Rafe Voss, 62, retired Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge manager, had made it exactly 17 steps into the Crawdad Hole’s weekly Wednesday boil before he considered bailing. He’d driven into town only to drop off three pounds of smoked catfish he’d cured the weekend prior, a thank-you to the regulars who’d helped sandbag the refuge’s visitor center during the October hurricane. Three years out from his wife’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis and subsequent death, he’d perfected the exit strategy: drop the contribution, nod at the bartender, turn around before anyone could ask him to stay for a beer.
She smelled like jasmine and cut pine, the kind of scent that stuck in the back of your throat without being cloying. He mumbled an apology of his own, pushed the hot sauce toward her, and would’ve turned right back to the door if she hadn’t leaned in, just close enough that her sun-warmed flannel shoulder brushed his bicep, and asked, “You’re the guy who built all those wood duck boxes out on the west edge of the refuge, right? I’ve been trying to track you down for weeks.”
Rafe’s throat went dry. He’d spent 28 years explaining habitat restoration to school groups, irate hunters, even a group of Japanese ornithologists who’d flown in to study the refuge’s wood stork population, but he couldn’t get a full sentence out to save his life right then. He nodded, stared at the scuffed toes of his work boots for three full beats, then forced himself to meet her eyes. They were dark brown, flecked with amber, and she held his gaze a full two seconds longer than polite small talk required, like she was amused by how flustered he was.
He sat down for one beer. That was the deal he made with himself: one beer, answer her questions about the duck boxes, then go home to his quiet cabin and the three hound dogs he’d had since his wife was sick. She told him the preacher everyone thought she was dating was her first cousin, in town visiting to help her fix up the old farmhouse she’d bought on the edge of the county, and Rafe felt the tight knot of guilt in his chest loosen—he’d spent the first 10 minutes of their conversation mentally berating himself for even thinking about flirting with a woman the whole town considered “taken.”
They talked about the saltwater intrusion creeping into the refuge’s freshwater marshes, the way the latest round of king tides had killed off 12 acres of cattails that were critical nesting habitat for the least terns. She’d spent 20 years working on wetland restoration in the Great Lakes, knew more about sediment retention than anyone he’d ever met in south Georgia, and she didn’t laugh when he admitted he still talked to his wife when he was out checking trail cameras, like she understood the kind of quiet loneliness that sticks to your bones after you lose the person you’ve spent half your life with.
The band switched to a slow George Strait deep cut, the one Rafe had danced to with his wife at their wedding, and Elara nudged his boot with hers under the bar. “C’mon,” she said, and when he shook his head, said he hadn’t danced in 34 years, she stood up, tugged his wrist lightly, her palm warm against his skin, and said, “Me neither. We’ll be bad at it together.”
He stood up. They didn’t get too close, not at first, his hand light on her waist, hers resting on his shoulder, swaying just off the beat by the side of the small dance floor. A kid running with a plate of crawfish almost crashed into them, and she stepped closer, her chest brushing his, her hair falling forward to brush his cheek, that jasmine scent hitting him again. He told her he’d spent the last three years avoiding every bar, every community event, every chance to meet someone new, like it was a betrayal to even enjoy talking to someone who wasn’t his wife. She squeezed his shoulder, told him she’d done the exact same thing, until her cousin had told her her late husband would’ve yelled at her for wasting the good years she had left.
The song ended, and they stayed standing there for another 10 seconds, neither of them pulling away first, before she stepped back, grinning, and wiped a fleck of crawfish seasoning off his jaw with her thumb. She asked him if he wanted to go scout the marsh by the county park tomorrow morning, she was planning to put in 20 new duck boxes and wanted his input on the best locations. He said yes before he could overthink it.
He walked her to her beat-up 4Runner in the gravel parking lot, and she squeezed his hand before she climbed in, her calloused fingers wrapping around his for just long enough that he could feel the indent of her wedding band, still on her left hand, same as his was on his. He stood in the parking lot long after her taillights faded around the curve of the county road, listening to the crickets chirp and the faint twang of the band drifting out through the bar’s screen doors, and realized he hadn’t looked forward to a morning this much in over a thousand days.
