Mitzi's Marine

by Rogenna Brewer

  Mitzi’s laughter carried to him.

  Bruce’s mouth held a grim line.

  “You just gonna stand there while he kisses her?” Henry rolled from behind the Dumpster to where Bruce could see him. “Make some noise.”

  “What are you doing out here, old man?” Bruce tossed the garbage bags, unnoticed by the couple.

  “I’m not some damn voyeur, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You can’t be scrounging. You had plenty to eat.”

  “Sometimes I scrounge for information…and other things,” he said.

  Fred stepped into the alley and tossed a couple more garbage bags into the Dumpster, heedless of the noise he made.

  Mitzi and Dan looked up. And between one heartbeat and the next Bruce had figured out what he wanted to give Mitzi for Christmas.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FOLLOWING THIS WEEKEND, Bruce might never be ready for kids, after all. He had six of them and their gear loaded into his USMC Hummer. Heather sat in the passenger seat beside him, making him nervous the way she looked him over.

  His brother, the boys he thought of as the SEAL twins, the corpsman recruit and the gamer were all piled into the backseat. Keith, as per usual, was texting. The other boys were, as his mother would say, roughhousing.

  As long as they were all buckled in and he had the signed permission slips of those who weren’t quite eighteen, he didn’t care that they were getting a little rowdy back there.

  Vail was about a hundred miles west of Denver up I-70. It had taken them two hours to get to town and they still had a ways to go to get to the cabin. Bruce couldn’t blame them for being excited. He was excited.

  But he had more than just Heather to be nervous about. He hadn’t skied in years and he was about to go skiing for the first time with a prosthesis.

  He was bringing up the rear of their little caravan. Dan was out front in his Ford Bronco with another six kids. He was followed by Mitzi in her dad’s van—because it was bigger than her CR-V—and Annie in her Subaru, a good snow car. The women had four kids each.

  He shared joint responsibility for twenty teenagers. Yeah, having any of his own was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

  MITZI LOOKED in the rearview mirror. The three girls in the backseat of her dad’s van had plugged in to the latest Zac Efron movie. Kelly sat beside her in the front.

  She was texting someone and kept looking over at Mitzi as if she had something she wanted to say. “Mitzi?” she finally asked.

  “Hmm?”

  Kelly glanced over her shoulder at the other girls before continuing. “I don’t think I’m going to go into the Navy.”

  “Why not?”

  Please do not let this be because Keith joined. Kelly would be giving up the opportunity of a lifetime because of a boy.

  Kelly shrugged. “I’m going to visit my grandma in Arizona at Christmas. And I might decide to stay. So I might not even finish out my senior year at Englewood. I could just test out and get my GED and not even go back to school. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway.”

  “Kelly,” Mitzi said, “it doesn’t matter where you decide to live. Please just promise me you’ll get your high school diploma.”

  She was too smart and too talented to quit. But Mitzi noticed the drummer girl never made her that promise.

  BRUCE PULLED IN behind Dan and set his parking brake.

  It took some maneuvering to get all four vehicles parked behind the cabin. The three-car garage was on a level beneath the house.

  Dan offered the women the use of the garage for their smaller cars. The third bay was taken up by a couple of snowmobiles. But the Bronco and Hummer wouldn’t have fit anyway.

  The cabin was older, well maintained, with rustic wood siding and shingles. Dan had either inherited it, had connections or money. Maybe all three.

  This was not the kind of cabin a guy could afford on a schoolteacher’s salary—or a soldier’s either. And it wasn’t the kind of cabin that went on the market very often. When it did, it went to someone who could afford a couple million for a vacation home.

  Access to the cabin was a steep rock climb over wide, snow-covered stone steps. Again Bruce brought up the rear as all twenty teens raced ahead of the adults.

  He didn’t want any witnesses in case he slipped and fell.

  MITZI SLOWED HER STEPS so Bruce could catch up. He didn’t appear to be having any problems with the climb. The pace he set was more deliberate.

  Dan led them past the front door, around a stone path running along the side of the cabin to the back. Here they had ski racks to dump their snowboards, skis, poles and boots. The covered hot tub elicited a few giggles from the teens. And Annie.

  Luckily Dan had supplied the chaperones with the same printed packing list he’d given the kids, so Mitzi had remembered to bring her tankini and beach towel.

  Mitzi smiled at him as the group unloaded their equipment into the racks and the excited chorus of “Mr. Estrada, Mr. Estrada, when can we go skiing?”

  Skiing was an expensive sport and Dan had paid for Kelly and a couple others who didn’t have the money for equipment rental and lift tickets. Mitzi thought the world of him for that. “Have I thanked you yet, Mr. Estrada?”

  “We just got here,” he said.

  “Then thank you for inviting me.”

  He wrapped his arm around her waist for a squeeze. “You’re welcome,” he said into her ear.

  Dan gave her a quick kiss, then unlocked the French doors. “Stomp off your boots outside,” he reminded everyone as he turned on the lights and adjusted the thermostat.

  “Nice place you got here, Bubba,” Annie said with her eyes toward the vaulted ceilings.

  There was a half loft with two bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs and a bathroom on each floor. Now, that was going to be a problem among twenty-four guests, almost half of them teenage girls.

  “Absolutely beautiful, Dan,” Mitzi said, admiring the wood paneling and the stone fireplace taking up an entire wall at one end of the open living area.

  Bruce, who was bringing up the rear, stomped off outside and followed the last of the kids in, making sure the door was closed behind them.

  The girls were to divvy up the bedrooms how they saw fit and the guys were going to be camped out in the living room.

  Dan turned to Bruce. “There’s a queen-size bed in one of the downstairs rooms if you’d be more comfortable.”

  “Thank you, no,” Bruce declined—as Mitzi knew he would. “Floor’s fine.”

  “Plenty of Army cots and wool blankets if you need one, Marine. Just let me know.”

  Dan was just being a polite host, but Bruce scoffed as if insulted at being offered a cot. Specifically an Army cot. Oblivious to the undercurrent between the men, the young males dumped their sleeping bags in a corner by the fireplace. Dan and Bruce handed them their car keys and the boys raced back down the hill to bring up their food supplies, most of which had been packed into the Hummer and the Bronco.

  Enough to feed a small army of teens.

  Again thanks to Dan.

  Mitzi and Annie took an upstairs room with a couple of twin beds. This left another room with twin beds, a room with two sets of bunk beds and the room with a queen-size bed—seven beds for ten girls.

  “There are plenty of beds to go around,” Dan reassured them as he directed the staging of the good old Army cots. By the time the girls, who’d also brought their sleeping bags, had their sleeping arrangements figured out, the boys had returned with the supplies.

  Bruce supervised the storage, with everyone eager to help. The sooner things got put away, the sooner they’d be on the slopes.

  “All right, then,” Dan said, rubbing his hands together. “Who’s ready for their first run of the day?”

  “I am!” Mitzi chimed in with the eager chorus.

  Dan held her back as everyone scrambled out the door. “I wanted to ask you something,” he said. “And I’m too excited to wait.�
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  “Okay,” she said, responding to the glint in his eye. Her back was to the wall and they were standing near the open French doors.

  “Do you think—” he started playing with a strand of her hair “—we could come back here over Christmas break? Just the two of us?”

  Calhoun cleared his throat. “Forgot my gloves,” he said, pointing toward the kitchen. “Won’t take me but a minute.”

  Mitzi straightened and Dan put his hands in his pockets, waiting for Bruce to retrieve his gloves and leave.

  “As you were,” Calhoun ordered on his way out the door, as if they were a couple of raw recruits in his charge.

  WHILE EVERYONE ELSE MADE their way over to the resort Bruce decided to stick to the private run, which was little more than a beginner slope with a rope tow.

  He’d read about a Marine, an above-the-knee amputee, who’d returned to extreme skiing in just one day on the slopes. He was determined to do as well or better.

  He’d waited until everyone was out of the house, including Mitzi and Dan, before changing out his snow boots for ski boots and skis. In his ski socks Bruce sat on one of the many benches built into the deck outside the cabin. He opened the tongue wide on both boots. Reached for his left boot before grabbing the right. He put his right ski on first, because that was easiest.

  But funny how a lifetime of putting on his left shoe first had become ingrained. He stood and stomped down on the heel to seat the boot, then sat back down and buckled it until it was snug, but not tight.

  He repeated the same procedure on his left. Only, when he stomped down he had to use his best judgment to determine if he’d seated the boot. And a snug fit didn’t matter as much as getting his boot on his prosthetic foot nice and tight. He bent forward at the knees a couple of times to make sure his heels were in the heel box.

  He was good to go.

  Cautiously at first, he made his way across the deck in the clunky boots and down the steps, across the snow-covered yard toward the rack with his skis. The backyard here was fairly level.

  He laid down his skis, picked up his poles and cleared the snow from his left boot first this time. For stability he’d decided to put his right ski on last. He slid the lip of his left boot under the lip of the left binding. Lining the heel of the boot up with the back binding, he dropped the heel into the heel cup and pushed down until it clicked. Then repeated the process on his right side.

  He bent at the knee a couple of times. So far so good. Now all he had to do was snowplow his way down the slight slope to the right and he’d be on that private run. Keeping his skis in the V was the easiest way to start because two skis in a straight line wanted to travel at different speeds.

  The snowplow wasn’t used by someone who could ski well. He practiced a couple of snowplow runs, then added some snowplow turns. The ski with the most weight had the most control, so more often than not he turned to his left, the ski with less control.

  The cabin’s private run connected to one of Vail’s many trails. So they still needed lift tickets to enjoy the resort. He could see Dan, Mitzi, Annie and several of the kids already hitting the powder with season passes on their ski jackets.

  The rest, like Bruce, had purchased a weekend pass just before the trip. His skis were old and had sat in the garage for several winters unused.

  He’d borrowed the jacket and pants from his brother. According to their mother, his old gear had somehow ended up at Goodwill. That’s what he got for not coming home more than once every couple of years.

  But it felt pretty darn good to be on skis again. He might not be ready for carving or jumping, but after a few hours he was ready to take it to the slopes. Just to be on the safe side he practiced falling down and getting up a couple times first.

  As long as he remembered to keep his skis sideways to the slope, and that getting up on his right was easier than getting up on his left, he would do.

  By the end of the day he’d worked his way up from beginner to intermediate slopes. And had advanced from snowplow turns to parallel turns and hockey stops. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow to carve out another slope.

  He wasn’t the first one to call it a day. When he got back to the cabin Keith and Heather were already there in their pj’s. They looked awfully guilty when he came in.

  Bruce narrowed his eyes.

  “What?” Keith asked.

  “Show a little respect. And restraint.”

  MITZI SKIED RIGHT UP to the last run of the day. She’d done a pretty good job of keeping up with Dan only because he’d come down to her level.

  She felt most comfortable on the intermediate slopes, but had tried a couple expert runs with his encouragement.

  Dan’s ability went beyond expert. He was a trained, all-terrain soldier. He’d fought in the mountains of Afghanistan in the snow and bitter cold.

  As they were putting away their skis for the night, she found herself alone with Dan for a few minutes. Not one to pass up the opportunity, he hugged her close—as close as their ski jackets allowed—and traced her face with his cold fingers, quietly giving her a little history about his former unit, the famed 10th Mountain Division. “Vail was started by a handful of veterans of the 10th,” he whispered. Kissing her chin, he added slowly, “They trained at Camp Hale, Colorado, during World War Two and returned afterward to become instructors. Then—” he kissed her gently on the lips “—they realized their dream by founding this resort.”

  They stood staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Mitzi had no idea how she felt about this kind, generous man. He’d even arranged to treat them to a demonstration by the 10th Mountain (Light). Disentangling herself from his arms, she said, “It’s a shame Mike couldn’t come. He’d probably have all these boys, and some of the girls, signing up for the Army.” Dan laughed and steered her toward the cabin.

  But if Mike had come, Bruce wouldn’t be here.

  Bruce.

  She wondered where he’d been all day. She hadn’t seen him on any of her runs.

  When they walked in through the French doors, Bruce and Annie were in the kitchen. Annie stood holding a three-pound spaghetti package in each hand. “Help, do you know how to cook for twenty starving teens?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Mitzi said. “Let me just go get changed.”

  MITZI WAS A GOOD COOK. From the look in Estrada’s eye the man still had an appetite for dessert, Bruce thought. A couple of the girls got out the ingredients for s’mores. While Estrada built the fire, Bruce supervised the s’more making and after-dinner cleanup.

  “Mr. Estrada?” one of the girls asked. “Can we get in the hot tub now?”

  “Only eight at a time,” he said.

  Several of the girls ran off to put on their bathing suits, leaving Bruce alone in the kitchen with Heather. Annie stepped in to help with the s’mores. “Heather, go put a bra on,” Annie said, snapping a graham cracker in half. The girl turned beetred and disappeared. “You didn’t notice that?” she asked him.

  “I did,” he said, “but unlike you, I wasn’t going to say anything in front of everyone.” Besides, that would be admitting he noticed.

  “It’s probably best you didn’t react,” Annie said, ignoring his reprimand. “That girl’s been trying to get your attention all evening.”

  Bruce wasn’t so sure Heather was trying to get his attention as much as she was trying to get Keith’s by making him jealous.

  Bruce glanced over at Mitzi toasting marshmallows.

  “You gonna get in the hot tub tonight for the adult swim, Calhoun?” Annie asked, nibbling chocolate and looking up at him.

  “I didn’t bring my suit.”

  “Neither did I.” She winked at him, then left him alone in the kitchen to think about that.

  Chaperones in need of chaperones.

  How screwed up was that?

  DAN HAD DIMMED THE LIGHTS and put a movie in the DVD player. The kids who weren’t in and out of the hot tub had their sleeping bags sp
read out on the floor in front of the big-screen TV, watching one of the stupidest movies Mitzi had ever seen, about hot-tub time travel.

  It was after eleven before most of the kids had settled for the night. Mitzi stood and stretched.

  “Are you going to put your swimsuit on?” Dan asked.

  Actually, she’d been going to put her pj’s on to go to bed. But she wouldn’t mind trying the hot tub.

  And she had that brand-new tankini she’d got on clearance a few months ago. “I thought I might,” she said.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  BRUCE WAS IN THE BATHROOM wringing out his brother’s wet swim trunks. He’d ducked in right after he saw Dan coming out with his trunks on. He’d be damned if he was going to let Dan be out there alone with Mitzi.

  He’d been invited along to chaperone a bunch of horny teenagers—well, not invited, volunteered. But he was here to chaperone. And he didn’t care if that horny teenager was eighteen or twenty-eight.

  “Shit!” Keith’s wet trunks were cold. He wrapped the equally wet beach towel around his waist, wishing he’d had the time to run both through the dryer. He stepped into his brother’s flip-flops. His junk was going to shrivel up like an old man the minute he hit that thirty-two-degree air outside.

  Estrada was the only one in the tub.

  The lights were low. The music was slow.

  Oldest trick in the book. Get there first and set the mood. If Estrada’s trunks were gone there were going to be fists-a-flying.

  But Estrada, lucky him, had his trunks on underneath those bubbles. He just didn’t look happy to see Bruce.

  The jets were bubbling and steam was rising. Nothing like getting into a hot tub when the air outside was cold enough that you could see your breath in front of your face.

  If Bruce had been here to relax he might have taken his leg off and really enjoyed it. As it was he decided he might want to keep his leg on.

  Guess he’d find out just how good those modifications were that made his C-Leg a swim leg.