Elias Voss, 53, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before a shattered hip from a bad landing outside Mount Shasta forced early retirement. Now he runs a tiny custom chainsaw carving business out of a cinder block workshop on the edge of Sisters, Oregon, his days split between felling dead cedar and sanding bear sculptures for tourists passing through on their way to Bend. His biggest flaw, the one he refuses to admit exists, is that he’s spent the last seven years walling himself off from all casual connection after his ex-wife left him for a Portland real estate developer, convinced anyone who gets close will eventually bolt when they realize he’s far better handling a 20 pound chainsaw than small talk. He only agreed to attend the town’s annual harvest potluck because his 72-year-old neighbor Marnie brought him homemade peach jam every week all summer, and threatened to cut off supply entirely if he skipped.
He’d been standing by the dessert table for 12 minutes, holding a lukewarm PBR and planning his escape route, when Clara walked up. She was the new U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist who’d moved to town three months prior, he’d seen her driving her beat up Subaru around the national forest a handful of times, but never spoken to her. She wore a faded forest service fleece vest, jeans cuffed over scuffed work boots, a smudge of pine sap high on her left jaw, and she stepped closer to him than most people did, her shoulder brushing his bicep when a group of screaming kids darted between them chasing a golden retriever. The air smelled like grilled bratwurst, burnt marshmallows, and fallen fir needles, and when she leaned in to ask if the lumpy apple crisp on the end of the table was his, he caught a whiff of pine resin and faint lavender hand lotion, no heavy synthetic perfume, nothing that made his skin crawl like his ex’s favorite scent used to.
He nodded, and she grinned, reaching past him for the serving spoon, her forearm brushing his as she heaped a generous scoop onto her paper plate. She didn’t flinch at the rough calluses on his hands, didn’t look away when he fumbled with his beer label as he explained he’d almost burned the crisp earlier that day, too focused on carving a six-foot bear for the town visitor center to remember he had it in the oven. She laughed at his bad joke about the time he landed in a patch of poison oak on a jump outside Yosemite, leaned in even closer when he described watching a lynx family cross his landing zone three years prior, her eyes never straying from his face even when a group of his old smokejumper buddies yelled his name across the picnic area.
For the first time in years, he didn’t feel the urge to bolt. The wall he’d built around himself, thick as cedar bark, was cracking little by little, every accidental brush of her hand, every unbroken stretch of eye contact chipping away at it. He hated the thrill of it, hated that he’d spent so long alone that a casual conversation with a stranger made his chest feel tight, like he was a 16 year old kid again asking his first date to prom. Part of him wanted to make an excuse, say he had a log he needed to finish carving before dawn, leave before he could get attached enough to be disappointed when she lost interest in the quiet, gruff carver who rarely left his property.
The sun dipped behind the Cascades as they talked, the air turning sharp enough that he could see his breath when he exhaled. She shivered, pulling her fleece tighter around her shoulders, and he didn’t even think before he grabbed the well-worn plaid flannel he’d draped over the back of his folding chair and held it out to her. She took it, her fingers brushing his for a full two seconds, longer than necessary, and held his gaze, her dark eyes glinting in the string lights strung between the pine trees. She admitted she’d been working up the nerve to talk to him for weeks, wanted to commission a carving for the three lynx that had been hit by a logging truck on the highway the month prior, knew he donated half his carving proceeds to local wildlife groups, would pay him whatever he asked. He told her he’d do it for free, if she brought black coffee and that peach pie Marnie had raved about she baked, and came with him to pick out the perfect cedar log up in the national forest the following Saturday. She laughed, nodding, said she’d even bring extra whipped cream.
Most of the crowd had left by then, only a handful of town regulars still sitting around the fire pit swapping old hunting stories. He walked her to his beat up 2008 Ford F150, his flannel hanging loose on her frame, sleeves rolled up twice to keep them from covering her hands. He opened the passenger door for her, and she paused before climbing in, tapping the silvery four-inch scar on his forearm with one warm finger, saying she wanted to hear the full story of how he got that while they were out in the woods next weekend. He nodded, leaning against the truck frame as she pulled the door shut, and watched her fumble with the radio until she found a station playing old Johnny Cash.
