Moe Pritchard, 62, spent 38 years climbing power lines for the Adams County Electric Co-op, retired three years now, still has calluses thick as pennies across his palms and a silver scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2019 line fault that put him in the ER for three days. He’d fought coming to the volunteer fire department chili cook-off for six straight months, until his 11-year-old granddaughter begged him to enter his brisket chili, the recipe he’d honed over decades of 2 a.m. storm callouts in blizzards, no running water, just a dented crockpot strapped to the back of the service truck. He stood by the folding table holding his entry, worn navy flannel unbuttoned over a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd tee, work boots caked with last week’s mud from splitting oak firewood, deliberately avoiding eye contact with anyone who looked like they wanted to make small talk about the unseasonably warm October weather or the local high school football team’s losing streak.
The first time he smelled her, he thought he was imagining it. Lavender hand lotion, cut with the faint tang of peppermint lip balm, sharp enough to cut through the thick cloud of chili steam and menthol cigarette smoke hanging over the gym’s cinder block walls. She leaned in past his shoulder, upper arm brushing his scarred forearm when she reached for a stack of paper sample cups, her dark hair streaked with thick strands of silver pulled back in a loose braid, high-waisted jeans that fit like she actually cared what she looked like without trying too hard. He didn’t realize he was staring until she turned to face him, one dark eyebrow raised. Lena Voss, he placed her after a fumbling beat, his late wife’s second cousin, the last time he’d seen her was at the funeral seven years prior, she’d been living in Chicago then, working in the ER at a downtown hospital. She was 58, recently moved back to the county to work part time as a public health nurse, she told him, when he finally found his voice.
He tensed up immediately, the old guilt curling tight in his gut, the same twist he’d felt that day at the funeral when he’d caught himself staring at her laugh lines, how wrong it felt to notice anyone else when his wife was still cold in the ground. He’d spent seven years deliberately closing that door, eating dinner alone at his kitchen table, fixing up his 1987 Ford F-150 in the garage on weekends, turning down every blind date setup his sister tried to arrange, convinced any kind of new romantic connection was a betrayal of the 34 years he’d had with his wife. But she didn’t leave. She leaned against the table next to him, elbow brushing his again when she picked up a toothpick to spear a piece of brisket from his crockpot, held his eye when she took a bite, hummed low in her throat, said it was better than any takeout she’d had in the last decade.
They talked for 45 minutes, he realized after a while, the cook-off crowd thinning out around them, his granddaughter had run off with her friends an hour earlier, forgotten entirely. She told him she’d left her ex-husband two years prior, he’d retired and decided he wanted to move to Florida, play golf every single day, and she’d hated the heat, hated the idea of spending the rest of her life sitting on a golf cart listening to him complain about his swing and the price of country club memberships. He told her about the line fault that left him with the scar, how he’d spent three months in physical therapy, how he’d almost quit before he hit his 30-year mark, scared he’d never climb again. She reached out, brushed her thumb across the raised edge of the scar on his forearm, didn’t pull away when he didn’t flinch. The announcement for first place in the beef chili category blared over the gym’s scratchy speaker, neither of them moved to go listen.
He was the one who asked her if she wanted to walk down to the river behind the fire station, watch the sunset, his voice rougher than he intended, like he was asking for something he didn’t deserve. She smiled, nodded, grabbed her worn denim jacket off the back of the folding chair next to her, slipped her hand into his when they walked out the door into the crisp October air. His chest felt tight, half leftover guilt, half something he hadn’t felt in so long he couldn’t name it, like he was 16 again, asking out the girl who worked at the local diner, terrified he’d get rejected before the words even finished leaving his mouth.
They walked down the rutted dirt path to the river bank, sat down on a fallen oak log half-buried in dead leaves, the sun painting the sky streaks of pink and tangerine over the rolling hills west of town. She leaned her shoulder against his, warm through the thin fabric of their flannels, their fingers still laced together in his lap. He didn’t say anything about his wife, didn’t make any grand promises, didn’t overthink every word that came out of his mouth for the first time in years. He watched the last sliver of sun dip below the tree line, and squeezed her hand a little tighter.
