Jax Thorne is 67, has been a minor league baseball scout for 28 years, still carries a tattered navy spiral notebook instead of the league-mandated scouting app, calls all the new spin rate and exit velocity metrics nonsense that misses the way a kid grits his teeth when he’s down two strikes with the bases loaded. He’s parked himself at a splintered pine picnic table in the Vigo County Fair beer garden for three hours now, nursing a lukewarm Miller High Life, watching the 19-year-old lefty he’s been tracking pitch for the county all-star team, sun burning the back of his neck through the frayed hole in the crown of his worn St. Louis Cardinals cap. The air smells like fried Oreos, cut clover, and the faint acrid tang of portable toilets down the walkway, and he’s just scribbled a note about the kid’s loose, easy 94 mph fastball when a shadow falls across his page.
It’s Elara Voss, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one he almost kissed in the coat closet at his brother-in-law’s wedding 21 years prior, before his ex had banged on the door yelling for her to help fix her slipping veil. He hasn’t seen her in 14 years, not long after his ex left him for a regional sales manager for a corn planter company, and he’s suddenly very aware of the sweat beading at his hairline, the crumb of funnel cake stuck to the knee of his faded work jeans. She’s got streaks of silver running through her thick auburn hair, tied back in a messy braid, wears cutoff jean shorts and a faded “Voss Family Pies” t-shirt, flour dusted on her forearms from the booth she’s been running all week. She holds up a grease-stained paper plate with a slice of peach pie, no whipped cream, and grins, and his chest tightens so hard he almost drops his ballpoint pen.
She slides into the bench across from him, their knees knocking hard under the table because the space is so narrow, and she pushes the plate toward him, their calloused fingers brushing for half a second when he reaches for it. He tastes sugar and sun-ripened peach when he takes a bite, exactly how he likes it, and she laughs when he raises an eyebrow in surprise. “I remembered. You turned down whipped cream at every family cookout for 10 years, said it muddled the flavor of good stone fruit.” Her voice is still low, a little raspy, like she’s spent all day yelling over fair music and rowdy pie customers, and she leans forward on her elbows, so close he can smell coconut sunscreen and vanilla lip balm on her, the faint hint of the hard cider she’s sipping from a neon plastic cup. He keeps waiting for the awkwardness to hit, for one of them to mention his ex, for that old guilt to creep in—he was still happily married when they almost kissed, after all, had spent 20 years telling himself that moment was a stupid, drunken lapse, that he’d been an idiot for even considering crossing that line—but it never comes. She asks about the lefty, listens intently when he rants about the new league rules that make him file three reports a week on an app he can barely operate, nods when he says he still drives 300 miles a week in his dented 2008 Ford F-150, sleeping in $60 a night motel rooms just to watch kids throw ball for 2 hours a night.
He fights the urge to reach across the table and brush the fleck of flour off her left forearm, tells himself she’s just being polite, that she wouldn’t be interested in a stubborn old man who spends more time with teenage pitchers than people his own age, who still sleeps with a photo of his late border collie on his nightstand, who hasn’t been on a date in 12 years. But she keeps leaning in, holds eye contact two beats longer than casual when he talks, laughs so hard at his story about the 17-year-old catcher who tried to bring a pet ferret into the dugout that she snorts, and she kicks his scuffed work boot playfully under the table when he teases her about burning an entire batch of apple pie at the 2002 county fair, leading to a 45 minute line of angry fairgoers. The sun dips below the grandstand, the string of fair lights strung above the beer garden flicker on, pink and tangerine and lavender painting the sky over the creaking ferris wheel, and the crowd thins out as the last baseball game ends, the PA system blaring old Johnny Cash deep cuts over the speakers.
She says her booth is packed up for the night, asks if he’ll walk her to her car, and he nods before he can overthink the decision. The gravel parking lot is half empty, crickets chirping loud in the tall grass along the curb, the distant hum of the fair’s rickety wooden roller coaster fading behind them. She stops next to her beat up 2012 Subaru Outback, a “World’s Okayest Pie Baker” bumper sticker peeling off the back hatch, and turns to face him, her hand brushing the brim of his Cardinals cap before she tucks a strand of gray hair that’s fallen out of his low ponytail behind his ear. “I’ve waited 21 years to do this,” she says, and leans up to kiss him, soft at first, then firmer when he doesn’t pull away, and he tastes peach and peppermint on her lips, feels her hands on the back of his neck, warm against his sunburned skin. He doesn’t think about his ex, doesn’t think about the guilt he’s carried for two decades, doesn’t think about the six hour drive he has to make tomorrow to scout a kid in southern Illinois. All he thinks about is how her hand fits in his when he laces their fingers together, how she laughs against his mouth when he teases her for taking so long to make the first move.
She scribbles her phone number on a crumpled napkin from her purse, draws a tiny lopsided peach next to it, and shoves it into the breast pocket of his plaid flannel shirt before she climbs into her car. He pulls it out a minute later, tucks it into the back of his scouting notebook, right next to the notes he took on the lefty pitcher, and leans against the bed of his truck while she pulls out of the parking lot, waving wildly out the driver’s side window. He pulls his notebook out of his back pocket, flips to the blank page next to her number, and scribbles “peach pie, no whipped cream, breakfast at Main Street Diner, 8 a.m.” under the scrawled digits, before he climbs into his own truck, turns the key in the ignition, and cranks up the old Johnny Cash CD he keeps wedged in the disc player. He shifts the truck into drive, already smiling at the thought of showing up to the diner 10 minutes early, with a fresh pack of peppermint gum tucked in his jeans pocket.
