Elroy Voss, 53, spent 22 years as a wildland firefighter before a crushed ankle from a 2021 fire line fall forced early retirement, now runs a small firewood delivery service out of his garage outside Missoula, Montana. His biggest flaw is that he’s spent the last 7 years hiding from any situation that might lead to small town gossip, ever since his wife left him for a traveling construction foreman and half the town started treating him like a wounded puppy to be pitied or set up with every divorced woman within a 30 mile radius. He only agreed to show up to the annual October chili cookoff because his 16-year-old niece Lila begged him, saying her first ever entry was the spiciest in the whole competition and she needed her favorite uncle to be the first to taste it.
The community center smelled like cumin, burnt onions, and the faint pine smoke drifting in through the propped open back door. Elroy leaned against the cinder block wall by the drink station, jeans still dusted with fir bark from a delivery he’d run that morning, a paper bowl of Lila’s chili in one hand, a lukewarm root beer in the other. He’d already turned down three well-meaning neighbors who tried to steer him toward the table of single women clustered by the dessert bar, and was half planning to sneak out early when she walked in.
Mara Hale, 48, the county’s new fire marshal, had been back in town for 18 months after leaving her 15 year marriage to the former county sheriff, who’d been Elroy’s first crew lead back when he was 19. Everyone in town still treated her like she was off limits, like dating her would be some kind of betrayal to the ex-sheriff, who still coached the local little league team and stopped by the diner every Saturday for pancakes. Elroy had known her for almost 30 years, had sat across from her at countless cookouts and fire crew holiday parties, had always thought she was the kind of woman you looked at from across the room, not the kind you talked to one on one.
She spotted him before he could duck behind the drink cooler. She walked over, steel toed work boots scuffing the scuffed linoleum, her navy county work jacket slung over one arm, a paper bowl in her other hand. She stood close enough that he could smell the vanilla lip balm she wore, mixed with the faint diesel fumes that clung to her shirt from inspecting a commercial truck fire the day before. “Heard Lila’s chili is the one to beat,” she said, nodding at the bowl in his hand, and held his eye contact three beats longer than casual politeness required.
When she reached past him for a stack of paper napkins on the windowsill behind him, her forearm brushed the thick, ragged scar that ran across his left bicep, the one he got from a falling snag during the 2017 Lolo Peak fire. He flinched, not from pain, from the sharp, warm jolt of her skin against his, a feeling he hadn’t had in so long he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. She paused, her fingers hovering over the scar for half a second, and smirked. “Always wondered if that was as rough as it looked,” she said, like she was teasing, but her voice was low, no laugh behind it.
Elroy’s throat went dry. He’d spent so long telling himself he wasn’t interested in anything other than his firewood runs and weekend fishing trips that the sudden, sharp pull of desire caught him off guard. Half of him screamed that this was a bad idea, that the whole town would be talking by Monday morning, that her ex was still a friend of his, that he didn’t need the drama. The other half of him couldn’t stop staring at the freckles across her nose, the way her hair fell over one shoulder, the faint callus on the tip of her index finger from holding a fire investigation pen all day.
He didn’t say anything for a second, just took a sip of his root beer, and she laughed, a low, gravelly sound that made his chest feel warm. “Relax, I’m not gonna bite,” she said, nodding her head toward the back door. “I got a six pack of that dark amber ale you used to bring to the fire line camps in my truck. Figured we could skip the rest of this and drink it somewhere quieter, if you’re not busy.”
Elroy glanced over at the dessert table, where one of the women who’d tried to set him up earlier was staring at them, her eyebrows raised. He thought about the gossip, about the old unspoken rule that you didn’t go near your old crew lead’s ex-wife, about how long it had been since he’d wanted to do something that didn’t involve splitting logs or mending his fishing nets. He set his half-eaten bowl of chili on the windowsill next to the napkins, drained the last of his root beer, and nodded.
They walked out to her county issued pickup truck, parked under a stand of ponderosa pines at the edge of the parking lot, the sun dipping low over the mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and dusty rose. She hopped up on the tailgate, passed him a cold beer, and their fingers brushed when he took it from her, the cold of the bottle seeping into his skin. She leaned back against the rear window, her legs swinging a little, and told him she’d been wanting to ask him out for two years, ever since she’d seen him carry an elderly neighbor’s 12 year old golden retriever out of a brush fire west of town, his boots sinking into ash, the dog tucked safe against his chest.
Elroy took a long sip of beer, the bitter, malty taste spreading across his tongue, and let his hand rest lightly on her knee, the denim of her work pants soft under his palm. She didn’t pull away. She shifted closer, so their shoulders were pressed together, and pointed up at the first star peeking out over the mountain ridge. Somewhere behind them, inside the community center, the crowd cheered as they announced the chili cookoff winner, and a group of kids laughed as they ran past the truck, chasing a calico stray cat that darted into the trees.
