Ronen Voss, 62, retired wildland fire foreman, leaned against a weathered cedar post at the Newport Beer Garden’s annual firefighter appreciation night, scuffing the toe of his steel-toe boot through loose wood chips. His daughter had all but blackmailed him into attending, threatening to stop bringing his granddaughter around for weekend fishing trips if he kept “holing up like a bear in a den all winter.” He’d already planned his escape route an hour prior, one hand curled around a half-drunk hazy IPA, the other stuffed in the pocket of his frayed canvas work jacket dotted with old fire crew patches.
The air smelled like pine smoke and fermented grain and grilled meat, 90s Alan Jackson playing low over the outdoor speakers, the chatter of off-duty firefighters and their families wrapping around him like a blanket he didn’t want to wear. He’d almost turned to leave when he heard his name called over the noise, sharp and warm, from the open window of the smoked salmon taco truck parked 10 feet away.
He’d ordered a single taco 15 minutes prior, half out of boredom, half to avoid making small talk with a group of young city firefighters who kept glancing at his crew patches. The woman leaning out the window was around his age, sun lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes, a faded wolf tattoo curling around her left forearm, a smudge of dill sauce on the edge of her navy flannel sleeve. When she held the paper plate out to him, their fingers brushed—hers cold from handling tubs of sour cream and pickled red onion, his calloused from 30 years of gripping chainsaws and fire hoses. She held eye contact for a full beat longer than casual, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth when she spotted the 2017 Cascades Fire patch sewn to his chest.
He stayed to eat the taco, leaning back against that same cedar post, and before he knew what he was doing he was walking back to the truck for a second. Her name was Marnie, she said, 58, retired park ranger, widowed six years, ran the taco truck three nights a week to stay busy. She’d been on detail for that same 2017 fire, she said, holding up her right wrist to show him a thin, pale scar slicing across the bone, courtesy of a falling ponderosa pine branch.
The crowd thinned as dusk crept in, the sky turning soft pink and orange over the bay, the air biting cold enough that Ronen could see his breath when he laughed at a story she told about chasing a group of drunk campers away from a fire restriction zone three weeks before that 2017 blaze. For the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel like the ghost of his late wife Elaine was sitting on his shoulder, judging him for enjoying himself with someone new. He’d spent so long convincing himself that wanting any kind of connection after she was gone was selfish, disgusting even, that the warm hum of attraction curling in his chest felt both foreign and long overdue.
When she locked up the truck’s service window an hour later, she wiped her hands on her jeans, nodded toward the gravel lot behind the beer garden, and said she had a bottle of rye stashed in the back of her beat-up F150 if he wanted to stick around a little longer. He hesitated for half a second, his daughter’s teasing warning about “cringe old guys hitting on people at community events” ringing in his ears, but he nodded before he could talk himself out of it.
They sat on the tailgate of her truck, passing the rye bottle back and forth, the faint sound of waves crashing against the nearby dock mixing with the distant hum of traffic on the coastal highway. She shivered after 10 minutes, and he shrugged off his wool work jacket, draping it over her shoulders, their shoulders pressing together when she leaned into his side to ward off the chill. When she brushed a fleck of cedar bark off his cheek, her thumb brushing the raised scar across his left cheekbone, he didn’t flinch—no one had touched that scar since Elaine had cleaned it for him in the hospital after the fire.
They talked until the last of the beer garden’s string lights flickered off, the only light coming from the soft glow of the streetlight at the edge of the lot. She hopped off the tailgate, fished a crumpled napkin and a ballpoint pen out of her jacket pocket, scribbled her number down, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his canvas jacket, patting the spot gently with her palm. She said she was set up at the beer garden every Saturday, if he felt like coming back, no pressure either way.
He drove home slow, the windows cracked, the smell of her pine soap and the rye still clinging to the wool jacket he’d left in the passenger seat. He pulled into his dark driveway, turned off the truck, and sat there for a minute, fishing the crumpled napkin out of his pocket, the numbers smudged a little from the heat of his hand. He pulled his old rugged flip phone out of his jeans pocket, punched in the number one digit at a time, and hit send on a text asking if she wanted to go salmon fishing with him the following Saturday before he could second guess it.
