Rafe Mendez, 62, spent 38 years restoring vintage camping gear out of his cinder block garage outside Traverse City, and he’d perfected the art of avoiding small talk at summer swap meets. He’d been burned bad 11 years prior, when his wife left him for a 38-year-old realtor who drove a Tesla and didn’t know the difference between a down sleeping bag and a space blanket, and he’d written off casual connection entirely after that. His only steady companions were two floppy coonhounds and a half-finished bottle of bourbon he kept on his workbench.
The July sun hung low over the beer garden adjacent to the swap meet, gilding the tops of the pine trees, when he decided to call it a day. He’d sold three canvas tents and a 1970s Coleman stove to a kid heading off to Northern Michigan University for forestry, and he’d earned enough to cover the hounds’ vet bills and a new buffer for his workbench. He grabbed a cold IPA from the drink stand, wiped pine sap off the cuff of his worn flannel, and got in line for a bratwurst.
He shifted his weight to rest his bad knee—injured back in ‘09 when he fell off a ladder hauling a 1960s wall tent down from a customer’s attic—and his steel-toe boot knocked hard against the boot of the woman standing in front of him. He mumbled an apology, and she turned, sun catching the streaks of silver in her auburn braid, a thin scar slicing across her left eyebrow. She laughed, the sound rough and warm, like she spent most days yelling over wind and campground generators. “No harm,” she said, tapping the scuffed toe of her own work boot. “I kicked a coyote off a camp picnic table yesterday. These things have seen worse.”
She was the new county backcountry ranger, he realized, the one the regulars at the hardware store had been chattering about for six months, the one who’d ticketed the mayor’s son for lighting an illegal bonfire on state land two weeks prior. He’d never talked to her before, had assumed she was just another rigid bureaucrat who hated old guys who camped off-grid. They chatted while they waited in line, her shoulder inches from his, the smell of citronella and pine and sunscreen rolling off her every time she shifted. She said she’d been hunting for a properly restored vintage wall tent for the remote patrol cabin she manned three nights a week, the new nylon ones ripped too easy when tree branches fell in storms. He told her he had a perfect one in his garage, fully waterproofed, original hand-carved wood poles, he’d been meaning to list it for months but hadn’t gotten around to it.
Their hands brushed when they both reached for the same stack of paper napkins at the food truck counter, and he felt a jolt shoot up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking his dad’s beer out to the lake with his high school girlfriend. He tensed up, ready for her to pull away, to make a joke about old guys being clumsy, but she just smiled, held eye contact for three slow beats, before grabbing a napkin and wiping mustard off the corner of her mouth.
The part of him that had spent 11 years building walls screamed to make an excuse, to grab his brat and head back to his booth, to tell her he’d list the tent online later and she could make an offer if she wanted. But the other part of him, the part he’d thought was dead, wanted to stay, to hear her talk about chasing coyotes and ticketing spoiled rich kids, to feel that little jolt again when their hands touched.
She asked if he wanted to sit at her picnic table, said her friend had bailed last minute to help her kid move into a dorm, and she had an extra order of deep-fried cheese curds going stale. He agreed. They sat across from each other, their knees almost touching under the rickety wood table, and she didn’t check her phone once the whole time they talked. He told her about his ex wife, about how he’d stopped trying to meet people because he figured he was too set in his ways, too perpetually covered in canvas wax and pine sap to be worth anyone’s time. She leaned in, elbows on the table, and reached over to brush a fleck of pine sap off the front of his flannel, her fingers lingering on the fabric for half a second before she pulled back. “Pine sap’s a hell of a lot better than the golf course grass and Axe body spray most guys my age reek of,” she said.
He scribbled his address on a scrap of old tent canvas he kept in his pocket, handed it to her, told her she could come by the shop tomorrow around 2, he’d show her the tent, and throw in a set of restored cast iron skillets he’d had sitting on his shelf for a year, no extra charge. She tucked the scrap into the breast pocket of her ranger uniform, grinned, and said she’d bring a six pack of the same IPA he was drinking, and if he wasn’t busy, they could pitch the tent in his big backyard after they looked it over, test out the waterproofing if the forecasted rain hit.
He watched her walk back to her park service truck, her boots kicking up little clouds of dust on the gravel path, and he didn’t even think about making up an excuse to cancel when he got home. He stopped at the hardware store on his drive back, picked up a new pack of citronella candles for the backyard, and tossed the half-finished bottle of bourbon he’d kept on his workbench for 10 years in the gas station trash can on the corner.
