Elias Voss, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, has held himself intentionally distant from every social connection since his wife Lena died of ovarian cancer 8 years prior. He spent the last 12 years of his career manning a remote Sierra Nevada fire tower, only coming down once a month for supplies, so moving to a tiny coastal Oregon town after retirement felt like more than enough human contact. He only speaks to the grocery store clerk and the tavern waitress on Thursdays, when The Salty Spur runs their famous cod fry.
He hunkers in his usual scuffed vinyl booth that night, crumbs of crispy batter dusting the frayed cuff of his Carhartt jacket. He nurses a 16-ounce draft of cold amber ale, rain streaking the fogged plate glass next to him so he can just make out bobbing fishing boat lights in the harbor. The place is louder than usual, out-of-town surfers yelling over a jukebox spinning old Johnny Cash. He almost leaves early, but the cod here is the only thing that tastes even close to the beer-battered fry Lena used to make on camping trips, so he stays, picking at tangy coleslaw.
Waitress Marnie, who’s known him three years, leans over, apologetic, says every other seat is full, can a woman sit with him? He’s about to grumble no, then glances past her and sees Marisol, linen work shirt dotted with pine sap and charcoal smudges, silver hoop earring catching the neon Pabst sign, freckles across her nose he recognizes from the woman hauling groceries up his neighbor’s porch the week prior. He nods, stiff at first, and she slides into the booth across from him, her denim-clad knee brushing his under the table before she yanks back, flushing, apologizing. She says she’s staying with her aunt, who lives three houses down from his cabin, helping her recover from knee replacement surgery, she’s seen him hauling split firewood up his driveway a few times.
He grunts in response, takes a sip of beer, then jumps a little when she reaches across the table for the shared tartar sauce bottle, her calloused index finger brushing the raised scar across the back of his left hand, the one he got when a pine branch fell through his tower window in 2017. He’s not used to being touched, even accidentally, his skin prickling half with discomfort, half with something he hasn’t felt in so long he can’t name it at first. He wants to pull away, tell her he likes eating alone, that he doesn’t do small talk, that the whole town will whisper if they see him with a woman who isn’t Lena, but she’s leaning forward, elbows on the table, asking him about fire towers, says she’s a botanical illustrator, has been obsessed with abandoned lookouts since childhood, wants to draw the coastal view from the one five miles up the ridge.
She smells like cedar shampoo and wild blackberry jam, her eyes the color of the ocean after a storm, and she doesn’t look away when he talks, doesn’t fidget or make polite excuses to leave like most people do when he rambles about fire patterns and smoke plumes. She laughs at his dry joke about the raven that stole his lunch off the tower catwalk three times in one summer, her foot brushing his under the table again, and this time she doesn’t move it. Guilt twists sharp in his gut, like he’s betraying Lena, but it fights against the warm hum in his chest that’s making him forget he hates talking to strangers, that he’s spent eight years building walls so no one would get close enough to make him feel this off-kilter.
The tavern closes an hour later, rain coming down harder now, fat drops bouncing off the asphalt loud enough to drown out the last of the jukebox. Marisol says she walked here, forgot her umbrella, and he’s already grabbing his waterproof work jacket off the booth seat before he can think better of it, offering her a ride. They run to his beat up 2008 F150, both soaked through, his flannel sticking to his shoulders, the hem of her shirt damp enough that he can see the faint chanterelle mushroom tattoo on her left wrist when she brushes wet hair out of her face. He cranks the heater, the truck smelling like pine air freshener and old work boots, and she turns to him, biting her lower lip a little, asks if he’d take her up to that abandoned fire tower Saturday, says she’ll bring cold brew and homemade blackberry turnovers, the kind her grandma used to make. He almost says no, almost lies about his knee acting up, about fixing a broken fence, but then he looks at her, streetlight gilding the edge of her wet hair, and he says yes, quiet, like he’s afraid if he says it too loud the whole town will hear.
He pulls up to her aunt’s cottage a minute later, porch light glowing yellow through the rain. She opens the truck door, pauses, then reaches over, squeezes his hand for two slow beats, her thumb brushing the scar on his knuckle, before she climbs out, yelling over the rain that she’ll be at his place at 9 a.m. Saturday. He drives back to his cabin, pulls into the gravel driveway, sits in the truck for five minutes with the engine off, listening to rain tap on the roof. He lifts his hand, runs his thumb over the spot where her fingers wrapped around his, the skin still warm. He reaches for his phone to set an alarm for 7 a.m., just to be sure he’s up early enough to clear fallen branches off the trail up to the tower before she arrives.
