Elias Voss, 62, retired smokejumper turned part-time wildfire forensics consultant, sits alone at a Formica table at the VFW fish fry, wiping grease from his calloused fingers on the thigh of his faded work jeans. A thin, silvery scar cuts across his left cheek, leftover from a 2018 blaze that jumped the containment line outside Missoula, and he wears a frayed Carhartt jacket even though the indoor space is packed and warm. He’s avoided every casual social invitation for eight years, ever since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, convinced letting anyone new get close would erase the 32 years they spent together. He only comes to the monthly fish fry because the VFW gives free meals to former first responders, and he’s usually out the door before anyone can strike up a conversation longer than a comment on the weather.
The place is extra crowded that night, the whole town turning out after a small but tense blaze burned 300 acres of pine forest two weeks prior. He’s halfway through his second catfish filet, crust crisp with cornmeal, when a woman drops a paper plate stacked with hushpuppies across from him, huffing a laugh as she slides into the only empty seat in the room. She apologizes first, says her coworker bailed last minute and she didn’t want to stand in the corner holding her food like a lost tourist. He’s already reaching for his jacket to leave, irritated at the interruption, when he spots the pine sap caked on the cuff of her work jeans, the chipped sage green nail polish on her fingers, a faint thin scar along her jawline from a falling tree branch, by her own later admission. She introduces herself as Mara, the new county extension agent, moved to town three weeks prior to help landowners with post-fire reforestation.
He gives short, one-word answers at first, stiff, ready to bolt, until she asks if he’s the guy who tracked the recent blaze’s origin to a faulty campfire ring left by out-of-state hunters. Most folks in town just blamed random arsonists without asking questions, so he blinks, surprised, and finds himself talking for 15 minutes straight, explaining how he follows burn patterns, how pine needles char darker on the north face first if a fire starts low to the ground, how he tripped over a fallen log mid-investigation and landed in a patch of poison ivy that itched for two weeks. She leans in, elbows on the table, doesn’t check her phone once, laughs loud enough that a few folks at the next table glance over. When she passes him the half-empty jar of Louisiana hot sauce, their knuckles brush. He flinches like he’s been singed, not from pain, but because he hasn’t felt the warm weight of another person’s skin outside a doctor’s office in almost a decade. A sharp twist of guilt hits him right in the chest, like he’s betraying Linda by even sitting here, talking to a woman who smells like cedar and peppermint lip balm instead of Linda’s usual lavender hand lotion.
She doesn’t push when he goes quiet for a minute, just takes a slow sip of her iced tea, says she lost her partner, a construction foreman, to a fall on a job site five years back. She knows what it’s like to feel like talking to anyone new is some kind of sin, she says, and the knot in his chest loosens just a little. When she suggests they walk down to the Clark Fork after to watch the salmon run, he almost says no, almost makes up an excuse about having case files to review that night, but he nods before he can stop himself. A few of the old VFW regulars at the next table raise their eyebrows, staring. Everyone in town knows he’s the widower who keeps to himself, and the quiet thrill of doing something so openly out of character makes his pulse pick up, fast and light like he’s a kid sneaking out after curfew.
The walk to the river is short, gravel crunching under their heavy work boots, the air sharp enough that their breath fogs in front of their faces, a distant coyote yipping somewhere in the pine hills. They lean against the rail of the weathered wooden footbridge, the river roaring below them, silver flashes of salmon jumping in the current every few seconds. Her shoulder presses against his, warm even through their thick jackets, and she doesn’t move away, doesn’t apologize for the contact. He looks over at her, her light brown hair blowing in the wind, cheeks pink from the cold, and realizes he hasn’t felt this light, this unburdened, since before Linda got her diagnosis. The guilt is still there, quiet, but it’s not screaming anymore, not when she turns to him and smiles, says she hasn’t had this much fun since she moved to town. He lifts his hand, brushes a strand of wind-tousled hair away from her face, his fingers grazing the soft skin of her cheek, and she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull back, just holds his gaze, her eyes soft in the bright starlight.
They stand there for another 20 minutes, talking about nothing important, their shoulders pressed together the whole time, no awkward silences, no unspoken pressure to do or say anything more. When he walks her to her beat-up old Ford Ranger parked at the edge of the lot, she pulls a crumpled slip of notebook paper out of her flannel shirt pocket, scribbles her number on it in messy blue ink, says she’s heading up to a reforestation survey plot in the Bitterroot tomorrow if he wants to tag along, no pressure, she just needs an extra set of eyes that know the terrain. He tucks the paper into the inner pocket of his Carhartt, right next to the folded photo of Linda he’s carried there since she died, and watches her pull out of the parking lot, taillights fading into the dark. He pulls out his beat-up old flip phone, the one he only uses for work calls, punches in the number before he can talk himself out of it. He taps out a one-line reply—“I’ll bring the coffee, extra strong”—and hits send before the cold wind can make him second guess it.
