Hank Colton, 58, retired wildfire crew lead turned part-time woodworker, spent the first hour of his mandatory community service glaring at every city council member who walked past the waste sorting tent at Boise’s downtown farmers market. He’d gotten the $500 citation two weeks prior for burning a pile of dry sagebrush behind his garage, even though he’d cleared the same pile with the fire department three years running. The new summer burn ban, pushed through by a council who couldn’t tell a Douglas fir from a Ponderosa, had stuck him with 8 hours of sorting compost and recycling in 92-degree heat, and he was already counting the minutes until he could get back to his quiet garage and a cold Coors Banquet. He’d made a point of showing up 20 minutes early so he wouldn’t have to talk to his assigned volunteer partner, but that plan fell apart when she rounded the corner of the roasted corn stand at 8:58 a.m., hauling a stack of paper sorting bins behind her.
Clara Bennett was 52, ran the zero-waste refill shop three blocks from his woodworking space, and had gotten the exact same citation two days before his, for burning a stack of treated shipping pallets behind her store. She wore faded high-waisted Carhartts, a faded Pearl Jam tee, and had a silver nose stud that caught the sun every time she tilted her head to shake a strand of sun-streaked auburn hair out of her face. Her work gloves were caked in sawdust, and she smelt like coconut sunscreen and pine resin before she even stepped into the 10×10 tent with him. Hank’s first instinct was to grunt a one-word greeting and go back to picking glass bottles out of the compost bin, but she beat him to it, holding up the crumpled pink citation slip in her gloved hand and snorting. “Can you believe these clowns charged me for burning material that would’ve caught fire on its own next month if we get a dry lightning strike?”
Hank blinked, then laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months. They fell into an easy rhythm after that, passing bins back and forth, trading stories of run-ins with the city code enforcement team, making fun of the soccer moms in Lululemon who tried to toss their whole half-eaten acai bowls in the recycling bin. The tent was so small their shoulders brushed every time one of them bent to grab a trash bag, and when they both reached for the same dented pasta jar tucked under a pile of coffee grounds, their gloved hands touched, and Hank felt the rough callus on her palm through the canvas, the same kind of callus he had from hauling 2x4s and planing lumber. He pulled his hand back fast, heat creeping up his neck, angry at himself for even noticing. He’d promised himself four years ago, after Linda died of ovarian cancer, that he wouldn’t let anyone else get close. It felt like a betrayal, like he was throwing away 32 years of marriage for a stranger with a pine tree tattoo on her wrist and a habit of cussing loud enough to make the nearby honey vendor glance over.
He tried to keep his distance for the next hour, but every time she leaned out of the tent to yell at a kid tossing a soda can in the compost, her hip pressed against his, and he could smell the lemon iced tea she’d been sipping on her breath. He caught himself staring at the way the sun turned the edges of her braid gold, and had to look away, jaw tight, disgusted with how quickly his resolve was crumbling. He’d spent four years turning down every set-up his sister tried to arrange, every advance from the widows at his church, all of whom only wanted to talk about grandkids and HOA meetings and how much they missed their husbands. Clara didn’t ask about his personal life, didn’t give him that sad, pitying look everyone gave him when they found out he was a widower. She just complained about the price of bulk olive oil, told him stories about getting caught sneaking into national forests to camp off-trail, asked him about the wildfire season of 2017, when he’d spent 6 weeks straight fighting the blaze that burned 100,000 acres outside the city.
The sky turned dark fast around 3 p.m., the kind of sudden summer thunderstorm that rolls over the Boise foothills without warning. The wind picked up, sending paper bags flying across the market, and fat, cold raindrops started hitting the tent roof so hard they drowned out the sound of the corn roaster next to them. They scrambled to load the last of the sorted bins into the city truck, and by the time they’d tied the tailgate shut, the rain was coming down in sheets, so hard they could barely see 10 feet in front of them. They dove under the tailgate of Hank’s beat up 2004 F150 to wait it out, pressed shoulder to shoulder, backs against the rear tire, so close he could feel the heat of her body through their soaked tee shirts. She laughed, loud and unselfconscious, wiping rain off her forehead with the back of her hand, and said this was the most fun she’d had since she moved to Idaho from Portland three years ago, when she left her ex-husband and his gluten-free yoga instructor girlfriend to go somewhere people didn’t care if you wore dirty boots to the grocery store.
Hank didn’t think before he spoke, told her about Linda, how she used to drag him outside to dance in the rain when they were first married, how she’d hated the stuffy church events and HOA meetings he’d gone to just to keep the peace. Clara didn’t give him that pitying look he hated, just nodded, her shoulder pressed tighter against his, and said it sounded like Linda was the kind of person who’d yell at him for moping around his house alone for four years. The thunder rumbled low over the foothills, and Hank leaned in, kissed her, before he could talk himself out of it. She kissed him back, tasted like lemon iced tea and mint, her hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck, her thumb brushing the scar he had there from a falling tree branch in 2012. The rain drummed on the truck bed above them, and for the first time in four years, Hank didn’t feel guilty for feeling happy.
The rain slowed to a drizzle 10 minutes later, and they climbed out from under the truck, wiping mud off their jeans. Hank grabbed two dry flannels he kept behind the seat of his truck, handed one to her, and asked if she wanted to get a beer at the dive bar three blocks over, the one with the peanut shell covered floor and no TV screens. She said yes, as long as he promised to show her his woodworking shop sometime, so she could commission a set of wooden bulk bins for her store. They walked towards the bar, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the smell of wet asphalt and cut alfalfa hanging thick in the air. When she tucked a stray wet strand of hair behind her ear and winked up at him, he fumbled in his pocket for his truck keys, already mentally rearranging his work schedule for the next day so he could clean out the sawdust from his shop before she came over.
