The air smelled like pressed apple, burnt caramel, and pine dust off the nearby Sierra peaks. Elias Voss, 67, retired U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, wiped calloused palms on the thigh of his worn Carhartts. He’d spent three weeks forging the fire pit pokers stacked on the folding table in front of him, each etched with a tiny ponderosa pine at the handle, a nod to the 32 years he’d spent manning fire towers 7,000 feet above sea level. He’d avoided the annual cider festival for 11 straight years, only agreeing to man the local hardware store’s booth this year because his old Forest Service partner begged him, said the custom pokers would sell out in an hour.
He spotted her before she spotted him. Clara Hale, 49, wife of the county sheriff running for re-election next month, wove through the crowd, a half-eaten caramel apple in one hand, her dark braid flecked with gold confetti someone had tossed earlier. He’d only spoken to her twice before: once when she brought her beat-up F-150 into the hardware store for a tow hitch, once at a wildfire mitigation meeting where she’d called out three county supervisors for skimping on low-income defensible space grants. He’d avoided her ever since, his chest tight every time he saw her pickup drive down Main Street, a stupid, sharp want he’d thought he’d buried with his wife 12 years prior. He’d told himself a dozen times it was wrong, disrespectful to his wife’s memory, and worse, she was married, the sheriff’s wife, the last person he should be staring at like a teenager with a crush.
She stepped up to the booth before he could pretend to busy himself restacking pokers. The bluegrass set three tents over was cranked loud enough to rattle enamel mugs on the adjacent food stand, so she leaned in, her wool flannel sleeve brushing his bicep, vanilla and cedar perfume curling into his nose. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said, loud enough only he could hear, dark eyes crinkling when she smiled. He fumbled a poker, nearly dropping it on his boot. He wanted to tell her he was busy, that she should go back to her husband’s campaign tent on the other side of the fairgrounds. Instead he asked if she wanted a poker, his voice rougher than he intended.
She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the crowd noise. She said she already had three fire pits at her place, she was there to ask if he wanted to walk to the cider press tent for a spiked drink. He glanced over at his buddy Jake, running the booth with him, and Jake winked, waved him off, said he could handle the rest of sales alone. He hesitated half a second, then stepped out from behind the table.
They walked side by side through the crowd, shoulders brushing every few steps, once their hands knocked together when a kid darted between them, and he flinched like he’d been burned. The cold autumn air nipped at his cheeks, and the cider cup she pressed into his hand a minute later was icy, spiked with bourbon that burned going down his throat. They stopped at the edge of the fairgrounds, near the treeline where festival noise faded to a low hum, and she leaned against a ponderosa pine, looking up at him. She told him she and the sheriff had been separated three months, waiting till after the election to announce it to avoid tanking his campaign, no one else knew besides their lawyers.
He felt a twist of guilt in his gut, half disgust at the part of him that was relieved, half desire getting harder to ignore. He told her he hadn’t so much as had coffee with another woman since his wife died, that he didn’t want to be the guy people whispered about, the homewrecker ruining the sheriff’s campaign. She stepped closer, so close he could feel heat off her skin, their foreheads almost touching. She said she didn’t care what people thought, that she’d noticed him staring at the hardware store, that she’d been staring too, that she liked how quiet he was, how he didn’t boast like every other guy in town trying to impress the sheriff’s wife.
He reached out, brushed a crumb of caramel apple off her cheek, his calloused finger lingering on her jaw for a second. She didn’t pull away. She said she knew the trail up to the old fire tower he used to man, no one went up there this time of year, that if he met her at the trailhead at 6 a.m. the next day, before anyone was up, they could hike up with coffee, no one would see them. He nodded, his throat too tight to speak. She squeezed his wrist once, then turned and walked back toward the festival, glancing over her shoulder once to wink before she disappeared into the crowd.
He walked back to the booth, the cold cider cup still in his hand, the spot on his jaw where her breath had hit him still tingling. Jake teased him about looking like he’d just won the lottery, and Elias didn’t say anything, just ran his thumb over the tiny pine etching on the last remaining poker on the table, already counting the hours till 6 a.m.
