Manny Ruiz, 53, retired smokejumper turned wildfire mitigation consultant, leaned against the scuffed cinder block wall of his small Northern California town’s only dive bar, sweating a little through the sleeves of his well-worn pine-green flannel. He’d dragged himself to the annual fall harvest fundraiser only because the bar owner let him park his work trailer out back for free through fire season, and he owed the guy a favor. Three years out from his wife leaving him for a software sales rep in Sacramento, he’d mostly stopped showing up to community events, preferring to spend his off hours fixing up his old pickup or hiking the ridges outside town alone. His sister teased him constantly that his biggest flaw was convincing himself no one who didn’t know the acrid smell of a fire whirl up close could possibly have anything in common with him.
The bar was packed, air thick with grilled bratwurst, spiced cider, and cheap beer, the jukebox blaring old Merle Haggard between speeches from the local fire chief. He was halfway through his second draft, half paying attention to his old jump buddy’s story about a rookie who’d landed in a patch of poison oak last month, when he caught her staring. She leaned against the other side of the drink table, holding a paper cup of cider, a half-smile on her face, her knit sweater dotted with tiny stitched pinecones along the cuffs. He recognized her as the new part-time librarian who’d started in June, though he’d never spoken to her before. She held his eye contact for three full beats, longer than polite, before she took a sip of cider and looked away, like she knew exactly that she’d flustered him.
He felt his ears go pink, stupid, like a 16-year-old caught staring at a cheerleader in the high school cafeteria. He turned back to his friend, but couldn’t focus, his gaze drifting back to her every few seconds. Ten minutes later, she drifted through the crowd toward the napkin stack right next to him. They both reached for a napkin at the exact same time, their elbows brushing. Her skin was warm, and she smelled like cinnamon and old paper, the kind of smell that clung to the stacks of 1970s western novels he flipped through when he ducked into the library to post mitigation flyers every couple weeks. “You’re the guy who left those wildfire safety pamphlets for the after-school program last month, right?” she said, her voice low, a little rough from seasonal allergies, like she’d been hiking too. He nodded, surprised anyone had noticed he’d dropped those off.
They talked for forty minutes straight, no awkward lulls, leaning in closer and closer as the bar got noisier. She teased him for always ducking out of the library two minutes before closing, like he was scared she’d charge him a late fee even though he never checked out books. He teased her for putting cutesy fox stickers on the top of every one of his mitigation flyers before she hung them up on the library notice board. When a group of rowdy volunteer firefighters ran past, yelling about a 50/50 raffle win, one slammed into Manny’s shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. His hand flew out to steady them both, landing firm on her waist, his calloused fingers brushing the soft knit of her sweater. He froze, ready to apologize, ready for her to pull away, but she didn’t. She leaned into the touch for half a second, her own hand resting on his forearm, and he could feel the small callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages over the years.
He admitted he’d avoided most community events for three years, because he thought everyone would just see him as the grumpy guy who talked about wildfires too much, who didn’t know how to make small talk about football or pumpkin patches. She nodded, said she’d avoided all of them for a year after her husband died in a car crash two years prior, because she was sick of everyone looking at her like she was a broken thing that might shatter if you spoke too loud. The band set up by the door started playing a slow, wobbly cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” reworked for a slow dance. She nodded toward the tiny patch of cleared floor by the jukebox.
He hesitated for half a second, then took her hand, the rough calluses on his palms from years of holding parachute lines and chainsaws fitting perfectly against the softer spots of hers. They swayed off-beat, not talking much, her head almost resting on his shoulder, and he could smell the cider on her breath when she laughed at a guy who tripped over his own boots trying to dance with his 82-year-old grandma. When the song ended, she pulled back just enough to look up at him, her thumb brushing the thin scar on his jaw he’d gotten from a falling oak branch on a jump 12 years prior. He asked her if she wanted to get blueberry pancakes at the 24-hour diner off the highway after the fundraiser wrapped up. She laced her fingers through his, squeezing once, and said she’d love that.
