Manny Ruiz is 59, spent 27 years with the U.S. Forest Service fighting wildfires across the northern Rockies, now runs a one-man wildfire mitigation crew out of a beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 he fixed up himself after his wife Maria passed eight years prior. His biggest flaw, as his late sister nagged him about, is that he’s convinced any softness is a betrayal of the 22 years he had with Maria, so he turns down every dinner invitation, every set-up, every quiet offer of company from the widows at the church he only attends on Christmas Eve. He’d swung by the Missoula summer street fair on a lark that Saturday, still dusty from clearing brush off a 10-acre property up the Bitterroot that morning, fire-retardant work shirt tucked under a faded red flannel, work boots caked in pine duff. He was third in line for the smoked brisket sandwich stand when he smelled jasmine.
The woman stepped close behind him to avoid a kid darting past with a cotton candy stick as big as his head, her shoulder brushing the thick muscle of his bicep, and she mumbled an apology, warm breath fanning the back of his neck. He turned, recognized her instantly: Lena, 48, Mrs. Henderson’s niece from Portland, the one who’d moved in three months prior to help her aunt recover from knee replacement surgery. He’d carried two cases of bottled water up to Mrs. Henderson’s porch for her back in June, had avoided eye contact then because the second she smiled at him he’d felt a jolt low in his gut that made him feel like a teenager sneaking a beer behind the football stands, guilty and giddy all at once. Today there was a smudge of blueberry pie on her left cheek, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single strand of silver, ink stains smudged across the pads of her fingers from handling the used books she sold for a living back in Oregon.
She laughed when he pointed out the pie smudge, reaching for a napkin at the same time he did, their hands brushing in the space between them. His were crisscrossed with thin scars from falling branches and stray embers, calloused from hauling hose and swinging a Pulaski for decades, hers soft, warm, the tip of her ring finger rough from turning thousands of book pages. He handed her the napkin, held it for a beat longer than he needed to when she took it, and she held his eye contact, hazel eyes flecked with gold, no awkward look away, no forced casual grin, just a quiet, knowing little tilt of her head. She said she’d been meaning to drop a book off at his place for weeks, had spotted his shelf of vintage A.B. Guthrie novels through the kitchen window when she’d brought over the oatmeal raisin cookies her aunt baked for him after he cleared the dead pine off her roof last month.
His first instinct was to make an excuse, say he was swamped with work, say he didn’t have time to read, say anything that would let him bolt back to his empty cabin in the woods where he didn’t have to feel that split second of want warring with the sharp twist of guilt in his chest, the stupid, persistent voice in his head saying he didn’t get to be happy, not after Maria was gone. But then she mentioned she’d found a first edition of *The Big Sky* at a garage sale the week prior, the same book Maria had given him for their first anniversary, and he couldn’t make himself lie. He told her he’d love to have it, and she grinned, bright enough that the edge of that guilt softened just a little.
They danced through two songs, his hand on the small of her back, her other hand laced in his, no awkward steps, no overthinking, just the soft thrum of the music and the warm press of her body against his. When the set ended, the crowd cheered, and she didn’t let go of his hand. She asked him if he wanted to drive out to the diner on the edge of town after the fair, get a chocolate milkshake and look at that first edition book she had in her truck. He said yes, no hesitation, no internal argument, no voice in his head yelling that he was doing something wrong. She tucked her free hand into the crook of his arm as they walked toward the parking lot, her shoulder pressed against his side, the sun dipping low over the Rattlesnake Mountains painting the sky streaks of tangerine and lavender, and he didn’t let go of her hand.
