Ron Jablonski, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against the splintered wooden post of the beer tent at the annual Washburn County fish fry, calloused fingers curled around a sweating plastic cup of Spotted Cow. He’d shown up only because the volunteer fire department he donated Adirondack chairs to every year had begged him to make an appearance, and he hated letting people down. For eight years, ever since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, he’d avoided these kinds of events, ducking the well-meaning old ladies who tried to set him up with their divorced cousins, sticking to his garage workshop where the only noise was the whine of his table saw and the old country station he kept tuned low.
The air smelled like hot grease, dill pickle brine, and citronella from the tiki torches strung between oak trees. A polka band off to the side wheezed through a version of the Beer Barrel Polka, kids screamed as they chased each other through the gravel parking lot, and the line for fried perch snaked halfway across the fairground. He was halfway considering bailing early when Mara Carter stepped out of the line, paper plate heaped with fish and coleslaw in one hand, a can of root beer in the other. He’d known Mara for 20 years, back when she was married to his old co-worker, the auto shop teacher who’d dropped dead of a heart attack six months before Linda got her diagnosis. He’d never really looked at her before, not like that, but today he couldn’t look away. She was wearing frayed cutoff jeans that showed sun-freckled calves, a faded 2010 Packers Super Bowl hoodie even though the sun was high enough to make the air hover at 78 degrees, silver streaks cutting through her dark brown braid that slipped over one shoulder.
She spotted him, grinned, and walked over, boots crunching on gravel. “Figured I’d find you hiding over here away from the matchmakers,” she said, stopping so close their elbows almost touched. He could smell lavender hand soap and lake water on her, like she’d been out on her fishing boat that morning. When she shifted her plate to take a sip of root beer, her forearm brushed his, warm and solid, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the static from the dry summer air. He mumbled a joke about the church ladies having a list of eligible widows as long as his arm, and she laughed, leaning in a little so her shoulder pressed against his bicep. She didn’t move away after she stopped laughing.
His chest tightened. For eight years, he’d told himself any flicker of interest in another woman was a betrayal, that he was being a disloyal old fool for even noticing the way her laugh lines crinkled at the corners of her eyes, the way she wiped a smudge of coleslaw off her chin with the back of her hand. He alternated between hot, sharp desire that made his ears burn and a cold twist of disgust at himself for even thinking about anyone but Linda. He was still working through that mess when she held out an extra tartar sauce packet between two fingers, their knuckles brushing when he took it. “You always hated the plain stuff, right? Linda used to bring extra for you to the staff potlucks,” she said, holding his gaze steady, no awkward looking away like most people did when they mentioned his wife.
The polka band switched to a slow, twangy cover of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” a few minutes later, and she nodded toward the lake path behind the fairground. “Wanna get away from the noise? The sunset over the bay’s supposed to be real pretty tonight.” He hesitated for half a second, every part of him screaming that this was crossing a line, that everyone they knew would see them walking off together and talk, that he was betraying the 32 years he’d had with Linda. Then he nodded.
They walked a hundred yards down the dirt path, the noise of the fish fry fading behind them, crickets chirping in the tall grass along the shore, the lake turning soft pink and orange as the sun dipped low. She sat on a weathered fallen oak log half-buried in sand, patted the spot next to her. He sat, their thighs pressed together through the denim of their jeans, and he could feel the heat of her leg seeping through the fabric. “Linda talked to me, you know,” she said quietly, turning to look at him, the sunset gilding the edges of her hair. “A year before she died. She said if you ever stopped moping around long enough to notice anyone else, she hoped it’d be me. Said you were too stubborn to make the first move on your own.”
The tight knot of guilt in his chest unraveled all at once. He reached up, brushed a stray strand of hair off her face, his calloused fingertips brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She leaned into the touch, her hand coming up to rest on his wrist. They sat there for an hour, talking about the time the auto shop kids had stuffed a lawnmower engine into a golf cart and driven it through the cafeteria, about the way Linda used to sneak chocolate chip cookies into his lunch pail before first period, about the smallmouth bass she’d caught out on the bay the weekend before that was almost 20 inches long.
By the time the sky turned deep indigo, fireflies flickering over the grass, he walked her back to her beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 parked at the edge of the lot. She leaned in before she climbed in, kissed him soft, her lips tasting like root beer and the dill pickle she’d eaten with her fish. He didn’t pull away. When she rolled down the window to wave as she pulled out of the lot, he stood there for a minute, fingers brushing his cheek where her lipstick had left a faint pink smudge. He turned toward his own truck, boots crunching on gravel, a small, unforced smile tugging at the corner of his mouth for the first time in eight years.
