Javier Mendez, 58, retired forest fire spotter, trundled through the Saturday farmers market in eastern Oregon, work boots crunching over sun-warmed gravel, the August sun beating down on the back of his neck, sweat beading under the brim of his frayed gray crew cap. He’d come for the peach jam he bought every week, the kind with little flecks of ginger in it, but the sharp, garlicky tang of roasted habanero cut through the sweet smell of stone fruit before he could make it to the jam booth. He veered off course without thinking, one calloused hand tapping the faded 2018 fire crew patch sewn to the front of his canvas jacket out of old habit.
The woman behind the hot sauce booth looked up from stirring a pot of mango salsa, and he froze. It was Lena. Tom’s ex-wife. He hadn’t seen her since the crew’s 2020 Christmas potluck, right before she and Tom split for good. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a faded Willie Nelson t-shirt, silver streaks threading through the dark hair she’d pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheekbone. She grinned, and the same dimple he’d always thought was way too pretty for Tom to deserve popped in her right cheek.
“Javier Mendez. I thought that was your beat-up old cap. You still wear that thing even when you’re not 60 feet up a lookout tower?” She leaned across the wooden booth, holding out a small plastic cup of pale orange hot sauce for him to try, and the cuff of her shirt brushed his wrist. He could smell coconut shampoo and smoked paprika on her, warm and bright against the dusty market air. Their fingers brushed when he took the cup, and he fumbled it a little, a drop of sauce splashing on his thumb. He licked it off, the heat blooming slow across his tongue, sweet and sharp at the same time.
They made small talk first, the safe kind. He told her he’d retired last spring, spent most of his days hiking the back trails and fixing up the old pickup he’d had since college. She told him she’d moved to town six months prior, bought the small farm on the edge of county land, grew her own peppers for the hot sauce line she’d launched after the divorce. He knew he should leave, that this was treading on territory he’d forbidden himself from touching for decades. Tom might have been an ass who’d stopped talking to him two years prior, might have remarried a woman half his age down in Texas, but crew family had always been off limits. Add to that the quiet, heavy guilt he carried any time he felt even a flicker of interest in someone who wasn’t Maria, his late wife, and he was already halfway to making an excuse to leave.
But she kept talking, asking him about the lookout tower he’d manned for 12 years up on Miller Ridge, the one she’d hiked to once with Tom back in 2017. She laughed when he told her about the time a bear broke into the tower and ate three weeks worth of his granola bars, leaning further across the booth, her elbows resting on the wooden slats, their faces less than a foot apart now. He didn’t step back. He found himself telling her about Maria, how she’d bring him tamales up to the tower every Sunday when she wasn’t working at the hospital, how she’d laughed so hard at the bear story she’d snort salsa out her nose. He hadn’t told that story to anyone since Maria died.
The crowd thinned as the afternoon wore on, the 4-H kids packing up their chicken coops, the jam booth closing down for the day. Lena wiped her hands on her apron, tilting her head at him, and he noticed her nails were chipped, stained dark red from pepper juice. “I’ve been trying to fix the leaky roof on the old cabin I bought up on Miller Ridge,” she said, and her voice was softer now, no teasing edge to it. “I can’t get the shingles to lay right. You know anything about roofing?”
He hesitated, his throat tight. That old voice in his head was yelling, telling him he was crossing lines, that he was betraying Maria, that Tom would lose his mind if he found out. But then she reached across the booth, her palm resting light on his forearm, callus from her gardening trowel rough against his skin, and he didn’t pull away. He didn’t even want to. “I know a thing or two,” he said, and his voice was rougher than he expected.
She scribbled her phone number on a napkin printed with little chili peppers, tucking it into the pocket of his jacket, her fingers brushing the front of his shirt for half a second longer than necessary. “I’m free tomorrow at 10. Bring beer. I’ve got fresh salsa.”
He nodded, tucking the jar of hot sauce she’d pressed on him for free under his arm, and walked back to his pickup. He passed the golden retriever tied to the bench outside the coffee shop, the same one he’d petted every Saturday for the past two years, and scratched it behind the ears. The dog licked his hand, and he smiled, the kind of smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, the kind he hadn’t let stick around longer than a few seconds in years. He pulled the napkin out of his pocket when he got in the truck, unfolding it, and typed her number into his phone before he could talk himself out of it.
