Clay Bennett, 58, retired wildland firefighter turned custom woodcarver, leans against a splintered picnic table in the Missoula County Fair beer garden, sweat beading at the back of his neck under the brim of his faded USFS hat. It’s late August, 7 p.m., the day’s heat still clinging to the pine-scented air, sawdust crusted in the cuffs of his frayed Carhartts. He’d driven straight from his garage workshop, half a carved black bear sitting on his workbench, to corner the new county administrator about the temporary trail closure that cuts across the northwest corner of his 10-acre property, the exact spot he scattered his wife Ellie’s ashes 12 years prior. He’s nursed a grudge against the county government every day since they denied Ellie’s last-minute request to expand their cabin porch two months before she died of ovarian cancer, and he’s got a whole speech prepared, sharp and unforgiving.
Every other table is packed with fairgoers yelling over the distant whine of the Tilt-A-Whirl, so Maren Hale slides onto the bench across from him without asking, setting her dented can of black cherry seltzer down so hard it sloshes over the rim, knocking his elbow hard enough that a mouthful of his IPA spills down his left wrist. She curses soft, fumbles a crumpled paper napkin out of her canvas tote, and dabs at the damp fabric of his flannel before he can protest. Her fingers are cool, scented with lavender hand cream, a thin, rough callus on her index finger from signing 40-plus permits a day, her pale blue nail polish chipped half off, no rings on any finger. He tenses, ready to snap about personal space, until she tucks a loose strand of dark brown hair streaked with silver behind her ear and says she’s Maren, the county admin he’d emailed three angry, unreturned messages about the trail closure.
His jaw locks so tight he can feel a headache building behind his eyes. He leans back, crosses his arms over his chest, the thick, silvery scar across his left bicep from a 2011 Lolo National Forest fire pulling tight. He gets three sentences into his speech—about trespassers leaving beer cans on Ellie’s ash spot, about the old county board being the most useless group of bureaucrats west of the Mississippi—before she holds up a hand, not dismissive, just quiet, and pulls a folded stack of official paper from her tote. She says she found his old porch permit file last week clearing out a back cabinet, the old board denied it for a zoning technicality no one had enforced in 15 years, she already pushed through a retroactive approval, no fees, no mandatory inspections, he can build a porch the size of a football field if he wants. Then she slides a second sheet across the table: the revised trail reroute, moving the closed section 20 feet off his property, permanent, no more random hikers cutting through his land uninvited.
He stares at the papers, the raised county seal embossed in the corner, her signature scrawled neat but slanted a little to the right at the bottom. A bluegrass band off near the livestock barns strikes up a slow cover of “Folsom Prison Blues,” the same song he and Ellie used to dance to in their kitchen when the power went out in winter storms. Maren leans forward, elbows on the table, the neck of her loose linen button-down gapping just enough he can see a tiny silver sparrow necklace resting at the base of her throat. She says she looked up his woodcarvings too, the life-sized bear and deer statues he makes for national park visitor centers, her 10-year-old niece saved up allowance for three months to buy a small fawn carving he sold at the county craft fair last year, it sits on her nightstand now. He catches himself staring at her mouth, the way she bites her lower lip when she’s waiting for a response, her hazel eyes flecked with bright green, and he’s halfway between furious she dug through his old files and weirdly flattered she cared enough to fix the mess no one else bothered with for a decade.
He buys her a second seltzer, she buys him a second IPA, they split an order of greasy fried cheese curds he grabs from the stand next to the beer garden. She tells him about the retiree who showed up to the county office last week demanding they pass a law banning squirrels from stealing his sunflower seed, he tells her about the time he had to fight a 12-acre fire started by a teen with a sparkler on the Fourth of July. She snorts when he jokes the old county board was as useful as a screen door on a submarine, the sound loud and unselfconscious, no forced polite laugh. When she reaches across the table to grab the last curd, her wrist brushes his, and he feels a jolt like static, warm and sharp, the kind he hasn’t felt since Ellie first kissed him behind the Missoula high school gym in 1983. He hates himself for it, for feeling anything but anger at someone who works for the department that made Ellie’s last months harder, but he can’t make himself pull his hand away.
The sun dips low over the Bitterroot Mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and soft pink, the fair’s string lights flicker on strung between the ponderosa pines, casting warm gold across her cheek where a thin white scar cuts across the edge of her jaw from a childhood horse riding accident. She asks if he wants to walk over to the Ferris wheel, says she’s been scared of heights her whole life but everyone says the view from the top is the best in the valley. He hesitates for half a second, thinks about the half-carved bear on his workbench, the cold six pack of IPA in his fridge, the quiet empty cabin he’s gotten used to occupying alone, then nods, stands up, holds out a hand to help her off the bench. Her palm is warm, a little sweaty, she laces her fingers through his before he can second guess the gesture. They walk past the cotton candy stand, the sound of kids screaming on the roller coaster mixing with the distant low of 4-H cows in the barns, and when they reach the Ferris wheel line she leans her shoulder against his, light, no pressure, and points out a kid in a neon cowboy hat riding a Shetland pony around the petting zoo pen. The attendant calls their group, they climb into the rickety metal car, the safety bar slamming shut across their laps, and when the car crests the very top of the wheel, the whole valley spread out glowing below them, she turns to him, her thumb brushing the ragged scar across his knuckle, and tilts her chin up. He leans in, the smell of lavender and fried sugar clinging to her hair, and kisses her.
