Rafe Mendez, 62, spent 34 years as a U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, retired three years back, has a scar slicing across his left eyebrow from a 2017 blaze that jumped the containment line he’d monitored for 72 hours straight. His biggest flaw: he holds grudges so tight his knuckles stay white for decades. For 18 years, he’d avoided the town’s annual summer street fair, all because of a lie his late wife’s cousin had spread at their 2005 Fourth of July cookout, claiming he’d slept with Rafe’s wife while Rafe was out on a two-week fire assignment. Rafe never bothered to ask his wife about it before she died of a sudden heart attack six months later, just cut every person tied to that cousin out of his life entirely.
This year, his 10-year-old granddaughter begged him to enter his famous hickory-smoked brisket in the fair’s barbecue contest, so he caved. He’s sweating through his faded forest service t-shirt, wiping the back of his neck with a crumpled paper napkin, when his elbow knocks a plastic cup of iced peach tea out of someone’s hand. Half the cup spills onto their high-waisted linen capris, leaving dark, splotchy stains across the left thigh.
He starts to apologize, then freezes when he looks up. It’s Elara Voss, 58, his ex-cousin-in-law, the woman who’d been married to that piece of trash who lied about his wife. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, not since the cousin’s 50th birthday party he’d showed up to just to yell at the guy and leave. She’s got streaks of silver in her dark wavy hair, pulled back in a messy braid, a smattering of freckles across her nose that he’d never noticed before. She laughs, bright and warm, not mad at all. “Relax, Rafe. These pants were thrifted. The stain looks like the Big Dipper, if you squint.”
She steps closer, leaning in to sniff the brisket resting on the folding table behind him, and her bare shoulder brushes his sun-warmed bicep. He can smell coconut sunscreen and peppermint gum on her breath, over the thick smell of smoked meat and the bluegrass band playing off the main stage 50 feet away. “That smells better than any of the dry, over-salted crap the other guys are serving,” she says, holding his gaze for three beats too long, the corner of her mouth tilted up in a smirk that makes his ears go hot. He fumbles the metal tongs he’s holding, and they clatter onto the table.
He’s still frozen, half ready to mumble another apology and turn away, when she says she left that cousin 10 years back. Found three different women’s text threads on his phone, plus a receipt for a hotel room in Denver the weekend he claimed he was with Rafe’s wife. She’d been trying to tell Rafe the truth for years, but he’d always ducked into the grocery store’s back aisle when he saw her, or sped past her on the main road like she was a speed trap.
His throat feels tight. He’s spent 18 years hating a ghost, hating her by association, and all that anger feels like it’s melting off him in the 90-degree heat. She leans against the tent pole next to him, crossing her ankles, and tells him she always loved driving past the old fire lookout tower he still maintains on the ridge west of town, wondered what the view was like up there at sunset. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just watches a group of kids run past chasing a cotton candy vendor, the sticky sweet smell drifting over them.
When the contest announcer calls his name for second place, he grins before he can stop himself, turning to look for her first before he even walks up to get his $75 gift card to the local hardware store. She’s holding a jar of dill pickles she won at the ring toss booth, waving it at him like it’s a trophy. When he gets back to the tent, he takes a pickle she holds out to him, and she wipes a smudge of brisket rub off the edge of his jaw with her thumb, her skin soft and cool against his stubble. He doesn’t flinch.
He asks her if she wants to skip the rest of the fair, drive up to the lookout. He’s got a cooler of cold beer in the back of his old beat-up 2002 Ford F-150, the one with the forest service decal still peeling off the door. She says yes immediately, no hesitation, no mention of the gossiping neighbors that are already glancing over at them from the next tent over.
They walk to his truck together, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the sound of the fair fading behind them as they turn onto the dirt road leading up the ridge. He rolls the windows down, and the smell of pine and wild sage blows through the cab, mixing with her coconut sunscreen. She rests her hand on the center console, palm up, her fingers slightly curled. He glances over at her, then laces his calloused, scarred fingers through hers, no big speech, no over-the-top declaration. The sun dips lower over the mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender, and he turns onto the final stretch of dirt road leading up to the lookout.
