Elias Voss is 62, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew supervisor, now restoring vintage crosscut saws out of his garage outside Missoula for private collectors. He’s kept every routine exactly the same since his wife Linda died eight years prior—same Tuesday meatloaf at the downtown diner, same 6am hike up Mount Sentinel, same unshakable rule against letting anyone new into his space, romantic or otherwise. He’d only signed up for the county fall craft fair because his niece begged him, said his hand-restored saws would sell fast to the tourist crowd passing through for elk hunting season. His booth is crammed between a guy selling custom tooled leather belt buckles and a woman with stacks of mason jars three high on folding tables, a chipped hand-painted sign reading MAREN’S FORAGED JAMS propped above her head.
The edge of her folding table sits 17 inches from his, he measures it at 9am when he’s setting up, because he likes knowing exactly how much space he has to work with. The first time they touch is an hour in, a golden retriever on a stretched retractable leash bolts between their booths, yanking its owner off balance, and Maren lurches forward to avoid getting knocked into her fragile jam display, her palm slamming into his left forearm to steady herself. Her skin is cold from hauling jars out of a cooler all morning, he feels the thick callus on the pad of her thumb from stirring 10-gallon pots of jam over a wood stove, and he yanks his arm back like he’s been burned, mumbles an apology even though it wasn’t his fault. She snorts, wipes her hand on her faded red plaid flannel, says no harm done, her balance has been garbage ever since she broke her ankle falling off a logging truck when she was 19.
He spends the next three hours sneaking glances at her when he thinks she’s not looking. He notices the faint pale scar slicing across her left cheekbone, the way she tucks a strand of silver-streaked auburn hair behind her ear when she’s explaining the difference between wild blackberry and mountain huckleberry jam to a customer, the way she laughs so hard at an old rancher’s off-color joke that she snorts, then claps a hand over her mouth like she’s embarrassed. The warm, spiced smell of her pear jam mixes with the pine resin he uses to seal the saw handles, and for a second he forgets he’s supposed to be mad at himself for noticing her. He’d spent eight years convincing himself any flicker of interest in another woman was a betrayal of Linda, that he was supposed to carry that loneliness forever, that that was the price of loving someone that hard. When a customer leaves a flyer for a local retired fire crew reunion on his table, he picks it up to toss it, and she leans over the gap between their tables, points at the Forest Service logo, says she remembers him and Linda bringing firewood out to her place off Miller Creek back in 2013, that Linda had brought her a jar of her own homemade peach jam when her mom died that same year.
The rain hits at 4pm, hard, fat cold drops that soak through the thin canvas canopy in 10 minutes flat. He’s rushing to wrap his saws in plastic sheeting, fumbling with the bungee cords because his fingers are numb with cold, and suddenly the rain stops hitting his back. He looks up, and she’s holding a heavy vinyl tarp over both him and his saws, her shoulder pressed tight to his, rain dripping off the brim of her worn Mariners baseball cap onto his wrist. She’s close enough that he can smell the pine soap she uses, the faint hint of vanilla lip balm, the damp wool of her coat. “You’re gonna catch your death out here loading that truck by yourself,” she says, her voice low, warm, no pity in it, just quiet observation. He opens his mouth to say he’s fine, that he doesn’t need help, that he’s got it handled, and then he looks at her, and she’s smiling, not pitying, not pushy, just like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, and the words die in his throat.
By the time they get his load tied down, both of them are soaked through to the skin, their jeans stiff with cold, water squelching in their work boots. She tucks a crumpled paper bag with two jars of spiced pear jam into his coat pocket, says she’s got a pot of venison stew simmering on her wood stove back at her place, that there’s enough for two if he wants to stop by, no strings attached, just warm food and a dry place to sit for a minute. He hesitates for half a second, thinks of Linda’s old peach jam jars lined up on his kitchen shelf, thinks of the empty chair across from his dinner table that’s been unoccupied for eight years, and nods. He follows her beat-up blue pickup down the rutted dirt road to her place, his tires kicking up mud behind him, and when he pulls into her gravel driveway, he sees three dented vintage crosscut saws propped against her porch rail, the blades rusted, the handles cracked, waiting to be fixed. He turns off the truck, sits there for a beat, and smiles, slow, like he’s been waiting to remember how to do it.
