Elroy Voss, 62, retired woodshop teacher, leans against the cinder block wall of the central Ohio VFW post, paper bowl of three-alarm chili in one calloused hand, the other stuffed deep in the pocket of his oil-stained Carhartt. He’s come to the fall chili cook-off every year for 28 years, first with his wife Karen, then alone after lung cancer took her in 2015. He avoids small talk mostly, nods at the old National Guard buddies who holler his way, picks at the crumbly cornbread on the side of his bowl. The air smells like smoked paprika, diesel from the pickup trucks lined up in the lot, and the sharp, crisp edge of October oak leaves blowing across the asphalt.
He spots her across the room first, when she bends to grab a bottle of habanero hot sauce off the folding table, her long gray-streaked braid falling over the shoulder of her forest green wool coat. He knows who she is: Mara Hale, 58, the new librarian who moved into Karen’s old position at the town branch back in June. He’s avoided the library entirely since she started, too cowardly to walk into the space that still smells like Karen’s lavender hand lotion in his memory, too aware of the way town gossips would whisper if they saw him anywhere near the woman who replaced his wife. He’s spent eight years convincing himself even noticing another woman is a betrayal, a slap in the face of the 32 years he and Karen shared.
She catches him staring before he can look away. She smiles, a lopsided little thing, crinkles at the corners of her hazel eyes, and starts walking toward him. His throat goes dry. He debates ducking into the men’s room, but his boots are rooted to the concrete. “This seat taken?” she asks, nodding at the folding chair next to him, half-buried under a stack of old VFW fundraiser flyers. He grunts a no, kicks the flyers off with his boot, sits down himself so he doesn’t have to keep standing like an idiot. She sits, close enough that her coat brushes his elbow when she shifts to set her chili bowl on the small folding table between them. He can smell vanilla on her, faint, mixed with the old paper and ink she must handle all day at the library.
He runs his thumb over the ink of Karen’s note, worn thin from 22 years of people flipping the page. When she passes him a paper napkin to wipe chili grease off his thumb, their hands brush. He feels the callus on her index finger, from holding pens for hours every day, the warmth of her skin seeping into his. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, his face hot. He’s half convinced the entire room is staring, that everyone can see the way his heart is hammering against his ribs, that he’s enjoying talking to a woman who isn’t Karen. “I’m not trying to take her place,” she says, quiet enough no one else can hear, leaning in a little so her shoulder presses firmly against his, no accidental brush this time. “I just wanted to meet the guy she talked about like he hung the moon. You’ve been hiding for too long, Elroy.” The vanilla of her perfume is stronger now, mixing with the chili steam curling up from their bowls, and he doesn’t lean away.
He laughs, a rough, rusty sound, the kind he hasn’t let out in years. “Karen always did hate it when I moped,” he says. She grins, the crinkles back at the corners of her eyes, and she doesn’t move her shoulder from his. They talk for another 45 minutes, about the pulpy westerns Karen loved to hide in the “literary fiction” section, about the wooden birdhouses he builds for the local animal shelter, about the way she used to sneak sour candy into his woodshop classes when students were finishing their final projects. When the sun starts to set, painting the sky pink and tangerine over the cornfields across the road, she stands up to leave. She brushes a crumb of cornbread off the sleeve of his flannel shirt, her fingers lingering on the fabric for half a second longer than necessary, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away. He asks her if she wants to stop by his workshop tomorrow morning, he’s got a half-finished oak bookshelf he was planning to donate to the library, he could use a second opinion on how high to mount the shelves for the kids’ section. She says yes, tells him she’ll bring the good hazelnut coffee, the kind he likes that she saw mentioned in one of Karen’s notes. He tucks the Frost book under his arm, picks up his empty chili bowl, and walks over to the signup sheet for the library’s upcoming furniture build volunteer day, scribbling his name in the first blank slot.
