Manny Ruiz, 57, retired air show stunt pilot turned small prop plane repair shop owner, had avoided the annual Oracle, Arizona, 4th of July block party for eight straight years. Ever since his wife passed in a car crash outside Phoenix, he’d stuck to his hangar on the edge of the neighborhood, worked on 1960s Cessnas till his fingers were crusted with hydraulic fluid, listened to old Merle Haggard records loud enough to drown out the sound of neighbors laughing through his fence. He only showed up this year because his 16-year-old intern, Javi, had threatened to leave all his wrench sets unorganized for a month if he kept acting like the street’s resident recluse.
He stood by the dented aluminum beer cooler, sipping a cheap lager that tasted like canned corn, grease still crusted under his fingernails that he hadn’t bothered scrubbing off before he walked over. His faded A-2 jacket, the same one he’d worn for 22 years of stunt runs, was too hot for the 92-degree evening, but he didn’t want to take it off and show the faded scar that snaked across his left bicep from a 2004 crash. He checked his watch for the third time in five minutes, planning to sneak out as soon as Javi was distracted by the group of teens by the cornhole boards.