Russell “Rus” Higginbotham, 52, spent 18 years as a smokejumper before a blown knee and messy divorce pushed him to hang up his parachute and start a small backcountry firewood delivery service outside Missoula, Montana. His worst flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s spent the last 8 years deliberately pushing away anyone who tries to get close, convinced the scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2017 Lolo National Forest blaze is as good as a warning label: damaged, do not touch. He only showed up to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his old crew captain badgered him into it, said the department needed cash for new wildfire response kits, and Rus owed them a favor.
He was leaning against the side of his beat-up 2006 Ford F-150, sipping cheap beer and pretending to listen to a rookie firefighter ramble about his first prescribed burn, when the collision happened. Warm, spiked hard cider sloshed across the front of his gray wool flannel, sticky and sweet with cinnamon, and he looked down to see a woman with honey-blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid, her fingers dotted with faint blue and green watercolor stains under chipped clear nail polish, fumbling with a crumpled napkin and apologizing so fast her words tripped over each other.
She was Lila Marlow, 48, the new 4th grade art teacher who’d moved to town three months prior, the woman he’d stared at from across the grocery store produce aisle twice now, too stubborn to say hello. She stepped closer to dab at the cider stain on his shirt, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and her perfume drifted up—pine and vanilla, the same as the sugar cookies his grandma used to bake at Christmas. Her hand brushed the raised, silvery edge of his forearm scar when she wiped a drip off his wrist, and he flinched first, waiting for the inevitable pitying wince, but she didn’t even pause. “Sorry, that’s so clumsy of me,” she said, grinning up at him, hazel eyes flecked with gold, “I was too busy staring at the guy in the dalmatian costume tripping over the chili pot.”
Rus snorted, a rough, unused sound. He’d spent so long tucking that scar under long sleeves, avoiding any physical contact that might expose it, that her casual reaction knocked him off kilter. He told her the flannel was already stained with chain oil and pine sap anyway, no harm done, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed. He didn’t want to leave. That thought hit him like a bucket of cold water, sharp and unexpected. For 8 years, he’d left every social event the second he could, gone home to his quiet cabin, eaten frozen dinners alone, but now he wanted to stay, wanted to hear her laugh again.
He was torn, half ready to make an excuse about needing to feed his hound dog back home, half leaning in to ask her what she thought of the winning chili, when she mentioned she’d been calling around trying to find someone who could deliver firewood up to her rental cabin on the west side of Miller Creek. The road to that cabin washed out every time it rained hard, no other delivery service would touch it, but Rus knew every rutted inch of that road, had cut firewood in the woods surrounding it a dozen times. He offered to bring a full cord up Saturday, no extra charge for the rough drive, and her face lit up so bright it made his chest feel tight.
They ended up sitting on the tailgate of his truck after the cookoff wrapped up, sharing a slice of peach cobbler he’d won in a raffle, the air crisp with fall, larch trees glowing gold across the valley behind them. She leaned her shoulder against his when he told her about his old smokejumper buddy who accidentally dyed his hair neon orange the night before a big jump, and their knees knocked together when she shifted to grab a napkin, her jeans soft against his worn work pants. He told her the full story of the scar, how he’d gone back into a burning cabin to pull out a 10 year old kid’s golden retriever, and she didn’t look at him like he was a hero, she just nodded and said that sounded like the kind of stupid, good thing he’d do. No one had ever said that to him before.
He’d spent so long convinced any kind of closeness would leave him burned again, that letting someone in would just end with them walking away like his ex-wife did, that the soft, warm buzz of desire he felt sitting next to her felt foreign, not disgusting like he’d feared it would. When she left, she pulled a crumpled watercolor sketch of the larch trees lining Miller Creek out of her jacket pocket, scribbled her cell phone number on the back in blue ink, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing the edge of his t-shirt under the flannel, warm and light. She told him to text her when he was on his way Saturday, said she’d have fresh baked chocolate chip cookies waiting.
He watched her drive away, her old Subaru kicking up dust down the dirt parking lot, then pulled the sketch out of his pocket, holding it up to the glow of his truck’s dashboard light. The Johnny Cash tape he’d had stuck in the player for 10 years warbled through the speakers, and he smiled so wide his jaw ached, for the first time in almost a decade not dreading the end of the night. He turned the key in the ignition, shifted the truck into drive, and tapped the sketch against the steering wheel once, already counting down the days until Saturday.