Rafe Mendez, 62, spent 28 years as a smokejumper before retiring to run a one-man wildfire mitigation consulting firm out of his garage outside Sisters, Oregon. He’d avoided the annual county fire safety fair for seven straight years, but owed the sheriff a favor after the man helped him pull his stuck ATV out of a mudslide the previous spring, so he’d dragged his booth of pamphlets and charred wood samples out at 6 a.m. that Saturday, already wearing the permanent scowl he reserved for small-town community events.
The air smelled like fried Oreos, pine, and diesel fumes from the parked fire trucks, the speakers blaring 90s country so loud he could feel the bass thrum through the soles of his work boots. He was half-asleep leaning against the folding table when Elara Voss stepped up to his booth, and his first thought was that he didn’t have the energy to make small talk with another local who’d ask invasive questions about his dead wife. She was 48, the new county extension agent who’d moved to town three months prior, sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a frayed braid, work boots caked in mud, a tiny chainsaw scar wrapping around her left wrist that made his own matching scar tingle.
She leaned in close to be heard over the music, her shoulder brushing his bicep, the warm scent of lavender and pine pitch drifting off her sun-warmed skin. “Your pamphlet on defensible space is the only one that doesn’t treat landowners like they’re too stupid to operate a chainsaw,” she yelled, nodding at the stack in front of him. He blinked, not expecting the compliment, and when he handed her a copy his fingers brushed hers, calloused from decades of felling trees and hauling gear, cold from the iced seltzer she was holding. He pulled his hand back fast, heat creeping up his neck, annoyed at himself for even noticing how the corner of her mouth crinkled when she smiled.
They talked for 20 minutes over the roar of the crowd, her leaning in every time he spoke, never looking away when he mentioned the 2017 fire that burned 10 acres of his own property, never flinching when he offhandedly mentioned his wife Lila’s crash a few years prior. She told him she’d lost her partner, a logger, in a falling tree accident five years back, that she’d moved to Oregon from Montana to get away from the constant pitying looks from people who thought she should be “over it” by now. Rafe found himself leaning in too, his shoulder pressed to hers for longer than necessary when a group of kids ran past, jostling the table.
When the fair wrapped up at 6 p.m., she asked if he wanted a beer at The Ponderosa Tap down the street, and he said yes before he could talk himself out of it. The bar was dim, sticky peanut shells crunching under their boots, the jukebox playing old Johnny Cash at a volume that didn’t make his ears ring. They slid into a vinyl booth in the back, the table so small their knees knocked together every time one of them shifted, and he didn’t move his leg away when hers stayed pressed to his calf. He teased her about the flat seltzer she’d handed him earlier that day, she teased him back about the grumpy scowl he’d worn when a group of 10-year-olds begged to hold his old smokejumper helmet.
He spent the first hour fighting a quiet war with himself, half disgusted that he was even enjoying the company of a woman who wasn’t Lila, half giddy at the way she laughed at his bad jokes about fire crew pranks, the way she held eye contact like she actually cared what he had to say. He’d forgotten what it felt like to talk to someone who didn’t treat him like a walking memorial to his dead wife, someone who got the quiet, constant weight of grief that never fully goes away.
When she reached across the table to wipe a smudge of fried Oreo dust off his cheek, her thumb lingering on the stubble of his jawline for half a second, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away. The hum of the bar faded out for a beat, and he admitted he’d almost skipped the fair entirely, that he’d spent eight years hiding in his house, avoiding every event that required talking to people, convinced even a casual conversation with another woman was a betrayal. She nodded, like she knew exactly what he meant, and said she’d spent three months avoiding the bar too, scared the locals would start gossiping if she so much as had a drink with a man who wasn’t a coworker.
They walked out to the parking lot an hour later, dusk painting the sky pink and orange over the Cascade foothills, crickets humming in the grass along the sidewalk. She leaned against the passenger door of his beat-up Ford F-150, her shoulder brushing his, and he didn’t make any awkward moves to kiss her, didn’t fumble through an invitation to come back to his house. He just asked if she wanted to come with him the next weekend to map out a new defensible space trail in the national forest, the one he’d been working on alone for six months, and she said yes, no hesitation, no awkward pause.
He watched her drive away in her dented green Subaru, her braid visible through the rear window as she turned onto the highway, the corner of his mouth tugging up in a smile he hadn’t felt in nearly a decade.
