Roland Voss, 62, retired high-voltage lineman, sits in his usual corner booth at the Spokane Valley VFW’s weekly fish fry, calloused thumb hooked around the cold rim of a draft Pabst, half-eaten plate of battered cod in front of him. He’s held this booth every Friday for four years, ever since he retired, grumbling through the old guys’ arguments about high school football and ignoring the handful of widows who occasionally slide into the seat across from him to ask if he needs a refill on coleslaw. He holds grudges like he used to hold fiberglass utility poles: tight, for as long as his muscles can bear the weight, and he’s cut off more than half his old social circle over real or perceived slights since his wife left him for a travel nurse 12 years prior.
The fryer grease hangs thick and savory in the air, Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* warbles through the scratchy jukebox by the bar, and he’s mid-sip of beer when a shadow falls over his table. He looks up. The woman leaning over the booth is a stranger, late 40s, chestnut hair streaked with gray pulled back in a loose braid, flannel shirt rolled to the elbows, forearms dusted with a light smatter of freckles. She holds a ramekin of tartar sauce in one hand, and when she sets it down, the frayed cuff of her sleeve brushes the raised, pale scar across his left forearm, the one he got in the 2017 line fault that almost got three of his crew fired. The contact is light, accidental, but he flinches anyway, not from pain, from the unexpected warmth of the fabric against skin he hasn’t let anyone touch in years.
“Figured you’d want extra,” she says, and her voice is low, rough around the edges like she’s spent too many years yelling over wind and power line hum. “Heard you don’t like the watered-down stuff they pass off to the new guys.” She holds his gaze for a beat longer than casual, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, and he notices the tiny tattoo of lineman spurs on her wrist, faded blue ink, chipped pale blue polish on her nails, no wedding band.
He recognizes the tattoo before she says her name. Clara Mercer. Ex-wife of Jake Mercer, his old crew chief, the man who threw him under the bus after that 2017 fault, told the company Roland had cut the wrong line even though it was Jake’s mistake. He hasn’t spoken a single word to anyone connected to the Mercer name in 8 years, has walked out of three different hardware stores when he heard Jake’s sister was working the register. His jaw tightens, and he’s halfway to telling her to take the tartar sauce and leave when she huffs a small laugh, like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“Relax,” she says, sliding into the booth across from him, not asking permission. “I left Jake two years ago. Caught him cheating with a dispatcher down in Tri-Cities, took the truck, half the savings, and moved back up here to take care of my mom. Haven’t spoken to him since. Hate the guy more than you do, probably.” She nods at his scar. “He told me once that scar was proof you were careless. I always thought it was proof you were dumb enough to push the new kid out of the way when the arc hit. Joe told me the real story, last year, before he passed.”
Joe was his old work partner, the only person he still kept in touch with before Joe’s heart attack last spring. Roland blinks, the tightness in his jaw loosening a little. He studies her, the calluses on her palms that match his, the way she leans forward like she’s actually interested in what he has to say, no trace of the pretension Jake always carried. The scent of cedar and lemon dish soap hits him, faint, over the grease and beer, and he finds himself leaning forward too, just an inch, his knee brushing hers under the table. He doesn’t pull away.
They talk for an hour, past when the fryer shuts off, past when most of the old guys have wandered out to their trucks. She knows all the old lineman safety rhymes he used to chant on the pole, laughs so hard at his story about the time a hawk built a nest in the transformer they were fixing that she snorts beer out her nose. She asks if he’s still fixing small engines for folks out on the north ridge, says her mom’s riding lawn mower died two weeks ago, she can’t afford to pay a repair guy, but she’ll trade him a whole homemade peach pie, the kind with the crumb top he used to rave about to Joe. He knows every guy in the VFW is staring, knows they’ll be talking about him sitting with Jake Mercer’s ex for weeks, but he doesn’t care. He says yes.
He drives out to her mom’s small ranch house the next Saturday, sun slanting through the pine trees, fixes the mower in 20 minutes, replaces the spark plug and tightens the carburetor no one else bothered to check. She hands him a slice of pie warm from the oven, and they sit on the porch swing while he eats, the air thick with the smell of pine and peach, crickets starting to chirp in the grass at the edge of the yard. She leans her shoulder against his, no hesitation, warm through the thin fabric of his work shirt, and he doesn’t pull away. He stays for meatloaf for dinner, talks to her mom about old lineman stories, doesn’t mention Jake once.
When he leaves that night, she walks him to his truck, the porch light gilding the edges of her braid, and kisses him on the cheek, soft, her lips warm against his skin. He tucks the whole pie tin she hands him into the passenger seat of his F-150, turns the key in the ignition, and pulls out of the driveway, already looking forward to coming back next weekend.
