Merv Pritchard, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, leaned against a chipped folding table in the Missoula VFW hall, cradling a dented plastic bowl of his famous smoked elk chili. He’d driven 40 minutes from his off-grid cabin outside Lolo for the annual October cookoff, same as he had every year for the past eight. He’d never placed higher than fourth, didn’t much care. The point was cheap Pabst on draft, catching up with old fire crew buddies, and getting out of the silent woods for a few hours. He’d kept to himself mostly since his divorce 12 years prior, when his ex-wife had accused him of flirting with a seasonal park ranger at a crew barbecue, the rumor snaking through the small town for months before she moved to Bozeman. Since then, he’d made a point to keep interactions with women he didn’t know strictly transactional—no small talk, no lingering eye contact, no chance of anyone getting the wrong idea.
The line of judges meandered past the tables, and he spotted the new addition first: Elara Voss, the 58-year-old librarian who’d moved to town from Portland three months prior. He’d seen her twice at the downtown grocery store, both times hauling a stack of local history books under one arm, a streak of silver cutting through her dark brown hair, chunky work boots on her feet. He’d told himself not to stare, turned to ask his old crewmate Joe about the upcoming elk season, when he heard a sharp yelp, felt warm fingers wrap tight around his left forearm, crumpling the sleeve of his faded red flannel.
She’d tripped over the leg of a folding chair someone had left pulled out, leaning into him to steady herself, her face inches from his. He could smell cedar and vanilla perfume mixed with the faint tang of chili powder on her breath, her hazel eyes wide and flecked with gold, a little smudge of pencil graphite on her left cheekbone. She laughed, a low, smoky sound that made the back of his neck tingle, and apologized, saying she’d been pulling all-nighters cataloging 1970s fire spotter logs for the library’s local history archive, could barely keep her eyes open let alone watch where she was walking.
He didn’t jerk away like his first instinct screamed to. Instead, he said he’d spent 28 years manning the fire tower on Lolo Peak, probably had a dozen old notebooks full of his scribbled logs in his cabin attic, half of them filled with nonsense about migrating elk and purple sunsets through wildfire smoke. Her face lit up, and she leaned in a little closer, her hand still resting light on his arm, saying she’d been obsessing over those little side notes in the old logs, that no one she’d talked to so far had any context for what the spotters’ days actually looked like. They talked for 22 minutes, he counted later, Joe wagging his eyebrows at him from across the room the whole time, Merv ignoring him entirely. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to someone new who actually cared about the 28 years he’d spent alone in a tower, watching for smoke.
The cookoff wrapped up a few minutes later, the guy who ran the downtown auto shop taking first place, and Merv didn’t even bother clapping. He offered to walk Elara to her car, the October air sharp enough to burn his lungs a little when they stepped outside, frost dusting the gravel parking lot, crickets going quiet for the season. Their knuckles brushed twice as they walked, the first time he tensed up like he’d been burned, the second time he didn’t. When she stumbled on a patch of black ice halfway across the lot, he grabbed her elbow to steady her, her skin soft through the thick wool of her gray coat, and she thanked him, her voice quieter now, softer than it had been over the roar of the VFW hall speakers.
They stopped at her beat up blue Subaru, and she leaned against the driver’s side door, didn’t reach for her keys right away. She said she’d been wanting to talk to him for weeks, but he always looked so closed off, like he’d snap at anyone who bothered him. He laughed, said he was just rusty at talking to people, had been for a long time. She reached up, brushed a fleck of smoked chili off the front of his flannel, her thumb lingering on his chest for a beat longer than necessary, and he could feel the heat of her hand through the fabric, didn’t move away, didn’t overthink it, didn’t waste energy worrying about who might be watching from the hall windows.
He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his jeans pocket, a page torn from his old spotter notebook, a scribbled note about a 2019 lightning fire on the back, and scribbled his cell number on the blank side, handing it to her. He said if she needed help sorting through the logs, or wanted to hear stories about the worst lightning storms he’d sat through 6,000 feet up, she could call anytime. She tucked the paper into the inside pocket of her coat, grinned, leaned in and kissed his cheek, her lips warm against his cold skin, said she’d call him tomorrow, no excuses.
He stood in the parking lot until her taillights disappeared around the bend leading into town, the cold air stinging his cheeks, the faint smell of cedar and vanilla still lingering on his flannel sleeve. He reached into his pocket for his truck keys, realizing he’d never even bothered to ask what place his chili got.
