“Get your shoes and socks off. I’ll see what I can find.”
He started with the lost and found. Seemed like every
week somebody left something. Sunglasses, single
gloves, bras hanging on the towel rack in the shared
bathroom, long underwear left carelessly on the bed,
you name it, he’d found it. If one of the girls wanted
birth control pills, he could offer her a month’s supply.
Bottles containing half a dozen other prescription drugs.
Pillows, watches, but mostly clothes.
John dragged the boxes out and distributed socks,
one pair of men’s slippers, sweatpants, a pair of flannel
pajama bottoms and miscellaneous other garments.
Then, irritated at the necessity, he raided his own
drawers and closet for jeans, socks and sweaters.
Without arguing, they sat down on chairs and the
floor as close to the fire as they could get and changed,
nobody worrying about modesty. Not even the teacher,
who wore bikini underwear and had spectacular legs
that she quickly shivvied into a pair of those skintight,
stretchy pants cross-country skiers wore these days.
They looked fine on her, he saw, while trying not to
notice.
“We were so lucky to find you,” she told him, appar
ently unaware that he’d noticed her changing. “I
couldn’t see anything. But Dieter—” she gestured
toward one of the boys “—saw tire tracks. I don’t know
how. Then he spotted your sign. He and his family have
stayed here before.”
“You’re not the old guy who was here then,” the kid
said.
“I bought the lodge last year.”
“It’s a cool place! My family and me, we’ve come a
couple times. Once in the summer, when we stayed in
one of the cabins. Last time we skied.”
“It’s not skiing when you have to plod instead of
riding up the hill,” one of the girls sniffed. Literally—
her nose was bright red and dripping.
“Sure it is,” the first boy argued. He was at that ungainly stage when his hands and feet were out-sized and the rest of him skinny. Crooked features added up
to a puppy-dog friendly face. “You don’t think when
they invented skiing they had quad chairlifts, do you?”
“My great-great-whatever came west in a covered
wagon, too,” she retorted, with another sniff. “I’d rather
fly United, thanks.”
The rest chimed in with opinions; John didn’t listen.
He looked at the teacher. “Anyone going to miss you?”
“Oh Lord! Yes! We were having trouble with cell
phone coverage.” She gave him a hopeful look. “Do you
have a land line?”
“Out here? No. And cell phone coverage is lousy for
miles around even when the weather’s good. Unfortunately, my shortwave radio had an accident and I haven’t got it fixed.” If what his idiot guest had done to
it with spilled coffee could be called an accident. And
he should have taken the damn thing to town to be
worked on, but hadn’t felt any urgency. Stupid, when a
guest could have an emergency at any time.
“Well, we’ll try again anyway. Kids, anyone who
brought a phone. If you reach someone, tell them to start
a phone tree.”
Six out of the eight kids pulled tiny flip phones out
of a pocket or bag. John suddenly felt old. When he was
sixteen, nobody’d had a phone. Or wanted one.
The teacher was the only one who got lucky,
although he gathered the reception wasn’t good. The
kids all put theirs away, shaking their heads.
She kept raising her voice. “Yes, Thunder Mountain.
You’ll call the parents?” Pause. “It’s snowing there, too?”
That caused a stir.
“Wow.”
“Cool.”
“We don’t get snow that much. I wish I was home.”
“We have more here.”
“Snowball fight!” another boy said. This one’s face
caused a shift in John’s chest. He looked too much like the
teenage boys hanging around on dusty streets in Baghdad.
He might be Hawaiian or Polynesian. Something just a
little exotic, skin brown and eyes dark and tilted.
“Yeah!” The third boy, short and stocky with spiky
blond hair. Sweatpants from the lost and found bagged