Rafe Marquez, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew superintendent, slouched in a sticky plastic folding chair at the annual Bend Fire Department chili cookoff, pretended to scribble notes on his judging sheet while the guy next to him droned on about the county’s new senior speed dating night. He’d spent the last eight years deliberately avoiding any event that smelled like setups, still convinced dating after his wife Elaina died of breast cancer was some kind of betrayal, a cheap replacement for the 32 years they’d had together. His biggest flaw, as his only remaining coworker had pointed out last Christmas, was that he’d turned being a widower into a personality trait, too stubborn to let anyone else even sit at his kitchen table for dinner.
He’d just choked down a bite of over-salted beef chili when a woman leaned past him to grab a stack of sample cups off the edge of his table, her denim work shirt brushing his bare forearm for half a second. She smelled like roasted green chile and lavender lip balm, and when she turned to apologize, he recognized her immediately: Clara Hart, Jimmie Hart’s little sister, the girl who’d dumped a bucket of lake water on his head when he made fun of her training wheels back in 1978. She was 58 now, gray streaks cutting through her dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, work boots caked in mud, a smudge of chile sauce on her left cheek. He’d heard she’d spent the last 20 years doing forest restoration work in New Mexico, hadn’t known she was back in town.
She laughed when he said he still had the faded t-shirt she’d soaked through that day, leaning against the table across from him, her knee brushing his under the edge when she shifted her weight. She’d entered a chile verde in the contest, she said, made with hatch chiles she’d driven down to New Mexico to pick herself two weeks prior. He snuck an extra bite of it when the other judges weren’t looking, the heat lingering on his tongue long after he’d swallowed, and when she caught him he just shrugged, told her it was the only entry here that didn’t taste like canned beans and regret.
The conflict snuck up on him slow, the same way wildfires used to creep through dry underbrush before he even saw the flames. He kept finding excuses to talk to her, asking about her work, about Jimmie, about the camping trips they’d all taken as teens, and every time their hands brushed reaching for the same sour cream jug or the same bottle of water, he felt a jolt he hadn’t felt since Elaina was still alive, a warmth that spread from his fingertips up to his chest. He hated it at first, disgusted with himself for noticing how her jeans fit, how she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear when she laughed, how she held eye contact for a beat longer than most people did. Jimmie had been his friend off and on for 40 years, had explicitly told every guy in their old crew to leave Clara alone back when they were teens, said she was too smart to waste time on any of their dumb firefighter bullshit. Rafe felt like he was breaking a dozen unspoken rules, like he was cheating on Elaina even though he’d never so much as bought another woman a cup of coffee since she died.
He was half a second from making an excuse to leave when she won first place for her chile verde, holding up the cheap plastic trophy over her head, whooping so loud the bluegrass band off to the side paused for a second. She walked straight over to him when she was done posing for photos, holding a cold six pack of the IPA he used to drink back in the 90s, the same one he kept in his fridge at home. She said she’d heard he still had keys to the old Cascadia Lookout, the fire tower he’d manned for three summers early in his career, asked if he wanted to drive up with her to watch the sunset. She’d been wanting to see the view for years, she said, and no one else she knew had access.
He hesitated for a full ten seconds, staring at the six pack in her hand, thinking about Jimmie, thinking about the empty cabin waiting for him, the stack of unread fire history books on his coffee table, the silence that had become his default. Then he nodded, grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair.
The dirt road up to the lookout was bumpy, dust kicking up behind his beat up Ford F-150, and she sang along to the old Johnny Cash CD he had stuck in the player, rolling the window down so the wind blew her braid loose. He glanced over at her every few minutes, noticing the small scar on her left cheek from when she’d fallen off her bike when she was 15, the accident he’d driven her to the ER for, back when Jimmie was too drunk to get behind the wheel.
The lookout was exactly how he remembered it, the wooden railings weathered gray from years of rain and snow, the valley spread out below them, pine trees stretching for miles until they blurred into the Cascade peaks on the horizon. They sat on the old wooden bench outside the tower, passing the beers back and forth, as the sky turned pink then orange then soft purple. She told him she was moving back to Bend permanently, tired of New Mexico’s dust storms, missed the smell of pine after it rained, missed the people she’d grown up with.
She leaned into him after a few minutes, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep, and he tensed for half a second before he relaxed, letting the weight of her settle against him. She took his calloused, scarred hand in hers, her own palm soft but rough at the edges from years of planting saplings, lacing their fingers together. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand and watched the last sliver of sun sink below the snow-capped peaks, painting the sky streaks of deep red and gold.
