Elias Voss, 53, showed up to the northern Michigan small-town 4th of July potluck 20 minutes late, a tray of hickory-smoked brats balanced in one hand, sawdust still crusted in the cuffs of his Carhartts and the frayed edges of his 2018 Superior National Forest firefighter tee. He’d spent the morning milling cedar for a local cabin build, his left shoulder throbbing like it always did when the humidity spiked above 70 percent, a leftover souvenir from the 2019 Boundary Waters blowup that left a silvery, web-thin scar snaking up his forearm. He hated crowds, had avoided most community events for the last 12 years, ever since his wife left him for a pharmaceutical sales rep who wore loafers without socks and thought a chainsaw was a movie prop. The only reason he’d come at all was his neighbor Marnie, who’d brought him soup three times when he’d had that bad case of flu the previous winter, had badgered him until he caved.
He scanned the packed park, the only empty spot at the picnic table tucked in the shade of a stand of white pines, at the far edge of the field. A woman sat on the bench there, bare feet propped on a blue cooler, flipping through a dog-eared copy of a Raymond Carver short story collection, auburn streaks in her shoulder-length brown hair catching the late afternoon sun. He hesitated for a full 10 seconds, half ready to dump the brats on the main food table and bolt back to his cabin, before she looked up, caught his eye, and nodded at the empty seat next to her. He walked over, set the tray down between them, and their elbows brushed when she reached for a brat immediately, wiping her hand on the side of her loose linen dress before taking a bite.
“Marnie said you’d bring the good food,” she said, mouth half full, and he recognized her then as her niece, Lila, in town to help Marnie recover from knee replacement surgery. She ran a used bookstore in Portland, Marnie had mentioned a few weeks prior, was taking a month off work to help out. She smelled like lavender hand lotion and lemon iced tea, mixed with the faint sweet tang of the cherry Kool-Aid the kids were spilling all over the grass 20 feet away. He leaned back against the table leg, crossing his ankles, and she teased him about the sawdust stuck in the short gray hairs at his temple. He teased her back about bringing a book to a potluck, like she was expecting the conversation to be so boring she’d need an escape route.
They talked for an hour, about the lousy state of the local paper, about the way the pine trees smelled different here than they did out west, about the stray cat that kept leaving dead mice on Marnie’s porch. When he passed her a cold root beer from the cooler at her feet, their fingers brushed, and he felt a sharp, warm jolt run up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old, fumbling with his first girlfriend’s bra in the back of a beat-up Ford F-150. He tensed up immediately, half convinced he’d overstepped, half wanting to reach for her hand again just to see what it felt like. He’d spent so long convinced he was too rough, too scarred, too used to coming home covered in sawdust and diesel to be desirable, that the spark of interest in her eyes felt like something he didn’t deserve. He almost made an excuse to leave right then, but she laughed at a dumb joke he made about the mayor’s terrible speech, and the sound of it made his chest feel light, like the weight he’d been carrying for 12 years had shifted a little.
When the sun dipped below the treeline, the fireworks show started, and the whole crowd migrated down the sloping field to the shore of the small lake. They walked together, his shoulder brushing hers every few steps, the grass tickling the bare ankles he’d left exposed when he’d rolled his jeans up earlier. They stopped a dozen feet away from the rest of the crowd, off to the side where the sand was soft and no one was screaming loud enough to drown out the crickets. When the first big, booming red firework exploded over the water, she flinched a little, leaning into his side, and said she’d always hated loud noises, ever since a tree fell through her bedroom window when she was a kid.
He didn’t even think about it before he rested his hand on the small of her back, his calloused palm warm through the thin fabric of her dress. She didn’t pull away. Instead, she laced her fingers through the hand he had hanging loose at his side, her skin soft against the rough ridges of the calluses on his knuckles. He looked down at her, and she was already looking up at him, the pink and blue and gold light from the fireworks painting her cheeks, the corner of her mouth turned up in a small, soft smile. She said she was only in town for two more weeks, but she’d heard he had a little sawmill up on his property, and she’d love to come see it sometime, if he didn’t mind the company.
He walked her back to Marnie’s porch after the show ended, the crickets chirping loud around them, the distant sound of kids laughing as their parents herded them to cars. She stopped on the top step, still holding his hand, and tugged gently until he leaned down, pressing a soft, warm kiss to his cheek, right next to the faint scar he had there from a falling branch when he was 22. He told her he’d pick her up at 10 the next morning, bring the dark roast coffee he roasted himself in an old cast iron pot on his porch. She grinned, said she’d bring the glazed donuts from the bakery on Main Street, the ones he’d mentioned liking half an hour earlier. He turned to walk back to his beat-up pickup, his left shoulder not throbbing at all for the first time all day, even with the humidity hanging thick and heavy in the summer air.
