Elias Voss, 62, leans against the cinder block wall of the Bend Elks Lodge, calloused thumb rubbing the dent in the side of his Pabst can. He spent 28 years as a U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, most shifts solo, 10 days at a time perched 70 feet up a steel tower, no company but ravens and the low crackle of his radio. The flaw that stuck with him after retirement? He still forgets how to make small talk, tends to stare too long, answers most questions with a grunt or a one-word reply. His wife Karen died 8 years back, and he’s barely said more than 10 sentences to any woman outside the grocery store checkout line since.
Late August air reeks of fried catfish, hickory smoke, and cut grass. Cornhole bags thud against wooden boards 20 feet away, kids shriek as they chase each other around picnic tables, and Sheriff Tom Hale holds court at the center table, beer in one hand, cowboy hat tilted low over his eyes. Elias came tonight only because his old crew partner runs the fish fry, and he owed him a favor for fixing his cabin’s water heater last winter. He’d planned to eat his catfish, drink two beers, and be back on his dirt road by 8.
That plan goes out the window when Clara Hale steps up to the cooler next to him. She’s Tom’s ex-wife, 58, moved back to town three months ago to run the public library, and the whole county has an unspoken rule: don’t talk to her. Tom’s got a mean jealous streak, ran a hardware store clerk out of the diner last month just for asking her if she needed a refill on coffee. Elias only knows who she is because he donated his old fire spotter logs to the library a month prior, and she’d sent him a handwritten thank you note, scrawled in loopy blue ink, that said she’d loved the little side notes he’d jotted about hawk migrations and wildflower blooms between fire risk assessments.
She’s wearing a faded Pearl Jam t-shirt, cutoff denim shorts, scuffed cowboy boots, and a flannel tied around her waist, sun streaks in her auburn hair. She bends to grab a seltzer from the bottom of the cooler, loses her balance on loose gravel, and they both reach for her at the same time. His shoulder bumps hers, his hand wraps around her elbow for half a second, and he can feel the rough callus on her forearm from planting rose bushes, the warm softness of her skin under his palm. She laughs, the sound bright over the hum of the crowd, and smells like lavender shampoo and lemon Pledge, the same stuff Karen used to dust the cabin shelves.
“Sorry about that,” she says, brushing gravel off her knees, and her eyes lock onto his, no hesitation, no awkward look away like most people do when they see the thick scar slicing across his left cheek from the 2018 Deschutes National Forest fire. “You’re Elias, right? The guy who donated the fire logs? I’ve been reading them on my lunch breaks. You write about the view from the Three Sisters tower like it’s sacred.”
He blinks, surprised anyone would bother reading 20 years of dry government paperwork, let alone notice the little notes he’d scribbled when he was bored. He opens his mouth to reply, glances over her shoulder, and sees Tom staring right at them, jaw tight, knuckles white around his beer can. Old guilt nags at him first – he doesn’t want drama, doesn’t want to piss off the sheriff, doesn’t want to feel like he’s replacing Karen – but then Clara tilts her head, waiting, and that guilt fizzles out against the warm buzz in his chest.
“Nah, it’s just a view,” he says, and he doesn’t even realize he’s smiling until her grin widens. “S’pretty at sunrise, though. You can see the snow on the Cascades glow pink before the rest of the valley wakes up.”
She nods, leans in a little, close enough that he can smell mint on her breath, and their knees brush when she shifts her weight. “I’ve been wanting to hike up there. Nobody I know will go with me, says the trail’s too steep. You ever go back?”
“Once a month, to check the radio equipment,” he says, and he can feel Tom’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his shirt, but he doesn’t look away from her. The sheriff can yell all he wants. Elias has stared down wildfires that ate 12,000 acres in a single hour. A guy with a badge and a bad attitude doesn’t scare him.
Clara glances over her shoulder, sees Tom standing up like he’s about to march over, and snorts. “He’s gonna throw a fit. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to deal with him.”
Elias takes a sip of his beer, leans back against the wall, and crosses his arms. “I’m not scared of him.”
Tom pauses halfway across the lawn, meets Elias’s steady stare, and thinks better of it. He turns around, sits back down at his table, and slams his beer down hard enough that foam sloshes over the side. Clara laughs so hard she snorts, and she reaches out to tap his wrist, her fingers warm against his skin. “You’re brave. Most guys in this town run the second he so much as glares at them.”
They talk for 45 minutes, leaning against the wall, their shoulders brushing every few minutes, her hand brushing his when she passes him a packet of tartar sauce for his half-eaten catfish. She tells him about growing up in Bend, moving away for college, coming back after the divorce, how she’s been turning the library’s back room into a community seed library. He tells her about the time a bear climbed the tower stairs when he was on shift, about the way the sky turns neon green right before a thunderstorm hits the mountains, about how he still leaves a bowl of sunflower seeds out on his porch for the ravens that followed him down from the tower after he retired.
When the sun dips below the horizon, the sky turning soft orange and purple, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and nods at his beat-up Ford F-150 parked across the lot. “You gonna offer to drive me home, or am I gonna have to ask?”
He grins, grabs his keys off his belt loop, and holds the lodge gate open for her. When she walks past, she squeezes his hand once, quick, and winks over her shoulder. He opens the passenger side door for her, the cool mountain air wrapping around his shoulders, and for the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t feel like rushing to get back to his empty cabin.
