Manny Rios, 62, retired Border Patrol canine handler, spent the last seven years avoiding the annual West Texas chili cookoff like it was a busted smuggling run. His buddies badgered him nonstop for months leading up to it, saying he was wasting his retirement holed up on his 10-acre plot with only his geriatric German shepherd, Rico, for company. He’d finally caved an hour before, throwing on a faded green patrol hoodie and scuffed work boots, grabbing a case of Shiner Bock to bring as a peace offering. The air reeked of smoked brisket, cumin, and the faint acrid tang of burnt chili someone left on the grill too long, kids screaming as they chased each other across the sunbaked red dirt of the community park.
He was leaning against a splintered picnic table, halfway through his second beer, when she stepped up beside him. She was 58, he guessed, silver hair pulled back in a loose braid, denim jacket cut off at the elbows, scuffed cowboy boots on her feet. “You got a bottle opener?” she asked, holding up a cold hard seltzer, her shoulder brushing his forearm as she shifted her weight. He could smell lavender hand soap and a faint whiff of tequila on her breath, the kind of warm, sweet scent that made the back of his neck tingle. He fumbled the opener out of his jeans pocket, passed it to her, and their fingers brushed for half a second, rough calluses on both their hands catching against each other.
He froze. He knew who she was now: Elara Voss, the new county judge, younger sister of the guy he’d busted for smuggling 50 pounds of meth across the border back in 2001, the guy who’d died in prison three years later. He’d spent decades resenting the entire Voss clan, convinced they’d all been in on the operation, helping their brother poison half the small town teens in the valley. He tensed, waiting for the snark, the cold shoulder, the lecture about ruining her family.
Instead, she laughed, a low, rough sound that fit the scratch of the country band playing on the stage 50 yards away. “Relax. I’ve wanted to buy you a drink for 22 years. That idiot brother of mine was selling to 16 year olds. I testified against him at his trial, even if my mom never spoke to me again after. You did the valley a favor.” She nodded at the crockpot of chili sitting on the table beside him, the one he’d made with his mom’s old recipe, venison he’d shot last fall and a handful of dried chilis he’d brought back from Oaxaca the year prior. “You gonna let me taste that, or you gonna hold a grudge against me for something I never had anything to do with?”
He hesitated, then scooped a bite into a paper bowl, passed it to her. She leaned in, her knee brushing his as she took a bite, and moaned soft enough only he could hear. “Shit, that’s better than any chili my dad ever made. He dumped so much cayenne in it you couldn’t taste anything else.” They talked for an hour, sitting on the tailgate of his beat up 2008 F150, the cookoff noise fading into static as they swapped stories: his tales of chasing smugglers through the brush with his old K9, Ace, hers of dealing with small town petty crime as a judge, the time she sentenced a guy to 40 hours of community service for stealing a goat from the county fair. She kept leaning in when she talked, her arm brushing his every time she gestured, eyes crinkling at the corners when he made a dry joke about his old patrol partner’s terrible cooking.
He’d spent seven years feeling guilty for even looking at another woman, convinced he was betraying his wife, Maria, who’d died in a car crash on a rainy night when he was stuck on a shift 100 miles away. He’d told himself he’d never date again, that he was too old, too set in his ways, too bitter about the hand life had dealt him. But when Elara tilted her head toward the west, where the sun was dipping pink and orange over the desert hills, and asked if he wanted to drive out to the river overlook to watch the sunset, he didn’t even hesitate to say yes.
They drove out with the windows down, the wind blowing her braid loose, the radio playing old George Strait songs so loud the speakers crackled. When they pulled up to the overlook, the valley spread out below them, the Rio Grande glinting silver in the fading light, she leaned her head on his shoulder. He stiffened for half a second, then wrapped his arm around her waist, his hand settling on the soft worn denim of her jeans. She tilted her face up to his, and he kissed her, slow, the taste of seltzer and lime on her lips, the faint chill of the desert wind on his cheeks.
They sat there until the stars came out, until his phone buzzed in his pocket, a text from his daughter asking if he’d remembered to feed Rico. He drove her back to her small adobe house on the edge of town, walked her up to the porch. She kissed him again before she unlocked the door, soft and quick, and asked him to come over for dinner next Saturday, said she’d make tamales just like her abuela used to. He said yes.
He climbed back into his truck, turned the key in the ignition, and laughed when the same George Strait song he’d been listening to on the drive out came on the radio again.
