Earl Crockett, 58, retired smokejumper turned wildfire mitigation consultant, hunched over his dented cast-iron chili pot at the annual county volunteer fire department cookoff, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of his faded Carhartt. He’d entered the contest every year for the past decade, won three times, and he knew this year’s smoked brisket and hatch green chili batch was good enough to make it four. He’d spent three hours smoking the brisket the night before, rubbed down with chipotle and garlic, slow cooked over oak he’d harvested off his own property. He’d turned down three blind date setups from his older sister in the past six months, stubbornly convinced anyone his age only wanted to drone on about grandkids, joint pain, and the rising cost of groceries. He’d been perfectly happy sticking to his routine: work, hunt, watch old westerns with his hound dog, no drama, no expectations.
The crowd around the booths was loud, half the town showing up even with the 35-degree wind whipping down main street, kids chasing each other with plastic cups of hot cocoa, old timers arguing about the best bean to meat ratio. He nodded at people who stopped to sample, half listening to their compliments, when he caught a whiff of pine soap and lavender hand cream, sharp over the smell of chili and wood smoke.
He looked up. Marnie Hale stood on the other side of the table, holding a crumpled paper bowl, a half smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She was Lila’s cousin, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the one he’d only met twice, once at his wedding 22 years prior, once at a family barbecue a year later, back when he was still gone 10 months out of the year jumping fires across the west. She’d always hated him back then, called him reckless, said he cared more about chasing fire clouds than he did about his wife. Now she was 49, the new backcountry park ranger for the Shoshone National Forest, just moved to town three weeks prior, sun lines crinkling around her hazel eyes, a thin silver scar snaking up her left wrist from the rock climbing accident he’d heard about years ago, when she’d fallen 20 feet off a ledge in Grand Teton.
“Earl,” she said, holding out her bowl for a serving. “Heard yours is the only batch here that doesn’t taste like canned tomato sauce dumped over kidney beans.”
He grunted, scooping a heaping serving into her bowl, his knuckle brushing her wrist when he passed it over. Her skin was cold, calloused at the palm, same as his, from years of working with her hands. He pulled his hand back fast, like he’d touched a hot stove. He’d had a stupid, useless crush on her back when he was married, the kind he’d never breathed a word of to anyone, had squashed down so deep he’d almost forgotten it existed. Seeing her here now, it was like poking a smoldering ember he thought had gone cold.
She took a bite, hummed, leaning against the edge of the table so her shoulder pressed against his bicep through his coat. The heat of her seeped through the thick fabric, and he found himself leaning into it before he could stop himself. “Told you you were a good cook,” she said, and he remembered she’d said that at the wedding, when he’d grilled burgers for the after party, Lila had rolled her eyes and said he only knew how to cook meat over an open flame.
He glanced around, half expecting to see someone he knew staring, gossiping. Everyone knew Lila left him seven years ago, handed him divorce papers at the airport when he got back from a six week fire deployment in California, said she’d met a real estate agent in Denver who was home every night for dinner. He still got side eye from some of Lila’s old friends in town, even now. Hooking up with her cousin was the kind of gossip that would spread faster than a grass fire in August, the kind of drama he’d spent years avoiding.
“You here to tell me I’m still a deadbeat husband?” he said, more gruff than he meant to, and she laughed, loud and bright, cutting through the noise of the crowd.
“Nah,” she said, wiping a fleck of chili off her chin with the back of her hand. “Lila was an idiot. I told her that when she left you. I’d have killed for a guy who knows how to fix a leaky roof and doesn’t spend every weekend complaining about HOA fees.”
She leaned in closer, so her mouth was almost at his ear, the scent of lavender stronger now. “I need someone to come look at the fuel breaks around the north visitor center,” she said. “The last guy left it a mess. I heard you’re the best in the state. And maybe after we’re done, we can grab a beer. My cabin’s 10 minutes outside the park, no neighbors for three miles. No one’s gonna see us.”
His throat went dry. He thought about the rules he’d made for himself after the divorce: no dating, no getting attached, no drama that would make the town talk. He thought about how wrong this was, how everyone would call him a creep if they found out, how he still carried a little guilt for not being around more when he was married. But then he looked at her, her lips parted a little, waiting, and he realized he was tired of living by rules that only made him miserable.
He nodded, before he could overthink it. He yelled over to the 19 year old volunteer who’d been helping him all afternoon, told him to take the chili pot back to his place, he didn’t care if he won the 50 dollar gift card to the hardware store or not. He walked her to her beat up Ford Bronco, his hand brushing the small of her back for half a second when he stepped around a puddle of melted snow, and she didn’t pull away.
He followed her out of town in his own pickup, the road winding up into the foothills, pine trees crowding the sides of the pavement. She pulled into a small log cabin set back from the road, Christmas lights strung along the porch even though it was mid-March, a stack of firewood piled against the side of the house. She was standing on the porch holding two cold IPAs when he got out of his truck, the golden light from the porch lamp gilding the edges of her dark hair. He walked up the steps, took the beer from her, his fingers lacing with hers for a beat longer than necessary, as the wind carried the sharp, warm scent of pine and burning cedar off the mountains.
