Earl Rainer, 62, retired forest fire spotter, sat on his usual far-end stool at The Rusty Spur, chipped ceramic chili bowl half-empty between calloused, scarred hands. He’d spent 32 years manning remote fire towers in the Olympic National Forest, living three weeks at a time with nothing but a radio, a stack of Louis L’Amour paperbacks, and wind through Douglas firs, and he still avoided crowded rooms whenever he could. The post-wildfire-mitigation town hall an hour earlier had left his jaw tight, his old fire service jacket zipped all the way to his chin even though the bar was stuffy, and he picked at the frayed cuff on his left sleeve whenever he caught himself staring at the woman two stools over.
She’d sat down ten minutes earlier, ordered a bourbon neat and a side of the spiciest chili on the menu, and didn’t bother wiping the smudge of ash off her left cheek. Her work boots were scuffed and caked with pine duff, her flannel shirt had a state wildfire response patch sewn to the breast, and when she laughed at a joke the bartender cracked, the sound was rough and warm, like she spent half her days yelling over wind and fire engine sirens. Earl had avoided even casual flirtation since his wife died of ovarian cancer eight years prior, convinced any flicker of interest in another woman was a betrayal, that he owed it to her to close that part of himself off for good. But when the bartender slid a stack of clean pint glasses between them, she shifted one stool closer to make room, and the knee of her work pants brushed his for half a second, and he forgot how to breathe for a beat.
She glanced over when he flinched, dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Sorry. These stools are crammed tighter than fire crews at a free pancake breakfast.” Her voice had a faint southern lilt, like she’d grown up somewhere east of the Mississippi before moving out west. He nodded, mumbled something about it being fine, and stared down at his chili to avoid eye contact. He picked at his cuff again, the frayed threads catching under his fingernail. A minute later, she reached across the empty space between them for the napkin holder, and her forearm brushed his, the rough cotton of her shirt rubbing against the scar he’d gotten when a burning branch fell on him in ‘07. He could smell pine and citrus shampoo on her, faint under the smoke and bourbon and smoked paprika hanging in the bar air.
They started talking slow, first about the town hall, the group of loud out-of-state developers who’d thrown a fit about having to install fire-resistant siding on their new vacation rental project, then about old fires. She told him about a blaze outside Bend last summer that had come within 100 feet of an elementary school, how she’d carried a sobbing first grader out of the smoke when the bus got stuck on a blocked road. He told her about the 1998 Maple Fire, how he’d spotted the first wisp of smoke 12 miles out right as his radio cut out, how he’d run three miles down the mountain to the nearest ranger station to call it in, beating the spread by 30 seconds, saving 10,000 acres of old growth and a handful of isolated homesteads. He didn’t talk about that story much, didn’t like the attention, but it slipped out easy with her.
Half an hour later, he realized he hadn’t picked at his cuff in 20 minutes. That twist of guilt hit him then, sharp and hot, like he was cheating on the wife who’d waited for him every three weeks when he came down from the tower, who’d left him a jar of her famous peanut butter cookies on the kitchen counter every time he went back. He tensed up, grabbed his beer to chug the last of it, ready to mumble an excuse and leave before he did something he’d regret.
She noticed, tilted her head. “You okay? Look like you just saw a 100-foot wall of flame coming over the ridge.” He hesitated, then told her, rough and blunt, about his wife, about the guilt he felt even talking to her. She didn’t push, didn’t tell him it was okay to move on, just nodded, sipped her bourbon. “My husband died in a car crash seven years ago. I spent three years refusing to go out to dinner with anyone, even friends, like I was punishing myself for outliving him. Then one of my crew dragged me to a trivia night, and I had so much fun I forgot to feel guilty for two whole hours. It doesn’t go away, the missing them part. But it doesn’t have to stop you from having a good minute every now and then.”
He sat with that for a minute, Johnny Cash playing low on the jukebox, the clink of beer glasses around them. When she said she was walking back to her motel a block away, that the sidewalks were icy from the afternoon snow, and asked if he wanted to walk with her, he said yes without thinking.
The air was cold enough to make his nose run, the sidewalks slick under their boots, and their shoulders brushed every three or four steps. When they got to her motel door, she paused, fished her key out of her pocket, then reached up and brushed a smudge of chili off his cheek with her thumb. Her skin was warm even through the cold, and he didn’t pull away. He didn’t ask to go inside, not yet, knew he wasn’t ready for that, but he asked if she was coming back for the follow up town hall next month. She grinned, the porch light catching the silver streaks in her dark hair, and said she’d even save him a stool at the bar if he promised to tell her more old fire tower stories. He nodded, turned to walk back to his truck parked out front of the bar, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t pick at his frayed cuff once the whole walk.
