Rudy Marquez, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the Deschutes County fire department’s annual chili cookoff, plastic spoon in one hand, a crumpled score sheet in the other. His faded navy fire crew flannel still has a faint, permanent whiff of burnt pine, and the scar snaking up his left forearm from the 2017 Eagle Creek blaze glows pink in the late September sun. He’s avoided the cookoff for three years, sick of the same old questions about when he’ll “finally stop moping” and settle down again, but the new fire chief had begged him to judge, said no one knew spicy food better than a guy who’d eaten MREs for three weeks straight in the middle of a burn zone. He’d caved, and so far, the chili ranged from passable to so hot it made his eyes water, the crowd loud and chaotic in the way small town events always are, kids screaming as they chase each other with water guns, old country drifting from a beat-up speaker by the beer tent.
A sharp bump to his elbow makes him jolt, a dollop of red chili dribbling down the toe of his scuffed work boot. He’s halfway to a gruff apology when he looks up, and the words die in his throat. The woman standing six inches away is holding a bowl of bright green hatch chili, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, a smudge of chili powder on her left cheek, laughing so hard her shoulders shake. “Sorry, sorry,” she says, holding out a crumpled paper napkin, her sleeve brushing the scar on his forearm as she passes it over. The touch is light, accidental, but he feels it all the way up his arm, like static. She smells like jasmine lotion and roasted chile, and when she locks eyes with him, her grin softens, like she knows him. “I’d recognize that scar anywhere,” she says, and it clicks. Elara. Lila’s younger cousin, the one who’d moved to California for college when they’d first gotten married, the one he’d only seen a handful of times over the years, the one he’d spent three whole Christmas dinners trying not to stare at, back when Lila was still alive.
He freezes, the napkin crumpled in his hand, guilt coiling tight in his chest before he can even think. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, not since Lila’s 50th birthday party, and the last thing he needs is small town gossip about him hitting on his dead wife’s cousin. He mumbles a greeting, wiping the chili off his boot, already mentally mapping an escape route back to his truck, but she doesn’t let him leave. She says she moved to Bend last month, took the admin job at the national forest service office, heard he was judging the cookoff and wanted to say hi. She leans against the picnic table next to him, close enough that their shoulders brush when she shifts her weight, and talks about the drive up from California, about how she’d forgotten how crisp the Oregon air gets this time of year, about how Lila used to send her jars of the raspberry jam they’d make every summer, until she got sick. He finds himself responding, before he can stop himself, talking about the jam, about how he still has three jars in the back of his pantry, too scared to eat them.
The guilt doesn’t go away, not entirely, but it softens a little when she laughs at his story about burning the jam two years in a row, when she asks about the ponderosa pines on his plot, says she’s been wanting to hike the trails out that way. When she gestures to the tamale truck across the park, her hand brushes his wrist, and he flinches, not from dislike, but from surprise, from how long it’s been since anyone touched him that casually, that gently. She notices, tilts her head, pulls her hand back immediately, no pressure, no pushiness, just asks if he’s okay. He admits he hasn’t talked to anyone this long, outside of fire department guys and the cashier at the grocery store, in years, that he’s spent most of the last eight convinced anyone who showed interest was just after his pension or the land he and Lila bought. She nods, says she gets it, that her ex-husband left her for a 28-year-old paralegal six years ago, that she’s had her share of guys hit on her just because they think a single woman her age is desperate for a ring.
They walk over to the edge of the park, away from the noise of the crowd, leaning against a split-rail fence, watching a group of golden retrievers chase a frisbee across the grass. She says she knows this is weird, that she never thought she’d be standing here talking to him like this, that she always thought he was the good one, the kind of guy who’d drive three hours in a snowstorm to pick Lila up from her sister’s house, who’d fix the leaky roof on her grandma’s cabin without asking for payment. He admits he’s carried a stupid, useless crush on her since that first Christmas dinner, that he’s felt guilty about it for 30 years, that he thought even talking to her like this was betraying Lila. She smiles, soft, and reaches out, squeezes his hand quick, her palm calloused from gardening, from years of working on old pickup trucks. “Lila would’ve kicked your ass for being this lonely,” she says, and he laughs, because it’s true. She asks if he wants to get coffee later in the week, no strings, no pressure, just to talk, maybe drive out to his plot and check on the pine beetle damage he’d mentioned. He hesitates for half a second, then says yes, before the voice in his head that’s been telling him he doesn’t get to be happy anymore can talk him out of it.
They exchange numbers, her thumb brushing his when she passes his phone back, and she says she has to go, her chili is up for judging in ten minutes. She winks, says he’d better give her first place, then turns and walks back toward the booths, her boots crunching on the gravel. He stands there for a minute, leaning against the fence, the sun warm on his face, the sound of the crowd fading into background noise. The chili on his boot is already dry, crusted into the leather, and he doesn’t even care enough to wipe it off. He tucks his phone back in his flannel pocket, picks up his half-eaten bowl of chili, and for the first time in 8 years, doesn’t feel guilty for looking forward to tomorrow.
