Rafe Mendez, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service wildfire crew superintendent, nursed a cold IPA at the scuffed Formica bar of The Pine Tap, a dive off Bend’s Greenwood Avenue that hadn’t updated its decor since 1992. A crumpled paper sack of fresh Okanogan peaches sat on the stool next to him, still warm from the mid-July farmers market sun. He’d driven into town that morning ready to corner the new city council member he’d spent three weeks ranting about on local Facebook groups—Elara Voss, the woman who’d pushed through a 30% hike in public forest access fees, a move he’d called “a middle finger to every local who’d spent their life tending those woods.”
The bar was packed that night, the AC humming so loud it drowned out half the Johnny Cash track playing on the jukebox, when she slid onto the empty stool next to him. He recognized her immediately from the grainy headshot in the Bend Bulletin: high cheekbones, a streak of silver through her dark auburn hair, the faint scar that cut across her left eyebrow. She was wearing a wrinkled linen button-down, half unbuttoned at the collar, sweat beading at the hollow of her throat, and she held his eye for half a second, a faint amused smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, before she reached across him to grab the salted peanut bowl set between their stools, her forearm brushing his. He flinched first, then noticed the calluses on her knuckles, the faint white scar wrapping around her right wrist that looked exactly like the chainsaw nick he’d gotten back in 2012 fighting the Big Lava fire.
He was halfway to a snarky line about the fee hike when she flagged down the bartender and ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon, not the fancy natural wine he’d assumed she’d drink. She caught him staring at her wrist, and lifted it with a half smile. “Chainsaw accident, 2019. Was clearing brush on my dad’s property outside Prineville, got cocky, didn’t check the kickback. You’ve got the same mark, don’t you?” She nodded at the faded scar on his left forearm, peeking out from under the sleeve of his well-worn forest service work shirt, the brim of his hat still dotted with faint burn marks from the 2017 Eagle Creek fire.
His irritation softened, just a little. He’d assumed she was a California transplant who’d never held a power tool in her life, who’d voted for the fee hike to pad the city’s general fund for stupid public art projects. She leaned in, elbow brushing his as she pulled up a budget document on her phone, and the faint smell of lavender lotion mixed with pine and campfire smoke hit him, a scent he hadn’t registered since his wife Diane died 8 years prior. “The paper got it wrong,” she said, holding the phone close enough that their shoulders pressed together. “Every cent of that fee hike goes straight to wildfire mitigation for the national forest bordering the west side of town. We’re hiring 12 new seasonal crew leads, updating 20 miles of fire break, stocking extra water tanks at every trailhead. I would’ve voted it down if it went anywhere else. My dad ran a fire crew for 32 years, same as you.”
He sat quiet for a minute, scrolling through the budget line items, the warmth of her shoulder seeping through his thin work shirt. He’d spent so long locked up in his cabin outside Sisters, tending to his 10 acres of pine, talking to no one but his old hound dog, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be this close to someone who didn’t treat him like a broken widower to be pitied. When she shifted to grab her beer, her knee brushed his under the bar, and he didn’t pull away. They talked for two hours, about the time he’d gotten stranded on a fire line for 36 hours with nothing but a bag of jerky and a canteen of warm water, about the time she’d fallen off a ladder while hanging campaign signs and broken three ribs, about how the local paper had a bad habit of twisting every council vote to get clicks.
She paid for his second beer when the bartender came around, and when she leaned in to hug him goodbye, her lips brushed the edge of his ear, warm and soft, and he felt a jolt go straight down his spine that he hadn’t felt in close to a decade. No guilt, no sharp pang of grief over Diane, just a low, steady hum of want that caught him off guard. He grabbed a peach out of the paper sack next to him and pressed it into her hand, his fingers brushing hers for a beat longer than necessary. “Ripe this week,” he said. “Better than anything you’ll get at the grocery store.”
She turned the peach over in her hand, grinning, and tapped the forest service patch on the front of his shirt. “I’ve got a busted chainsaw at my house that won’t start,” she said. “If you’re free tomorrow, you can come take a look at it. I’ll even make you ribs for dinner. No catch, unless you count me making you delete those angry Facebook posts about me.”
He laughed, the sound loud and rough, foreign to his own ears after so many months of quiet. He pulled his old flip phone out of his pocket and handed it to her to type in her number, his knuckles brushing hers again when he took it back. He walked out to his beat up Ford F-150 an hour later, the remaining peaches rolling around in the passenger seat, the scent of lavender still clinging to the cuff of his shirt, and didn’t even bother reminding himself that he’d sworn off any kind of connection the day Diane took her last breath.
