Clay Bennett, 58, spent 32 years on the Boise National Forest’s hotshot crew before retiring to rebuild vintage Fords out of his cinder block garage. He’d avoided every neighborhood block party for the seven years since his wife passed, but his 72-year-old next door neighbor had banged on his door at 4 p.m. that July afternoon, holding a Tupperware of potato salad, and threatened to let the air out of his 1972 F150’s tires if he didn’t come. He’d grumbled the whole three steps across the lawn, already annoyed by the sound of top 40 country blaring from a portable speaker, the cloying sweet smell of cotton candy sticking to the 92-degree air.
He camped by the beer tent, plastic cup of cheap lager sweating through his work flannel sleeve, and ignored everyone who tried to make small talk. He’d come ready to leave 20 minutes in, until the pole he was leaning on jolted, and a shoulder bumped hard into his bicep. He turned to snap, and froze. It was Maren Hale. The 52-year-old city councilwoman who’d pushed through the temporary ORV ban on the foothills trails he’d ridden since he was 16, the woman he’d ranted about to every buddy who stopped by his garage, the face he’d blocked from his Facebook feed six months prior.
She wasn’t wearing the crisp navy blazer he’d seen on the local news segments. She had on faded high-waisted jeans, a half-unbuttoned white linen shirt dusted with flour from the bake sale table, and scuffed white tennis shoes. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a messy braid, a few strands stuck to the sweat on her neck, and she was laughing so hard at the golden retriever that had just stolen a brat off a kid’s paper plate that her eyes crinkled shut at the corners. When she noticed him staring, she didn’t flinch. She held out a hand, her palm calloused at the base, a faint scar slicing across her thumb. “Clay, right? I’ve left three messages for you about the foothills trail restoration. You never called back.”
His throat went dry. He’d seen her name pop up on his voicemail, assumed she was going to yell at him for posting a rant about the ban on the neighborhood Facebook group, and deleted them unheard. He shook her hand, the heat of her skin seeping into his, and shrugged. “Thought you were gonna chew my head off.” She snorted, leaning back against the pole so their elbows were pressed together, no space between them. The smell of jasmine perfume and lemon seltzer cut through the smoke of the grill. “I wanted to ask you for advice. You ran the initial containment on the 2022 Pine Fire, right? The soil’s still too loose to support ORV traffic up there. The ban’s only temporary. I was gonna lift it as soon as we rerouted the trails around the new growth. Figured you’d know the terrain better than anyone.”
He stared at her, stunned. The local paper had only run the quote from the ORV club president calling her a “city transplant who hates working class folks.” No mention of the fire, no mention of trail restoration, no mention of her asking for his help. A group of kids on scooters came barrelling past, and she stepped closer to him to get out of the way, her chest brushing his arm for half a second. He could feel the warmth of her through both their shirts, his pulse jumping so hard he was half-sure she could see it throbbing in his neck. She didn’t step back once the kids were gone, just tilted her head up to look at him, hazel eyes glinting in the dappled shade of the oak tree hanging over the tent.
They talked for 45 minutes, standing so close their knees knocked every time one of them shifted their weight. She told him she’d moved to Boise three years prior after a messy divorce, that her dad had been a hotshot in Oregon in the 80s, that she’d bought a beat up 1998 Toyota Tacoma when she moved and still couldn’t get the carburetor to run right. He told her about his wife’s love of hiking the same foothills trails, about the F150 he’d been rebuilding for two years, about how he’d hated coming to the block party until 20 minutes prior. She laughed at that, a low, gravelly sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and reached up to brush a fuzzy green caterpillar off his flannel sleeve. Her fingers lingered on his forearm for three full beats, her thumb brushing a faint scar he’d gotten from a chainsaw accident in 2011, before she pulled her hand back like she hadn’t even noticed she’d done it.
He didn’t hesitate when she asked if he wanted to come check out the upper trails with her the next Saturday. She had a key to the gate that locked the ORV access point, she said, and she wanted him to show her where the best reroutes would go. He agreed before he could overthink it, before he could remember he’d promised his buddy he’d help swap an engine in a 1968 Bronco that same day. She pulled her phone out of her back pocket to exchange numbers, the back of the case plastered with a faded Pacific Northwest hotshot crew sticker, and her hand brushed his when she passed it to him to type his contact info in, and he could feel the heat of her skin lingering on his when he handed it back.
A kid wailed from the other side of the block, and she looked over, frowning, when she saw he’d fallen off his bike and scraped his knee. “That’s my neighbor’s son,” she said, already stepping away. Before she left, she squeezed his wrist, her fingers wrapping tight enough for him to feel the press of her silver rings into his skin, and winked. “Don’t ghost me this time, okay? I’ve got a cooler of good IPA I’ll bring, not the cheap swill they’re serving here.”
He stood there for five minutes after she walked away, his beer gone warm in his hand, watching her kneel down to help the kid brush the gravel off his jeans, pull a dinosaur band-aid out of her purse and press it to his knee. The grudge he’d carried for six months felt stupid now, flimsy, just another excuse he’d used to stay holed up in his garage, to not talk to anyone, to pretend he was fine being alone. His thumb brushed the spot on his forearm where her fingers had touched the caterpillar off, and he pulled his phone out to text his buddy he wouldn’t make it to the engine swap next Saturday.
