Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Leo dodged a kid in a Stags jersey who came tearing through the crowd at knee height and nearly took out a church lady carrying a tray of brownies.
The kid’s mom yelled something that got swallowed by the noise, and Leo sidestepped into Ski, who didn’t notice because he was already waving at someone across the fairgrounds.
“You’re going to want these.” Ski pressed a pair of foam earplugs into Leo’s palm without breaking his wave.
Tommy Kowalski—Ski because it seemed these hockey players didn’t know how to leave the nicknames on the ice—had been talking since they’d pulled into the gravel lot.
One hand on the wheel of his truck, the other gesturing at landmarks Leo couldn’t distinguish from each other.
“Earplugs,” Leo said. “How loud can it be?”
Ski gave him a look that suggested Leo had just asked whether water was wet. “Trust me.”
Leo pocketed the earplugs and followed the group through the gate.
The air hit him first—fryer grease and diesel and something sweet underneath, funnel cake maybe, mixed with the dust that rose off the packed dirt paths every time someone walked through.
Gunnar and Wes led the group, Gunnar’s hand resting at the small of Wes’s back.
Ford had his daughter next to him, one hand on her shoulder to keep her from darting into the crowd. Charlotte had a stuffed animal tucked under one arm and was pulling on Ford’s shirt with the other hand, talking up at him with the intensity of someone delivering classified intelligence.
Ford nodded as they walked, steering her aside when she nearly collided into a group of teenagers.
“She’s explaining the rules of tractor pulling,” Ford said when he caught Leo looking. “She’s got strong opinions.”
“She’s five.”
“She’s been coming to this since she was two. She knows more about it than you do.”
Leo held up both hands. “No argument here.”
Novo walked along the edge of the group, hands loose at his sides, watching the crowd without engaging.
He’d nodded at Leo when they’d met up at The Penalty Box that morning and hadn’t said much since.
Leo had tried twice to start a conversation.
The first time, Novo said, “Yep.” The second time, just a shrug.
Leo had laughed, filled the gap with a joke about the heat, and Novo had almost smiled before looking away. Close enough.
The fairgrounds were packed. Church groups sold food from folding tables. The volunteer fire department ran a dunk tank. A booth for the Stags booster club had a woman in a foam antler headband handing out schedules for the upcoming hockey season. She spotted Leo and lit up.
“Oh! You’re the new one! Gunnar told me about you.” She grabbed his hand and shook it with both of hers. “We are so excited for this season. You boys are going to do great things.”
“Can’t wait.” Leo matched her grip and gave her the full smile. She beamed.
Ski stopped every ten feet. Everyone in the county seemed to know him, and he knew them back: first names, kids’ names, whose cousin just had surgery, who was selling their boat.
Leo hung at his elbow and let Ski make introductions, shaking hands and cracking jokes and matching whatever energy the person in front of him needed.
Warm with the older couples, easy with the guys, a little extra shine for anyone who seemed excited to meet a Stag.
“You’re the new guy from Florida, right?” A guy in a Packers hat, arms crossed, sizing Leo up. “How you liking Wisconsin?”
“Still figuring out where everything is. But the cheese curds are no joke.”
The guy laughed. The woman next to him laughed. Ski clapped Leo on the shoulder and steered him toward the food stands, and Leo let himself be steered, still riding the laugh, already scanning for the next person to win over.
They stopped for food because Ski insisted.
Cheese curds from a stand run by St. Anne’s.
“You haven’t lived till you’ve had fair curds, Vargas.
” Leo took one and burned the roof of his mouth because nobody warned him they came out of the fryer at the temperature of the sun.
He hissed through his teeth and grabbed the napkin Wes held out. Gunnar’s mouth twitched.
“There’s a learning curve,” Wes said.
“Could’ve mentioned that before I lost feeling in my tongue.”
Ford bought Charlotte a mini corn dog. She sat on the edge of a hay bale and ate it with both hands, ketchup on her chin, the stuffed animal wedged beside her.
A woman passing by stopped to coo at Charlotte and ask Ford how the off-season was going.
Ford kept one eye on Charlotte and gave the woman three minutes of small talk, introducing Leo without missing a beat.
The woman shook his hand, told him he was too skinny, and that she’d bring a hotdish to his first home game.
“She will,” Ford said after the woman left. “She brings one every year. It’s always tuna.”
“Every year?”
“Every year. You learn to eat before you get there.”
They found a spot along the track where the dirt had been packed into a hard surface and the grandstand was already filling.
The pulling track stretched out in front of them, a long lane of packed earth with distance markers and a weighted sled waiting at the near end.
The first competitor was already staging, and it was not a tractor in any sense Leo understood.
The thing had a modified chassis, an exposed engine the size of a washing machine, and a roll cage.
It looked like someone had built a vehicle out of spite and horsepower.
“That’s a modified puller,” Ski said, pointing. “See the supercharger? That thing’s pushing at least three thousand horses. Some of the big boys run double that.”
“Three thousand.” Leo stared at the rig. “On dirt.”
“On dirt. They hook up to the sled, which has a weight box that transfers forward as they pull, so it gets heavier the farther they go. Full pull’s the whole track.”
Charlotte tugged on Leo’s sleeve. He looked down. She pointed at the rig. “That one’s not gonna make it.”
“No?”
“Nope.” She crossed her arms.
Leo glanced at Ford. Ford shrugged. “Don’t look at me. She’s got a better track record than I do.”
The first puller fired up, and the earplugs made sense.
The sound hit Leo in the sternum—a deep, concussive roar that shook the air and sent a plume of black exhaust straight up.
The rig lurched forward against the sled and the crowd noise swelled, people standing, kids on shoulders, the whole grandstand vibrating with it.
Dirt sprayed from the rear tires in twin arcs.
The sled’s weight box crept forward as the rig fought for distance, engine screaming before the front end lifted and the thing died at the one-eighty mark.
The crowd groaned. Charlotte shook her head.
“Told you she’s good,” Ford said.
They watched three more pulls. Leo asked questions because they kept him inside the conversation, and Ski answered every one before Leo finished asking, grabbing his arm and pointing at the track, talking over the engine noise.
Novo, who hadn’t said more than two words all day, leaned forward when a puller stalled at the line.
“Cam issue,” he said, and went back to watching. Leo glanced at Ski. Ski just shrugged.
Between pulls, a couple in the row ahead turned around. The woman recognized Ski first, then noticed Leo. “Are you new? I don’t recognize you.”
“Brand new. Just got in from Florida.”
“Florida!” She swatted her husband’s arm. “He’s from Florida, Gary.”
Gary looked Leo up and down. “You ready for a Wisconsin winter?”
“I own exactly one jacket,” Leo said. “So probably not.”
They shook their heads, laughing about what a rude awakening Leo was in for.
When Leo admitted it was his first tractor pull, Gary explained the finer points of the modified class while the woman told him about her nephew who played hockey in Appleton.
Maybe making small talk wasn’t as hard as it seemed.
He’d never be the chatty type, but Leo was pleased with himself for not shutting them down.
Ford left first. Charlotte had gone quiet, leaning against his leg with her eyes half-shut.
He scooped her up, and she dropped her head on his shoulder without protest, the stuffed animal dangling from one hand.
“I’m going to get this one home before she crashes,” Ford said.
“It was good hanging out, Vargas. We’ll have to do it again. ”
“Yeah, for sure. Thanks for the intel.” Leo nodded at Charlotte. She blinked at him once, heavy and slow, already gone.
Novo drifted next. Saw someone he knew near the livestock barns and disappeared with a chin lift.
Ski lasted another twenty minutes before a woman Leo assumed was his mother appeared from the crowd like she’d been summoned by a homing beacon.
She grabbed Ski’s arm and started talking about someone named Carol whose daughter had just gotten engaged, and Ski gave Leo an apologetic grimace.
“Go,” Leo said. “I’m good.”
Gunnar and Wes had wandered off earlier to meet up with Wes’s sister and niece.
Leo had watched Wes scoop the little girl onto his shoulders while Gunnar fell into step beside them, and the four of them had disappeared into the crowd.
They’d said they’d find him later. He wouldn’t.
They were enjoying family time and didn’t need the new guy tagging along.
He bought a lemonade from a stand run by the Port Haven High School band.
The girl who served him had braces, asked if he was on the hockey team, and then called him sir, which made him feel ancient.
He thanked her, tipped too much, and walked back toward the track with the cup sweating against his palm.
The grandstand was full now. Families packed into the bleachers, kids sitting on the rails, couples sharing seats.
A group of older men in lawn chairs had set up along the fence with coolers, arguing about a puller’s gear ratio loud enough to carry halfway across the grounds.
A woman braided her daughter’s hair while watching the track, fingers working without looking down.
Two boys shared a funnel cake, powdered sugar on their shirts, shoving each other for the last piece.
Leo sipped his lemonade and stood at the edge of all of it.
He could leave. Go back to the Lakeside Inn, stare at the lighthouse photograph above the dresser, listen to the AC rattle through another evening.
At least the apartment Gunnar had found for him would be ready next week.
Four walls he could make his own. But that was next week, and right now, the fair was louder than his hotel room, which was enough reason to stay.
He checked his phone. A text from his mother he didn’t open. Nothing from Phil. Nothing from anyone on his old team, but that had been true since the day the trade went through. He pocketed the phone and looked down at the cup. The wax coating had cracked where his thumb had been pressing into it.
Another puller fired up. The roar hit his chest, but this time, he didn’t flinch.
He watched the rig launch forward, tires biting, sled dragging, the whole apparatus straining against the laws of physics.
The crowd surged, people on their feet, and Leo found himself watching them instead of the track.
A woman grabbed her husband’s arm without looking.
A kid pumped his fist on the rail. The older men in their lawn chairs leaned forward like they could will the rig another foot down the lane.
He crushed the lemonade cup and tossed it. The sun was lower now, shadows stretching across the track. It wasn’t as much fun sitting around by himself when everyone else seemed to know one another. He could track down Ski or find Gunnar and Wes, but again, he was the outsider.
He walked in the opposite direction of where he’d last seen them.
Past the grandstand, past the food booths, the dunk tank, and a guy selling knives out of a tent.
Past the last of the spectator fencing, where the crowd thinned and the announcer’s voice faded to a tinny echo.
A couple walked past him, the woman leaning into the man’s side, his arm around her shoulders.
Neither of them so much as glanced at Leo.
The pits were a different world from the grandstand.
Crews worked on rigs with their heads down, tools out, nobody looking up.
A woman wearing a welding mask sent sparks flying from a roll cage.
Two guys shoulder-deep in an engine compartment yelled at each other over the generator noise.
Leo drifted closer, hands in his pockets.
Nobody stopped him or asked what he was doing back there, so he decided to stick around a bit.
He ended up at the chain-link fence at the far edge of the pits, fingers curled through the wire, watching a crew run through what looked like a last-minute adjustment. His shoulders loosened. Out here, the only thing anyone cared about was whether the work got done.
A flatbed with WYATT’S GARAGE stenciled on the door was parked just past the fence.
Leo almost didn’t see him. Dawson was crouched beside a rig, working at something on the chassis, his back to Leo.
Same brown hair, same broad shoulders, grease up both forearms. His shirt was threaded through a belt loop.
Leo’s attention was drawn to the Lin of sweat trickling down the center of his bare back.
He straightened and said something to the guy beside him. The guy laughed and passed him a wrench. Dawson took it without looking and leaned back into the work. Everything about him was unhurried. Sure hands, no wasted movement.
Leo’s fingers tightened on the chain-link.
Dawson reached deeper into the engine compartment, and the muscles across his back shifted with every movement. Leo watched him work and couldn’t have named a single thing he was doing. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t watching the work.
He should go. Back to the grandstand, back to the inn, back to anywhere that wasn’t standing at a fence watching a mechanic he’d spoken ten words to.