Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service wildfire crew lead, leaned against the dented steel beer cooler propped outside Jim’s Hardware at the town’s post-4th of July block party, calloused fingers wrapped around a frosty IPA. He’d moved to the small Idaho town 11 months prior, after 7 years of holing up alone in a remote cabin outside Bend following his wife’s death from breast cancer, and his biggest personality flaw by his own admission was that he’d rather spend 12 hours rebuilding a transmission than make small talk with a neighbor. The sun dipped low over the pine tree line, painting the sky streaky tangerine and lavender, and the air smelled like charred bratwurst, citronella candles, and pine smoke drifting from the half dozen front yard fire pits that would’ve been banned if the HOA’s most recent proposal had passed.
He’d almost skipped the party entirely, until his old hound dog had knocked his half-finished carburetor rebuild off the workbench that afternoon and he’d decided he needed a break from cussing at rusted bolts. He’d signed the anti-HOA petition three weeks prior purely out of spite for the busybody retirees who kept leaving passive aggressive notes on his truck about uncut grass, and he’d assumed the woman who’d organized the petition was some overzealous city transplant with a clipboard and a lot of opinions about noise ordinances. So when Marnie Carter, 52, the town’s new librarian who’d moved to the area three months prior, stumbled into him as a kid on a skateboard swerved around a fire hydrant to avoid a golden retriever, his first instinct was to step back and grunt a dismissive response.