Clay Bennett, 58, retired Glacier National Park ranger, leaned against the chipped vinyl patio rail of The Rusty Sparrow, the neighborhood’s only dive bar, and twisted the neck of his frosted pilsner mug between calloused fingers. He’d bailed on the annual end-of-summer block party three hours earlier, sick of the neighbors sidling up to him with potato salad and uninvited questions about his late wife Linda, his 30 years fighting wildfires and rescuing lost hikers, why he’d traded Montana pines for Florida swamp humidity. The patio was mostly empty now, save for a group of college kids playing cornhole at the far end and the faint thrum of Tom Petty bleeding through the screen door from the jukebox inside. He could taste salt on his upper lip, feel the sticky residue of old beer under his forearms where they rested on the rail.
He’d just lifted the mug to his mouth when she slid onto the stool two spots down, so quiet he almost didn’t notice her until she flagged the bartender and ordered bourbon neat, no ice. He recognized her immediately: Mara Carter, 47, his next door neighbor Todd’s ex-wife, the woman Todd had ranted about for two hours over leftover meatloaf three Sundays prior, called her a gold digger, a liar, said she’d left him for a vet tech half his age and cleaned out his savings on the way out. Clay had nodded along then, too polite to push back, too checked out of neighborhood drama to care. He told himself he should leave, avoid the mess, but he couldn’t look away from the sun streaks in her dark hair, the faint smudge of dog hair on the cuff of her flannel shirt, even in 85 degree heat.
She caught him staring at the thick, silvery scar snaking across his left hand, the one he’d gotten from a juvenile black bear that charged a family on the trail 12 years prior. She leaned in, not close enough to overstep, but close enough that he could smell jasmine shampoo and cedar soap over the stench of fried pickles and old cigarette butts in the ashtray between them. “Dog bite?” she asked, nodding at his hand, her voice rough from years of yelling at spooked rescue dogs, he’d later learn. “Black bear,” he said, and she laughed, a throaty, unpolished cackle that didn’t sound like the fake, breathy laughs the widows at his church gave him when he made small talk. She reached across the bar for a napkin, her bare forearm brushing his, and he flinched first, then didn’t pull away. Her skin was warm, dotted with faint freckles, a tiny scar of her own on her wrist.
They talked for 45 minutes, no mention of Todd, no mention of Linda. She told him she ran the local animal rescue 10 minutes down the road, grew up hiking the Cascades, missed the smell of pine so bad she kept a pine scented candle burning in her truck 24/7. He told her about the winter he spent snowed in at a backcountry ranger station for three weeks, ate nothing but canned beans and jerky, read the same Louis L’Amour novel four times. He kept waiting for the guilt to hit, the sharp twist in his gut that usually came when he so much as thought about going on a date, about moving on, but it didn’t come. Instead he felt light, giddy even, the kind of stupid thrill he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager sneaking into bars with his friends back in Bozeman.
The screen door slammed open. Todd stood there, drunk, face red, holding a half-empty can of beer. He spotted them immediately, started yelling, loud enough that the college kids at the far end stopped playing cornhole to stare. “Really, Mara? You already working your way through the whole neighborhood?” he slurred, then turned to Clay, “She’s just gonna take your money, man, leave you high and dry like she did me. You’re an idiot for even talking to her.” Clay stood, all six foot two of him, broad shoulders still solid from years of hauling gear up mountain trails, and Todd took a step back. Mara didn’t flinch, just sipped her bourbon, tilted her head, and said, “Tell him why I left you, Todd. Tell him about the time you crashed my truck drunk and broke my jaw. Tell him you spent all our savings on sports betting, not me.” Clay glanced down, spotted the faint, thin scar along her jawline she’d mentioned 10 minutes earlier, said she got it in a “bad car crash” a few years back. The last of his hesitation melted, the weird mix of guilt and disgust at himself for even being there vanishing so fast he almost laughed. “Leave, Todd,” he said, his voice low, the same tone he used to use on drunk hikers who tried to wander off trail after dark. “I can handle my own business.”
Todd stared for a second, then muttered a curse and stumbled back out the door. Mara slid her stool closer to his, on purpose this time, her knee pressing against his through the worn denim of his jeans. She grinned, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on the side with the scar, and said she had a three year old husky at the rescue that loved to hike, would he want to come with her tomorrow to meet him, maybe take him out to the trailhead on the north side of town. He nodded, already mentally clearing the chores he’d planned for the weekend, the gutters he was gonna clean, the leaves he was gonna rake, all of it suddenly irrelevant. He lifted his frosted beer mug to clink against her bourbon glass, the cold glass clinking sharp and bright over the hum of the bar and the distant chirp of crickets in the oak trees lining the parking lot.
