Rafe Marquez, 59, spent 32 years manning fire towers in the Eldorado National Forest before retiring three years back, and his most defining flaw is that he holds petty grudges longer than he holds a grudge against the sun for baking his skin through summer shifts. He hasn’t spoken to Jimmie Tatum, his ex-wife’s cousin, since 2011, when Jimmie won a World Series bet Rafe swears was fixed, and he’d sworn off all Placerville county fair appearances for life rather than risk running into Jimmie, who’d been on the fair board for a decade. The only reason he’s sweating through the shoulder of his well-worn gray flannel (a habit he can’t kick, even on 92-degree August afternoons) at the fair this year is his 16-year-old grandniece Lila begged him to come watch her show her prize Nubian goat, and he’s never been able to say no to that kid.
He’d skipped the food stalls for two hours, but the smell of fried peaches drifting from the far end of the midway gets too strong to ignore, so he falls into a line 10 people deep, scuffing his work boots in the dust and avoiding eye contact with anyone who might recognize him. When he gets to the front, his throat goes dry before he can even order. The woman behind the counter is Lena Hale, Jimmie’s ex-wife. He’d only met her a handful of times back when he was still married, but he’d spent more than a few idle shifts up in the fire tower thinking about the way her dark hair curled over her shoulders, the silver hoops she always wore, the laugh that carried across the room at family cookouts.
He fumbles for his wallet, knocks a jar of cinnamon off the counter, and they both reach for it at the same time. His calloused, saw-scraped knuckles brush her wrist, and her skin is cool from hauling iced tea pitchers all afternoon, a shock against the heat wrapping around both of them. She holds eye contact for three full beats longer than polite, a slow smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, before she grabs the jar and sets it back on the shelf. “Rafe Marquez. I thought you swore you’d rather eat pine needles than step foot on this fair property as long as Jimmie was on the board.”
He’s flustered, which is a feeling he hasn’t had since he was 17 and got caught sneaking a beer behind the high school gym. He mumbles something about Lila’s goat, shoves a crumpled 20-dollar bill across the counter, and avoids her eyes while she piles two fried peach halves into a paper boat, dusts them with extra cinnamon, and slips a cold sweet tea into the paper bag alongside it, even though he didn’t order one. “My shift ends at 7,” she says, leaning across the counter just enough that he can smell the cedar shampoo in her hair over the fried sugar and grease of the stand. “The old oak grove by the horse arena doesn’t have any security cameras, and Jimmie’s stuck judging the peach pie contest till 9. If you feel like wasting a couple hours not talking about stupid 12-year-old baseball bets.”
He walks back to the goat barn in a daze, eats the peaches while Lila gossips about her 4-H rivals, and spends the next three hours fighting with himself. Half of him is furious at the thought of even spending five minutes with anyone connected to Jimmie, stubborn pride screaming that he’s letting a grudge he held for over a decade go for a pretty smile and a free iced tea. The other half can’t stop replaying the feeling of her wrist under his knuckles, the way her smirk made his chest feel tight, the fact that she’d remembered his name after all those years. He tells Lila he’s heading out early, hands her a 50 for the goat feed fund, and drives his beat-up Ford F150 around the fairgrounds three times before he finally parks by the horse arena and walks toward the oak grove.
She’s already there, leaning against the biggest oak, holding a mason jar full of pale peach liquid, no apron on, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Johnny Cash t-shirt that’s frayed at the cuffs. The sun is dipping low, painting the sky pink and orange, and the distant hum of the ferris wheel’s generator mixes with the whinny of horses in the nearby stalls. She passes him the jar when he sits down on the fallen log next to her, their knees brushing when he takes it, and neither of them moves away. “Left Jimmie six years ago,” she says, before he can even ask. “Cheated on me with the 2017 peach pie contest coordinator. Turned out his ‘rigged World Series bet’ schtick was just the first sign he was a pathological liar.”
Rafe snorts so hard he snorts moonshine out his nose, coughing so hard his eyes water, and she laughs so hard she snorts too, the sound loud and bright, nothing like the polite little laughs he remembers from family cookouts. They pass the jar back and forth for an hour, talking about his fire tower shifts, her side gig selling homemade jam at the farmers market, the time Lila’s goat escaped and ate half of Jimmie’s prize rose bush three years back. When she leans in to brush a piece of oak bark off his flannel shoulder, her hand lingers on his arm, and he tucks a strand of gray-streaked dark hair behind her ear before he can overthink it. The kiss is slow, no rush, tastes like peach moonshine and cinnamon, the rough bark of the log digging into his back, the fair music fading into the background.
They stay there till the clock tower chimes 9, and he walks her to her beat-up Toyota Tacoma parked by the arena gate. She hands him a jar of her peach jam when he opens the truck door for her, scribbles her phone number on the lid in permanent marker. “My sunroom window’s been stuck shut for two months,” she says, leaning against the doorframe, her hoops glinting in the porch light of the nearby concession stand. “I know you’re good with that handyman stuff from all the fire tower repairs. You wanna come over tomorrow night and fix it? I’ll make pork chops and apple sauce.” He says yes before he can even think about the stupid grudge, about Jimmie, about all the years he wasted hiding out in his cabin avoiding people for no good reason. He waits by the fence till her taillights disappear over the hill, the leftover cinnamon from the fried peach still sticky on his fingertips.
