Rafe Mendez, 53, spent 22 years as a wildland firefighter before a busted knee and the 2017 Lolo Complex fire that took three of his crew pushed him into early retirement. These days he runs a one-man firewood delivery and custom fire pit build operation out of his 20-acre property outside Darby, Montana, and avoids small town social events like they’re laced with poison oak. His 16-year-old neighbor Javi talked him into bringing his award-winning steel fire pit to the annual August chili cookoff, though, promising a case of his dad’s homemade jalapeño beer as payment, so he showed up an hour late, covered in sawdust, already planning his escape before he even parked his dented 2008 F-250.
He’d set the pit up near the tree line, stoked a small, even fire to demo for the crowd that kept wandering over, and was halfway through turning down a request to build a pit for the local Elks lodge when he reached for a square of cornbread off the shared platter at the same time as the woman next to him. Their hands brushed first: his calloused, scarred, crisscrossed with old burn marks and the faint white line where a chainsaw bit his palm back in 2019, hers soft at the fingertips but sticky with pine sap, a thin scar wrapping around her wrist like a bracelet. He pulled his hand back fast, mumbled an apology, and glanced up, expecting to see the wife of one of his old crew mates, someone who’d ask him how he’s holding up like he’s still half broken from the fire.
Instead she was grinning, dark hair pulled back in a braid strung with pine needles, wearing a Forest Service hoodie and worn work boots, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheek. “Took you long enough to notice I was standing here,” she said, nodding at the fire pit. “I’m Clara. New county forestry extension agent. Been asking around for the guy who builds these things that don’t rust through after one winter.”
Rafe’s throat went dry. He’d sworn off even talking to women who worked in land management, let alone flirting with them, after his ex-wife left him 7 years prior, saying she couldn’t spend another night waiting for a call that he’d died in a burn over. It felt like a betrayal of the promise he’d made to himself to keep things simple, no messy emotions, no one depending on him to come home at night. But she smelled like pine smoke and vanilla lotion, and she wasn’t looking at him like he was a damaged war vet, she was looking at the burn scar wrapping around his forearm like she knew exactly how he got it.
They talked for 40 minutes, pushed closer by the crowd drifting over to sample his entry in the chili cookoff, the one he’d loaded with habaneros and smoked venison so hot it made most people’s eyes water. She leaned in so close her shoulder brushed his when she yelled over the crowd’s cheers for the chili eating contest, whispering that his was the only entry that didn’t taste like it came out of a can, that she’d put in three bowls already even if her tongue was still burning. He found himself leaning in too, catching the faint smell of peppermint on her breath when she laughed, his hand resting on the wood fence next to hers so their pinkies kept brushing every time someone jostled them from behind.
He didn’t even think before he asked her if she wanted to ride up to his property to see the stand of ponderosa pines he’d been restoring, the one he’d planted after the 2017 fire to replace the stand that burned down with his crew. He expected her to say no, expected her to laugh it off, say she had plans, but she nodded fast, grabbing her jacket off the picnic table behind her, saying she’d been wanting to see that stand since she pulled the old restoration files last month.
The drive up the dirt road to his place was quiet, the windows rolled down, the smell of sage and pine blowing through the cab, old Johnny Cash tracks playing low on the static-ridden local country station. When they pulled up to the edge of the pine stand, she hopped out of the truck before he could even turn the engine off, running her hand over the bark of the smallest sapling, saying she couldn’t believe how well they were growing, that most restoration plots around the county were half dead from the three-year drought. She turned to him then, reached out, brushed her thumb over the raised burn scar on his forearm, and said she’d been a rookie on the 2017 Lolo fire, that she’d heard his name a hundred times from crew leads who said he’d gone back in three times to drag guys out before they physically pulled him off the line.
They sat on the tailgate of his truck drinking the jalapeño beer Javi had given him, watching the sun dip below the Bitterroot Mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine, lavender, and deep rose, talking about the fire, about the guys they lost, about how it felt to stop running into burns and start growing things instead. Rafe didn’t feel that tight, anxious twist in his chest he always got when he talked about the fire, didn’t feel the urge to run like he did every time someone got too close to the parts of him he kept locked down. When she laced her fingers through his, calloused from years of running chainsaws and planting saplings in hard Montana dirt, he didn’t pull away.
