Ray Garza, 62, retired border patrol K9 handler, leans against the dented side of his 2008 Silverado, twisting the cap off a cold Shiner Bock. He spent 31 years enforcing every rule, big and small, so rigid he still sets his coffee maker for 5:47 a.m. even though he hasn’t had a shift in four years. His wife of 34 years passed from ovarian cancer in 2019, and he hasn’t so much as flirted with a woman since, convinced any kind of fun after loss was some kind of betrayal. The monthly rib cookoff in his tiny West Texas town is the only thing he lets himself leave the house for on weekends, when he’s not patching up old bird dog crates for the local animal shelter.
The air smells like hickory smoke, vinegar-based sauce, and the sharp crisp of October mesquite leaves underfoot. He’s wiping a smudge of rib grease off his faded Carhartt sleeve when he spots her, weaving through the crowd of cowboy hat-clad regulars with a tray of peach cobbler samples held over her head. It’s Lila Mendez, his old patrol partner’s only daughter, the girl he’d watched sneak sips of his beer when she was 16, the one who’d cried to him when her first boyfriend dumped her senior year. She’s 48 now, moved back to town two months prior after a messy divorce from a lawyer in Austin, opened a small pastry shop on Main Street. He’d avoided running into her on purpose, scared the little jolt he’d felt seeing her photo in the local paper was something he shouldn’t entertain.