Clay Bennett, 58, retired US Forest Service ranger, leans against the scuffed pine bar of The Hitching Post, a frosty pint of PBR sweating through the paper coaster under it. He’s got a faint scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 wildfire, calluses thick as leather on his palms from 32 years of cutting line, hauling hoses, and fixing the same 1992 Ford F-150 he’s had since he got promoted to district ranger. His biggest flaw, if you ask his sister who calls every Sunday to nag him about dating, is that he’s spent the seven years since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer acting like any warm body within six feet of him is a wildfire he needs to contain. He told himself he only showed up to the bar after the fire department’s weekly fish fry because his cabin was too quiet, not because he’d spent the last three hours sneaking glances at the new volunteer wiping down folding tables across the gym.
That volunteer, Mara, 54, owns the tiny vintage bookstore on Main Street, sits down two stools away ten minutes after he orders his second beer. She’s still wearing the faded navy fire department volunteer hoodie she pulled on when the sun went down, a smudge of fryer grease streaked on the side of her jaw, gray streaks laced through her shoulder-length auburn hair. She orders a bourbon sour, extra cherry, and when the bartender slides it to her, she twists on the stool to face him, one boot propped on the metal footrest, her knee brushing his under the bar for half a second before she pulls back like she didn’t notice. “You’re the ranger who did the wildfire safety talk at the library last month, right?” she says, and her voice is lower than he expected, rough around the edges like she spends half her day yelling over kids asking for Harry Potter books and the other half yelling over fryer buzzers.
He nods, takes a sip of beer to buy time, because he’s already flustered that she recognized him. He’d forgotten half his notes that day, rambled for 20 minutes about the best way to clear brush from around your deck, and left before anyone could ask questions because he hated being the center of attention. She laughs when he admits that, leans in a little closer, her shoulder pressing to his bicep when a group of spring break tourists from Seattle crowd the bar behind her, yelling for shots of tequila. He can smell her perfume then, jasmine and old paper and the faint charcoal tang of the fish fry grills, and he has to stop himself from leaning in further like a kid sniffing a pie on a windowsill. The county lifted the wildfire smoke mask mandates two weeks prior, and it still feels like a secret, illicit thrill to be close enough to a stranger to smell them, no layer of cloth between you, no public health rule telling you to keep six feet apart.
He’s halfway to making an excuse to leave, chest tight with the familiar, sharp guilt that hits every time he so much as looks at another woman, when she passes him the bowl of salted peanuts the bartender set down between them, her knuckles brushing his on the edge of the bowl. The contact is light, accidental, but it sends a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt since he was 19 and kissed Linda for the first time behind the high school gym. “I know you lost your wife,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, and he freezes, ready to get up and walk out right then, until she adds, “I lost my husband three years ago. Heart attack, out of the blue, while we were hiking up to Avalanche Lake. I haven’t said hello to someone I thought was cute without feeling like I’m stealing something in three years.”
He blinks, realizes the tight knot in his chest is loosening a little, not getting tighter. He’s spent seven years thinking he’s the only person in the world who feels that specific, stupid guilt, like choosing to be happy again is a betrayal of the person you lost. He tells her that, and she nods, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and her hand brushes his jaw when she does it, like she’s wiping off the smudge of tartar sauce he forgot he had there. “It’s not stealing,” she says, soft, and her thumb brushes his cheekbone for half a second before she pulls her hand back. “It’s just not wasting the time we’ve got left.”
The bar clears out around 11, the spring break kids piling into a rented van yelling, the bartender wiping down the bar for the night. They walk out into the parking lot together, light rain misting down, the air smelling like wet pine and asphalt and the faint, sweet smell of clover growing in the cracks of the pavement. He walks her to her beat up 2008 Subaru, the back window covered in stickers for the local animal shelter and Save the Flathead Lake, and she stops before she opens the driver’s side door, turns to face him, her eyes glinting in the yellow streetlight. She tilts her chin up a little, and he doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t talk himself out of it, just leans down and kisses her, slow, her hand coming up to curl around the back of his neck, her fingers cold from holding her bourbon sour for the last hour. It’s not rushed, not messy, just warm, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel guilty when he pulls away.
He drives home with his windows rolled down, the rain misting on his face, Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” playing low on the radio, the same song he and Linda danced to at their wedding. He pulls into the driveway of his cabin, the porch light on like he left it, and sees the framed photo of him and Linda on their 30th anniversary propped on the dashboard, her grinning with a fishing pole in her hand, him covered in lake mud. He smiles, taps the frame once with his index finger, then pulls out his phone, texts Mara the address of the quiet hiking trail he told her about earlier, adds that he’ll bring the thermos of dark roast he brews every morning if she brings the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies she mentioned she bakes for the bookstore regulars. He sits in the cab for another minute, listening to the rain tap on the roof, and watches a deer step out of the treeline at the edge of his property, pausing to sniff at the clover by the driveway before it bounds off into the dark.
