Rayford “Ray” Hargrove, 62, retired wildfire hotshot crew foreman, stood slouched against the splintered wooden brisket table at the Boise County harvest potluck, scuffing the toe of his work boot through a patch of crumbly fallen oak leaves. He’d only shown up because his sister had threatened to hide the carburetor he’d been tracking down for his 1972 F-150 if he bailed, and he’d spent the first 45 minutes avoiding eye contact with anyone who looked like they might ask about his still-stiff left knee, the one that had ended his career three years prior when a burning fir branch crumpled onto it on a line outside McCall.
The smell of smoked paprika and simmered apple cider curled through the crisp late September air, and he was just reaching for the jar of pickled okra on the table edge when a shoulder brushed his, soft but firm, and he caught a whiff of vanilla hand lotion mixed with pine sap. He and the woman next to him both closed their fingers around the cold mason jar at the same time, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched a live wire when he recognized her. Lena Mercer, 58, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the woman he’d spent 18 years actively avoiding after he’d lost a stupid bet chopping dead pines at a family reunion, slipped and face-planted in a bed of pine needles, convinced she’d spent the next decade telling every relative within 100 miles how much of a fool he’d made of himself.
She huffed a low, smoky laugh, the kind that sounded like she’d smoked menthols for 20 years and quit cold turkey after her husband died two years prior, which he’d heard through the grapevine she had. “Still a sore loser, Hargrove?” she said, twisting the jar open easy, popping an okra into her mouth and holding the jar out to him, her knuckles scraped raw like she’d been working on trail maintenance, which he’d also heard she did part time for the forest service. He hesitated, then grabbed one, the brine stinging the tiny cut on his thumb he’d gotten adjusting his truck’s spark plugs that morning. He’d always thought she was pretty, even back when he was married, a fact he’d buried so deep he’d barely admitted it to himself, paired with the sharp, bitter anger he’d carried over the bet, the two feelings warring in his chest every time he’d heard her name.
She nodded toward an empty picnic table set back from the crowd, under a gnarled old apple tree, and he followed before he could talk himself out of it. She sat close enough that their knees brushed every time she shifted, her flannel shirt unbuttoned over a faded Merle Haggard tee, her gray-streaked brown hair pulled back in a loose braid. She kept holding his eye contact when she talked, no quick looks away, no polite smiles, and when he finally admitted he’d avoided her all those years because he thought she’d mocked him to the whole family, she threw her head back and laughed so hard a piece of the cornbread she was eating almost fell out of her mouth.
“I was the one who brought you that ice cold Coors after you ate shit, dummy,” she said, leaning in so her voice was low, just for him, her knee pressing firm against his now, no accidental brush this time. “You were so embarrassed you ran off before I could hand it to you. I thought you hated me.”
He sat quiet for a second, replaying that day in his head, all the years he’d wasted being mad over a misunderstanding, all the weekends he’d spent alone in his garage, talking to inanimate truck parts instead of another human being. The anger melted fast, replaced by something warmer, sharper, the kind of thrill he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old, sneaking out of fire camp to meet a girl at the dive bar down the road. He knew he should feel weird about this, that some people would call it messy, that his ex-wife would throw a fit if she found out, but the longer he sat there, watching the sun catch the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, the less he cared.
She leaned in suddenly, her fingers brushing the side of his neck as she plucked a dry pine needle off the collar of his faded hotshot jacket, and he shivered, not from the cold. She didn’t pull her hand away right away, her thumb brushing the edge of his jaw for half a second, so quick he almost thought he imagined it. “You wanna get out of here?” she said, her voice softer now, no teasing edge. “I got a fresh pot of apple butter simmering on my stove, just 10 minutes up the mountain road. No cousins, no potluck small talk, no stupid old bets.”
He hesitated for half a beat, then nodded, pushing himself off the picnic table, his knee twinging a little but not enough to matter. He held his hand out to help her up, and she took it, her palm calloused, warm, fitting against his like it belonged there. They walked to his beat-up F-150, the crunch of leaves under their boots mixing with the sound of a bluegrass band playing at the other end of the park. He opened the passenger door for her, and she slid in, resting her hand palm up on the center console when he climbed into the driver’s seat. He turned the key, the truck rumbling to life, Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” crackling through the old radio, and he laced his fingers through hers before he shifted into drive, the sun dipping below the pine-covered mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and deep purple.
