Elias Voss, 53, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before a shattered hip from a bad landing outside Mount Shasta forced early retirement. Now he runs a tiny custom chainsaw carving business out of a cinder block workshop on the edge of Sisters, Oregon, his days split between felling dead cedar and sanding bear sculptures for tourists passing through on their way to Bend. His biggest flaw, the one he refuses to admit exists, is that he’s spent the last seven years walling himself off from all casual connection after his ex-wife left him for a Portland real estate developer, convinced anyone who gets close will eventually bolt when they realize he’s far better handling a 20 pound chainsaw than small talk. He only agreed to attend the town’s annual harvest potluck because his 72-year-old neighbor Marnie brought him homemade peach jam every week all summer, and threatened to cut off supply entirely if he skipped.
He’d been standing by the dessert table for 12 minutes, holding a lukewarm PBR and planning his escape route, when Clara walked up. She was the new U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist who’d moved to town three months prior, he’d seen her driving her beat up Subaru around the national forest a handful of times, but never spoken to her. She wore a faded forest service fleece vest, jeans cuffed over scuffed work boots, a smudge of pine sap high on her left jaw, and she stepped closer to him than most people did, her shoulder brushing his bicep when a group of screaming kids darted between them chasing a golden retriever. The air smelled like grilled bratwurst, burnt marshmallows, and fallen fir needles, and when she leaned in to ask if the lumpy apple crisp on the end of the table was his, he caught a whiff of pine resin and faint lavender hand lotion, no heavy synthetic perfume, nothing that made his skin crawl like his ex’s favorite scent used to.