Manny Rios, 59, has spent 27 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 40,000 miles a year in a dented 2018 Ford F150 with a cooler of seltzer and a stack of scouting reports permanently strapped to the passenger seat. His biggest flaw, the one his ex-wife screamed at him about through the divorce papers 18 years prior, is that he never stays put long enough to learn anyone’s last name unless it’s printed on a player roster. He’s in central Iowa the last week of August, vetting a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher with a 97 mph fastball and a habit of forgetting to cover first base, when he runs into Lena Marlow at the local fire department chili cook-off.
The air hangs thick and sweet with the smell of smoked pork and cut grass, crickets starting their hum as the sun bleeds orange over the cornfields lining the fairgrounds. He’s leaning against his truck, nursing a styrofoam cup of spiked chili and a cheap lager, when she drops a stack of paper plates at his feet. He bends to grab them at the same time she does, their knuckles brushing hard enough that he feels the rough callus on her index finger before she pulls back, laughing. She’s 48, wears faded high-waisted cutoffs, a fire department volunteer hoodie tied around her waist, sun streaks cutting through the dark brown hair she’s pulled back in a messy braid. She’s the pitcher’s stepmom, he realizes a half second later, the woman the kid had mentioned when Manny showed up at his house for a pre-tryout chat two days prior.
They make small talk first, about the terrible chili the town’s mayor entered into the contest, about the tornado that tore through the edge of town three months prior, about the beat up leather scouting notebook peeking out of Manny’s back pocket. She teases him that she remembers that same notebook from the last time he was in town, 12 years prior, scouting a shortstop who ended up blowing out his knee playing rec league softball. He’s stunned she remembers him at all; he’d only been in town four days that trip, had barely spoken to anyone outside the high school baseball dugout. She tilts her head when he says he can’t recall the last time someone recognized him off the baseball circuit, her gaze holding his steady, no shy look away, even when a group of volunteer firefighters hoots and yells her name from the cook-off booth 20 feet away.
He knows he shouldn’t engage. The kid he’s scouting is a top prospect, already getting offers from three big league organizations, and small town gossip travels fast. If anyone sees him so much as lingering too long with the kid’s stepmom, someone will spin it into a story about him playing favorites, about him crossing a line to lock down the prospect’s commitment. He tries to tell himself he should say goodbye, head back to his motel, go over scouting reports like he planned. But when she nods toward the tree line at the edge of the fairgrounds and says the creek down there is the only place you can hear yourself think for 10 miles, he follows without a second thought.
The path down to the creek is rutted and overgrown, his arm brushing hers every time they step over a root or duck under a low-hanging oak branch. She laughs so hard at his story about a prospect who showed up to a tryout last spring drunk on homemade moonshine that she leans into his shoulder for three full seconds, her hair brushing his neck, before she pulls back like she didn’t even notice she did it. They sit on a fallen ash log at the edge of the creek, fireflies blinking soft gold around them, the distant sound of the fair’s country cover band drifting through the trees. She mentions her husband, the kid’s dad, left her six months prior, moved to Florida with a 28-year-old dental hygienist he met at a golf tournament. The kid’s already an adult, she says, he spends half his time on the road with travel teams, doesn’t care who she spends her time with.
Manny’s chest feels tight, the same tug he gets when he sees a prospect throw a perfect curveball, the kind of pull he hasn’t felt for a person in two decades. He wants to reach for her, but he’s still hung up on the rule he made for himself after the divorce: no attachments that could jeopardize his job, no people who would expect him to show up for something that isn’t a baseball game. She breaks the stalemate first, reaching across the log to take his left hand, running her thumb over the thin, pale scar across his knuckle from the time a batter’s stray swing caught him during a tryout 10 years prior. She says she can tell he’s tired of sleeping in motels where the sheets smell like bleach and microwave popcorn, tired of eating fast food alone in his truck. He doesn’t argue, because she’s right.
He kisses her slow, no rush, the faint taste of chili and the root beer he switched to an hour prior mixing with the cherry lip balm and peppermint candy she’s been chewing. There’s no frantic fumbling, no awkward rush, just the quiet sound of the creek gurgling past, the distant cheer of the cook-off crowd when the winner is announced. When they pull back, she tucks a strand of hair that fell loose from her braid behind her ear, smiling like she knows he’s not going to run first thing in the morning.
He pulls out his phone while they walk back up the path to the fairgrounds, texting his boss that he’s extending his trip by three days, that the lefty needs extra vetting to make sure he’s mentally ready for the minors. It’s half true, half excuse. She laces her fingers through his when they step into the glow of the fairground string lights, doesn’t let go even when the pitcher, leaning against a food truck with a group of his friends, grins and gives them a sarcastic little two-finger salute.
