yellow sundress that hits mid-thigh, a cherry snow cone in one hand, syrup dripping down her wrist to her elbow, a tiny smudge of the red sticky stuff on her upper lip.
She leans against the edge of his booth, tilts her head to look at the polished 1962 Evinrude sitting front and center on the display table, and her shoulder brushes his bicep. He can smell coconut sunscreen and cherry syrup over the gasoline and metal polish fumes he’s been breathing all day, and his throat goes dry. He hasn’t felt anything like that sharp, warm jolt since Linda was alive. Guilt hits him right after, sharp as a box cutter to the gut. He tells himself he’s being an idiot, that she’s just a customer, that he’s 61 years old and smells like motor oil and has grease under his fingernails he can never fully scrub off, that she’s way out of his league.
She asks him how long it took to restore that Evinrude, and he stumbles over his words at first, rambling about tracking down original carburetor parts on a forum from a retired mechanic in northern Minnesota, about sanding the casing down for 12 hours straight to get that perfect mirror chrome shine. She nods, listens like she actually cares, doesn’t even flinch when he mentions that he started restoring motors after Linda passed to keep his hands busy, to stop himself from sitting on the porch drinking cheap beer all day staring at Torch Lake. She says she remembers Linda, remembers seeing the two of them out on the water in their beat-up aluminum boat every weekend when she was a teenager, thought they looked like the happiest couple in the county.
He freezes for a second, half expecting her to say something polite and drift off to the next booth, but she stays, leans in a little closer, says she got divorced six months ago, bought a dented old kayak for $200 at a garage sale, has been looking for a small motor so she doesn’t have to paddle three miles out to the good salmon fishing spots by herself. The sun dips below the treeline, and the first firework goes off with a loud, echoing pop, painting the sky neon pink. The crowd around them cheers, and she steps closer to him, not because the crowd’s pushing in, just because she wants to, her bare arm pressed warm to his. Her hand brushes his when she reaches to tap the side of the Evinrude, and this time she doesn’t pull away, laces her fingers through his, her palm soft and sticky from the snow cone syrup.
He tenses for half a second, every voice in his head screaming that he’s betraying Linda, that he’s too old for this kind of teenage foolishness, that he’s going to make a fool of himself. Then he squeezes her hand back, and the guilt melts a little, like Linda’s sitting up there laughing at him for taking so damn long to stop moping. She leans up, her mouth close to his ear so he can hear her over the crackle of fireworks, says her place is ten minutes away, she’s got a cooler of cold IPA in the fridge, and she’d love to hear more about the motors, more about Linda, if he wants to come over.
He nods, picks up the little Evinrude with his free hand, tucks it under his arm, tells her it’s a housewarming gift for her new kayak. She laughs, the sound bright over the pop of the next round of fireworks, and tugs on his hand to lead him through the crowd, her sticky wrist pressed tight to his, the sky lighting up red and blue and gold behind them as they walk.
