Ronny Voss, 62, retired rodeo clown and co-owner of Voss & Sons Feed in Sheridan, Wyoming, leaned against the splintered split-rail fence surrounding the county fire department’s summer fundraiser beer garden, sweating through the collar of his faded Wrangler work shirt. A scar sliced diagonally across his left cheek, leftover from a bull’s horn that caught him mid-joke at a 2009 rodeo in Casper, pulled tight when he grinned at a golden retriever chasing a toddler through the patchy bluegrass. His biggest flaw, one he’d nursed for 14 years ever since his wife packed her bags and moved to Florida with a real estate agent, was that he’d convinced himself he was too loud, too banged up, too much of a small-town hick for anyone to look at twice. He’d not so much as bought a woman a cup of coffee since she left, figuring rejection was more trouble than the rush of even casual connection.
The sun dipped low over the Bighorns, painting the sky streaky tangerine and rose, when she walked up. Elara Mendez, 58, the new county forest ranger who’d moved to town three months prior from Portland, wore scuffed work boots caked with pine duff, gray cargo pants, and a forest service tee cut off at the elbows, showing freckled arms crisscrossed with faint scratch marks from underbrush. Everyone in town had written her off as stuck up, a city transplant who’d leave as soon as the first snow hit, and Ronny had shared that take until she reached past him to grab a stack of napkins off the fence post, her warm forearm brushing his, and he caught the faint scent of lavender hand cream mixed with pine sol and campfire smoke.
She didn’t pull away fast, just held eye contact when he turned to look, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smirk that made his ears go hot. “You’re the guy who does the goat impression at the 4H fair every spring, right?” She popped the tab on a seltzer can, and the fizz drifted up to his nose, sharp and citrusy. “I sat in the back row this year. You made the kid with the pet lamb stop crying. Thought that was pretty cool.”
Ronny fumbled with his beer can, nearly sloshing suds down his shirt. He’d not had anyone outside his cousin and the regulars at the feed store comment on something that silly, let alone the ranger everyone swore didn’t even talk to locals. They talked for 45 minutes leaned up against that fence, her shoulder brushing his every time a group of yelling firefighters walked past, their boots thudding on the packed dirt. He learned her husband had died two years prior in a bike crash on a busy Portland street, that she’d moved to Wyoming to get away from the constant wail of sirens, that she fostered injured foxes for the local wildlife rescue out of her cabin on the edge of the national forest. He told her about the bull that gored him, about the feed store, about how he still slept with his ex-wife’s favorite quilt at the foot of his bed because he couldn’t bear to give it away.
A local cover band struck up a slow, twangy Merle Haggard track, and couples drifted into the open grass to dance, their shadows stretching long across the lawn. Elara nodded toward the dance floor, and Ronny’s chest tightened, the familiar voice in his head yelling that he’d make a fool of himself, that she was just being nice, that he’d trip over his own boots and she’d laugh and leave and tell everyone in town what a loser he was. He told her he hadn’t danced since his wedding, that he’d broken his ankle at a hoedown in 1998 and never bothered to try again. She laughed, warm and low, and tugged his wrist, her calloused fingers wrapping around the faint old scar on his pulse point from a barbed wire accident when he was 19. “I’ll lead. Promise I won’t let you fall.”
He followed her out to the grass, his hand hovering awkwardly over her waist until she pressed it down, her own hand settling light on his shoulder. They moved slow, mostly just swaying to the beat, their chests almost touching, close enough that he could feel her breath on his neck when she leaned in to say she’d been stopping by the feed store every other week for sunflower seed for her bird feeder just to watch him help the little old ladies carry their feed bags out to their cars, to watch him slip free lollipops to the kids who tagged along with their dads. He froze, his breath catching, because he’d never thought anyone was paying that much attention.
The song ended, and she didn’t let go of his hand. “I got a cooler of hazy IPA in the back of my truck,” she said, nodding toward the forest service pickup parked at the edge of the lot. “And a baby fox with a broken paw back at the cabin that’s been trying to steal my socks. You wanna come meet him?”
Ronny didn’t even hesitate, grabbing his frayed denim jacket off the fence post where he’d slung it earlier, not even stopping to say goodbye to his cousin who was manning the beer stand. When he climbed into the passenger seat and she reached over to tuck a strand of windblown gray hair behind his ear, he didn’t flinch for the first time in 14 years.
