Staffers wearing bright red coats were doing some kind of training exercise, pulling empty long-handled sleds designed to transport injured skiers off the mountain.
“Good idea. I could put the crate on one of those and drag it out to the camp.”
We asked if we could use one, and they said yes. I sweated my ass off dragging it up and over the hill, only to realize I should have borrowed someone’s snowmobile. Why didn’t Elsie get us one? Then again, she probably did, and my dumb ass didn’t check to see if she sent instructions with the crate, something she always does.
We want to keep the kids away from the film crew, so I start to build a fire away from the camp while Maddie unpacks the crate.
I’m really surprised she’s here. I’m guessing Rhonda had something to do with it. Or maybe she just wanted to see how National Discovery does something like this. I can see how that would be interesting to most people. Either way, it means I get to spend more time with her, though it also means I’ll have to say goodbye again.
I keep thinking I’ve seen her for the last time. The whole hot tub thing wasn’t my intention. When I came around the corner and saw her, I almost turned back, but then I thought she probably saw me, so it would look like I was avoiding her. And I would have been, but I didn’t want it to look that way. I considered using the empty hot tub next to hers, but that would have been awkward as hell. I really didn’t have a choice but to join her, and besides, I could think of worse things than sharing a jacuzzi with a girl as beautiful as her.
Then, when we parted ways last night, I really thought that was the end of it. But here we are.
“They sure like those beds. I guess I can see why, they’re so interesting.”
I glance up to see she’s looking toward the camp. “Elsie said the beds are the second most popular thing people talk about in the comments below her videos.”
“Why do you call them ‘her videos’? They aren’t your videos too?”
The larger logs have caught fire and are burning well, so I stand to stretch my legs. “Technically, they are. On paper, Ash and I are equal partners with her, but it feels like she does all the work while we play.”
She pulls several hickory sticks out of the crate. They’re about three feet long and the diameter of a quarter. Ash and I have been using them for kids’ events over the past three years. I was worried they wouldn’t be in the crate. “I guess that makes sense,” she says. “What’s the first?”
I come over to give her a hand. “The first?”
“Yeah, what’s the most popular thing people talk about in the comments?”
“Oh, our clothes. I’m not sure why. Like our gear, Ash and I make all our clothes, even our socks. It’s the only way to have things that will hold up for three months in the crazy places we go.”
I pull three folding tables out of the crate. It’s like we gave Elsie a list of what we’d need, but we didn’t. We never do, yet somehow, she always gets it right.
Maddie sets cookie sheets and several bags of raw brown sugar on the table I just set up. “I’m not surprised. I noticed your clothes too, but I didn’t recognize the brand. You didn’t do a bad job. They look well made.”
The third table’s legs sink into the snow a bit, but it’s still functional. “Coming from a professional seamstress, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
The fire has burned down to coals, and everything is in place on the tables, so we gather the younger kids over to us. When they’re all seated on fire-retardant tarps around the fire pit, I take a can of biscuits, the kind in a cardboard tube, and pop it open. I roll one biscuit between my palms until it’s a long snake, then wrap it in a loose coil around the end of a hickory stick. Then I roll the dough back and forth on a cookie sheet filled with brown sugar and cinnamon, and hand it to a little girl who looks to be about five. I show her how to cook it over the fire like it’s a giant marshmallow.
“This stick bread is way better than those doughnuts over there,” I tell her.
The girl’s eyes light up. “Thank you, Mr. Dwyer.”
While I have my hands full, Maddie opens two more tubes and lays the biscuits on the sheets of parchment paper. “Who wants to try it?”
Every hand goes up.
Maddie hands out biscuits and helps the kids make their own stick bread while I assist with cooking at the fire.
“Thank you, Mrs. Dwyer,” a boy, who looks about seven, says to Maddie.
“Oh, I’m not… You know what? You’re welcome.” She shoots me a desperate look with a shrug.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s easier than trying to explain.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
As we help the kids and hand out juice boxes from the crate, there are plenty of runny noses to wipe along with dirty mouths, faces, and fingers to clean with wet wipes; and lots of tiny hands to hold as we make trips to the porta-potty. I love every minute of this and can’t help imagining what it would be like if Maddie were my wife and some of these kids were ours. How can I not? Thecoolest thing is, she seems to be enjoying this as much as I am.
While the kids are cooking their stick bread, Maddie takes pictures with her phone and then sends them to someone.
