Manny Ortega, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, has showed up to the Flagstaff VFW’s Friday night fish fry every week for three years, ever since his wife Elaina lost her four-year fight with ovarian cancer. He’s stubborn to a fault, the kind of man who’ll haul a 50-pound propane tank up the steps of his half-restored 1972 Airstream alone even when his left knee, wrecked during a 30-foot fall on the 2011 Wallow Fire, throbs so bad he can barely stand straight afterward. For a month straight, he’s ranted to his old crew buddy Jax over fried catfish and cheap lager about the city council’s temporary public campground fire ban, writing off the new transplants who pushed for it as soft, out-of-touch, too busy obsessing over organic smoothies to understand how the land around them works.
He’s mid-rant, half-eaten hushpuppy in one hand, sweating beer bottle in the other, when a woman’s arm brushes his elbow as she reaches for the habanero hot sauce on the edge of his table. He glances up, ready to snap, and freezes. She’s 58, maybe, streaks of gray woven through her dark braid, flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, calluses ridging her fingertips, a thin silver scar snaking across her left wrist like a faded map line. She smells like lavender hand soap and faint cedar shavings, like she’d spent the afternoon stacking dog beds at the town’s no-kill animal shelter. She holds his gaze for three full seconds, no skittish look away, no awkward apologetic smile, just a half-raised eyebrow. “You’re wrong about the ban, you know,” she says, nodding at the crumpled copy of the town newsletter he’d tossed on the table ten minutes earlier.
Manny’s first instinct is to tell her to mind her own business. He’s got zero patience for the folks who moved to town last year, who complain about red dust on their Teslas and try to get the annual rodeo canceled for being “insensitive to animals.” He opens his mouth to say exactly that, but she leans in a little, elbows propped on the edge of the table, close enough he can see flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes, and says her dad was a wildland fire crew boss out of Prescott for 28 years. She knows exactly how pine smoke stuck in your hair for three days tastes like home, she says, knows there’s no better way to end a 12-mile hike than sitting around a fire with a cold beer, but the cheat grass infestation this year is the worst it’s been in four decades. One stray spark could burn half the county down before the initial 911 call even makes it to dispatch.
Jax snorts, finishes his beer, claps Manny on the shoulder so hard his knee throbs, and says he’s got to get home to his grandkids’ soccer game the next morning. He winks before he walks away, like he knows something Manny doesn’t, and Manny’s left flustered, half mad that he’s not actually mad anymore, half curious why this woman every old timer in his friend group would write off as a California transplant knows more about cheat grass fuel loads than half the city council. She passes him a bowl of cold coleslaw a second later, her fingers brushing his for half a beat, and he feels a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt since the first time he kissed Elaina back when they were both 22, assigned to the same fire line outside Show Low.
He learns her name is Clara, that she moved to town three months ago to take the part-time librarian job after her mom died, that she volunteers at the animal shelter four days a week, plays rhythm guitar at the downtown coffee shop’s open mic every Saturday night. She doesn’t coo or coddle him when he shifts in his seat to take pressure off his aching knee, just nods at the joint and says her dad had the exact same injury, used to ice it every night while he binged old John Wayne westerns and complained about “desk jockeys making fire policy.” They talk for an hour, the buzz of the VFW hall fading into background noise, Johnny Cash deep cuts playing low on the jukebox, the smell of fried catfish mixing with the cedar on her shirt. He complains about the leaky roof on his Airstream, she complains about the library’s broken 3D printer the city council refuses to allocate funds to fix.
He stands up to leave an hour later, his knee buckling halfway down the concrete steps, and she catches him before he faceplants into the gravel parking lot. Her hands are firm on his biceps, the rough fabric of his work flannel catching under her palms, and she doesn’t gasp or make a big dramatic fuss, just guides him to the splintered wooden bench by the door, runs inside to grab an ice pack from the freezer behind the bar. She hands it to him, sits down close enough their shoulders brush, and doesn’t say a word until he’s stopped gritting his teeth from the sharp, throbbing pain.
Manny’s always hated people seeing him weak, hated asking for help, hated even letting Elaina help him ice his knee back when they were married. But sitting there next to Clara, the cold ice seeping through his jeans, the sound of crickets chirping in the juniper bushes lining the parking lot, he doesn’t feel embarrassed. He feels seen, for the first time in four years. She mentions she’s been trying to find someone to show her the old backcountry meadows that aren’t listed on any tourist app, the ones where the aspens turn neon gold in mid-September, and before he can talk himself out of it, he offers to take her up the following Saturday. The meadow he’s thinking of has a designated fire ring grandfathered in before the ban, he says, they can bring hot dogs and that hazy IPA he saw her drinking earlier, he’ll even bring the marshmallows if she brings her guitar.
She grins, pulls out her phone, and hands it to him to type in his number. The screen is smudged with faint dog paw prints, the lock screen a photo of her holding a scruffy border collie puppy with one blue eye and one brown eye. He types his number slower than he needs to, just to let his knuckles brush hers one more time.
