Elias Voss, 62, spent 28 years perched in fire lookout towers across the Willamette National Forest, before he retired three years prior. His left forearm bears a thick, silvery scar from a 2017 blaze that took out 700 acres of old growth, and his conscience bears a thicker, quieter scar from the same fire: it claimed his old crew partner, Joe Marlow, too. He’d avoided Joe’s ex-wife Clara for a full decade after that, out of some half-baked sense of loyalty that felt equal parts honor and self-punishment, even after his own wife Linda died of breast cancer seven years prior. The annual fire department fundraiser at the roadhouse on the edge of town was the last place he wanted to run into her, but there he was, leaning against the scuffed oak bar, lager sweating in his hand, watching a group of teen volunteers haul a smoked brisket platter past to the buffet table. The jukebox hummed Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” low enough to talk over, sawdust stuck to the cuffs of his worn work boots, and the sharp, sweet smell of pine drifted through the open screen door from the woods out back.
He’d just decided to slip out early when she slid into the empty spot next to him at the bar, so close their shoulders brushed through their unbuttoned flannel shirts. He froze. She smelled like lavender hand cream and pine sap, the latter crusted on the cuff of her navy work shirt, and when she turned to smile at him, her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, faint laugh lines fanning out toward the streaks of silver woven through her chestnut hair. She was there to drop off a silent auction item: a gift certificate for 10 native plant saplings from the nursery she’d run for 18 years, she explained, nodding at the bid sheet the bartender was tucking under the counter. She ordered a seltzer with lime, and when she reached across him to grab a napkin from the holder by his elbow, her forearm brushed his raised scar, the light, unexpected touch sending a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt since Linda was alive. He wanted to step away, to mumble an excuse about an early morning and head for the door, but his feet wouldn’t move.
The guilt hit first, sharp and hot, the same as it did every time he caught himself staring at her across the farmers market, or when she waved at him from the cab of her beat-up forest green pickup at the feed store. Joe would have my head, he told himself, and Linda would too, like he was cheating on both of them just by standing there, letting his gaze linger on the way she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear when she laughed at his joke about the terrible silent auction grand prize: a framed, autographed photo of the local high school football team’s 2022 state championship run. When a group of rowdy off-duty firefighters squeezed past them behind the bar, her knee pressed against his for three full seconds, and neither of them shifted away. She mentioned she’d been meaning to call him for weeks, that the stand of 60-year-old Douglas fir on the back of her property was showing early signs of bark beetle infestation, and she trusted his opinion more than any of the county forest service guys who’d come out to look, most of them barely old enough to buy beer. He hesitated for so long she started to backtrack, apologizing for asking, saying she knew he preferred to keep to himself these days, and that was when he caved, told her he’d be out at 9 a.m. the next morning.
He tossed and turned all night, fighting the urge to text her and cancel, telling himself he was making a catastrophic mistake, that crossing that unspoken line would ruin every good memory he had of Joe and Linda both. But when 9 a.m. rolled around, he loaded his beat-up binoculars and a tattered forest service notebook into his truck and drove the 12 miles out to her property, the gravel driveway crunching loud under his tires as he pulled up. She was waiting on the wide wrap-around porch, holding two chipped ceramic mugs of black coffee, and she handed him one as he stepped up, her calloused, dirt-streaked fingers brushing his as she passed it over. They walked the treeline for an hour, him pointing out the small, telltale holes in the bark, explaining how to wrap the trunks and which pheromone traps to buy to keep the infestation from spreading, and when they stopped in a small sun-dappled clearing halfway up the hill, she turned to him, so close he could feel the warm of her breath on his cheek.
She told him she’d known how he felt for years, that she’d felt the same, that she’d never said anything because she knew he was still grieving Linda, that she knew he felt like he owed it to Joe to stay away from her. She said Joe used to tease her about having a crush on Elias back when they were all on the crew together, long before Joe and her split, long before either of their spouses were gone. The tight knot of guilt in his chest loosened, just a little, and when she leaned in to kiss him, soft at first, then deeper, he didn’t pull away. They spent the rest of the afternoon on her back porch, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and talking about old fire crew stories, about Linda’s obsession with growing heirloom tomatoes that never ripen, about her daughter who was studying forestry at Oregon State, her son who was working on a fishing boat in Ketchikan for the summer.
The sun dipped low as the afternoon faded, painting the tops of the fir trees burnt orange, the exact same color as the edge of the blaze that took Joe all those years ago. He reached over, lacing his scarred, weathered fingers through hers, still smudged with dirt from repotting a western red cedar sapling earlier that day. She squeezed his hand once, then leaned her head on his shoulder, the faint scent of lavender still clinging to her hair. A downy woodpecker tapped a slow, steady rhythm on a dead fir across the clearing, and neither of them said a word for a long, quiet minute.
