Rudy Galvan, 62, spent 28 years as a Boise National Forest hotshot before retiring to run a small firewood delivery service out of his 12-acre property outside Eagle, Idaho. His biggest flaw, one his late wife Linda used to nag him about nonstop, was that he’d sooner sleep in his snow-crusted work truck than ask for a favor, or admit he wanted something for himself. He’d barely left his property except for deliveries and the occasional grocery run since Linda died four years prior, so showing up to the annual volunteer firefighter appreciation night at The Smoldering Pine, the dive bar his old crew used to haunt after 14-hour shifts, felt like crossing a border he’d drawn himself.
The bar still smelled like fried cheese curds and faint, stale cigarette smoke, even though the state ban had been in place for 17 years. The vinyl stools were cracked in the same spots, the jukebox still cycled through Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard like no one had updated the playlist since 1998. He nursed a neat bourbon, the frayed cuffs of his old hotshot jacket brushing the edge of the sticky bar top, when someone slid onto the stool next to him, their elbow knocking his hard enough to slosh a drop of bourbon onto his jeans.
He looked over, and for half a second he thought he was seeing a ghost. It was Maren Carter, Jim’s only kid. He’d not seen her since her high school graduation, when she’d been a lanky 18-year-old with neon green nail polish and a chip on her shoulder about everyone seeing her as just the crew chief’s daughter. She was 38 now, a park ranger by the patch on her flannel, her chestnut hair pulled back in a messy braid, the same faint scar curving across her left forearm from the time she’d fallen off a boulder on a crew hike when she was 12 and Rudy had caught her mid-tumble. She smelled like pine sap and orange peel, the same scent Jim used to carry in the citrus candies he kept in his work vest.
“Thought that was you,” she said, leaning in so he could hear her over the jukebox, her shoulder pressing warm against his through his jacket. She held up a seltzer can, clinking it against his bourbon glass. “Dad used to say you’d only show up to these things if they promised top-shelf bourbon and no mandatory speeches. Guess he was right.”
Rudy laughed, a rough, rusty sound he didn’t recognize coming out of his own mouth. He’d spent so much time alone lately, half the time he forgot he knew how to talk to people who weren’t asking for a half cord of oak. They talked first about Jim, swapping stories about the time he’d accidentally dyed his beard pink with Kool-Aid on a backcountry fire, the time he’d talked a baby bear out of raiding the crew’s cooler. Then she told him she’d just gotten out of a six-year relationship with a real estate agent who’d hated that she spent 60-hour weeks in the backcountry, barely had cell service half the month. He told her he hadn’t so much as bought a woman a drink since Linda died, had convinced himself he was too old, too set in his ways, to bother with all that mess.
The whole time, he fought the voice in the back of his head screaming that this was Jim’s kid, that he had no business noticing how the corner of her mouth curled up when she laughed, no business shivering a little when her wrist brushed his knuckle as she reached for her seltzer, no business wanting to lean in closer, to smell that pine and orange scent again. It felt wrong, dirty almost, like he was breaking a promise he’d never actually made. But every time she caught him staring, she didn’t look away, held his gaze for three, four beats longer than polite, a little smirk playing on her lips like she knew exactly what he was thinking.
When the bar started emptying out, she offered to walk him to his truck, and he didn’t argue. It was snowing soft, wet flakes, the streetlights glowing orange over the empty downtown sidewalks, their boots crunching on a thin layer of slush. She stopped next to her beat up old 4Runner, the same one Jim had bought her for college, and turned to face him, her boots scuffing the pavement.
“I followed your firewood truck on the highway last month,” she said, so quiet he almost missed it over the wind. “Followed it for ten minutes before I chickened out of pulling over. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while. I know you think this is weird, that you’re supposed to be the responsible grownup who only sees me as Jim’s kid. But I’m not a kid anymore. And I’m tired of watching you act like you don’t deserve to be happy.”
She put her hand on his chest, right over the faded hotshot patch on his jacket, and he froze. He could feel the heat of her hand through the thick canvas, could see the same stubborn glint in her eye that Jim used to get when he was arguing with the forest service about prescribed burns. The voice in his head was screaming louder than ever, but it was drowned out by the way she was looking at him, like she saw every part of him, the part that still missed Linda, the part that missed the crew, the part that had spent four years hiding from the world because he thought he didn’t get to have good things anymore.
He didn’t say anything, just leaned down, and kissed her. She tasted like cherry seltzer and mint, her hand moving from his chest to the back of his neck, her fingers tangling in the gray hair at his nape. When he pulled back a few seconds later, he half expected to feel guilty, half expected to turn and run. Instead, he just smiled.
“Your dad would kick my ass if he knew we were doing this,” he said.
Maren laughed, the sound loud and bright in the quiet street, and she tugged him toward the passenger door of her 4Runner. “Good thing he’s not here to stop us. C’mon. I make mean pancakes. I’ll even let you pick the syrup.”
He let her pull him along, the cold snow melting on his cheeks, and for the first time in four years, he didn’t feel like he was carrying the weight of every fire he’d ever fought on his shoulders.
