Rudy Galvan, 58, retired wildland fire crew supervisor, leans into the scuffed oak bar at the Silverton Harvest Fest afterparty, calloused fingers curled around a frosty pint of amber ale. A four-year-old scar slices diagonally across his left forearm, a souvenir from the 2019 Gorge fire that he still traces when he’s anxious. He’s spent the last six hours running fire extinguisher demos for giddy kids and harried parents, pine straw still stuck in the tread of his work boots, the faint acrid smell of dry chemical powder clinging to his flannel shirt. His only plans for the rest of the night were to drive back to his cabin, sand down the handle of a 1978 Husqvarna he’s restoring, and fall asleep to old westerns on the 12-inch TV he found at a garage sale last spring. He hasn’t intentionally spent time alone with a woman since his wife Marnie died of ovarian cancer four years prior; he’s stubbornly convinced any kind of romantic connection at his age is just a cheap knockoff of what he had, a betrayal of the 22 years they built together.
A woman slides onto the stool next to him, her shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that he jolts, spilling a drop of beer down his wrist. She smells like spiked apple cider and cinnamon, the same scent Marnie used to fill their house with every October, but brighter, sharper, less worn. “Sorry about that,” she says, laughing, and when he looks over he recognizes the crinkle at the corner of her dark brown eyes immediately. It’s Lila, Marnie’s youngest cousin, the last time he saw her she was 19, bumming a ride from their house to Portland State for orientation, a stack of beat-up poetry books tucked under her arm. She’s 38 now, a streak of silver cutting through the dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a silver nose ring glinting under the neon beer sign above the bar. She’s just as loud, just as unapologetically curious as he remembers.