Rafe Mendez, 57, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before a shredded ACL from a 2020 jump in the Bitterroot Range forced his early retirement. Now he builds custom fly rods out of a cinder block workshop on 12 wooded acres outside Missoula, and he’s spent the eight years since his ex-wife moved to Portland treating casual small talk like a wildfire he can stamp out before it spreads. He’d fully planned to skip the town’s annual fall chili cookoff until his 72-year-old neighbor left a crockpot of his famous hatch green chili on his porch at 7 a.m. with a note scrawled in neon marker saying if he didn’t bring it, she’d tell every one of his out-of-state clients he’s allergic to fun. He showed up an hour late, in a well-worn Carhartt flannel dotted with epoxy stains, scuffed work boots, the thin scar snaking up his left jaw pale against the faint sunburn he’d picked up fishing the day before.
He’s halfway through handing a sample of chili to a kid in a camo hat when someone bumps his shoulder hard enough to slosh a spoonful of green chili down his sleeve. He turns, ready to snap, and comes face to face with Elara Voss, the new county public health inspector who’d written him up three weeks prior for leaving a half-empty mug of black coffee on his workbench next to the rod blanks he sells to walk-in clients, saying it violated food service protocol for the small complimentary coffee bar he runs for regulars. She’s in a cream cashmere sweater that looks too soft for the 50-degree crisp October air, dark jeans tucked into scuffed cowboy boots, a smudge of red chili on her left cheek. She laughs, low and warm, grabs a crumpled napkin from the stack on the table, dabs at the chili on his sleeve first before she wipes the smudge off her own cheek, her knuckles brushing his jaw by accident, warm and soft, nothing like the sharp, no-nonsense tone she’d used when she’d walked through his workshop a month prior.
He teases her first, saying he figured she’d be here writing up every grandmother who forgot to wear a hairnet while serving chili to the local kids. She snorts, leans in so her shoulder presses solidly against his, and he can smell lavender shampoo and a hint of bourbon on her breath, says she’s off the clock, and she’d only written him up because the previous owner of his workshop had a rat infestation that got three people sick back in 2021, and she’d wanted to make sure he wasn’t cutting corners the same way. He blinks, no one had ever told him that. He’d spent the last three weeks complaining to every client that the new health inspector was a power-hungry stick in the mud, and he suddenly feels stupid for it. She grabs a small sample cup of his green chili, takes a bite, moans quiet enough only he can hear, says it’s better than the chili her dad used to make when she was a kid growing up on a cattle ranch outside Bozeman.
They wander away from the main crowd, sit at a splintered picnic table at the edge of the field, their knees brushing under the table every time one of them shifts. She tells him she’s divorced, two kids in college in Colorado, moved to Missoula six months prior because she got sick of the chaos of the Denver city health department, tired of writing up restaurants for violations that never got fixed. He tells her about the smokejumping days, the jump that shredded his knee, the fly rod business he built from scratch in his first year of retirement, how he’d taught himself to carve the custom handles out of reclaimed cedar from fallen national forest trees. The sun dips lower, turns the sky pink and tangerine, and the crowd thins out as people pack up their crockpots and haul folding chairs back to their trucks.
She leans forward, elbows on her knees, and a strand of dark hair falls in her face, she tucks it behind her ear, holds eye contact with him for three full beats, no smirk, no sharp remark, just soft, and asks if he’d mind showing her that workshop of his later. She adds, quiet, that she’s been curious about the fly rods, and she’d rather not deal with the small town gossip if they leave together from the cookoff, so she’ll follow him home in her truck in 10 minutes, if he’s interested. He doesn’t even hesitate, says yes, hands her a folded slip of paper with his address scrawled on it in pencil, his calloused fingers brushing hers when he passes it over.
He waits 10 minutes exactly like they agreed, drives slowly back to his property, leaves the garage door cracked open so she knows where to pull in. He’s leaning against the workbench inside, sipping a cold IPA, when he hears her truck pull up the gravel drive, sees her boots hit the ground through the open door, the porch light gilding the edges of her hair as she walks toward him.
