Was he going to have to deal with frostbite?
“How far did you walk?”
One guy turned his head. “Just, I don’t know, halfway from the turn?”
The voice gave him away. He was a kid. John looked down the line. They were all kids!
“Isn’t there an adult with you?”
“Me.” The woman who’d been the first to come in turned to face him, pushing back the hood on her parka. Dark, curly hair framed a face on which he could read exhaustion. Her eyes, though, were the pale, clear grey of the river water cutting between snowbanks. She was young, not much older than her charges, her body as slight as those of the teenage girls. “My name is Fiona MacPherson. Thank you for taking us in.”
“What were you doing out on the road?”
She explained. They’d competed in a high school Knowledge Champs tournament in Redmond, and were returning home over the mountains.
“We came over this morning on Highway22,” she explained, sounding meek. “But the weather reports said a storm was coming from the south, so I thought I’d take a more northerly route back.”
“This highway closes in the winter. You’re probably the last ones over it.”
“I didn’t know that.”
And parents trusted her to be in charge? He shook his head.
“You’re damn lucky to have made it.” John waved off whatever she was going to say. “You all need to get out of your wet clothes. I don’t suppose you have anything to change into?”
Eight—no, nine—heads shook in unison.
“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, apparently 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 on him. “I will so take you down.”
Girls giggled. Like a litter of puppies driven by instincts they didn’t understand, the boys began shoving and wrestling.
Dark heads, laughter. A group of boys much like this, clowning around. A mud-brick wall. Rusty dust puffing under their feet, a couple of dirty soccer balls lying forgotten.
With a physical wrench, John pulled himself from the past. He tolerated guests at the lodge. Teenage boys, he avoided. Their very presence brought back things he couldn’t let himself remember. How was he going to endure this group?
The teacher—Fiona?—evidently sensed his longing. After telling the kids that the principal would call all their parents, she said to John, “I hope you won’t be stuck with us for long. Um… Do you have any idea when this storm is supposed to end?”
“A couple of days, at least. And I’m at the bottom of the highway department’s list for plowing. Could be a week before they get here.”
The longest week of his life.
Just
