Elias Voss, 62, spent 28 years as a smokejumper before shifting to wildfire forensics consulting, and had avoided large town gatherings for 18 years, ever since his wife’s car slid off an icy road while he was away on a fire call. The guilt he carried had turned him into a man who preferred the quiet of his cabin outside Silverton, Oregon, to the noise of crowds. His old crew had badgered him for three weeks to show up to the fire department’s summer beer garden fundraiser, so he’d caved, showed up in faded Carhartt work pants, a threadbare Oregon Ducks tee, scuffed steel-toe boots, the pale scar cutting across his left cheek a permanent souvenir from the 2009 Mount Hood blaze.
He was leaning against the side of the taco truck, sipping a hazy IPA and pretending to check his phone to avoid small talk, when a group of rowdy teens carrying stacked jello shots cut in front of him. He stepped back fast to avoid getting knocked into, and his shoulder collided with the woman standing behind him. Half an ounce of beer sloshed over the rim of his cup, soaking a pale splotch on the front of her linen button-down. His hand flew out to steady her by the forearm before he could think better of it, the rough, warm skin of her arm pressing against his calloused palm for half a second before he jerked back, flustered.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he said, already patting his pockets for a napkin he didn’t have.
She laughed, a low, rough sound like gravel and honey, and waved him off. “Relax, I got pine sap and three different kinds of dirt on this shirt already. Spilled beer’s an improvement, honestly.”
He looked at her properly then. She was 58, he guessed, with a thick braid of sun-streaked gray hair slung over one shoulder, silver hoop earrings catching the string light glow, hazel eyes crinkled at the corners from too much time in the sun. Her hands were calloused, nails short, a smudge of dark soil under her thumbnail, and she smelled like cedar, lavender, and the faint, sweet tang of blackberry. She introduced herself as Mara, ran the native plant nursery on the edge of town, was there lobbying the county commissioners to allocate more funds for fire-resistant landscaping after the 2023 Echo Mountain blaze that burned 300 homes.
The conflict hummed under his skin the whole time they talked. Part of him ached for the easy, warm back and forth, the way she didn’t look at him like he was a broken widow who needed pity, the way her knee bumped his when she laughed too hard. The other part of him felt sick, like he was betraying Linda, like he had no right to feel this light, this seen, after he’d been gone the night she died. He kept shifting back an inch, then leaning forward again, his brain fighting with his body every step of the way.
When the band shifted to a slow, twangy two-step, couples started drifting to the patch of grass marked off as a dance floor. Mara tilted her head up at him, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smile, and held out her hand. “You dance?”
He froze. He hadn’t danced since his wedding, 32 years prior, when Linda had stepped on his feet three times during their first dance and laughed so hard she’d snort-laughed in front of 200 guests. “I haven’t danced in decades,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended.
“Good. Neither have I. C’mon.” She wiggled her fingers, and he stared at her hand for 10 full seconds, the calluses on her palm, the tiny scar across her index finger from a pruning shear accident, before he lifted his own hand and set it in hers.
Her skin was warm, rough, perfect against his. She pulled him to the dance floor, put one hand on his shoulder, laced the other through his, and told him to follow her lead. He was stiff at first, his hand hovering an inch above her waist like he was scared to touch her, until she huffed a laugh and pressed his hand flat to her side, the thin linen of her shirt warm under his palm. They moved slow, clumsy at first, then smoother, until he was barely thinking about the steps, just focused on the way her shoulder pressed to his chest when she turned, the way her breath fanned over his neck when she leaned in to say he was better at this than he let on. The guilt that had sat heavy in his chest for 18 years didn’t disappear, exactly, but it softened, felt less like a weight and more like a memory he could carry without letting it suffocate him. Linda would have yelled at him for hiding away for so long, he realized. She would have pushed him to go to the fundraiser, to talk to the plant nursery woman with the sharp mouth and the sun-weathered smile.
When the song ended, they didn’t pull away right away. Mara looked up at him, her hazel eyes glinting in the string lights, and said she knew a spot up in the national forest where the fireweed was blooming thick after last year’s burn, if he wanted to drive up there tomorrow. She’d bring cold beer, she said, if he brought his truck, since the road was rough.
Elias nodded, his throat tight, and told her he’d bring the smoked salmon jerky he cured himself, the spicy kind no one but him seemed to like. She laughed, squeezed his hand once before letting go, and said she’d meet him at the nursery parking lot at 9 a.m. sharp, no excuses.
He watched her walk back to her group of friends, and she glanced over her shoulder halfway there and winked at him. He took a sip of his now warm beer, and for the first time in 18 years, he didn’t feel the familiar twist of guilt when he thought about the next day.
