Moe Sorensen, 57, retired smokejumper turned wildfire mitigation consultant, hunches over a chipped plastic picnic table in the Missoula County Fair beer garden, the hem of his faded Carhartt shirt dotted with hops from the first round of homebrew contest entries he’s judging. The air smells like fried funnel cake, Ponderosa pine, and the sharp, tangy bite of fermented grain, the August sun dipping low enough to paint the tops of the surrounding mountains tangerine. He’s got a scar slicing through his left eyebrow from a 2019 Lolo National Forest blowup, calluses so thick on his palms he can hold a hot cast iron skillet without a mitt, and a rule he’s stuck to for 22 years: no attachments that don’t come with a pre-planned exit route, not after his first wife died in a car crash while he was 100 miles away hanging from a tree over a wildfire. He blames himself for not being there, has spent decades keeping everyone at arm’s length to avoid feeling that kind of gut punch twice.
He’s halfway through a sip of a surprisingly decent honey ale when a woman carrying a crate of brown glass bottles trips over a tent stake half buried in the grass. Moe reacts on instinct, lunging forward to catch her elbow, her free hand slapping against his chest hard enough to knock the breath out of him for half a second. She stumbles into his space, close enough that he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the sharp, green scent of cedar, and when she looks up he recognizes her immediately: Lila Marlow, 52, the new county extension agent he’d exchanged three awkward emails with about a forest health program, and the ex-wife of his former smokejumper crew chief, Jake, the man he hasn’t spoken to in 12 years after Moe refused to send a crew into an uncontained blowup that would’ve killed all four of them, Jake calling him a coward in front of the entire base before cutting off contact entirely.
Moe’s first instinct is to let go of her elbow, mumble an excuse, and leave. But she laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the noise of the fair rides and yelling kids, and says she should’ve watched where she was going, she’s been running on 4 hours of sleep and too much iced coffee all week. He doesn’t let go right away, his fingers wrapped around the soft fabric of her flannel shirt, and she holds his gaze for three beats longer than polite, no hint of awkwardness, like she knows exactly who he is and doesn’t care about the bad blood between him and her ex. She sets the crate of bottles on the table next to his, says they’re her entry, dandelion ale she brewed in her garage with flowers she picked from the side of the highway. He snorts, says that sounds like something that’d give a moose diarrhea, and she swats his arm hard enough to leave a faint pink mark, grinning, saying he just doesn’t have a refined enough palate for experimental homebrew.
She sits down next to him on the bench, their knees bumping every time someone squeezes past the narrow gap between tables, and they talk through the next two hours of contest entries, her leaning in close every time the loudspeakers blare a country song, her shoulder pressed against his, the heat of her seeping through the thin cotton of his shirt. She tells him Jake showed up at her office last month begging to get back together, admitted he was the one who messed up that 2011 fire call, that he’d pressured Moe to send the crew in because he wanted a promotion, knew he’d get written up if the fire burned the nearby cabins. Moe feels that tight, burning knot he’s carried in his chest for 12 years loosen a little, like someone finally cut the rope holding it in place.
When the fireworks start, the crowd surges toward the edge of the field, and Lila laces her fingers through his to pull him along, no hesitation, her hand smaller than his, calloused at the fingertips from planting saplings all summer. He doesn’t pull away. They stop at the split rail fence at the edge of the fairgrounds, and for a second she leans her head on his shoulder, the soft strands of her hair brushing his neck, as red and blue explosions paint the sky above them. When the last firework fades, she turns to face him, her cheeks pink from the cool evening air, and he brushes a stray strand of hair off her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone, and she doesn’t flinch.
They walk to his beat up 2008 Ford F150 parked on the edge of the fairgrounds, the gravel crunching under their boots, and he opens the passenger door for her. She pauses on the step, says she doesn’t do one night stands, doesn’t want to be a casual fling he bails on the second he gets a fire call. He tells her he’s tired of running from things that don’t have a pre-planned exit, tired of sleeping alone in a house that’s too quiet, and she smiles, sliding into the seat. He closes the door, walks around to the driver’s side, turns the key, and the radio cuts on to a Johnny Cash song he hasn’t heard since he was a kid, Lila reaching over to lace her fingers through his on the gear shift before he can put the truck in drive.
