Moe Korhonen, 57, has restored 1970s vintage snowmobiles out of his pole barn outside Marquette for 18 years, and he’d only dragged his cast-iron pot of smoked venison chili to the town’s fall cookoff because his best friend threatened to hide all his rare Ski-Doo carburetors if he hid out at home for another weekend. He’d planned to stay 10 minutes max, drop off the pot, grab a free beer, and bolt before anyone could ask him about his ex-wife, who’d left him three years prior for the guy who ran the local hazelnut stout brewery. He was wiping chili grease off his flannel sleeve when she stepped up to his table.
She’s Lila, his ex’s younger cousin, he’d recognize that gap between her front teeth anywhere, even if she’s got a county ranger uniform on now, a scar slicing through her left eyebrow he didn’t remember from the last time he saw her at a family Christmas four years back. The air smells like burnt hot dogs and pine and wood smoke, and when she leans in to sniff the chili, her shoulder brushes his bicep, warm even through two layers of fabric, and he catches the sharp, sweet tang of peppermint lip balm mixed with the pine sap she’s probably been hauling all week clearing backcountry trails. He freezes. For three years he’s written off every single one of his ex’s relatives as traitors, even the ones who’d never said a rude word to him, and he’s half a second from grabbing his jacket and bailing before she looks up at him, grinning.
She says she’d heard his chili was the stuff of legend, had been bugging the cookoff organizers to track him down for months. She reaches for a sample cup, and her knuckles brush his, rough with a callus right at the base of her index finger, the exact same spot Moe has one from turning wrenches on old engine parts. Hers is from running a chainsaw, she says, when he glances at it, she’s been clearing the old snowmobile trail up by Sugarloaf Mountain, the one Moe used to race on back in the 90s. He can’t remember the last time a woman held his eye that long, no polite dart away when he meets her gaze, no awkward shift of weight when the silence stretches a beat too long.
The conflict nags at him sharp, even as he laughs at her story about chasing a stray moose off the trail the week prior. It’s wrong, he tells himself, she’s family, ex-family, the whole town will talk if they so much as stand next to each other for longer than five minutes, his ex will throw a fit so loud it’ll carry all the way across Lake Superior. He feels sick with it for half a second, disgusted that he’s even entertaining the thought of talking to her longer than he has to, but then she tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear, and he sees the tiny snowflake tattoo behind her ear, the same design he had printed on his old racing helmet back when he was competing.
He’s about to mumble an excuse about having to get back to a snowmobile he’s restoring for a guy in Green Bay, when she reaches out and wraps her cold, calloused fingers around his wrist, her palm still chilled from holding an iced root beer can. She says she knows he thinks all her family is garbage, and she doesn’t blame him, her cousin was an idiot to leave him for a guy who thinks IPA is a personality trait. She says she’s not here to stir up drama, she just moved back to take the ranger job after 10 years in Oregon, and she’s been meaning to track him down to ask him for help marking the snowmobile trail for the winter race series. No one knows those trails better than him, she says, and she’s not going to tell anyone if he wants to come check them out with her tomorrow, no gossip, no strings attached.
He hesitates for 10 full seconds, staring at her hand on his wrist, the way her thumb is brushing the edge of his old racing scar, the one he got when he crashed his Ski-Doo into a snowbank in 1998. He thinks about the empty house he’s going home to, the half-restored 1974 Everest sitting in his pole barn, the way he hasn’t felt this light, this seen, in three whole years. He says yes.
They leave the cookoff 20 minutes apart, no wave, no obvious sign they’re meeting up later, like two people who just had a casual chat about chili and trail maintenance. He shows up to the trailhead at 10 a.m. the next day, thermos of spiced apple cider in one hand, his old tattered trail map folded in his jacket pocket, the wind whistling through the pine trees so loud it drowns out the distant hum of a passing pickup. She’s leaning against the front of her dented ranger truck, wearing a faded red snowmobile racing hat, the exact one he lost at a cross-state competition 12 years prior, the one he’d searched for for three straight days before giving up and buying a replacement. She tosses him a bright orange trail marker flag, and it hits his chest light, soft, the cold plastic crinkling slightly against the thick flannel of his shirt.
