Elias Voss, 59, spent most of his days in a cinder block workshop behind his small northern Wisconsin home, planing bamboo blanks and wrapping custom fishing rod guides with silk thread that matched the color of the brook trout native to the nearby Brule River. He’d retired from 32 years as a high school woodshop teacher three years prior, two weeks after his wife Linda lost her three-year fight with ovarian cancer, and he’d skipped the VFW’s monthly spring fish fry every year since. The only reason he showed up that rainy Friday was that his former star student, now the VFW commander, had begged him to donate a rod for the charity raffle, and Elias couldn’t say no to the kid who’d once built a fully functional Adirondack chair for his grandma as a freshman project.
He hovered by the industrial beer cooler near the back of the hall, a sweating can of Pabst in one calloused hand, trying to stay out of the line of sight of the three church auxiliary ladies who’d been making eyes at him from the pie table for the last 20 minutes. The air reeked of fried cod, vinegar coleslaw, and the damp wool of the coats hanging by the door, the jukebox in the corner thumping low Johnny Cash deep cuts that rumbled through the linoleum under his scuffed work boots. He was half debating slipping out before the raffle even started when a woman carrying a tray piled high with paper ramekins of coleslaw tripped over the leg of a folding chair, sloshing a dollop of the creamy, vinegar-dusted slaw right onto the cuff of his plaid flannel shirt.
She yelped an apology, setting the tray down on a nearby empty table and grabbing a handful of paper napkins from the dispenser next to the ketchup. Elias started to say it was no big deal, that the shirt was already stained with epoxy and sawdust anyway, when he caught sight of the fine black line art of a brook trout curling around her left wrist, its red belly bright against her sun-freckled skin. He paused mid-sentence, and she followed his gaze, lifting her wrist with a small, lopsided smile. “Got it last year when I moved up here from Chicago,” she said, leaning in a little so he could see the detail better, her shoulder brushing his bicep through the thin flannel. She smelled like lavender hand lotion and the sugary fried dough the VFW sold as a side, a faint silver streak running through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid over her shoulder. “Mara. I’m the new part-time librarian over at the town branch.”
Elias introduced himself, and she nodded, said she’d seen his name on the raffle sheet next to the custom rod propped up by the DJ booth. She asked him about the bamboo he used, and he found himself talking for 15 minutes straight, about the Tonkin bamboo he imported from a small farm in China, the way he aged it for two years in his workshop before he even touched a plane to it. She didn’t give him that sad, pitying look everyone else did when he mentioned he’d been doing it since he retired, didn’t ask if he was doing okay, didn’t mention Linda, who’d volunteered at the library for 10 years. She just asked questions, leaning in every time he explained a new detail, her knee brushing his when a group of kids ran past chasing each other, her eyes crinkling at the corners when he joked about the time he’d spent three weeks building a rod for a celebrity client who’d used it exactly once before leaving it in the back of a rental boat.
The emcee called the raffle numbers halfway through his story about the rental boat, and Mara’s number was called for the top prize: his rod. She whooped, loud enough that half the room turned to look, and jogged up to the front to grab it, holding it over her head like a trophy when she walked back. “I have had to buy three cheap Walmart rods in the last year because I keep snapping them on the smallmouth out on the lake,” she said, running a finger down the smooth, polished bamboo, her gaze lifting to meet his, warm and unapologetic. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to teach a total novice how to not destroy something this nice?”
Elias froze for half a second, that familiar twist of guilt hitting him in the chest, the voice in the back of his head saying he was supposed to still be grieving, that going fishing with a pretty woman he just met was some kind of betrayal of the 34 years he’d had with Linda. Then Mara tapped the trout tattoo on her wrist again, grinning, and he realized he hadn’t laughed that easy with a stranger since before Linda got sick. “I’ve got a spot on the Brule that the guides don’t even know about,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it. “6 a.m. next Saturday. Bring coffee. The bad kind, with too much cream and sugar.”
She laughed, tucking a scrap of receipt with her phone number scrawled on the back into the chest pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing the faded patch on the pocket that Linda had sewn on for him 20 years prior, her thumb lingering for half a beat before she pulled her hand away. “I’ll even bring donuts,” she said, holding eye contact for a full two seconds before she picked up her tray of coleslaw and walked back to the serving line, nodding at one of the church ladies who was staring at them with her eyebrows raised.
Elias took a slow sip of his now-warm beer, wiping the last of the coleslaw off his cuff with the napkin she’d given him earlier, and glanced at the clock above the bar, already counting down the hours until Saturday morning.
