Clay Bennett leans against the dented beer cooler at the West Tampa VFW, plastic plate of fried catfish heavy in one hand, condensation from his Pabst Blue Ribbon dripping down his wrist onto the faded scar wrapping around his left forearm. The AC’s been busted for three weeks, leftover damage from Hurricane Ian’s wind gusts tearing a hole in the roof above the utility closet, so ceiling fans creak overhead, pushing around air that smells like fryer grease, Old Spice, and citronella from the tiki torches propped by the back exit. He’s 58, 32 years in the Forest Service as a wildland firefighter under his belt, widowed 11 months, and he’s spent every Friday night here since he moved to Florida from Missoula, avoiding the cluster of women by the bingo tables who keep trying to set him up with their nieces, their neighbors, their church group friends. He’s got a rigid, self-imposed rule: no new people, no new feelings, no risk of feeling like he’s betraying Linda, his wife of 34 years who died of metastatic breast cancer the previous fall.
The back door swings open, and Mara Carter walks in, brushing a strand of sun-streaked dark hair off her face, work boots caked in red mud from clearing downed oak branches at the senior mobile home park earlier that day. She runs the neighborhood food bank, has been coordinating all the hurricane relief drop-offs out of the VFW for the last month, and Clay has gone out of his way to avoid crossing paths with her, because the first time he saw her he stared for 10 full seconds before he realized he was doing it, and a twist of guilt so sharp it made his chest ache hit him right after. She’s 52, wears cutoff denim shorts and faded Rays tees every day, has a scar slicing through her left eyebrow from a backcountry skiing accident when she was 28, and she laughs loud enough to cut through the pool table chatter every time one of the old vets tells a bad joke.
She heads straight for the cooler, reaching for the stack of water cases stacked on the bottom shelf, and her boot catches on the cracked linoleum, sending the top case tumbling. Clay reacts before he thinks, bending down to grab it at the same time she does, their hands brushing against the hard plastic of the water bottles. His skin prickles, warm, like he touched a live wire, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned before he can stop himself. She looks up at him, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, and holds his gaze for three beats too long, long enough that he can see the flecks of gold in her irises, long enough that his ears go pink, a reaction he hasn’t had since he was 17 and asking Linda to prom.
“Thanks,” she says, grinning, and her voice is rough, like she’s been yelling over chainsaws all day, which she probably has. “I recognize you, right? Dropped off three cases of MREs last week, said you hauled them down from your old fire camp stock?”
He nods, fumbling for words, suddenly hyper aware of how sweaty his Forest Service tee is, of the scar on his forearm, of the fact that he hasn’t had a conversation with a woman who isn’t a cashier or his sister in almost a year. He offers to carry the case out to her truck, and she nods, stepping aside so he can heft the case over his shoulder. The parking lot asphalt is still warm under his boots, leftover heat from the 92 degree day seeping up through the soles, crickets chirping in the oak trees lining the lot, a distant cover band playing Johnny Cash at the dive bar two blocks over.
They lean against the tailgate of her beat up 2004 Ford F150 after he sets the case in the bed, and she tells him she used to be a park ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park, spent 15 years there before moving to Florida to take care of her sick mom. They swap war stories: her getting stuck in a blizzard for 12 hours with a group of teen hikers, him getting trapped up a pine tree during the 2017 Lolo Peak fire, watching the flames burn 10 feet from his boots. She laughs so hard at that story she snorts, and her shoulder bumps his, warm through the thin fabric of his tee, and he can smell coconut sunscreen and pine soap on her skin, can feel the heat radiating off her arm where it presses against his.
He feels the guilt twist in his chest again, sharp, familiar, the voice in his head saying he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be laughing with her, shouldn’t be noticing how the streetlight catches the freckles across her nose, how her knee keeps bumping his when she shifts her weight. But then she asks him about the scar on his forearm, and he tells her about saving a rookie firefighter from a falling tree in 2012, and she listens, really listens, no pity in her eyes, no generic “that must have been so hard,” just a nod, a quiet “that’s the job, right?” and for the first time since Linda died, he doesn’t feel like the grieving widower. He just feels like Clay.
She invites him to come on the relief run the next morning, 7 a.m. meetup, dropping off water and non-perishables and tarps to elderly folks stuck in their homes out in Pasco County who still haven’t gotten FEMA aid. He almost says no, almost makes an excuse about needing to mow his lawn, needing to fix the leaky faucet in his bathroom, needing to do anything that doesn’t involve breaking the rule he’s clung to for 11 months. But then she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her thumb brushing his wrist accidentally when she hands him a crumpled slip of paper with her address scrawled on it in blue ballpoint, the paper warm from being in her pocket, and he says yes before he can overthink it.
He drives home that night, windows down, the humid Florida air blowing through his hair, and when he gets to his house, he pulls the magnetic photo of him and Linda on their 30th anniversary off the fridge. He talks to her for a minute, quiet, like he always does when he’s making a big decision, says he thinks she’d like Mara, says he’s tired of being sad all the time. He tucks the crumpled slip of paper under the magnet next to the photo, pours himself a glass of sweet iced tea, and sits on his front porch swing, watching the pink and orange sunset bleed over the palm trees. He picks up his phone, sets an alarm for 6 a.m., and rests his head back against the swing, the faint crinkle of the slip of paper still pressed against his palm from where he’d held it in his pocket the whole drive home.
