Roy Pritchard, 62, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, has spent the last eight years sticking to routines so rigid he could set his dented 1998 pocket watch by them. Coffee at 6 a.m. on his back porch, firewood split by noon every Sunday, monthly volunteer fire auxiliary meetings where he camps out in the back row and only speaks when someone asks a question about high-altitude suppression tactics. The town chili cookoff was a favor, not a social call, he’d told himself when the auxiliary head begged him to judge, and he’d showed up in his faded 2007 fire crew cap, scuffed work boots, the faint silvery burn scar snaking along his left jaw standing out against his sun-leathered skin.
He’s halfway through his third bowl of mediocre, cilantro-laced chili when the elbow hits him. Soft, warm, just hard enough to jostle his jaw, and he flinches before he can stop himself, not from pain—the scar stopped hurting a decade ago—but from the sudden shock of someone being that close to him without warning. He turns, ready to snap, and stops. Marnie Carter, 58, owner of the town’s only feed store, ex-wife of his old crew lead Jake, is holding a plastic water bottle in one hand, grinning like she knows she just caught him off guard. She smells like pine hand soap and roasted ancho chili, the same scent he remembers clinging to her flannel shirts at crew cookouts back in the early 2000s, when he’d catch himself staring at her across the picnic table before he’d force his eyes back to his plate, guilty as a kid stealing candy from the general store.
“Sorry about that,” she says, leaning in a little so he can hear her over the crowd of townspeople hooting at the costume contest going on near the stage. Her voice is lower than he remembers, rougher, from years of yelling over barking dogs and hauling 50-pound feed sacks up rickety porch steps. “These crowds are tighter than a new pair of work gloves. Figured I’d grab a water before I pass out from all the cumin fumes.” He snorts before he can stop himself. He’d forgotten she hates too much cumin, same as him. She nods at the half-eaten bowl of chili in front of him, the one so packed with cilantro he’d been debating dumping it when she bumped him. “Told the last contestant you can’t stand the stuff. She just rolled her eyes at me. Figured I’d save you the trouble.” She slides a white ceramic bowl across the table to him, and when their fingers brush, he feels the thick callus on her index finger, the same one she got branding cattle when she was 22, Jake had told him once. He stares at the bowl, steam curling up from the deep red chili, no flecks of green anywhere. “You made this?” She nods, leaning against the edge of the table, her hip a few inches from his knee. “Pulled it aside before I added the cilantro for everyone else. Remembered.”
They talk for an hour, after that. She teases him about still wearing that same beat up cap, the brim frayed at the corner where a falling tree branch clipped it during the 2011 Mesa fire. He teases her about still putting an extra shot of dark chocolate in her chili, a trick she’d bragged about back at those old cookouts that no one else ever seemed to pull off half as well. He tells her the story behind the missing tip of his right ring finger, the chainsaw accident that left him in the ER for three hours while Jake made fun of him for trying to cut a log too heavy for one person, and she laughs so hard she snorts, clapping a hand over her mouth like she’s embarrassed, and he laughs too, loud enough that a few people turn to stare, something he hasn’t done without a sharp twinge of guilt over his late wife since she passed from lung cancer eight years prior. For a second, the guilt nags at him, sharp and cold—he shouldn’t be this comfortable, shouldn’t be enjoying talking to another woman, especially not Marnie, who he’d thought was out of reach for so long, who was married to his friend once. But then she leans in again to tell him a story about Jake’s new girlfriend accidentally letting a goat loose in the feed store last month, and the guilt fades, replaced by a warm, buzzing feeling he hasn’t felt since he was 20 years old, nervous to ask a girl to the drive-in.
When the cookoff wraps up, volunteers packing up folding tables and turning off the string lights strung between the pine trees, she leans in, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and asks if he wants to drive up to the old lookout point, watch the sunset. He freezes. His first thought is no, that it’s wrong, that people will talk, that Jake will think he’s crossing a line, that his wife would roll in her grave if she saw him agreeing to go off with another woman alone. But then he looks at her, her hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of chili powder on her cheek, biting her lower lip like she’s worried he’ll say no, and he nods before he can overthink it.
Her old Ford pickup rumbles up the dirt road to the lookout, the seats worn soft from 15 years of use, dog hair sticking to the knees of his jeans, a half-empty bag of peppermints sitting in the cup holder. They sit on the tailgate once they get to the top, the valley stretching out below them, the air smelling like sagebrush and cold mountain air. She leans her shoulder against his, heavy and warm, and tells him she’s liked him for 20 years, that she always noticed how he’d hold the door open for the old ladies at the grocery store, how he’d stay late at crew trainings to help the new guys learn how to use their radios, that she never said anything because he was married, and she was married, and the timing was never right. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just stares out at the mesas turning pink and orange as the sun dips lower, then laces his fingers through hers. Her hand is warm, calloused, fits in his like it was made to.
They stay there until the sun dips below the horizon, the first stars pricking through the dark blue sky, before they climb back into the pickup to head down the mountain. She turns on the radio, an old George Strait song coming on, and she sings along off key, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. He glances over at her, the dashboard light gilding the edges of her gray-streaked hair, the smudge of chili powder still on her cheek, and he reaches over to brush it off with his thumb.
