Javier Mendez, 51, had spent the last three years avoiding small-town events like the annual Mesa County volunteer fire department chili cookoff like they were tinder-dry underbrush in mid-July. A retired U.S. Forest Service wildfire hotspot analyst, he’d spent 28 years staring at computer models and hiking smoldering backcountry lines, had a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 blaze outside Grand Junction that jumped three containment lines in 90 minutes. Since his wife Elaina died of ovarian cancer three years prior, he’d holed up in his off-grid cabin 12 miles outside town, only coming in for groceries and the occasional beer at the dive bar on Main Street, turning down every invitation from his old fire crew to join them for cookouts or ball games. The only reason he was here now was his former crew chief had showed up at his cabin at 10 a.m. with a six-pack of his favorite IPA and refused to leave until Javier agreed to come.
He was hovering by the industrial beer cooler near the back of the fairground pavilion, half-heartedly picking at a paper plate of lukewarm three-bean chili he’d grabbed just to avoid small talk, when she bumped into him. She was leaning back to get away from the county sheriff’s terrible joke about chili and fire alarms, her shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough to make him slosh a little beer over the edge of his cup onto his work boots. She turned immediately, wide-eyed, apologizing, and he caught the scent of lavender hand cream and pine sap off her canvas tote slung over her shoulder, the soft fuzz of her cream-colored wool sweater against his bare forearm where his flannel sleeve was rolled up. She said her name was Clara, she’d moved to town six months prior to run the small town library three days a week, and she recognized him from the framed backcountry trail maps he’d donated to the library’s local history section a year earlier, maps he’d drawn by hand over 15 years of hiking every inch of the surrounding forest.
He was shocked, mostly, that anyone had even noticed those maps. He’d dropped them off in a cardboard box after Elaina died, hadn’t stuck around to see if they’d even hung them up. She sat down next to him at a rickety folding table off to the side of the crowd, and they talked for an hour, at first about the maps, then about the time he’d gotten stranded on a ridge for 12 hours during a 2012 thunderstorm, then about the small collection of vintage hiking guides she was curating for the library. She leaned in when he talked, her elbow brushing his every time she reached for her seltzer, her knee bumping his under the table when she shifted to get comfortable, and he found himself talking more than he had in three years combined, no filter, no urge to cut the conversation short and bolt back to his quiet cabin. Part of him felt sick, guilty, like he was betraying Elaina by enjoying talking to someone who wasn’t her, like he was cheating on the memory of 22 years of marriage by noticing the way gray streaks threaded through her dark brown hair, the way she twisted a small silver ring on her index finger when she was thinking, the warm weight of her thigh pressed an inch away from his under the table.
When a group of kids ran past carrying a giant pitcher of lemonade, she shifted hard into his side to avoid getting splashed, her whole hip pressed against his for three full seconds, and he didn’t move away. He could feel the heat of her through his worn denim jeans, the soft curve of her shoulder against his chest, and for the first time since Elaina died, he didn’t feel the urge to shut down, to push the feeling away. The emcee announced the chili contest winners over the loudspeaker, the crowd cheering so loud he had to lean in to hear her when she asked if he’d be willing to take her hiking on the northern backcountry trails the next Saturday, said she’d been trying to explore the area but was nervous about getting lost on the unmarked paths.
He almost said no. His throat tightened, he thought of Elaina’s scuffed old hiking boots sitting in the back of his closet, untouched for two years, the way she’d used to tease him for stopping every five minutes to take notes on wildfire risk when they were supposed to be on a date. But then he looked at Clara, biting her lower lip a little like she was worried she’d overstepped, her eyes bright in the string lights strung across the pavilion, and he nodded, said he’d pick her up at 8 a.m., bring extra water and a copy of the hand-drawn map for her. She scribbled her phone number on a paper napkin, drew a tiny lopsided pine tree next to it, and her hand brushed his when she handed it over, her fingers calloused too, he noticed, from gardening, she said, when he asked.
He drove home as the sun was setting, the napkin folded carefully in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, and when he got back to the cabin he pulled Elaina’s old hiking boots out of the closet, brushed the dust off the leather with an old rag, and set them next to his own by the front door. He poured himself a glass of bourbon, sat on the porch watching the sunset paint the San Juan Mountains pink and orange, and smiled for the first time in months without feeling guilty about it.
