Rafe Mendez, 62, retired US Forest Service wildfire hotspot analyst, only showed up to the county fire relief fundraiser because his next-door neighbor all but dragged him out of his workshop. He’d spent the last eight years holed up there carving hiking staffs and fixing vintage crosscut saws, turning down every invitation to barbecues, holiday parties, even the annual forest service retiree potluck. Grief, he’d decided, was a job he had to do right, and that meant no distractions, no softness, no possibility of letting someone new chip away at the memory of his wife Elaine, who’d died of ovarian cancer in 2015.
The Smoldering Pine bar smelled exactly like he remembered: fried cheese curds left under heat lamps too long, cheap lager souring in plastic cups, pine-scented cleaner cutting through the layer of sawdust caked on the floor. The jukebox blared Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* loud enough to rattle the neon Coors sign above the bar. He propped himself against the back wall by the men’s room, sipping a draft he didn’t even want, calculating how long he had to stay before he could slip out without offending his neighbor.
That’s when she walked over. Clara Bennett, 57, the event organizer, widow of a wildland firefighter who’d died on the line during the 2020 Holiday Farm fire. He’d recognized her name on the fundraiser flyers taped to the general store door, but they’d never met. She was holding a clipboard, flannel sleeves rolled up to her elbows, freckles dusted across her nose from working outside all week setting up the auction. She thanked him for donating the hand-carved old-growth cedar hiking staff he’d dropped off a week prior, said it had already drawn three times the opening bid she’d expected.
She leaned in a little to talk over the jukebox, her shoulder brushing his bicep when a group of off-duty firefighters squeezed past to get to the bar. Her fingers brushed his when she handed him a free shot of bourbon as a thank you, her palm warm and calloused from splitting firewood over the winter, and he felt a jolt run up his arm that had nothing to do with the cheap liquor. He made a dry joke about how the forest service used to make him fill out three different incident reports just to use a chainsaw on a controlled burn, and she laughed, holding his gaze a beat longer than polite, crinkles fanning out at the corners of her hazel eyes.
He spent the next forty minutes talking to her, leaning against that wall, forgetting all about his plan to leave early. He told her about the time he’d been stranded on a fire lookout for three days during a thunderstorm, surviving on protein bars and rainwater, and she told him about how her husband used to sing terrible 90s country songs in the truck on the way to fire lines. He hated himself a little for how much he enjoyed it, for noticing how her hair smelled like pine and vanilla shampoo, for the way his chest tightened when she leaned in to whisper a joke about the county commissioner who’d showed up in a crisp button down that would be covered in beer stains by the end of the night. He’d spent eight years convincing himself that any feeling of joy that didn’t tie back to Elaine was a betrayal, and now he was fighting a stupid, giddy pull to a woman he’d just met, disgust and desire warring in his chest so sharp he could almost taste it.
When the auction started, the noise got so loud they could barely hear each other, so she gestured for him to follow her out onto the back porch. The air was cool, dusk painting the pine trees pink and orange, fireflies flickering low over the grass by the parking lot. You could still smell the faint, acrid tang of fire retardant from the small blaze they’d contained 20 miles west two days prior. She leaned against the porch rail next to him, their arms pressed together from shoulder to wrist, and he didn’t move away. She admitted she hadn’t been on a hike in three years, not since her husband died, because she was scared every trail would feel like a reminder of what she’d lost. He admitted he’d never given any of his carved staffs to anyone except the auction, because he used to carve custom ones for Elaine for every anniversary.
She tilted her head up to look at him, and he didn’t pull away when she kissed him, soft at first, her lips tasting like cherry lip balm and bourbon, her hand resting lightly on his chest right over his heart. For the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel guilty for feeling good. He didn’t feel like he was letting Elaine down. He just felt present, like the tight band he’d wrapped around his chest the day she died had finally loosened enough to let him breathe.
They agreed to meet at the trailhead for the old lookout he used to man back in the 90s the next Saturday, packed lunches and all. She squeezed his hand before she headed back inside to check on the auction, and he leaned against the rail, sipping the last of his bourbon, watching the sun dip below the tree line. A firefly landed on the back of his hand, glowing soft gold for three full seconds before it drifted off into the dark.
