Elias Voss, 53, spent 18 years as a forest fire smokejumper before a shattered ankle ended his career. Now he runs a tiny axe sharpening and outdoor gear repair shop out of his detached garage outside Missoula, and he’s spent the last 8 years deliberately keeping anyone who isn’t a paying customer at arm’s length, ever since his ex-wife packed up and left for a realtor in Boise without so much as a note on the counter. He’d told himself a hundred times attachments were just more fuel for something to burn down, so he’d skipped the last three small town summer beer festivals entirely, only showing up this year because his old jump partner owed him a free case of the local IPA that tasted like pine and cold mountain water.
He was leaned up against a splintered split rail fence at the far edge of the grounds, half-hidden behind a kettle corn stand, when she bumped into him. She was reaching past his shoulder for a stack of napkins tucked into the fence post, her bare forearm brushing the worn flannel of his shirt, and she spilled a quarter inch of pale pink rosé onto the scuffed leather of his work boot. She apologized immediately, her voice warm, and when he looked up he recognized her immediately: Clara Hale, wife of the new county commissioner who’d pushed through the public fire pit ban Elias had ranted about to every single customer who walked through his shop door for the last three months. Her left hand glinted with a thick diamond wedding band, and she smelled like lavender shampoo and the pine salve he kept on his workbench for blisters.
He grunted a dismissive response at first, ready to turn away, but she didn’t leave. She nodded at the logo stitched onto his shirt, the tiny smokejumper wings he’d never taken off, and said she’d seen his shop sign on the highway, had an old felling axe her dad had left her that she’d botched sharpening so bad she’d nicked her thumb so deep she’d needed three stitches. She laughed when she said it, leaning in a little, close enough he could smell the citrus seltzer she’d mixed with the rosé, and when a group of screaming kids darted past chasing a golden retriever, her knee bumped hard against his. She didn’t step back. Her eyes were the color of the glacial lakes he’d jumped next to back in his prime, and she held eye contact longer than most people did, like she wasn’t put off by the scar that sliced across his left cheek or the fact he hadn’t shaved in three days.
He found himself telling her about the jump that broke his ankle, the way the wind had shifted mid-fall, slammed him into the side of a ponderosa pine, and he’d had to crawl three miles out of the burn zone with a comms radio that was dead. She rested her hand on his forearm when he said he’d thought he was going to bleed out before anyone found him, the heat of her palm seeping through the thin cotton of his shirt, and he didn’t pull away. He hated her husband, hated the ban that meant the families who’d camped at the creek edge for generations couldn’t roast marshmallows after dark, hated that he’d even let himself stand this close to a married woman, but he couldn’t make himself step back. She told him her husband spent 90% of his time schmoozing donors, hadn’t asked her a single question about what she wanted in 12 years of marriage, hadn’t even noticed when she cut her hair six inches shorter two months prior.
The bluegrass band on the main stage shifted to a slow, twangy cover of a Johnny Cash song, and she tilted her head toward the dirt path that led down to the creek behind the fairgrounds. Said her husband was tied up with county donors for another hour, no one would notice if she snuck away for a few minutes. Elias hesitated, knew every gossip in town would have a field day if they saw him alone with the commissioner’s wife, knew he was walking straight into the kind of mess he’d spent 8 years avoiding, but he nodded anyway. The noise of the festival faded as they walked, replaced by the gurgle of the creek and the low buzz of crickets waking up as the sun dipped low below the pine trees, painting the sky pink and orange. She stopped at the edge of the water, kicked off her sandals to dip her toes in, and turned to him, her smile softer now, no trace of the polite cheer she’d been wearing when she first walked up.
She said she’d seen the photo of him in the local historical society’s smokejumper exhibit last month, had stared at it for 10 minutes because he looked like the kind of man who didn’t lie to people to get what he wanted. She reached up, brushed a fleck of sawdust that had been stuck in his beard since that morning off his cheek, her thumb lingering on the line of his jaw for a beat longer than necessary. He told her he’d be at his shop tomorrow afternoon, that her husband was heading out for a work trip to Helena, he’d seen the announcement in the county paper, and she could bring the axe by then. She grinned, pulled a crumpled beer coaster out of her jacket pocket, scribbled her cell number on the back with a ballpoint pen she fished out of her jeans, and tucked it into the front pocket of his work shirt, her fingers brushing the warm skin of his chest through the open collar.
They walked back to the festival separately, 10 minutes apart, so no one would get suspicious. Elias leaned back against the fence for another 20 minutes, sipping the last of his beer, watching her stand next to her husband at the main tent, laughing at some stupid joke a donor told, her hand resting lightly on the commissioner’s arm. Every 30 seconds or so, she’d glance over at him, a tiny, secret smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, like they were the only two people in the crowd who knew something no one else did. He finished his beer, tossed the empty can in the trash can next to the fence, and walked toward his beat up old Ford pickup parked two blocks away, the cool evening air hitting his face, the crinkle of the beer coaster pressing against his chest through his shirt pocket. He unlocked his truck door, tossed his hoodie onto the passenger seat, and pulled the crumpled coaster out of his pocket to read the scrawled number one more time before he turned the key in the ignition.
