Elias Voss, 62, has restored 117 vintage canoes in the 11 years since his wife packed her suitcase and left him for a Twin Cities realtor with a boat newer than Elias’s first truck. He’s got a rule against making small talk with anyone who doesn’t know the difference between cedar and pine planks, and a worse rule against even looking at women long enough to register the color of their eyes. It’s easier that way, he tells himself, no surprises, no quiet letdowns, just sandpaper, epoxy, and the quiet of the lake at dawn when he takes his own 1952 Old Town out for test runs.
He’s perched on his usual end stool at Moe’s Bait & Tap the night of the annual walleye tournament wrap-up, sipping a warm Grain Belt, picking at a plate of deep-fried curds, when the whole bar goes half quiet, half jeering. He looks up, and he knows who she is immediately: Clara Marlow, 58, the county’s new recreational lands coordinator, the woman who’d pushed through the repeal of the 20-year unlicensed watercraft rental ban that Elias and 72 other local longtimers had signed a petition to block. He’d grumbled for weeks that the change would turn his quiet, walleye-rich lake into a playground for suburban tourists with no respect for shoreline rules.
She ignores the playful boos from a table of fishermen in frayed overalls, slings a canvas work bag off her shoulder, and slides onto the stool two down from Elias. Her uniform shirt is unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up to show forearms crisscrossed with thin scars from clearing brush off hiking trails, a tiny silver fish charm on a thin chain around her neck. The bartender slides a lime hard seltzer her way, and she reaches for it at the exact same second Elias reaches for his beer. Their knuckles brush. Hers are warm, sun-toughened, dotted with a few freckles he’d never notice if he wasn’t so close. His are caked with fine cedar dust, rough from three hours of sanding that morning. He yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot soldering iron, cheeks burning.
She laughs, low and throaty, no malice in it. “You’re Elias, right? I saw your name on the petition against the rental ban. Figured I’d run into you here sooner or later.”
He grunts, stares at the label of his beer, too flustered to come up with the sharp retort he’d practiced when he thought he’d eventually meet her. He expects her to leave it at that, but she shifts closer, one shoulder almost brushing his, and he can smell lavender shampoo and pine cleaner on her clothes, mixed with the faint, briny smell of lake water. “For what it’s worth, I get why you were mad,” she says, leaning in so he can hear her over the jukebox blaring Johnny Cash. “I thought we’d get 100 rentals the first weekend, we got 12. All the renters picked up their trash, stayed off the protected spawning shoreline. No disasters yet.”
He glances up, meets her eyes, hazel with flecks of green, crinkled at the corners like she laughs more than he does in a whole month. She doesn’t look away when he holds her gaze, just smirks a little, takes a slow sip of her seltzer. They talk for an hour, first about the lake’s best walleye spots, then about the canoe he’s restoring, a beat up 1947 Old Town he found half submerged in a marsh last spring. She asks questions that aren’t just polite, leans in when he describes the way cedar grain deepens to honeyed gold when you apply the first coat of varnish, her knee brushes his under the bar once, twice, he doesn’t move away. He’s fighting the whole time, a stupid, tight war in his chest between the part of him that’s been alone so long he’s forgotten what it feels like to have someone pay attention to him, and the part that’s terrified if he lets his guard down, he’ll end up alone again, staring at an empty closet and a half-finished canoe.
When last call hits, she winces, says her truck broke down on the way into town, the local mechanic is out at his sister’s wedding in Duluth, no one else is left to give her a ride to her cabin 10 minutes up the road. He offers before he can talk himself out of it.
Her cabin is small, cluttered with scuffed hiking boots and fishing lures scattered on the kitchen table, the same unobstructed view of the lake he has from his own porch. He walks her to the door, fumbling for something to say, when she reaches up, brushes a fleck of cedar dust off his cheek, and kisses him. It’s soft, no urgency, tastes like lime seltzer and cherry lip balm, and for the first time in 11 years, he doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t pull away, just rests one calloused hand on her waist, leans into it.
When he pulls back, she’s smiling, says she’s always wanted to learn how to restore a canoe, asks if he’s free Saturday morning to teach her. He says yes before he can think of an excuse.
He drives back to his house, the radio playing old Merle Haggard cuts, the cab of his truck still smelling like her lavender shampoo. He pulls into his garage, flicks on the overhead light, looks at the half-restored 1947 Old Town propped up on sawhorses, picks up a piece of 120-grit sandpaper, and runs it over the smooth cedar plank, smiling to himself for the first time in longer than he can remember.
