Rudy Galvan is 62, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, spends 90% of his days alone on his 20-acre pine plot outside Missoula, planting saplings, fixing fence, smoking meat for the occasional fundraiser because he doesn’t have to make small talk if he’s manning a smoker. He’s stubborn to a fault, has turned down three different dinner invitations from neighbors in the last month, convinced anyone showing interest in him either wants access to his property for hunting or a cut of his modest federal pension. Eight years out from his wife Carol’s sudden heart attack, he’s convinced his days of casual, easy connection are buried with her. He shows up to the county fire department’s annual rib cookoff at 11 a.m. sharp, drops off his brisket entry, slings a damp rag over his shoulder, and is halfway to his beat up 2008 F-150 when he hears his name.
He turns, squinting against the late May sun, and Marnie Cruz is standing three feet away, holding a lime seltzer, silver streaks cutting through the dark wavy hair he remembers as being all one length down her back. She’s Carol’s second cousin, he hasn’t seen her since Carol’s 50th birthday party 12 years prior, when she was still a grad student interning at a Seattle environmental nonprofit. She’s 54 now, wears high waisted jeans and a linen work shirt with the new public library branch logo stitched on the chest, a smudge of charcoal on her left jaw like she’d been helping light the cookoff grills that morning. She holds eye contact for a beat longer than polite, smiles slow, and steps closer, the smell of jasmine lotion cutting through the thick hickory smoke hanging over the field.
Rudy’s first instinct is to mumble a greeting and keep walking. He’d had a stupid, harmless crush on Marnie back when she was 22 and spent a summer crashing on Carol’s couch, had felt guilty for it for months after she left, like he’d cheated on his wife even though he’d never so much as brushed her hand on purpose. The guilt twists in his gut now, sharp enough that he takes a half step back, but she stops a foot away, nodding at the paper tag tied to his brisket’s foil wrapper. “Carol always said you smoked the best meat west of the Continental Divide,” she says, and when she lifts her hand to point at the handwritten “Rudy’s Pine Ridge Brisket” scrawled on the tag, her forearm brushes his bare bicep. The linen is soft, worn, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that he hasn’t felt since the last time Carol kissed him before she left for her morning walk.
The guilt nags at him again, quiet now, not sharp. He tells himself he’s being an idiot, that Carol would tease him until he was red in the face for being so hung up on a silly 40 year old crush, for closing himself off from everyone just because she was gone. But the desire is there too, warm and low in his chest, when she leans in closer to talk over the music, her breath smelling like lime and mint, her knee brushing his when they sit on his tailgate to split a slice of the test brisket he’d cut before dropping off his entry. He passes her a paper towel to wipe barbecue sauce off her chin, and their fingers linger for two full beats, her skin soft against his calloused, fire-scarred knuckles. She doesn’t pull away, just holds his gaze, and he feels his face heat up like he’s a 16 year old kid asking a girl to prom for the first time.
She’s the one who breaks the silence first, wiping her hands on her jeans. “I actually have a box of Carol’s old hiking books at my place,” she says, twisting the cap of her seltzer can back and forth between her fingers. “My mom found them when she was cleaning out her attic, said she knew I’d be able to get them to you. I also was gonna ask if you’d come talk to the library’s after school nature club about wildland fire safety? The kids keep asking about the 2017 Lolo Creek fire, and I can’t think of anyone who knows more about that than you.” Rudy hesitates for half a second, the last of the guilt melting away when he sees how earnest she looks, no hidden agenda, no interest in his pension or his land, just someone who remembers the parts of him he thought no one noticed anymore. “I’ll do the talk,” he says, before he can overthink it. “And I’ll buy you coffee before, to go over whatever talking points you need. If you want.”
Marnie grins, scribbles her cell number on the back of a cookoff entry slip, shoves it in the front pocket of his work shirt. Her thumb brushes his wrist when she pulls her hand away, light, intentional. She waves when one of the cookoff organizers calls her name to help tally the vote slips, and turns to walk away, her boots kicking up a little dust on the grass. Rudy sits on the tailgate for another five minutes, sipping the lukewarm beer he’d stashed in his truck cooler, watching her laugh as she high fives a kid holding a giant blue ribbon for best hot dog. He doesn’t feel guilty, doesn’t feel like he’s betraying anyone, just feels lighter than he has in eight years, like he’s finally stopped holding his breath. He pulls out his beat up flip phone, adds her new cell number to his contacts, and hits save before he can talk himself out of it.
