Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew lead, avoided the Ravalli County Fair for six straight years. He’d had his fill of crowds after 32 years of coordinating evacuation routes, of forced small talk after attending 11 funerals for crew members lost on the line, the last one just three months before he hung up his fire pack. His only flaw, if you asked his best friend Jim, was that he’d locked himself in his cabin outside Darby since his wife Ellie died seven years prior, turning down every blind date, every VFW fish fry invite, every chance to stop acting like the world owed him nothing but silence. He’d only agreed to come this year because the county was honoring the volunteer crews that stopped the Lolo Peak fire from burning down half the valley two weeks prior, and Jim had threatened to drive his pickup through Clay’s tomato patch if he skipped it.
He’s leaning against a splintered cedar post at the beer garden when she walks up, holding a spiked apple cider in a dented plastic cup, sunbleached blonde hair pulled back in a loose braid, faded Wranglers and a white linen shirt dotted with sawdust. He recognizes her before she says a word: Mara Hale, Ellie’s first cousin, the one who’d lived in Portland for 20 years, who he’d only met once at his wedding, when she’d gotten drunk on champagne and danced on the reception table. She stops so close to him that he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the fried onion ring scent wafting from the stand 10 feet away, the faint tang of pine on her clothes from the 10-acre property she’s been clearing for her mom’s new mobile home.
“Clay Bennett, I’d know that scar above your left eyebrow anywhere,” she says, and her voice is lower than he remembers, rough from years of smoking, warm like the first sip of coffee on a -10 degree Montana morning. She holds his gaze when he looks up, doesn’t dart her eyes away like most people do when they notice the thick, dented wedding band he still wears on his left hand, scuffed from the time he dropped a chainsaw on it during a prescribed burn. When she lifts her cup to take a sip, her forearm brushes his, bare skin against his, and he feels a jolt run up his arm, hot and sharp, the same kind he’d get when he crept too close to a wildfire’s 2,000-degree edge.
He tries to pull back at first, makes a dumb joke about not seeing her around before, and she laughs, loud enough that a couple of off-duty volunteer firefighters at the next table glance over, snorting a little when she laughs too hard. She tells him she moved back three months ago to take care of her mom, who had a stroke, that she’d seen him on the fire line two weeks prior, carrying a 72-year-old woman’s terrier out of the smoke, his face streaked with ash, his old fire coat hanging loose on him now that he’s lost 15 pounds since retiring. He feels that familiar twist in his chest, the guilt that always creeps in when someone mentions Ellie, when he feels something that isn’t grief. He should leave. He should say he has to feed his two old hound dogs, go home to his empty cabin, sit on the porch and drink cheap beer alone like he does every night.
Instead, he stays. He tells her stories about the wedding, about how she’d tried to teach Ellie to do a backflip in the reception lawn and landed in a patch of thorn-covered rose bushes, about the time his crew accidentally set a port-a-potty on fire during a training drill and had to explain to the county commissioner why there was a melted plastic toilet sitting in the middle of the Bitterroot National Forest. She leans in when he talks, her shoulder pressed to his now, her hand resting on his bicep when he tells the part about the port-a-potty, her fingers warm through the thin cotton of his faded 2018 fire season tee. The fair noise fades around them, the 90s country music blaring on the speakers, the screams of kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl, the clink of beer mugs, all of it turns to soft background static.
When the beer garden closes at 10, she asks him to walk her to her pickup, says she parked by the horse barns, the lot is mostly empty now, and she doesn’t feel like walking alone past the shut-down carnival rides. He agrees without thinking, falls into step next to her, their work boots crunching on discarded peanut shells and lollipop wrappers on the pavement. When they pass the horse stalls, most of the show animals already hauled home for the night, she stops, turns to face him, the dim glow from the fair’s string lights catching the gold flecks in her green eyes.
“I know this is wrong,” she says, soft enough that only he can hear it, crickets chirping loud in the grass next to the stalls. “I’ve felt guilty for three weeks just thinking about talking to you. But Ellie would kill me if I let you spend the rest of your life alone out in that cabin.”
He freezes for half a second, the guilt roaring back for a beat, sharp and heavy, before it melts away like snow on a hot hood. He lifts his hand, brushes a stray piece of hay that got stuck in her braid off her shoulder, his fingers lingering on the soft skin of her cheek. She doesn’t pull away. He leans down, kisses her slow, the taste of her spiked cider and cherry lip balm mixing with the faint smell of pine in her hair, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel like he’s betraying anyone. He feels light, like the 100-pound weight he’s been carrying around on his chest since Ellie died just lifted 90 pounds off.
They stand there for another five minutes, kissing slow next to the empty stalls, no rush, no pressure, until a carnival worker yells from down the path that they’re locking the gates in 10 minutes. He walks her to her beat-up 2006 Ford F150, leans against the door frame when she climbs in, and she reaches out, runs her thumb over the dented wedding band on his left hand before she pulls him in for one more kiss. She tells him to pick her up at 8 a.m. next Saturday, they’re going fishing at the alpine lake up the mountain, the one he used to take Ellie to when they first got married. He nods, doesn’t argue, doesn’t make a half-assed excuse to back out.
He stands there in the dark parking lot until her taillights disappear around the bend, the cool September air nipping at his cheeks, and he lifts his hand to his mouth, can still taste her cherry lip balm on his lips. He shoves his hands in his jeans pockets, turns toward his own truck, and smiles for the first time in longer than he can remember.
