Woody Rainer, 67, retired U.S. Forest Service antique map restorer, only showed up to the neighborhood block party because Marnie from two doors down left a lattice-top peach pie on his porch at 10 a.m. with a note scrawled in neon pink marker: If you skip this I’m leaving brussels sprout casserole on your step next. He hated being rude, and he hated brussels sprouts more, so he’d pulled his scuffed work boots on over his white tube socks, grabbed the frayed flannel he still wore even in July, and trundled down the driveway.
He’d been standing by the cooler for 22 minutes, counting, when he saw her. She was barefoot, cutoff jean shorts frayed at the hem, a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee hanging loose over her shoulders, sun-bleached auburn braid trailing down her back. She laughed at something the feed store owner said, head thrown back, and when she glanced his way, she froze mid-laugh, did a double take so obvious he could see it from 15 feet away.
She crossed the grass toward him, bare feet sinking into the soft, recently mown lawn, crumbs of clover sticking to her heels. He could smell coconut sunscreen and lemon seltzer before she even stopped, close enough that her shoulder almost brushed his. “Woody Rainer,” she said, and her voice was the same as he remembered, low, a little rough around the edges, like she smoked a pack a day even though he knew she never did. “I thought that was you. Jim mentioned you retired out here when we split last year.”
His throat went dry. He’d not heard that name spoken by her in 27 years, not since that afternoon in the Forest Service archive when she’d dropped off her then-husband’s lunch and they’d talked for 20 minutes about 19th century cartographers who hiked the Cascades with ink pots slung over their shoulders, no GPS, no emergency beacons, just a compass and good boots. He’d gone home to Clara that night and told her about Mara, admitted he thought she was the sharpest person he’d met at the agency in a decade, but he’d never spoken to Mara again after that, kept his head down, avoided Jim’s office unless he was called in, too afraid of the quiet, thrumming pull he’d felt the second she’d leaned over his work table to look at the map he was restoring.
He nodded, took a sip of his cheap lager, condensation dripping down his wrist onto his flannel cuff. “Mara. Didn’t know you moved out here.”
“Bought that little blue house at the end of the block three months ago. Run a mobile vintage bookstore out of the garage,” she said, and she reached out to tap the faded Forest Service patch sewn to the shoulder of his flannel, her fingers brushing his bicep, the silver ring on her thumb cool against his sun-warmed skin. He felt a jolt go all the way down to his scuffed boot soles, like static from a wool blanket. He hadn’t been touched by anyone who wasn’t a grocery store cashier or his primary care doctor in three years. “I still have that print you made of the 1911 Olympic National Forest map, by the way. Hung it in the checkout nook of the shop.”
He blinked. He’d given that print to Jim for Christmas back in 1997, had figured it would end up in a storage unit when they split. “You kept that?”
Part of him wanted to step back, make an excuse about needing to feed his old hound dog, go home to his quiet workshop, his stacks of old maps, the photo of Clara on the mantel he still talked to sometimes. It felt wrong, somehow, talking to his old boss’s ex-wife, feeling that same thrumming pull he’d pushed down for almost 30 years, like he was betraying Clara, betraying the unwritten rules of the old Forest Service crew. The other part of him, the part that had spent 8 years eating frozen dinners alone, that had restored 127 maps in the last two years just to have something to do with his hands, ached to stay, to hear her talk, to see what she’d been doing all these years.
She shifted her weight, her bare foot brushing his boot, and held up her seltzer can in a mock toast. “I picked up a 1927 Deschutes National Forest map at an estate sale last month. Got a three-inch tear along the eastern edge, I’ve been too scared to try to fix it myself. You wanna come take a look? I got fresh peach iced tea inside, better than that swill you’re drinking.”
He hesitated for half a second, twisting the wedding band he still wore on his left hand, the metal worn smooth from 42 years of wear. Clara had told him six months before she died, when they were sitting on the porch of their old house in Portland, that if he ever met someone who made him laugh again, he shouldn’t be stupid enough to push her away. He’d told her he’d never want anyone else, but she’d rolled her eyes, smacked his arm, told him he was too stubborn for his own good.
He nodded, set his half-empty beer down on the cooler next to him. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
They walked down the block together, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the heat from her arm seeping through his flannel shirt, the grass crinkling under their feet. When they got to her porch, she unlocked the screen door, turned to him, and rested her hand lightly on his chest, right over his heart, which was beating so fast he was sure she could feel it through the fabric. “I always wondered,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear, “if you were as quiet as you looked back then, or if you just didn’t want to get in trouble with Jim.”
He smiled, the first real, unforced smile he’d had at a social event in years, and stepped past her into the house, the warm scent of old paper and vanilla candles wrapping around him before the screen door clicked shut behind them.
