Rafe Marquez is 53, spent 22 years as a smokejumper with the U.S. Forest Service before a blown knee during a 2020 blaze outside Helena forced his early retirement. Now he runs Rafe’s Gear Fix on Bozeman’s Main Street, repairs puffy jackets, broken tent poles, frayed climbing webbing for anyone who can pay, and for a lot of folks who can’t. His biggest flaw, one he’ll admit to only when he’s three beers deep and no one he knows is listening, is that he’s spent the last seven years actively avoiding any human connection that doesn’t involve swapping stories about trail conditions or the best way to seal a hole in a raft. His ex-wife moved to Portland with a software developer the week he got out of physical therapy, and he’s carried a chip on his shoulder about anyone associated with the city’s “revitalization” crowd ever since.
She’s the woman who opened the used bookstore three blocks down from his shop two months prior, he recognizes her immediately, and he tenses up before he can stop himself. She’s married to Tyler Hale, the new city councilman who spent 20 minutes at last month’s public meeting calling Rafe’s shop a “blight on Main Street’s family friendly image” and pushing to deny him his annual business license. He’s spent the last four weeks muttering curse words about Tyler Hale every time he sees a campaign sign stuck in a front yard, so the last thing he expects is for her to grin at him, nod at the faded smokejumper patch sewn to the chest of his well-worn flannel, and say, “Cool patch. I’ve got a 1972 memoir about smokejumpers in the Cascades in my shop, I’ve been meaning to bring it by.”