Elwood “Woody” Rainer, 62, spent 38 years perched in 100-foot fire lookout towers across the Tahoe National Forest, so he’s used to being left alone. Seven years after his wife Lynn died of ovarian cancer, and five years after he retired with a full pension and a silvery scar slicing from his left eyebrow to his jawline—earned dragging a 12-year-old hiker out of the 2017 blaze two weeks after Lynn’s first chemo session—he still avoids the small town’s weekly community events like they’re fast-moving crown fires. The only reason he’s camped in the wobbly folding chair in the back of the VFW hall on taco night is his old crew chief begged him to bring a case of his homebrewed IPA, the stuff he brews in the old stainless steel fermenter he dragged up to his off-grid cabin after he retired.
The hall smells like burnt carnitas, lemon Pledge, and old canvas work jackets. The town just voted to lift the 10pm noise curfew put in place during the 2020 wildfire evacuations, and half the room is whooping about it, slamming beer cans on the scuffed Formica tables. Woody’s halfway through his second taco, staring at a chip in the tabletop and pretending he can’t hear the couple two tables over whispering and glancing at his scar, when a stack of western paperbacks crashes at his feet.
He looks up. The woman who tripped over the leg of his chair is 58, if he had to guess, wearing a faded flannel over a faded Johnny Cash tee, chipped sage-green nail polish on the fingers she’s clapping over her mouth in embarrassment. He bends to grab the books, and when he hands her the dog-eared copy of *Hondo* by Louis L’Amour, their hands brush. Her skin is cold, like she walked the three blocks from the library in the mountain wind without gloves, and she smells like vanilla lotion and cinnamon gum and rain on pine. She doesn’t glance at his scar. Not once.
“God, I’m so sorry,” she says, tucking a strand of gray-streaked auburn hair behind her ear. She’s the new part-time librarian, moved to town three months ago from Portland, he remembers his niece mentioning her last week when she dropped off groceries at his cabin. “I’ve been hauling these donations for the VFW’s free nook for an hour, my legs are jelly. I’ve been looking for that exact copy for my dad, he’s in a nursing home back in Oregon, only reads L’Amour.”
He grunts, nods, and for some reason he can’t explain, he kicks out the empty chair across from him. She sits, leaning forward so her elbows are on the table, no polite distance, no awkward hesitation. Their knees knock under the table when she shifts to grab a napkin off the next table, and she doesn’t pull back. He offers her a sip of his IPA, she takes it, hums in approval, says it’s better than any of the craft stuff she used to buy in Portland.
He tells her about the time he mistook a black bear cub for a lost hiker’s golden retriever when he was 20, tried to call it over, and got chased a quarter mile up a trail by its mom. She laughs so hard she snorts, claps a hand over her mouth, and he snorts right back, the first real, unplanned laugh he’s had since Lynn died. The guilt hits him sharp right after, like a punch to the chest—he’d spent seven years telling himself even talking to another woman was a betrayal, like he was cheating on the memory of the woman who’d waited for him every fire season, who’d left sticky notes with bad jokes on his lunch pail for 31 years. But the librarian doesn’t push, doesn’t ask about the scar, doesn’t ask why no one ever sees him in town. She just asks about his beer, about the lookout towers, about the wildflower blooms on the trail behind his cabin.
By 9:30, most of the crowd has drifted out, the jukebox blaring Johnny Cash’s *Folsom Prison Blues* loud enough the windows rattle, no one yelling to turn it down now that the curfew’s gone. He mentions Lynn collected western paperbacks for 25 years, has a box of 40 or 50 of them stacked in the corner of his cabin he’s been meaning to donate but never could bring himself to haul into town. She blinks, leans in a little closer, and he can smell the cinnamon gum on her breath when she speaks. “I could come pick them up tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I’ve been wanting to hike that trail, see the lupines that are blooming right now. No pressure, though.”
He hesitates for three full seconds, his throat tight. No one but his old crew chief has been up to his cabin in seven years. No one else has seen the photos of Lynn taped to the fridge, the stack of her old flannel shirts still in the closet, the fermenters in the garage. But she’s still holding eye contact, no pity, no expectation, just a half-smile on her face, and he nods. He grabs a napkin off the table, scribbles his address on it, his hand shaking a little, and hands it to her. She tucks it into the breast pocket of her flannel, grins, and says she’ll be there by 10.
She leaves 10 minutes later, waving over her shoulder as she pushes out the door into the cold mountain air. Woody sits there for another 20 minutes, finishing his beer, picking at the last of his taco, until he remembers the napkin was one the VFW uses for their weekly 50/50 drawings, pre-printed on the back with a space for phone numbers. He pulls it out of his pocket, the one he thought only had his address, and sees she scrawled her cell number on the back while he was grabbing another beer, a tiny doodle of a pine tree next to it.
He shoves the napkin into the front pocket of his worn work jeans, stands up to haul the rest of his IPA case over to his crew chief, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t have to force himself to look forward to the next day.
