Royce Pruitt, 53, wildland fire mitigation specialist, hunches over a lukewarm IPA at the Bend community beer garden, left shoulder throbbing where a falling cedar branch nicked him during a prescribed burn three days prior. He skipped the post-burn crew cookout to come into town alone, like he does most Thursday nights, avoids small talk because he’s tired of people asking when he’ll “get back out on the line” as if 28 years on hotshot crews wasn’t enough to wear out a man’s joints and his tolerance for bullshit. The sun dips low over the Cascade foothills, painting the sky the same burnt orange as the underbrush he clears 40 hours a week, and the bluegrass band on the small stage plucks through a slow John Prine cover he hasn’t heard since he was 20, bunking in a fire camp outside Boise.
He doesn’t notice her walk up until her jeans brush the toe of his work boot, caked with pine duff and ash. He recognizes her immediately: Mara Hale, wife of the city councilman who led the vote to cut 70% of the town’s wildfire mitigation budget two weeks prior, prioritizing three new pickleball courts over the 12 miles of fire breaks Royce proposed for neighborhoods backing up to the national forest. His jaw tightens, and he goes to grab his beer to move tables, but she sits down across from him before he can stand, sliding a glass of peach cider onto the splintered pine picnic table between them. “I know you hate my husband,” she says, no preamble, her voice lower than he expected, rougher, like she spends half her time yelling over wind or power tools.
He blinks, stares, notices the wedding ring isn’t on her left hand, it’s strung on a thin silver chain around her neck, tucked under her flannel collar. “Not here to argue about budget cuts,” he says, gruff, even though he spent three hours yelling at his kitchen radio when the vote aired. She laughs, leans forward a little, elbows on the table, and he smells lavender lotion mixed with faint horse manure—she rides, he’d bet, spends time in the same woods he works in. “I argued with him for three hours after that vote,” she says, tapping the table with a chipped navy blue nail, “called him a short-sighted idiot who’d rather pose for pickleball influencers than watch the west side of town burn. He moved out the next morning. We’ve been separated six months, but he begged me to keep it quiet until election season wraps.”
Tension in his shoulders loosens, he takes a sip of beer, doesn’t move away when her foot brushes his under the table, accidental at first, then she doesn’t pull back. He tells her about the cedar branch, the burn he’d been working on, the 72-year-old widow who brought his crew lemonade last week because her house was saved by the fire breaks he put in two years prior. She listens, no interruptions, leans in closer when the band gets louder, her knee brushing his now, and when she reaches across the table to grab a napkin for a drop of cider on her chin, her hand brushes his sore shoulder. He flinches, not from pain, from the jolt of heat shooting down his spine, and she pulls back immediately, apologetic, resting her hand on his forearm for half a second to check he’s okay. The callus on her palm, from holding horse reins, catches on the frayed cuff of his faded hotshot hoodie, and he doesn’t pull away.
He’s torn for a minute: disgust at her husband’s greed, desire thrumming low in his gut he hasn’t felt since his ex left him for a tech bro who could afford Cabo trips instead of national forest camping, worry that if any council people milling around see them talking, they’ll accuse him of sleeping his way into a budget, ruin the 10-year-old reputation of his small business. But then she tells him she volunteered on fire crews back in her 20s, that she can tell he’s the kind of guy who shows up instead of talking, she smiles, and he sees the freckles across her nose, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from falling off a horse at 16, and he stops caring what anyone thinks.
They finish their drinks as the band wraps up, and he offers to walk her to her truck, parked at the park edge under ponderosa pines. The air is cool now, sharp with pine and the distant glow of his prescribed burn, faint orange on the horizon. She stops next to her beat-up Ford F150, turns to him, leans up before he can say goodnight, kissing him slow, her hands on the sides of his face, tasting like peach cider and mint gum. He rests his good hand on her waist, doesn’t rush it, doesn’t care if anyone sees, the throb in his shoulder fading to a dull hum under her touch.
When she pulls back, she tucks a slip of paper with her cell number scrawled on it into his hoodie pocket, tells him she sent the full council the amended budget proposal that morning, his fire breaks are top of next week’s agenda. She climbs into her truck, rolls down the window, waves as she pulls out of the lot. He stands there for a minute, fingers curled around the slip of paper in his pocket, and lifts his half-empty beer to the orange glow on the horizon.
