Rafe Mendez is 52, spent 22 years on a federal wildland firefighting crew based out of Asheville, retired three years prior after a blaze in Pisgah National Forest left him with a third-degree burn snaking up his left forearm and a doctor’s order to stop hauling 80-pound packs up 60-degree slopes. Now he runs a small firewood delivery and forest thinning business, lives alone in a log cabin he built himself 12 years back, has not been on a single date since his wife left him for a pharmaceutical sales rep in 2015. He’s convinced anyone who shows him romantic interest is either pitying him for his scar or bored with the tiny mountain town’s limited dating pool, so he deflects every advance with a gruff smile and a quick exit.
He’s at the town’s annual fall harvest festival on a crisp mid-October Saturday only because his 16-year-old niece begged him to drop off a box of his late father’s western paperbacks for the library’s used book sale. He avoids the library on principle; he barely finished high school, never took a college class, and has always felt like the librarians side-eye him for checking out nothing but hunting magazines and history books about forest fire management. He hefts the cardboard box onto the folding table under the library’s canvas tent, and before he can step back, a woman’s hand lands on the opposite corner of the box at the exact same time.
Her hand is cool, smudged with blue ballpoint ink on the first knuckle, nails short and unpolished, and the brush of her skin against his sends a jolt up his arm he hasn’t felt in years. He looks up. She’s somewhere around his age, streaks of silver threading through her dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, wearing a faded plaid flannel shirt and jeans scuffed at the knees, a name tag that reads “Mara, Part-Time Librarian” pinned to her chest. She holds eye contact for three full beats, longer than casual acquaintance calls for, and he’s the first to look away, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
She nods at the burn scar peeking out from the cuff of his frayed work shirt. “You were on the 2016 Gatlinburg crew, right?” she asks, leaning in just enough that he can smell cinnamon gum, old paper, and lavender hand lotion over the overwhelming scent of fried apple donuts drifting from the food truck two booths over. Her elbow grazes his bicep when she reaches into the box to pull out a tattered copy of *Hondo*, and he tenses up, half ready to mumble a thanks and bolt back to his beat-up F-150. He doesn’t do small talk, doesn’t do people asking about his scars, doesn’t do any of it. But she’s not looking at him like she’s pitying him. She’s looking at him like she’s genuinely curious.
He admits he was on that crew, and she grins, says her older brother was his crew foreman, still talks about the guy who ran back into a burning rental cabin to save a family’s golden retriever. Rafe laughs, surprised; he hasn’t thought about that slobbery dog in years. They talk for 20 minutes, her leaning against the table, him leaning in too without noticing, her hand brushing his arm every time she laughs at one of his dry jokes about fire crew mishaps and terrible camp cooking. Part of him is screaming to leave, to cut this off before he gets attached, before she realizes he’s just a quiet guy who spends most of his time alone in the woods with his two hound dogs, no fancy job, no fancy hobbies. The other part of him is warm, lighter than he’s felt in almost a decade.
The festival crowd thins as the sun dips lower, painting the Blue Ridge Mountains pink and tangerine at the edges. Mara tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, twists the thin silver wedding band on her left ring finger once, twice, like she’s nervous. “My shift’s over in 10 minutes,” she says, voice quieter than before, like she’s scared a stranger will overhear. “You wanna get a spiced cider? I’ve been dying to try the one from the orchard booth all day.” Rafe hesitates for half a second, the old instinct to say no, to retreat to his quiet cabin and the football game he had planned, rising up fast. Then he looks at her, at the little smudge of ink still on her knuckle, at the way she’s biting her lower lip waiting for his answer, and he says yes.
They sit on a weathered split-rail fence overlooking the hay bale maze, sipping cider so hot it burns the tip of his tongue, watching kids run around screaming with neon face paint and sticky cotton candy stuck to their jackets. She tells him she moved to town four months prior, after her husband died of a sudden heart attack, wanted a fresh start somewhere small, somewhere she could hike on the weekends and not run into 10 people she knew every time she went to the grocery store. She admits she’s seen him driving his truck around town half a dozen times, always with his hounds hanging out the window, always wanted to say hi but was scared he’d blow her off. Rafe snorts, tells her he’s been avoiding the library because he was convinced all the librarians thought he was too uneducated to be checking out their books. She laughs so hard she snorts, swats his arm playfully, says anyone who owns 52 Louis L’Amour novels is more than welcome in her library any time.
The sun drops below the mountain line, and the air gets cool enough that Mara pulls her flannel tighter around her shoulders. She finishes her cider, tosses the empty cup in the nearby trash can, then reaches over, runs her index finger lightly along the edge of his burn scar, slow and gentle, no pity in her touch, just quiet curiosity. He doesn’t flinch. He tells her he has a pot of venison chili simmering on the stove at his cabin, plus a stack of old fire crew photos she might want to see, and his two hounds are probably passed out on the couch waiting for him to get home. Mara smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and nods. He reaches for her hand, laces their fingers together, and doesn’t let go when they stand up to walk to his truck.
