Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service fire captain turned custom woodworker, spends every Saturday manning a rickety folding table at Boise’s North End farmers market, selling hand-carved cutting boards and live-edge charcuterie platters. He wears the same frayed charcoal flannel every week, cuffs rolled up to show forearms crisscrossed with old burn scars, sawdust perpetually crammed under his fingernails. His biggest flaw, the one he’s carried for 12 years, is that he still blames himself for the death of his crewmate Jake Carter, killed when a fuel break collapsed during the 2011 Pine Creek wildfire, a call Clay signed off on. He’s turned down every date, every friendly overture from a woman since, convinced he doesn’t get to have soft things after he sent a good man to his grave.
The sun hangs low over the foothills on the last Saturday in August, air thick with the smell of grilled sweet corn and ripe peaches from the stand two down, when a woman taps his wrist to get his attention. The contact is light, intentional but soft, her cool fingers brushing the raised edge of a scar he got pulling Jake out of a small blaze three years before the Pine Creek fire. He looks up, and for half a second he thinks he’s misremembering, until he spots the faded 2010 Boise Interagency Hotshot Crew logo on her oversized white t-shirt, the same one the whole team wore to Jake’s funeral. It’s Lila Carter, Jake’s little sister, the kid who used to sneak extra lemonade at the crew’s annual summer barbecues, who he hadn’t seen since she moved to Portland for grad school a decade prior.
She holds out a cold can of IPA, condensation dripping down the sides onto her knuckles, and says she recognized his sawdust-streaked flannel from across the market. She’s 42 now, sun streaks in her dark hair, a small silver stud in her left nostril, and when she smiles the same dimple pops in her cheek that Jake used to tease her about. He takes the beer, his fingers brushing hers again, and when she leans in to ask how he’s been, he smells coconut sunscreen and cherry lip gloss, the warm, sweet scent wrapping around him like something he forgot he was allowed to want. He mumbles a half-decent answer, avoids her eyes at first, the old guilt coiling tight in his gut, like even talking to her is a betrayal of the man he lost.
She doesn’t push, just asks if he wants to walk over to The Rusty Axe, the dive bar adjacent to the market parking lot, the same one the crew used to pile into after long shifts. He agrees before he can talk himself out of it. They slide into a scuffed vinyl booth in the back, the one with a crack in the table shaped like a ponderosa pine, and order two shots of well bourbon to go with their beers. The jukebox spits out old Johnny Cash, ice clinks in the plastic water glasses on the table, and a group of construction guys yell over a game of pool in the corner. Their knees brush under the table when she shifts to get more comfortable, and she doesn’t pull hers away, just holds his eye contact for a beat longer than necessary, like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
He tells her about the woodworking shop he runs out of his garage, the way he sources most of his lumber from fallen trees on Forest Service land, gives a discount to any first responder who stops by. She tells him she moved back to town two weeks prior, took a job as a physical therapist at the local VA, spent the last ten years working with burn victims and disabled veterans, mostly because Jake used to say the people who put their lives on the line deserved someone who actually gave a shit about their recovery. When she says Jake’s name, her voice doesn’t waver, and when she tells him she never blamed him for the fire, that Jake talked about him constantly, called him the best captain he ever had, Clay feels the tight coil in his chest start to loosen, just a little.
He still feels wrong, though, torn between the low, warm hum of desire building in his bones and the sharp, familiar twist of guilt that tells him he has no right sitting here, flirting with Jake’s little sister, like none of the bad stuff ever happened. He’s halfway to making an excuse to leave, to pack up his table and go home to his empty house and his half-finished carving, when she reaches across the table, brushes a fleck of sawdust off the front of his flannel, her fingers lingering on the worn fabric over his chest for two full seconds. She says she didn’t just come over to say hi, that she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, used to hang around the crew barbecues just to get him to smile, that she’s been waiting 26 years to tell him that.
The confession hangs between them for a long minute, the Johnny Cash track fading into old Merle Haggard, and for a second Clay can’t breathe. He tells her about the guilt, about how he’s spent 12 years thinking he didn’t get to be happy, that anything good he had would be stolen from him because he took something from Jake first. She reaches across the table, wraps her soft, lotion-slicked hand around his calloused, scarred one, and says Jake would have kicked his ass so hard for carrying that weight for so long he’d be limping for a month. She laughs when she says it, that same bright, dimply laugh he remembers from the barbecues, and he finds himself laughing too, the first real, unguarded laugh he’s had in years.
They leave the bar an hour later, the sun dipped below the foothills, air cool enough that he offers her his flannel, which she slips on without hesitation, the sleeves hanging way past her wrists. Crickets chirp in the grass along the parking lot edge, and the streetlights flicker on one by one, casting soft orange glows over the pavement. He walks her to her beat-up old Toyota Tacoma, and when they get to the driver’s side door, she sets her bag on the roof, leans in, and kisses him slow, tastes like cherry seltzer and bourbon and mint, her hand curled around the back of his neck. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t overthink it, just wraps one arm around her waist, pulls her closer, feels the warm press of her body against his.
She pulls back after a minute, grinning, and says she’ll stop by his workshop tomorrow around noon, to pick up that custom fir cutting board she asked about, the one with the pine tree engraving, Jake’s favorite. He nods, watches her climb into the truck, roll down the window, wave as she pulls out of the parking lot. He stands there for a minute after her taillights fade around the corner, holding the empty beer can she handed him earlier, the faint smell of coconut sunscreen still lingering on the collar of the t-shirt he’s wearing under the flannel she left with. He tucks his free hand into the pocket of his jeans, feels the crumpled receipt for the fir lumber he bought last week, and smiles.
