Javi Mendez, 53, spent 22 years on wildland fire crews before a blown knee and a widowmaker tree that missed his head by three inches pushed him into early retirement. Now he runs a small portable sawmill and firewood delivery outfit outside Missoula, works six days a week, and avoids most social events unless his old crew drags him out. Tonight they dragged him to the fire department’s annual charity auction at the Wye, the dive bar off the interstate that still serves pickled eggs in a jar on the counter and blasts 90s country on the jukebox no matter who slips quarters in. He’s nursing a bourbon on the rocks, the ice clinking against the thick, silvered scar on his left forearm when he lifts the glass, that mark from the 2018 Lolo Creek blaze that put three of his buddies in the burn unit for weeks.
He’s half watching the auction, half scrolling fire weather alerts on his beat-up Samsung, when the next item comes up. The woman presenting it is the new county librarian, the one he saw last week hauling boxes of children’s books into the food bank, her dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with silver at the temples. She’s holding a wicker basket stuffed with paperback thrillers, a jar of homemade peach jam, and a gift card for the coffee shop downtown, saying the winning bid gets a private “custom reading list and storytime” on her, whatever that means. Javi snorts, takes a slow sip of bourbon, and catches her staring right at him. She smirks, holds eye contact for two full beats before turning back to the crowd, and Javi’s face heats up like he’s standing too close to a smoldering burn pile.
His buddies notice, of course. They start whooping, slamming their beer bottles on the table, bidding before Javi can even growl at them to cut it out. Twenty bucks, fifty, eighty. A rancher from up the Bitterroot bids a hundred, Javi’s best friend and old crew lead yells a hundred and twenty, and the auctioneer slams his gavel before Javi can protest. He’s red as a ripe tomato when he trundles up to the stage to get the basket, his bad knee creaking as he climbs the rickety steps. She’s holding the basket out to him, and when he reaches for it their hands brush. Her palm is cool from holding a seltzer can, there’s a thin callus on her index finger from turning thousands of pages, and she smells like pine soap and cherry lip balm, nothing like the cloying flowery perfume his late wife used to wear to formal events. “Guess you’re stuck with my reading list,” she says, and her voice is lower than he expected, rough around the edges like she smokes a cigarette every now and then when no one’s watching. He mumbles a thanks, trips over the edge of the stage on the way back down, and his buddies laugh so hard one of them snorts beer out his nose.
He’s still kicking himself an hour later, leaning against the pool table waiting for his turn to shoot, when she walks up to him. She’s holding two cans of black cherry seltzer, holds one out to him, and when he takes it her shoulder brushes his bicep. She doesn’t step back. “I know you didn’t actually want that basket,” she says, nodding at the wicker thing sitting on the table next to his half-empty bourbon. “Heard your friends heckling you the whole time. Figured I owed you a drink at least.” Javi blinks, takes a sip of the seltzer, and it’s his favorite, the kind he only buys when he’s rewarding himself for a big mill job. For a second he’s tempted to make an excuse, say he has to get home to his hound dog, that he doesn’t have time to read a bunch of books, that he’s too rough around the edges for someone who spends all day around quiet, organized libraries. But then she points at the scar on his forearm, asks if he got it on Lolo Creek, says her little brother was on that crew too, the one who broke his ankle running from a spot fire. That’s all it takes. They talk for 45 minutes, standing so close their hips brush every time someone walks past, the noise of the bar fading out until it’s just the sound of her laugh, the clink of glasses, the faint rumble of semi trucks passing on the interstate outside. She tells him she’s been bugging the county for months to buy new bookshelves for the kids’ section, they keep telling her there’s no budget. He tells her about his sawmill, the stack of cured ponderosa pine he has sitting out behind his shop that he hasn’t found a use for yet.
The bar closes at 2, he walks her to her beat-up Subaru out in the parking lot, light snow falling and sticking to the brim of his weathered fire department baseball cap, crunching under his steel-toe work boots. She stops at the driver’s side door, turns to him, and reaches up to tuck a strand of gray hair that fell out of his cap behind his ear. Her thumb brushes his stubbled cheek, and for the first time in seven years, Javi doesn’t flinch away from a woman’s touch. He doesn’t overthink it, just asks her if she wants to come by his shop tomorrow around noon, says he’ll mill her those bookshelves for free, if she brings him that reading list she promised. She grins, pulls a library hold slip out of her jacket pocket, scribbles her number on the back in bright blue ink, and tucks it into the breast pocket of his frayed flannel, her fingers brushing the fabric of his shirt for half a second longer than necessary. She climbs into her Subaru, rolls down the window, yells that she’ll bring extra seltzer and a jar of her famous chocolate chip cookies, and pulls out of the parking lot. Javi stands there for a minute, snow sticking to his shoulders, fingers brushing the slip of paper in his pocket, the faint smell of cherry lip balm still lingering on his cheek. He pulls out his phone, texts his crew that he won’t be helping them clear downed trees tomorrow, turns, and walks to his own truck, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth that he can’t wipe off even if he tried.
