Rudy Galvan, 62, retired aerial fire tanker pilot, spent the first hour of the county volunteer fire department barbecue ducking behind ice chests to avoid the neighbor who’d been badgering him for three weeks to buy a zero-turn riding mower. He held a lukewarm IPA in one calloused hand, the bitter hop tang coating his tongue, and watched a group of teen boys try and fail to flip a hamburger patty high enough to land on the roof of the picnic shelter. He’d spent 28 years flying tankers over wildfires across the West, had dropped 20,000 gallons of retardant on blazes so hot they turned the sky black at noon, but he’d rather face a wall of flame than listen to a guy ramble about blade speed and mulching attachments for 45 minutes.
He turned to head toward the brisket line when an elbow knocked hard into his ribcage, hard enough to make him slosh beer down the front of his faded gray fire crew t-shirt. “Whoa, sorry about that,” a familiar voice said, and he looked down to see Lena Marquez, the woman who’d been renting his guest cabin for the past eight months. He’d only exchanged half a dozen two-sentence conversations with her since she moved in, all about rent checks or leaky faucets, had assumed she was married, mid-40s, kept to herself. Today she had a faded red flannel tied around her waist, cutoff jeans that showed a constellation of freckles across her knees, and scuffed work boots caked with the same red clay that coated every trail on his property. She held a paper plate piled high with coleslaw and a half-smoked Marlboro tucked behind her ear, and she was grinning like she’d just caught him doing something embarrassing. “Saw you duck that mower guy twice already,” she said, nodding over his shoulder. “Figured you’d be hiding out by the brisket sooner or later.”
He grunted, swiping at the beer stain on his shirt. He’d made a point of keeping his distance from tenants for 20 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a 28-year-old smokejumper she’d met at a fire support rally, had decided letting anyone get close just meant you gave them material to leave you with. But Lena smelled like lavender hand soap and pine resin, like she’d been out cutting firewood that morning, and when she shifted her weight to let a kid with a snow cone run past, her knee brushed his, warm and solid through the thin denim of his jeans. “Found something in the cabin attic last weekend,” she said, digging in the pocket of her flannel and pulling out a crumpled polaroid, folded in half at the crease. She handed it to him, and their fingers brushed when he took it; her hand was calloused at the knuckles, like she worked with her hands for a living, and he had to fight the urge to flinch away from the contact.
The photo was of him, 34 years old, standing in front of his tanker, face streaked with soot, grinning like an idiot after a 12-hour shift dropping retardant on the 1995 Willamette National Forest fire. His ex-wife had taken it, he remembered, had brought him a thermos of black coffee and a peanut butter sandwich while he was refueling. He hadn’t seen a copy of it in 22 years, had thrown out every photo of them together when she left. “Was tucked in the spine of an old photo album up there,” she said, leaning against the split rail fence at the edge of the park, their shoulders now pressed together so he could feel the heat of her arm through his t-shirt. “Figured you’d want it back. Your ex is in a bunch of the other ones, I can leave those in the cabin porch if you want ’em, or toss ’em, whatever you prefer.”
His throat felt tight. He’d spent two decades telling himself he didn’t care about any of that old stuff, that he was better off alone, that letting anyone get close was a liability worse than any wind shift over a wildfire. But he could hear the low rumble of the bluegrass band playing near the shelter, could taste the smoky brisket drifting over from the grill, could feel the soft brush of her hair against his shoulder when she turned to watch a group of kids chase a stray dog across the field. “Husband was a wildland firefighter,” she said, quiet, like she didn’t say it out loud much. “Died on the Bend fire three years ago. Moved up here to get away from all the people who kept asking if I was okay.”
He nodded, didn’t say anything. He knew what it was like to have people ask you that when you didn’t want to admit you were barely treading water. He handed her the photo back for a second, pointed to the logo on the side of the tanker, told her about the time the left engine died mid-drop and he’d had to land on a dirt strip outside of Eugene with half a load of retardant still in the tank. She laughed, a rough, throaty sound, and when she shifted again her leg pressed full against his, no space between them now. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something for three weeks,” she said, looking up at him, her eyes dark in the golden late afternoon sun, holding his gaze long enough that he could feel his face get warm, like he was a kid again asking a girl to prom. “Got an old fishing rod my husband left me, the lake behind your property’s supposed to be full of bass. Was gonna ask if you wanted to go out tomorrow. Figured you probably had a boat, right?”
He hesitated for half a second, the old voice in his head screaming that she was his tenant, that this was a bad idea, that he’d just end up hurt again. But she was smiling, a little shy now, like she was scared he’d say no, and he could smell her lavender soap over the smell of charcoal and cut grass. “Got a 14 foot John boat hasn’t been in the water in 10 years,” he said. “Needs a new battery. I can pick one up on the way home tonight.”
Her grin widened, and she pulled the Marlboro from behind her ear, lit it with a beat up Zippo he recognized as standard issue for fire crews. “7 a.m. at the boat launch,” she said, tapping a loose ash off the end of the cigarette. “Don’t be late. I bring beer on fishing trips, even the early ones.” She squeezed his wrist lightly, turned, and headed back toward the picnic shelter, her boots crunching on the gravel path.
He stood there for a minute, holding the polaroid, watching her walk away, the sun dipping below the pine trees, painting the sky pink and tangerine. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have something to look forward to that wasn’t just a cold beer and a baseball game on the TV at 7 p.m. He tucked the photo into the pocket of his work flannel, took a sip of his warm IPA, and turned to head toward the mower guy, who was leaning against a tree picking at a plate of baked beans. The yard could use a trim, he figured. No point in letting the place go to waste anymore.
