Javi Mendez, 52, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew boss, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the Deschutes County fire fundraiser beer garden, sipping a hazy pale ale sweeter than he likes, dragged there by three old crewmates who’d nagged him for three weeks to stop hiding out in his off-grid cabin outside Bend. The air smells like grilled bratwurst and citronella candles, a bluegrass band saws through a Johnny Cash cover off to his left, kids chase each other with glow sticks weaving through the crowd. He’s already counting the minutes until he can leave, work boots dusty from the gravel lot, until her shoulder brushes his bicep hard enough to make him slosh half an ounce of beer over the edge of his can.
He’s about to snap a gruff apology before he looks down. Elara, that’s the name his old crewmate Ray had mentioned a dozen times, his only daughter, who moved back to the county six months prior to run the regional wildfire youth education non-profit. She’s 37, has a smattering of freckles across her nose, a thin silver hoop through her left nostril, and she’s wearing a faded 2009 fire crew hoodie he recognizes as the one his team printed after they contained the massive Mount Jefferson blaze. She laughs when she sees the beer dribbling down his wrist, grabs a stack of napkins off the table next to him, and her knuckles brush his when she hands one over. Her hands are calloused at the palms, he notices, same as his, from digging fire lines and chopping wood, she smells like pine soap and tangerine lip balm, and for the first time in seven years—since his wife Lena died of ovarian cancer—his chest tightens with something that isn’t grief or bone-deep exhaustion.
They talk for 45 minutes standing there, first about the fundraiser’s turnout, then about the dangerously dry summer the county’s facing, then about the time Ray got stuck in a porta-potty during a fire camp thunderstorm in 2011, a story Javi hasn’t told anyone in years. When she suggests they sit at an empty table off to the side, away from the noise of the crowd, he doesn’t hesitate. Their knees brush under the table when they settle in, she leans in so close when he’s talking about the 2013 snag incident that he can feel her breath on his forearm, and she doesn’t flinch when he rolls up his flannel sleeve to show her the pale, jagged scar running from his elbow to his wrist. He’s hyper aware of every passing glance from the crowd; half the people here know him, know Lena, know he’s been a reclusive hermit since she died, and a sharp twist of guilt curls in his gut every time she laughs too loud, every time her hand brushes his arm when she makes a point. He should leave. He should say goodnight, go home to his empty cabin, his quiet, unchanging routine, stop indulging something he has no right to want, something he’d spent seven years convincing himself was off limits forever.
He’s halfway to standing to make an excuse about an early morning fence repair when she reaches across the table and rests her hand on his wrist, her thumb brushing the edge of the scar slow and gentle, like she’s memorizing every ridge of the old wound. “My dad said you carried him out of that 2013 fire when his ankle broke,” she says, her voice soft enough that only he can hear it over the band. “Said you didn’t even think twice about the snags falling all around you. I’ve wanted to meet you for so long. Not just as Ray’s old boss. As you.” The guilt wars with the warmth spreading up his arm, up his chest, to the tips of his ears. He’d spent so long punishing himself for surviving when Lena didn’t, for being healthy when she’d wasted away in a hospital bed, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be seen as something other than a widower, other than a retired hotshot with a bum knee and a pickup truck full of old fire gear. He’d told himself a dozen times that night that he was being stupid, that a woman that bright, that sharp, that full of life would never look at a beat up old guy who still bought Lena’s favorite peonies every week to leave on her grave. But she’s looking at him now, eyes steady, no pity, no awkwardness, just something warm and curious, and he feels the cinder block wall he’d built around himself crack just a little.
He sits back down, orders them both another round of beer, tells her about the old fire lookout on the top of Tumalo Mountain that he’s been restoring on weekends, the one he and Lena used to camp at when they were first married. When she asks if she can come with him to see it sometime, he doesn’t hesitate to say yes. The sun dips below the Cascades while they talk, painting the sky streaky pink and tangerine, the glow sticks get brighter, the band switches to slower, twangier songs, and he stops worrying about who’s looking, stops worrying about the guilt coiled in his gut, stops worrying about whether he deserves to feel this light, this alive, for the first time in years.
He walks her to her beat up 4Runner at the end of the night, her hand brushing his the whole way across the gravel lot, and when she leans in to hug him goodbye, her arms wrap around his waist tight, and he lets himself hug her back, just for a second, before she pulls away. She gets in her truck, rolls down the window, yells that she’ll text him in the morning to pick a day for the hike, and he stands there in the cool dark gravel until her taillights disappear around the bend, the faint smell of tangerine lip balm still lingering on the cuff of his flannel.
