Silas Voss, 63, spent 38 years maintaining hiking trails for the U.S. Forest Service before retiring two years prior, and he still carried the proof under his fingernails: crusted pine sap, dirt ground so deep into the quick it would never fully wash out. His flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, was that he’d hidden himself away in his off-grid cabin 20 miles outside Bend ever since his wife Ellen died of breast cancer in 2016, convinced any attention from anyone that wasn’t related to trail maintenance or ordering hardware was either pity or a setup for embarrassment. He showed up to the weekly Saturday farmers market at 8 a.m. sharp every week, before the crowds flooded in, stuck to his exact routine: one carnitas taco with extra cilantro, one horchata, no small talk, leave before 8:30.
The August sun was already sticky on the back of his neck when he grabbed his order from the taco stand, the paper wrapper crinkling in his calloused palm, when someone yelled his name from a few feet away. He turned too fast, his work boot catching on a loose cobblestone, and the horchata slipped out of his grip, splattering cold, cinnamon-sweet liquid all over the front of his faded gray Forest Service hoodie and the cuffs of his work jeans. He cursed under his breath, already fumbling for the crumpled pack of napkins in his pocket, when a shadow fell over his shoes.
Lila Marquez ran the hot sauce booth two stalls down, had for four years, and Silas had made a point of never looking her in the eye for longer than half a second. She was 38, sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a braid dotted with chili pepper hair clips, her arms crisscrossed with tiny burn scars from grinding smoked peppers over open flame, and the old biddies running the jam stand across the way loved to whisper about how she’d never married, how she “liked older men.” Silas had written that off as small town garbage, until she knelt down in front of him, dabbing at the horchata splatters on his boot with a stack of heavy paper napkins, her shoulder brushing his knee as she leaned in.
He froze, his brain short-circuiting between the urge to step back and tell her he didn’t need help, and the sharp, unexpected jolt of wanting her to stay. She smelled like smoked paprika and lime, the kind of scent that sticks to your clothes long after you leave a cookout, and when she looked up at him, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, he felt his face flush. He hadn’t blushed like that since he was 16 and asked Ellen to prom.
“Relax, I don’t bite,” she said, wiping a stray fleck of taco grease off the toe of his boot before she stood, holding out a cold glass bottle of horchata to replace the one he’d spilled. “I keep a case under the booth for when I spill salsa on myself. Figured you’d need it more.”
Silas stared at the bottle, then at her, his throat tight. He’d spent seven years convincing himself he didn’t deserve to feel anything that wasn’t quiet, predictable, safe, that looking at a woman 25 years his junior made him some kind of creep, that the gossip would be worse than the loneliness. He could see the jam stand ladies out of the corner of his eye, leaning on their cane to get a better look, and he almost turned and walked away, until Lila laughed, soft, and tapped the side of the bottle.
“I never got to thank you, you know,” she said, shifting closer, her arm brushing his when she reached to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “My sister was on that Three Sisters fire crew in 2020, the one that got trapped when the wind shifted. You’re the one that led them out to the fire break. I’ve been leaving you a free jar of my smoked habanero sauce at the taco stand every week for three months. You always leave before Carlos can hand it to you.”
Silas’s chest went tight. He remembered that fire, the way the smoke had turned the sky orange for three weeks, the girl with the same crinkly hazel eyes that had cried when they got her out of the tree line. He’d never thought anyone other than the fire crew had even noticed what he’d done. She held out a mason jar labeled with her handwritten logo, the glass warm from sitting in the sun, and when their fingers brushed as he took it, he didn’t pull away. The calluses on her hands were almost as rough as his, from hauling boxes of peppers and grinding sauce by hand, and the contact sent a shock up his arm that he hadn’t felt in years.
He didn’t care about the jam stand ladies, or the gossip, or the voice in the back of his head that said he was too old, too broken, too still in love with Ellen to be talking to this woman. He wanted to know what her laugh sounded like when she wasn’t being polite, what her favorite trail was, if she liked the same old country he listened to when he was clearing fallen trees off the trail.
“You got plans after the market closes?” he asked, surprising even himself.
Lila smiled, slow, and tucked her phone number into the breast pocket of his hoodie, her fingers lingering for half a second against his chest. “Just need to load up my truck. There’s a dive bar on the edge of town that serves fried pickles so good they’ll make you forget your own name. Meet me there at 4?”
Silas nodded, tucking the jar of hot sauce into his cooler next to the six pack of IPA he’d picked up on the way into town. He walked back to his beat up Ford F-150, the taco still warm in his other hand, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t rush to get back to the quiet of his cabin. He sat in the parking lot for 10 minutes, twisting the lid of the hot sauce jar open and shut, the smell of smoked peppers filling the cab, and smiled when he saw Lila wave at him from across the market.
