Jaxson “Jax” Roarke is 61, spent 34 years as a wildlife biologist for the National Park Service, tracking black bear populations across the southern Appalachians before he retired three years prior. His biggest flaw, one his two grown kids nag him about every Sunday call, is that he’s shut himself off from any new connection since his wife Diane died of ovarian cancer eight years ago. He still sleeps on his side of the bed, keeps her chipped ceramic coffee mug on the counter next to his, and writes down little notes he thinks she’d find funny, tucking them into the spine of her dog-eared 1998 hiking guide. He avoids church entirely, still bitter at the minister who spoke at her funeral, droning on about God’s plan like losing the woman he’d loved since he was 19 was some sort of intentional gift.
He’s manning a booth at the small town fall festival outside Gatlinburg on a crisp October Saturday, selling the hand-carved bear figurines he whittles in his workshop behind his cabin, when she walks up. He spots the scuffed steel-toe work boots first, caked in hay and mud, then the faded red flannel layered over a plain white tee, then the small white clergy collar tucked at her neck. He tenses immediately, already bracing for some prying question about if he’s found a new church home, if he’s “healed” yet.
She leans in over the folding table, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she cranes to look at the smallest carving on the display, a two-inch bear cub with a minnow clamped in its jaws. He smells pine soap and cinnamon gum, the faint tang of spiked apple cider on her breath, and he has to fight the urge to lean away. Her left hand, nails chipped with navy polish, no wedding band in sight, taps the edge of the cub’s wooden base. “How much for this one? My nephew’s obsessed with bears, carries a tattered stuffed one everywhere he goes.”
Her voice is low, no performative warm lilt he’s come to expect from church folks, just rough around the edges, like she spends half her time yelling over mountain wind or chainsaws. He grunts, tells her ten bucks, avoids eye contact, wiping sawdust off his worn Carhartt jeans. “I saw you back in May, y’know,” she says, and he blinks, looks up at her finally. Hazel eyes, freckles across her nose, a small scar slicing through her left eyebrow. “You pulled that bear cub out of the drainage culvert off 321. I was there with the youth group picking up litter, watched you growl at that teen who tried to reach through the guardrail to pet it. Thought you were gonna bite his head off. Was hilarious.”
He snorts before he can stop himself, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t pulled out in months. “Little shit was gonna get his arm ripped off. Momma was 20 yards up in the oak, just waiting. I wasn’t gonna let him turn himself into a cautionary tale.” He leans forward a little, elbows on the table, and their knees knock under the edge. He feels the heat of her calf through the thin fabric of her jeans, and his chest tightens, a sharp twist of guilt mixed with something lighter, warmer, he hasn’t felt in years.
Lila, she’d introduced herself ten minutes prior, nods, not defensive at all, leans back against the table leg next to him, their shoulders pressed together now, no accidental brush this time. “I quit my first church gig over that exact garbage,” she says. “My senior pastor made me tell a 28 year old widow whose husband died in a logging accident that it was all part of God’s plan. Told him to go fuck himself, packed my bags, moved here three weeks later.”
He barks out a laugh, so loud a couple walking by glance over at them. He doesn’t care. When the festival closes an hour later, the sun dipping low over the mountains, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she asks if he wants to split a fried apple pie from the food truck at the edge of the parking lot. He hesitates for half a second, the voice in his head yelling that he’s betraying Diane, then the quieter voice, the one that sounds exactly like her, telling him to stop being an idiot, to live a little, wins out. He says yes.
They walk across the muddy parking lot, and she slips her hand into his, calloused palm fitting against his like it was made to be there. He doesn’t pull away. They sit on the tailgate of his beat up 2001 Ford F-150, eating the warm pie, sugar sticking to their fingers, and she wipes a crumb off his chin with her thumb, slow, like she’s making sure he’s okay with it. He doesn’t flinch. He tells her he’s got a half-carved mother bear in his workshop, that he’s been stuck on the curve of her face for weeks, asks if she wants to come over tomorrow to look at it. She says she’d like that, a lot. A cool wind picks up, and she leans into his side, her head resting light on his shoulder, and he wraps his arm around her waist, holding her there, no guilt, no hesitation, just the quiet, unexpected hum of something good.
