Roman Voss hauled the last stack of split white oak to the Lions Club chili booth, sweat sticking his gray flannel to his shoulder blades. The July air reeked of fried onions, diesel fumes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, and the sharp, sweet tang of fresh-cut hay blowing off the fields at the edge of the small Montana fairgrounds. He’d told the Lions Club president he’d drop the wood off and be gone before the first cover song ended, had no interest in navigating the small-town stares, the inevitable “how you holding up” questions that always came when people saw him out somewhere that wasn’t the hardware store or the woods. The 62-year-old retired smokejumper, who now ran a one-man forest stewardship and firewood delivery business, had spent eight years walling himself off after his wife died in a car crash, convinced letting anyone close meant signing up for more pain.
He turned too fast to walk back to his flatbed, and his shoulder collided with something soft, warm. A yelp followed, and cold lemonade sloshed down his shirt front, dribbling onto the waistband of his work jeans. He blinked down at the woman in front of him, dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with silver, wearing a county extension agent polo and scuffed work boots, a half-empty pitcher in her hand. He knew who she was: Elara Mendez, 58, widowed, moved to town three months prior, he’d passed her on the hiking trail once, had nodded and kept walking before she could say hello.
He stammered out an apology, already reaching for the stack of napkins on the nearby chili booth table, but she laughed, a rough, throaty sound that made the back of his neck tingle. She didn’t step back, standing so close he could smell coconut shampoo and peppermint gum over the fair noise, dabbing at the wet spot on his shirt with a napkin she’d pulled from her own pocket. Her knuckles brushed his sternum when she wiped at a streak of lemonade, and he froze, can’t remember the last time anyone who wasn’t a cashier at the grocery store touched him on purpose. She held his gaze when he looked down at her, dark eyes steady, no pity in them, no awkward “I heard about your wife” caveat that usually preceded every conversation he had with people in town.
She said the lemonade was her fault for carrying it with her head turned to watch the clog dancers, offered to buy him a beer to make up for ruining his shirt. He opened his mouth to say no, to make an excuse about having to stack wood back at his property, but he found himself nodding before he thought better of it.
They sat on a splintered pine bench off to the side of the beer garden, their knees brushing every time a group of kids ran past, or a couple stumbled by drunk from the wine tent. The beer was cold, bitter, the can sweating through the paper coaster in his hand. She told him she’d been a wildland firefighter in northern California for 20 years, lost her husband to a sudden heart attack five years prior, moved to Montana to get away from the house they’d built together, the stretch of forest where they’d met. He found himself talking, too, telling her about jumping fires in Idaho, about how his wife had loved these street fairs, had won first place in the peach pie contest three years running, stuff he hadn’t said out loud to anyone since her funeral.
The sun dipped below the Bitterroot Mountains as the band switched to a slow cover of Pure Prairie League’s “Amie,” the fiddle weaving soft through the hum of the crowd. She stood, wiped a fleck of fried oreo crumb off her lip, held out her hand. His first instinct was to say no, to pull back, to remember how much it had hurt when he lost the last person he’d danced with. But her palm was calloused from planting saplings, her nails chipped with pine resin, and he reached out, laced his fingers through hers.
They danced slow, not too close at first, until a group of drunk college students stumbled past, and she fell into his chest, her hands fisting in the back of his flannel. He wrapped his arm around her waist, the fabric of her polo thin under his palm, and she rested her head on his shoulder for three long seconds, before tilting her face up to look at him. Her lips were half an inch from his, he could taste the beer and lemonade on her breath, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t talk himself out of something that felt good. He kissed her, soft, the noise of the fair fading to a hum in the background, no one watching them but the moths fluttering around the string lights strung over the dance floor.
When they pulled apart, she was grinning, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth where she’d left a smudge of her cherry lip gloss. She said she had a bottle of 12-year bourbon on her kitchen counter, and a stack of old fire jump photos she thought he’d get a kick out of. He nodded, squeezed her hand once before letting go to grab his truck keys off his belt loop. He followed her across the fairgrounds, the sticky asphalt sticking to the soles of his boots, not caring who saw them walking side by side.
