Ronan O’Malley, 58, retired forest fire suppression crew lead, had dragged himself to the annual Josephine County fire department cookout only because three of his former crew members had showed up on his porch at 8 a.m. with a six pack of his favorite IPA and refused to leave until he agreed. He’d spent four years avoiding all small town community events since his wife died of a stroke in 2019, hated the forced pitying smiles, the women his neighbor kept trying to set him up with who thought his “gruff outdoorsman vibe” was cute. He brought a 12-pound smoked brisket he’d tended for 18 hours, set it on the serving table, then planted himself against a splintered pine picnic table at the edge of the crowd, beer in one hand, baseball cap pulled low over his graying red hair. His biggest flaw? He held grudges like they were earned medals, and he’d spent three years hating Clara Mendez, the 49-year-old county public health director who’d signed off on the 2020 masking and gathering mandates that kept him from visiting his younger sister in the hospital in Portland before she died of lung cancer.
He spotted her across the lawn 20 minutes later, wearing a faded navy county work shirt with her name stitched over the pocket, cutoff denim shorts, scuffed white hiking boots caked with trail dust, her dark curly hair pulled back in a messy braid slipping down her shoulder. There was a smudge of barbecue sauce on her left cheek, and she was laughing so hard at a story the fire chief was telling that she snort-laughed, loud enough that he heard it over the sound of the cornhole game and the classic rock playing from a portable speaker. He looked away fast, but she’d already seen him. She cut across the lawn toward him, holding a paper plate in one hand, and he tensed up, ready to snap if she gave him some public health lecture about eating too much red meat.
“Word on the street is you brought the brisket that won the state fair contest last year,” she said when she got close enough that he could smell coconut sunscreen and pine on her, no fancy perfume, just the smell of someone who spent most of her time outside. He grunted, picked up a pair of tongs, dropped a thick, juicy slice on her plate. Their fingers brushed when he passed it to her, and he noticed her nails were chipped, flecked with pine resin under the edges, no polish. “I thought you’d never show up to one of these,” she said, taking a bite, closing her eyes for half a second like she was savoring it. “Got all those angry emails you sent me during COVID, by the way. You called me a ‘tyrant with a clipboard’ twice, if I remember right.”
Ronan felt his ears go red. He’d forgotten he’d sent those, drunk one night after a phone call with his sister’s nurse saying he couldn’t visit. “Yeah, well,” he said, shifting his weight, his boot scuffing a patch of dry grass. “I was mad.”
She nodded, leaning against the picnic table next to him, their shoulders three inches apart, close enough that he could feel the heat off her arm when someone bumped the table from behind and she swayed into him. “I get it. I lost my husband to COVID that same year. I was the one who told my own kids they couldn’t come to his funeral. I didn’t have a choice.”
The anger he’d carried for three years fizzled out fast, like a match dropped in a puddle. He didn’t know that. No one had told him that. They talked for the next 45 minutes, standing so close their knees brushed every time one of them shifted, neither moving away. She told him she hiked the trails in the national forest every weekend, had seen the old fire lookout he used to man during fire season a dozen times. He told her about the time his crew got stuck on a ridge for 12 hours during the 2017 Eagle Creek fire, surviving on nothing but energy bars and warm beer someone had stashed in their pack. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed again, and he found himself grinning, something he hadn’t done around a stranger in years.
They stayed behind the tree for 10 more minutes, talking quiet over the sound of the rain, making plans to hike up to the old fire lookout next Saturday, bring a cooler of beer and sandwiches. When the rain slowed to a drizzle, they walked back toward the pavilion together, holding hands loosely, their fingers laced. His former crew spotted them first, whooping and whistling, holding up their beers in a toast. Ronan flipped them off, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. When she tucked a wet strand of hair behind her ear and grinned up at him, he realizes skipping the last four years of cookouts was the dumbest call he ever made.
