Cole Henderson, 58, former wildland firefighter turned small-tree-service owner, leaned against the splintered wooden post of the beer tent at the Mesa County annual chili cookoff, cold Coors Banquet sweating through the paper koozie in his grip. A streak of beef chili grease dotted the knee of his frayed Carhartts, pine dust still crusted in the tread of his work boots from the fir removal he’d wrapped three hours prior. He’d shown up only because his buddy owed him a case of beer for covering a job the week before, and he’d spent the first 45 minutes actively scanning the crowd to avoid Lila Marlow, the 32-year-old county park ranger who’d written him two $180 dumpster overflow tickets that summer. He’d told everyone who’d listen that she was a power-tripping kid with a badge, a nuisance he didn’t have time for. The part he didn’t say: he’d spent more time staring at the name stitched on her uniform shirt when she dropped the tickets off at his shop than he’d spent reading the fine print on the citations.
He spotted her across the lawn before she saw him, uniform shirt sleeves rolled to her elbows, sun-bleached brown braid slung over one shoulder, laughing so hard at a story the WWII vet selling raffle tickets was telling that she snort-laughed loud enough he heard it over the Johnny Cash cover playing from the speaker stack. He turned to slip out the side of the beer tent, and a volunteer shoved a sample cup of five-alarm chili into his free hand, sloshing red sauce over the edge onto his wrist. He stumbled backward, and his shoulder slammed into something soft, the beer in his other hand brushing warm denim at hip height. He spun, already ready to apologize, and came face to face with Lila, a streak of his chili splattered across the left thigh of her uniform pants.
He froze, half expecting her to pull out a ticket pad and write him up for littering or public disturbance or whatever else she could come up with. Instead, she looked down at the stain, dabbed at it with a crumpled napkin pulled from her cargo pocket, and snickered. “Figured you’d find a way to make a mess outside of your dump site, Henderson,” she said, tilting her head up to look at him, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners. She was close enough that he could smell cedar shampoo on her hair, cinnamon and smoked paprika from the chili she’d been eating on her breath, the faint sharp tang of pine sap on her work gloves tucked in her belt loop. Every time a group of attendees squeezed past the narrow path between the beer tent and the chili booths, her shoulder brushed his, the rough cotton of her shirt catching on the hair of his forearm.
He tried to hold onto the irritation he’d nurtured all summer, the quiet anger he’d used to justify how often he thought about her when he was alone in his truck driving to job sites. It melted fast when she asked him about the stand of old pines he’d removed off the side of the highway the week before, knew exactly which lot he was talking about, complained that the county had dragged their feet on approving the removal for two years even though the whole stand was infested with pine beetles, a tinderbox waiting for the first lightning strike. He found himself telling her about the black bear that had stolen his lunch off the bed of his truck mid-job, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed again, leaning in so her knee pressed against his as she braced herself. He felt a hot twist of guilt in his gut, told himself he was being a creep, that she was half his age, that he hadn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since his wife left him for a 28-year-old realtor 12 years prior. He tried to pull back a little, but she followed, shifting closer so they weren’t yelling over the crowd.
The sun dipped below the red rock cliffs lining the valley by the time the cookoff winners were announced, the crowd thinning out as families packed up their coolers and folding chairs. Lila nodded toward the dirt path leading down to the creek behind the park, the one he used to fish at when he was a kid. “Wanna walk down there? I can’t listen to one more person ask me if the campgrounds are gonna be open for hunting season,” she said, already stepping toward the path. He followed, his boots crunching on loose gravel, the sound of the music fading behind them as they got closer to the water, crickets chirping in the scrub oak lining the bank. They sat on a fallen cottonwood log half over the water, the gurgle of the creek loud enough that they could talk quiet.
She told him she’d hated writing those dumpster tickets, that her new boss had ridden her for three weeks to crack down on commercial waste dumping in the park, that she’d felt terrible every time she pulled up to his shop, that’s why she’d left handwritten notes on the back of the fire safety pamphlets she tucked under his door with the citations, tips for a cheaper waste disposal site outside the city limits that didn’t nitpick overfill rules. She touched his hand where it rested on the log next to hers, her fingers calloused from cutting trail and felling small hazard trees, and said she’d been wanting to ask him out for months, but thought he hated her so bad he’d tell her to go to hell.
He didn’t overthink it, didn’t spiral into the usual list of reasons he shouldn’t—too old, too broke, too much baggage, a dozen other excuses he’d used for 12 years to avoid letting anyone get close. He laced his fingers through hers, the rough pads of her palms fitting against his like they were made to, and told her he did hate her, for the tickets, but mostly hated how much he found himself looking for her truck on the side of the road every time he drove to a job, hated how he’d kept every one of those stupid pamphlets with her handwriting on them tucked in the visor of his truck.
They sat there for another hour, talking about the 2002 wildfire that had burned 10,000 acres on the mesa, about how his ex-wife used to complain that he smelled like pine smoke so bad it got in the couch cushions, about how she’d moved to the county three years prior after her mom died, looking for a fresh start. When they walked back up to the parking lot, the last of the cookoff attendees were gone, only the volunteer crew taking down the tent lights left. She leaned up, kissed him quick, her lips soft, tasting like mint gum and the same Coors he’d been drinking all night, and said she’d call him tomorrow about the stand of dead pines she needed removed by the north campground, and maybe they could get burgers after. He leaned against the dented side of his 2008 Ford F-150, watching her taillights disappear down the dirt road, and took a long sip of the warm, half-empty beer he’d carried down to the creek and back.
