Roland Voss, 53, has restored 117 vintage snowmobiles in the four years since his wife died, and that’s the only number he’s cared about tracking. He lives in a one-level ranch on the edge of Bovey, Minnesota, his shop out back stacked with carburetors and old Ski-Doo decals, and he avoids all town events unless his best friend, the local fire chief, shows up at his door with a six pack of Grain Belt and a guilt trip. The chili cook-off is no exception. He’d dragged his cooler of smoked venison chili out to the fire station parking lot at 4 p.m., planted himself by the bed of his beat-up 2001 F-150, and planned to leave as soon as he’d dropped off the pot and collected the free beer he was promised for participating.
The air smells like cumin and burnt hot dogs and pine from the stand of white pines at the edge of the lot. Crunched maple leaves stick to the soles of his steel-toe work boots, and a half-dozen locals have already meandered over to mumble a greeting, ask how he’s holding up, the usual pitying small talk he’s spent four years perfecting one-word answers for. He’s just about to grab his cooler and bail when someone bumps his elbow hard enough that the beer in his hand sloshes over the rim onto his flannel sleeve.
“Sorry, shit, didn’t see you standing there,” the woman says, and when he looks up, he doesn’t recognize her. She’s wearing a forest ranger uniform, the logo stitched to the breast of her flannel shirt, work boots caked with mud from the trail, a thin pale scar slicing through her left eyebrow. Her hand is still brushing his arm when she pulls back to grab a paper bowl from the stack next to his cooler, and he feels a sharp, warm jolt run up his forearm, the kind of stupid, fizzy feeling he hasn’t had since he was a teenager sneaking into the drive-in with his high school girlfriend. He’s so thrown he forgets to be annoyed about the beer on his shirt.
She’s Elara Mendez, the new county ranger he’d heard folks muttering about, moved up from Chicago six months prior, no family in the area, no one’s business but her own. She doesn’t look at him like he’s a fragile thing, the way everyone else in town does. She just nods at the dented pot of chili next to his feet, says she heard someone brought a batch so hot it could melt the ice off a frozen snowmobile track in January, and asks if that’s his.
He smirks, says it is, warns her most folks can’t handle more than a single bite without reaching for a gallon of milk. She snorts, ladles a heaping scoop into her bowl, doesn’t even bother with a spoon first, just licks a dollop off the side of her thumb. Her eyes water immediately, she coughs, swats his arm playfully, and laughs so hard she snorts. It’s loud, unselfconscious, nothing like the quiet, pitying chuckles he’s gotten used to.
For the next hour, they lean against the side of his truck, talking, the crowd around them thinning out as the sun dips low over the lake, painting the sky pink and tangerine. She tells him she got that scar on her eyebrow when a dead oak branch fell on her last month while she was clearing a hiking trail, that she bought a beat-up 1978 Ski-Doo at a garage sale last week and has no clue how to get it running, that she misses the al pastor tacos from her favorite spot in Chicago but the fried fish at the diner in town is almost good enough to make up for it. He tells her about the snowmobile he’s restoring right now, a 1974 Arctic Cat he found rotting in a barn up north, that his wife used to beat him in every snowmobile race they entered, that he hasn’t entered a race since she died.
He doesn’t realize how close they’re standing until their shoulders brush when he shifts his weight, and he can smell the pine soap she uses and the cinnamon gum she’s chewing, can feel the heat coming off her arm through the thin fabric of her uniform. Part of him screams to leave, to go home to his quiet house and his half-restored snowmobile and the routine he’s built that keeps him from feeling anything too sharp, too much. He’s spent four years telling himself he’s done with anything that feels like new, that dating would be a betrayal, that the town would whisper about him for months if they saw him even talking to a woman who wasn’t a relative. But another part of him, the part he thought died with his wife, is light, giddy, like he’s 17 again and just asked out the prettiest girl in his shop class.
When she mentions she’s been asking around for someone who knows old snowmobiles, he offers to come over to her place tomorrow after he finishes the job he’s got in the shop, says he’s got extra parts lying around, he can probably get that Ski-Doo running in a couple hours. She leans in a little, her hip brushing his, and says she’ll make him her abuela’s beef empanadas for dinner if he gets it running, no charge. She scribbles her address on a crumpled napkin from her pocket, presses it into his palm, her fingers lingering on his skin for a beat longer than necessary, before she grabs her empty bowl and says she’s got to head out, early patrol tomorrow.
He tucks the napkin into the breast pocket of his flannel, watches her climb into her beat-up ranger truck, waves when she honks as she pulls out of the parking lot. The lot’s almost empty now, just the fire crew cleaning up the leftover pots of chili, the portable speaker playing an old Johnny Cash song low in the background. He doesn’t feel guilty, not like he thought he would. He doesn’t care if the town gossips talk about him tomorrow, if they say he’s moving on too fast, if they act like he’s supposed to grieve forever.
He hoists his empty cooler into the bed of his truck, slams the tailgate shut, climbs into the driver’s seat. He turns the key, the old Ford rumbles to life, and he taps the pocket holding the napkin twice before he pulls onto the county road, heading for home.
