Ray Voss, 53, is a minor league baseball scout who spends 40 weeks a year crisscrossing Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana in a dented 2017 F150, evaluating high school and DIII pitchers for the Reds’ farm system. His biggest flaw is that he’s turned deliberate isolation into a personality trait: since his wife left him for a pharmaceutical rep eight years prior, he’s skipped every small-town event within 20 miles of his ranch outside Dayton, avoids small talk with neighbors, and keeps his social circle limited to three guys from his high school football team and a part-time ranch hand who mows his pastures when he’s on the road. The only reason he’s at the annual Maplewood Chili Cookoff on a crisp late October Saturday is that his buddy who runs the local feed store fixed his truck’s transmission for free in August, and he owed him a favor manning the beer ticket booth for an hour.
He’s 20 minutes past the end of his shift, leaning against a splintered fence post holding a plastic cup of hazy IPA, when it happens. The woman who moved into the old Miller farmhouse three miles down his road three months prior is hurrying past, carrying a ceramic crock of chili for the judging table, and trips over a stray hay bale left out for the kids’ hay bale maze. She sloshes a half cup of thick, bean-heavy chili right onto the sleeve of his faded red flannel, and grabs his forearm to steady herself before she faceplants into the mud. Her palm is warm even through the flannel, the silver oak leaf ring on her index finger pressing a faint, sharp indent into his skin, and when she looks up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with gold don’t dart away like most people’s do when they realize they’ve messed up with the town’s resident recluse.
He’d heard the gossip about her, of course. Clara Marlow, 42, a pottery teacher who moved from Chicago after a messy divorce, posed nude for a local feminist art collective’s body positive exhibit at the library two weeks after she moved in. Half the town’s church ladies have been side-eyeing her ever since, muttering about “big city values” corrupting the town, and Ray had told himself more than once when he’d passed her picking wild blackberries on the side of the road that she was too much trouble, too loud, too eager to ruffle small-town feathers to be worth his time. But right then, with chili dripping off his sleeve and her hand still on his arm, that irritation feels flimsy, like a cheap tarp blowing off a hay stack in a storm.
She grins, bright and unapologetic, and swipes at the chili on his sleeve with a crumpled napkin from her jeans pocket, her knuckles brushing his wrist as she does. “That’s my pork and hatch green chile recipe, for the record,” she says, nodding at the stain. “If you’re gonna ruin a flannel, at least it’s with a prize contender. I’ll buy you a new beer to make up for it. On me.”
He doesn’t say no. They end up sitting at a weathered picnic table tucked between the beer tent and the bluegrass stage, far enough from the crowd that no one’s staring at them, close enough that he can smell the vanilla and sandalwood of her perfume over the wood smoke and cinnamon wafting from the cookoff tables. She asks questions about his job, listens when he talks about how you can tell a pitcher has pro potential before he even throws a single pitch—by the set of his shoulders, the way he holds his glove, the quiet focus in his eyes when he’s staring down home plate. His ex-wife used to call his job “a silly waste of a college degree,” but Clara leans in when he talks, elbows on the table, like what he’s saying matters. He notices she has a faint smudge of gray clay under her left fingernail, even though she’s wearing a soft green sweater and jeans that look like she put effort into picking them out for the event.
He finds himself teasing her about the library photo exhibit, half-joking that half the town’s PTA is still clutching their pearls over it. She laughs, not embarrassed, and leans in even closer, her knee brushing his under the table. “Half those women have secret Tinder accounts they use when their husbands are out hunting,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear. “I just didn’t hide the fact I like how my body looks at 42, stretch marks and all. Sue me.” The warmth of her leg through his jeans sends a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in a decade, and for a second he almost reaches across the table to touch her hand, before he remembers the gossip, the way everyone in town loves to run their mouths, the quiet life he’s built for himself that doesn’t involve messy, complicated connections.
The emcee announces the cookoff winners a few minutes later, and when they call Clara’s name for third place, she cheers so loud a few people at the next table turn to look. She grabs his hand without thinking, squeezing it tight, her fingers laced through his, and he doesn’t pull away. The calluses on her hands from throwing clay are rough against his own calluses, worn into his palms from decades of gripping baseball gloves and fence posts, and it feels right, like two pieces of weathered wood fitting together.
She leans in after she accepts her ribbon, her breath warm against his ear, and says she has a bottle of 12-year bourbon back at her place, and an industrial-strength stain remover that works on even the thickest chili grease, if he wants to follow her home. He hesitates for half a second, thinking about the empty ranch waiting for him, the stack of scouting reports on his kitchen table, the way the town will be talking about the two of them by Monday morning. Then he nods, and she grins, squeezing his hand one more time before she grabs her crock of chili from the judging table.
They walk out to the parking lot together, the cool October wind stinging his cheeks, the chili stain still damp on his flannel sleeve. She unlocks her beat up forest green Subaru, waves at him over the roof, and he climbs into his F150, turning the key in the ignition. The radio cuts on to an old Johnny Cash song he hasn’t heard in years, and he pulls out of the parking lot behind her, the oak leaf ring’s faint indent still visible on his forearm, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel the urge to turn around and drive back to his empty house.
