Elroy Voss, 62, spent 28 years jumping into wildfires across the Northern Rockies before a shattered ankle forced his retirement in 2017. His only consistent companion for the last eight years had been a 1998 Ski-Doo and a hound dog named Mabel, and he’d avoided every Whitefish community event like they handed out leprosy samples at the gate, convinced small town mingling was just an excuse for bored retirees to complain about property taxes. The only reason he was at the summer craft beer festival at all was because his 17-year-old neighbor Jax had begged him to stop by his fried cheese curd truck, promised him a free order and a beer on the house if he’d hang for 20 minutes.
He was halfway through his second huckleberry sour, plastic cup sticky with condensation around his calloused fingers, when he smelled cedar and peppermint cut through the heavy mix of fried food and pine. He glanced left and immediately scowled. Mara Hale, 58, the new forest service wildlife biologist who’d written him a $120 ticket for leaving a campfire unattended on his own goddamn property three weeks prior, was reaching for the same tap handle he’d been about to grab. Their knuckles brushed, rough callus on rough callus, and Elroy pulled his hand back like he’d touched a live wire. She didn’t flinch, just lifted an eyebrow and smirked, holding eye contact long enough that he felt heat crawl up the back of his neck. He’d written her off as a stuck-up bureaucrat the day she’d stood on his porch, uniform crisp, not even flinching when he’d ranted for 10 minutes about how he’d put out more fires than she’d ever hiked past.
“Still mad about the ticket?” She asked, nodding at the half-empty cup in his hand, and her voice was lower than he remembered, rough like she spent half her days yelling over wind and mountain streams. He grunted, not willing to admit he’d thought about her more than once in the last three weeks, caught himself staring out his kitchen window wondering if she’d drive past on her way to backcountry patrols. She leaned against the picnic table next to him, close enough that her denim jacket brushed his bicep when she shifted her weight, and he didn’t move away. They didn’t talk for 10 minutes, just watched the crowd mill past, bluegrass twanging from the stage at the far end of the field, and every time their shoulders or knees brushed, Elroy felt a jolt he hadn’t felt since his first date with Linda, back in 1989.
He finally caved and asked her what she was doing at the festival, fully expecting her to say she was there for some work event tracking invasive species or something equally boring. She laughed, the sound warm enough to cut through the sharp evening air coming off Whitefish Lake, and said she’d lived here six months and hadn’t met a single person who wasn’t either mad at her for a ticket or trying to sell her a vacation rental. She told him she’d moved from Oregon after her ex-husband left, wanted a fresh start, spent most of her free time hiking backcountry trails looking for lynx dens. He found himself telling her about Linda, how she’d been a backcountry park ranger, died in a 2015 fall while checking trail conditions, how he’d closed himself off after that, didn’t see the point in talking to anyone new. He hadn’t said that out loud to anyone, not even his sister, in eight years.
When she leaned in closer, elbow brushing his on the table, he didn’t pull back. She told him she’d only written the ticket because she’d driven past his cabin a dozen times before that, saw him sitting alone by that same campfire every night, looked so lonely she’d made up an excuse to stop, panicked when he opened the door and started yelling, and slapped the ticket down before she could think better of it. Elroy barked out a laugh, loud enough that a couple walking past glanced over, and he realized it was the first real, unforced laugh he’d had since Linda died. He noticed the thin scar curving along her left jaw, asked her about it, and she told him a juvenile cougar had swiped at her on a patrol two years prior, she still had the scratch marks on her flak jacket to prove it.
The sun dipped below the mountains, painting the sky pink and orange, and the crowd started to thin out. He walked her to her beat-up forest service truck, boots crunching on the gravel parking lot, and when she stopped at the driver’s side door, she reached up and brushed a fleck of fried cheese off his flannel shirt, her fingers lingering on his chest for half a second longer than they needed to. She asked him if he wanted to hike the old growth trail up to Blacktail Lake the next weekend, said she’d heard he knew all the hidden spots off the main path, wanted to check for lynx tracks. He said yes before he could overthink it. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, her peppermint lip balm leaving a faint cool tingle on his skin, before she climbed into her truck and started the engine.
He stood in the parking lot until her taillights disappeared around the bend, the empty beer cup still in his hand, and Mabel nudged his ankle where she’d been waiting tied to his truck the whole time. He unlocked his door, let her hop in the passenger seat, and when he reached up to touch the spot on his cheek where she’d kissed him, he realized he was smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.
