Marlon Rios, 62, retired Forest Service trail crew foreman, had only dragged himself to the Eureka Springs summer street fair to keep a promise to his 10-year-old neighbor Jax. The boy was selling lemonade for his Cub Scout troop, and Marlon owed him for feeding his hound dog Mabel when he had a physical therapy appointment for his bad knee two weeks prior. He’d planned to stay 10 minutes max, grab a cup, slip Jax a 20, and hightail it back to his cabin before he had to make small talk with anyone he didn’t know. He’d avoided every town event for seven years, ever since his wife Linda dropped dead of a stroke mid-grocery run, convinced any joy that didn’t involve her was a betrayal.
He was just turning to leave when he reached for the last jar of garlic dill pickles at the Amish produce booth at the same time as another hand. Their knuckles brushed. Marlon flinched like he’d touched a hot stove, yanking his hand back so fast he knocked a bag of peaches askew. The woman across from him laughed, low and warm, and steadied the bag with one ink-stained thumb. He recognized her immediately: Elara Voss, the woman who’d opened the used bookstore on Main Street three months prior. He’d never spoken to her, but he’d driven past the store half a dozen times, slowing to glance at the handwritten signs in the window for old westerns and nature memoirs, the kind Linda used to devour.
She was wearing a faded Johnny Cash tee, scuffed leather work boots identical to the pair he’d worn on trail for 20 years, and silver hoop earrings that caught the golden hour light. Her shoulder pressed almost to his when she leaned in to grab a jar of sweet relish for herself, and he could smell lavender soap and the faint, sharp tang of clove cigarettes under the fair’s usual mix of fried dough, cut grass, and warm beer. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be close enough to a woman to notice the faint smattering of freckles across her nose, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow. Guilt hit him sharp and fast, right in the chest, and he took a step back, mumbled an apology, and tried to edge away.
She didn’t let him. She held up the dill pickle jar, one eyebrow raised, and said she’d fight him for it, but she’d be willing to split it if he bought her a soda to wash it down. Marlon froze. He’d had a hundred invitations to coffee, to dinner, to community events in the last seven years, and he’d turned every single one down without a second thought. But he looked at her, grinning, a smudge of dirt on her wrist where she’d been planting flowers outside her store that morning, and for the first time, guilt didn’t feel bigger than the small, quiet spark of curiosity in his gut. He nodded.
They stood by the produce booth for 20 minutes, passing the pickle jar back and forth, dipping spear after spear into the tiny cup of mustard she pulled out of her bag like she carried it around just for this. The bluegrass band at the end of the block kicked into a fast, scratchy rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues,” and a group of drunk college kids started dancing in the street, bumping into them every few seconds so her shoulder kept pressing into his bicep, warm and solid through his flannel shirt. She told him she’d moved to town from Portland after her divorce, that she’d always wanted to run a bookstore, that she’d been trying to find the old wild blackberry patches out in the national forest to make jam to sell by the register. Marlon knew every single one of those patches, had helped cut the trails to them back in the 90s. He almost didn’t say anything, almost made an excuse about his knee acting up, about Mabel waiting for him at home, about anything to run back to the quiet, safe routine he’d built for himself.
Instead, he pulled the crumpled, water-stained trail map he kept in his back pocket out, fished a pen out of his shirt, and scribbled his cell number on the margin next to the biggest blackberry patch marked on the map. He handed it to her, told her he’d take her out there next Saturday if she didn’t mind bumpy dirt roads and Mabel tagging along. She took the map, her fingers brushing his for three full seconds this time, neither of them pulling away. She tucked it into the canvas book bag slung over her shoulder, grinned, and said she’d bring the pickles.
Marlon drove home that night with half a jar of dill pickles on the passenger seat next to him, the windows rolled down, the radio playing old country he hadn’t listened to since Linda died. Mabel met him on the porch, tail thumping, and he knelt down to scratch her behind the ears, smiling for no reason he could name. He didn’t know if Elara would call, if the blackberry patch would still be as full as it was 30 years ago, if she’d even like the jam he remembered making with Linda out there. But for the first time in seven years, he didn’t mind the unknown. He walked inside, put the pickles in the fridge, and pulled his old hiking boots out of the closet to polish them before Saturday.
