Rafe Ortega, 62, retired wildland fire crew foreman, stood propped against a splintered cedar fence post at the county volunteer fire department chili cookoff, paper bowl of green chili sweating in his left hand. He’d only shown up because three of his old crew members had banged on his front door at 2 p.m. and threatened to haul him out by his boot laces if he didn’t stop hiding out on his 40-acre property. For eight years, ever since his wife Marisol died, he’d avoided every community event within a 20-mile radius, convinced that letting himself have fun, let alone feel anything like interest in another person, was a betrayal he couldn’t stomach. That was his flaw, the thing his friends ribbed him for constantly: he’d turned himself into a hermit so focused on honoring the past he was missing the present entirely.
He was already mentally mapping the drive home, planning to crack open a beer and watch old westerns by 7, when he spotted Clara Bennett across the fairground lot. She was the new county extension agent, the woman he’d met three times in the last three months to go over fire mitigation plans for the ponderosa pines on his land. She never wore anything but a crisp navy blazer and slacks to those meetings, hair pulled so tight into a bun he’d wondered if it gave her headaches. Today she was in faded sand-colored Carhartts, steel-toe boots caked in red clay from checking rangeland fire breaks earlier that day, hair loose down her back, silver streaks catching the late August sun like thin strands of tinsel. She waved when she saw him, and he lifted his beer in acknowledgement before he could think better of it.
She cut through the crowd easily, dodging kids chasing each other with snow cones and old guys arguing over whose chili had won last year, and stopped so close to him when she reached the fence that her shoulder brushed his bicep when she leaned back against the post. The George Strait cover band playing near the food trucks dipped into a slow, twangy version of “Amarillo by Morning,” and the hum of the crowd faded just enough that he could smell her when she sighed: pine sap, peppermint lip balm, a faint hint of diesel from the county truck she drove. He’d grabbed two lemonades from the drink table earlier, thinking his buddy would show up, so he held one out to her. When she took it, her fingers brushed his, and he felt the rough callus on her index finger, the kind you get from gripping a soil probe eight hours a day.
“Figured you’d be holed up on your land,” she said, grinning, and took a long sip of lemonade. She didn’t step back, even when a group of rowdy teen volunteer firefighters ran past, yelling so loud they made the paper cups on the fence rail rattle. She stumbled a little when one of them knocked into her shoulder, pressing into his side for half a second before she caught herself, and he could feel the heat of her through his worn flannel shirt. He told himself he was being a stupid old man, that he had no business noticing how her eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed at his joke about the chili being so spicy it could put out a 10-acre grass fire, that the twist of guilt in his gut was well deserved. For a second he almost made an excuse to leave, told himself he had a fence to fix first thing in the morning, that he didn’t have time to hang around.
Instead he found himself asking if she wanted to walk down to the creek behind the fairgrounds, get away from the noise for a minute. He expected her to say no, expected her to laugh it off and go back to talking to the ranchers she’d been with earlier. She nodded immediately, wiping a smudge of chili off her chin with the back of her hand.
They walked slow down the dirt path to the creek, gravel crunching under their boots, the air smelling like cut alfalfa and the faint, sharp scent of sage coming off the hills to the west. The sound of the band faded the further they got from the fairgrounds, replaced by the gurgle of the creek and the chirp of meadowlarks in the brush. She sat on a flat, sun-warmed limestone rock half a foot from the water, and patted the spot next to her. He sat, and their knees knocked together when he shifted to get comfortable, neither of them moving away.
“I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to ask you to go fly fishing with me for weeks,” she said, picking up a smooth flat rock and skipping it across the creek. It skittered three times before sinking. “Thought you hated me, honestly. You were always so stiff in our meetings, like you couldn’t wait to get out of the room.”
He huffed a laugh, rubbing the scar across his left cheek, the one he’d gotten from a falling ponderosa branch during the 2003 Yellowstone fires. “Didn’t hate you. Was just being an idiot. Spent so long convinced I wasn’t allowed to feel anything good for anyone else after Marisol died, I forgot how to talk to people like a normal human being.” The words came out easier than he expected, no catch in his throat, no twist of guilt so sharp it made his chest hurt. For the first time in eight years, it didn’t feel like he was betraying anyone by saying it.
They sat there for almost an hour, talking about nothing important: the best spots to catch cutthroat trout in the mountains, the idiot who’d lit a campfire in the middle of a burn ban two weeks prior, the terrible 90s country CDs she kept in her work truck. The sun dipped lower, painting the sky pink and orange, and a cool breeze picked up off the water, making her shiver a little. He untied the faded gray flannel he’d had wrapped around his waist and handed it to her. She put it on, sleeves falling past her wrists, and grinned when she rolled them up. It smelled like pine smoke and the lemon scented laundry detergent he used, the same one Marisol had always liked.
When she turned to look at him, she was close enough that he could see the tiny freckles across her nose, the gold flecks in her hazel eyes. She didn’t say anything, just leaned in slow, and he didn’t pull away when her lips touched his. The kiss was soft at first, peppermint from her lip balm mixing with the faint residual heat of chili and beer on his tongue, and he reached up to brush a strand of hair off her face, his calloused fingers grazing her cheek.
He pulled back after a minute, and she was still smiling, no awkwardness, no pressure, just the same easy grin she’d had when she walked up to him at the fence. He laced his fire-scarred fingers through hers, and didn’t let go when they stood up to walk back to the cookoff.
