Rafe Okoro is 52, a custom duck call carver and former union lineman who retired three years prior after a 20-foot fall from a power pole left him with a thin, silvery scar slicing across his left jaw and a permanent distaste for the drama of small town gossip. He’d spent the years since his divorce holed up in his cinder block workshop 10 miles outside of Memphis, only leaving once a week for feed store runs and the monthly fire station fish fry, and even then he stuck to the edges, avoided eye contact with anyone who might bring up his ex-wife, Lori. He’d turned down three separate invitations to join the local hunting club, ignored four women who’d slipped their phone numbers under his workshop door, and had perfected the art of grunting and walking away before anyone could rope him into a conversation longer than five minutes.
The September air bit at his knuckles as he leaned against the fire station’s brick exterior, paper plate stacked with fried catfish and crumbly hushpuppies in one hand, a plastic cup of neat Bulleit bourbon in the other. Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” warbled from a dented boombox sitting on the hood of a retired pumper truck, and the air smelled like hot grease, vinegar slaw, and the faint, acrid tang of menthol cigarettes from the group of retired firefighters huddled by the fryer. He’d been there 12 minutes, was already mentally mapping his route back to the workshop, when a woman in worn high-waisted jeans and a faded Johnny Cash tee bumped his elbow hard enough that bourbon sloshed over the rim of his cup, splattering dark spots on the toe of his scuffed work boot.
“Shit, sorry about that,” she said, laughing, and knelt to dab at the spots with a crumpled paper napkin before he could protest. Her hand brushed his calf through the thick denim of his jeans, warm and quick, and when she stood back up he caught the smell of coconut shampoo and peppermint gum over the grease fumes. He recognized her immediately, even though it had been 22 years since he’d last seen her: Jules, Lori’s half-sister, 18 and lanky on his wedding day, tripping over the aisle runner and breaking her plastic flip flop, which he’d fixed with a zip tie he kept in his work vest. She was 40 now, curvier, a small tattoo of a honeybee curled behind her ear, her dark hair streaked with a single strand of silver at the temple, and she was holding his gaze steady, no hint of awkwardness, like she’d been looking for him.
Rafe tensed, glancing over her shoulder to scan the crowd for Lori, half expecting his ex to round the corner yelling before he even said two words. “You’re back in town?” he said, keeping his voice low, leaning back a fraction like he could put more space between them without being rude. He’d heard rumors she was moving back to take care of her mom, who’d had a stroke earlier that year, but he’d written it off as small town nonsense, figured she’d stay in Chicago where she’d built a career as a graphic designer.
“Moved in last week,” she said, and sat down on the cinder block bench next to him, close enough that their thighs pressed together through their jeans. The heat from her leg seeped through the fabric, slow and steady, and Rafe’s throat went dry. “Mom’s doing physical therapy three times a week, can’t live alone right now. I forgot how good this catfish is, honestly. Chicago has fancy sushi and Michelin star burgers, but nothing tastes like that crispy, grease-soaked mess they make here.”
He nodded, still tense, waiting for someone to stare, for someone to text Lori a photo of them sitting together, for the gossip mill to start churning before the sun went down. But Jules didn’t seem to care, leaning back and kicking her boots out in front of her, asking him about the duck call carving, saying she’d seen his Instagram account, loved the little hand-carved wood accents he added to each call, wanted to learn how to carve small wooden jewelry for her Etsy shop. She teased him about the scar on his jaw, asked if he’d gotten it fighting a black bear out in the woods, and when he laughed and told her he’d fallen off a power pole, she snort-laughed so loud a couple of the retired firefighters glanced over, grinning.
Rafe stopped glancing over her shoulder after 20 minutes. He forgot about the gossip, forgot about Lori, forgot that he’d planned to leave 15 minutes prior. He told her about the national duck call award he’d won the year before, how he’d skipped the ceremony because he’d heard Lori was going to be there, and she rolled her eyes, said Lori was in Nashville for the week visiting her new husband, wouldn’t be back until Monday. She leaned in when he talked about the workshop, her shoulder brushing his, and he could feel her breath on his neck when she laughed at his dumb joke about the flock of geese that kept pooping on his porch rail.
He hesitated when she asked if he’d give her a carving lesson, the old avoidant part of his brain screaming that this was a bad idea, that it would cause nothing but trouble, that he was better off holed up alone in his workshop with nothing but his wood and his bourbon. But then he looked at her, her dark eyes glinting in the string light strung up over the fire station doors, her lower lip pulled between her teeth like she was half-expecting him to say no, and the words came out before he could think better of it. “Sure. Come by Saturday at 7. Bring a bottle of bourbon, I’m almost out.”
He scribbled his address on the back of a napkin from his plate, his hand brushing hers when he passed it over, their fingers lingering for a beat longer than they should have, no one watching, the boombox switching over to a George Strait deep cut, the crowd cheering when the fire chief brought out a fresh batch of hushpuppies. Jules tucked the napkin into the front pocket of her jeans, stood up, and brushed crumbs off her shirt. “Don’t make other plans. I’ll bring the good stuff, not that cheap bottom shelf bourbon you hide in your workshop cabinet,” she said, grinning, and winked before she turned to walk over to a group of her old high school friends by the fryer.
Rafe watched her go, took a slow sip of his bourbon, and didn’t even notice when the last crumb of hushpuppy fell off his plate and onto the toe of his already stained work boot.
