Holiday Heroes

by Rachel Lee

  “Since I got out of college about four years ago.”

  “And you like being alone like this?”

  “I like it better than the summers, when I have to deal with all kinds of people.” One corner of her mouth lifted. “Is that so surprising?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just my experience that most people don’t like solitude.”

  “There’s a vast difference between solitude and loneliness. I’m not lonely, and I like solitude.”

  He nodded. “To each his own.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “You do a very important job, but I’m not sure I could stand it.”

  He averted his gaze, uncomfortable. Somehow she always managed to turn the subject back to him.

  Another turn of the tables. “Did you take special training?”

  She nodded. “Forestry school.”

  “I never got to college.”

  “When have you had time?”

  An unwilling smile escaped him. “Not much since 9/11.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She rose as steam began to rise from the kettle. “Tea? Or do you want to wait for coffee? It just started perking, so maybe five minutes or so.”

  The coffee was starting to smell really good. “I’ll wait for the coffee.”

  She pulled a mug off a nearby shelf, dropped a tea bag into it and filled it with steaming water. Soon the aroma of tea and jasmine reached him. Apparently it reached Noel, too, because he came thumping out of the back of the cabin to wind up at Melinda’s feet. She laughed, set her mug on the table by her chair and bent down to lift him up. When she buried her face in the dog’s fur, Jon felt something tighten within him. At once he forced the feeling away.

  “He’s certainly going to keep me busy,” she said, lifting her face from the silky fur. The puppy’s adult markings were only just hinted at yet, a gray coloration that hinted of his coming mask then ran down along his spine. “I think he wants something to eat, but I left the biscuits in the car.”

  Jon immediately rose. “Where is his stuff? I’ll get it.”

  “Thanks. It’s all in the back of the Jeep. Nate really loaded me down.”

  He didn’t even bother to put on his parka. He needed to go outside and feel the chill. Needed to halt the softening he was beginning to feel within himself. It was a dangerous luxury he couldn’t afford until he came home for good. Walls, defenses and habits that had been built so painstakingly since he arrived in Afghanistan the first time had to remain in place for his own safety, both mental and physical.

  But, damn, she was a pretty woman, and that dog was nearly irresistible.

  She hadn’t exaggerated. By the time he carried all the puppy supplies indoors, there was a huge mound by the counter. Noel immediately attacked with his nose, sniffing every little thing until he found the box of biscuits. Then he pawed at it.

  “Smart little bugger,” Jon remarked.

  “Of course,” she answered airily. “He’s mine.”

  Jon laughed. “Of course. How stupid of me to remark on it.”

  Melinda fished out a couple of biscuits and pressed one into Jon’s hand. “You give him one, too.”

  He would have preferred not to, but there was no gracious way to refuse, so he squatted down and held out the little bone-shaped biscuit. Noel dashed toward him, screeched to a halt that almost tumbled him head over heels, then surprised them both by sitting patiently in front of Jon, although he never took his eyes off the biscuit.

  “Nate said his wife had him trained,” Melinda said, “but I never imagined he meant to this degree.”

  “Makes life a lot easier, doesn’t it?” Jon gave the biscuit to Noel, who promptly plopped down on his tummy and began to gnaw at it. “He’s probably going to want water. Where do I get it, and where do you want me to put the bowl?”

  She pulled a stainless-steel bowl out of a shopping bag. “Back here in the kitchen. I’ll show you. And by the way, if I’m gone and you need something, you can always get in. I never lock this place.”

  “Never?”

  She shook her head. “Only when I’m here. Otherwise I leave it open. You never know when someone might have an emergency.”

  But he didn’t miss the locked gun safe on the way back to the kitchen. Apparently she had at least one rifle.

  “I guess here is best,” she said, spreading a towel on a corner of the floor near the sink. The kitchen wasn’t very large, and barely had room for a rickety-looking wood table and four chairs. Jon filled the bowl with water and set it on the towel. He felt almost curious to find out how long it would take the puppy to find it.

  As he turned from putting the bowl down, he got his answer. In the doorway stood Noel, half a biscuit hanging out of his mouth, watching.

  Once again Jon laughed. Melinda joined him.

  “It’s almost criminal,” Jon said, still laughing. “He’s too cute.”

  “I know.” She looked rueful. “I never thought of having a pet of any kind, and I wasn’t sure I was happy about this one being dumped on me, but before I knew it, he’d wormed his way in.”

  “Yeah, I can see how he’d do that.”

  Still holding the biscuit, Noel went to check out the bowl. Satisfied, he ran back to the front room with the two adults following behind him.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Melinda announced. “Do you like anything in it?”

  “Black is the only way.”

  She poured him a mug and he took it in both hands as he would have when sitting around a campfire on a cold night, warming his fingers and letting the warmth run up his arms.

  Melinda put the pot on an iron shelf that was built into the back of the stove. “You can usually find a hot pot right there if you want some,” she told him. “I’ve got one going all day when I’m in.”

  “Thanks. How far away is this campsite?”

  She smiled. “Right now, far enough. When it’s summer, not far enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, just that when the campground is busy, I can hear most everything.”

  “Are you alone when the place is busy?”

  She shook her head. “I usually have two or three forestry students to help out as interns in the summer. Which is good, because sometimes people get drunk and a little disorderly, or they do stupid things and get hurt, or they mistreat the wildlife. I couldn’t handle all that alone.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “But for the most part, it’s a pretty peaceful job. And most people are nice.”

  That last phrase sounded almost like a mantra to him, and he wondered once again what lay in her past.

  But the situation, he decided, was becoming more dangerous by the minute. He was getting to know her and she him, and that wasn’t something he wanted to do, with exactly twenty-six days left of his leave. He didn’t want to get back to his unit with memories of someone left behind. Not even just a friend. All that did was make things harder.

  As soon as he finished his coffee, which was probably indecently quickly, he stood. “Where do I find that campground?”

  She, too, rose, and reached for her parka. “It’s not that far if you go through the woods. Do you want to walk the shortcut, or should I drive us over there?”

  “Let’s walk,” he said.

  It would leave a smaller trail.

  Chapter 4

  Jon put his tent up in a matter of minutes, then went to the woodpile Melinda had pointed out to him, brushed off the snow and carried the light, dry wood back. A fire pit was a built-in feature of the campsite, and all he had to do was shovel the snow out of it with his hands and remove the dead leaves beneath. A hole in wet dirt, it was safely ringed by large rocks. Long experience allowed him to get the fire going in a matter of minutes. Then, after spreading a waterproof ground cloth, he sat cross-legged beside the fire and nursed it slowly into a bigger blaze.

  This was more like it. He could have brought more conveniences with him, but he wasn’t used to them a
nymore. A scoop of coffee grounds in a tin cup of hot water, a small pan to heat the water in and plenty of MREs just about covered his needs. In fact, the hot water was a true luxury, one he often didn’t have in the field, because pans and cups made noise. Too much noise.

  It all depended on whether they had a fairly stable base of operations to work out of, and all too often his unit didn’t. They’d become so good at blending in and working with Afghans that they were pretty much out on their own most of the time.

  Sitting by the fire in the snow, though, took him back to other times and places. He recalled one snowy afternoon when he and his patrol had gathered around a fire like this with a couple of Afghan soldiers. The six of them had been working closely for several months, and had developed the kind of bond men grew when they shared danger together and covered each other’s backs. Jon and his guys had taken some courses in the local language before being dumped out there, and experience had made them passably fluent.

  One of the rules they usually followed was to avoid the personal. They couldn’t afford to be thinking about wives and kids and parents, and developing a bad case of homesickness. Nor, at some level, did they really want to know each other that way. It already hurt bad enough when one of them bought it.

  But that night one of the Afghans started the forbidden conversation. At first it had seemed innocuous enough, talk about life before the Russians invaded.

  “Hey.”

  Startled, he looked up and saw Melinda standing there, the pup in her arms.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to make sure you had everything.”

  She was feeling the solitude, he realized. Maybe he was, too. And he could tell it was odd for both of them. He scooted over on the tarp. “Have a seat. I was just about to make field coffee.”

  “Throw it in a tin cup and wait for the grounds to settle?” She grinned.

  “Exactly. We’ll have to share the cup, though.”

  “No problem. Mr. Speedy Gonzalez here wanted to get out and run.”

  She settled beside him on the tarp and put the pup down. Noel eyed the fire suspiciously but seemed to realize instinctively that he’d better not get too close. After studying it for a minute, he wandered off to play in the snow.

  “You looked lost in thought,” she said.

  “I was.” He hesitated, then decided what the hell. “I was remembering these Afghan soldiers we worked with. There was a snowy afternoon when we’d finished our patrol and decided to enjoy some heat. It looked kinda like it does right now.”

  “Were they friends of yours?”

  “By then, sort of. One of them started talking about life before the Russians invaded. Those people never had it easy. Some of them still talk about the glory days of the Silk Road, but that was a long time ago. Basically they’re a mountain country just scraping by. Everyone wants to pass through, few want to stay. But those who stayed used to at least have a life. Crops, herds, what we’d call subsistence, I guess.”

  “But not now?”

  “Well, the place was never totally peaceful. I’m sure you’ve heard of the warlords.”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded and adjusted the pot of melted snow as the wood beneath it collapsed a little in the blaze, threatening to spill it. “But back in the warlord days, you basically gave your fealty to the nearest strongman, and unless something happened with another warlord, you were protected.”

  “But now…?”

  He shook his head. “The Russians wanted to put a pipeline through. Funny how oil seems to be at the root of everything now. All that black gold gets purchased with red gold. Blood.”

  “But weren’t the locals also in the opium business?”

  He looked at her. “I’m never going to criticize a man for doing what he has to do to feed his family.”

  She hesitated, then slowly nodded. “I can see that.”

  “Anyway, this guy was sitting there at the fire, talking about the good old days before Russia, before the Taliban, before us. And I listened to him, thinking that wasn’t much in the way of good old days, but it sure as hell was better than what they got left with.”

  “How so?”

  “Every village is a front line now. And has been since the Russians. Everyone is fighting for different agendas, and the guys who’d just like to be left alone to raise their goats or their poppies don’t get left alone. We walk into a village and start looking for terrorists or weapons caches, and if someone talks to us, he might be dead by sundown. The amazing thing is how many of them help us anyway. They don’t want the Taliban back, and now that we’ve armed the warlords to the teeth, they don’t want them, either. As for bin Laden and his crew, they’re popular in some places and loathed in a whole lot of others. All these folks want is peace. Instead they got shot in a matter of a few decades from a tribal culture into the full horror of twenty-first-century war.”

  Melinda sighed and looked into the fire. “That’s awful.”

  “Yeah. It is. Meanwhile, we’re trying to get them to establish a national government, which is something they never had before and don’t fully understand. And the warlords don’t like it at all.”

  He prodded the fire again and adjusted the pot. It was getting close to a boil.

  “All that,” she said, “must make it very difficult for you.”

  “Actually, I don’t think about it. I can’t afford to.”

  She turned to him. “But you’re thinking about it now.”

  “It’s sitting by this fire. It reminded me. That guy was in his thirties. I don’t think he can really remember anything else, but he was repeating the talk of his elders. Most of those people, except for the ones carrying RPGs and Kalashnikovs, would vastly prefer to return to the nineteenth century.”

  Noel came by, as if to touch home base and reassure himself, then dashed back into the snow, tunneling for a bit, only to pop his head up like a snow gopher. From time to time he howled for some reason known only to him.

  “I hope he doesn’t draw the wolves,” Melinda remarked.

  “There are wolves out here?”

  “They arrived a few years back. No one knows exactly when, but we figure they must have migrated from Yellowstone. You heard about them being reintroduced there?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, we’ve got a pack here. At least one that I’m sure of. It might have split into two by now. I’m trying to track them without disturbing them too much.”

  “Why are you worried about Noel attracting them?”

  “They’re not dangerous to humans, but I’m not certain what they’d make of him. It’s conceivable he could look about the right size for a snack.”

  Jon almost chuckled. “Somehow I bet they’d just see him as another puppy. He’s not that different.”

  “You’re probably right, as long as he doesn’t take it into his head to follow them.”

  At that moment Noel came crashing back to them, sliding into the side of Jon’s leg before clambering up into Melinda’s lap. He’d apparently had enough of the snow for now.

  John poured steaming water into the cup he’d already prepared, then placed it near the edge of the fire to let the grounds steep and settle.

  Snow had begun to fall again, gently, and it hissed as it hit the fire. Jon looked at Melinda again and saw that her gaze had grown distant and her face had tightened. He had no doubt she was remembering something unpleasant.

  It took him a minute, but he forced himself past his self-imposed reserve. “Are you okay?”

  She started, then looked at him. “I’m fine. Sometimes I just remember things I’d rather not.”

  With that, she pushed herself to her feet, puppy in one arm. “I’m sorry. You said you came out here for solitude, and I invaded. I’ll just head back.”

  She took a couple of steps from the fire, then paused. “I’m going out tomorrow to check for possible avalanche areas. If you want to tag along, I guess that would be okay.”<
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  Before he could answer, she was off into the woods, Noel howling his head off.

  Jon waited a while, half hoping the wolves would show up, but the woods remained silent and nothing moved.

  It could have been the inside of a coffin.

  Chapter 5

  “Okay,” Melinda said to Noel after he’d gobbled down his supper, “it’s two weeks until Christmas. We’re going to decorate.”

  Since he’d already found a comfortable spot to curl up on the couch, he evinced disinterest with a big yawn.

  “I know, you could care less. But I care. It’s not much, but it’ll be pretty.”

  The decorations were up in the cabin’s attic, a place that was drafty but managed to get just enough heat from the woodstove to make it tolerable. The hardest thing to get down was the artificial tree she’d bought two years ago, a seven-footer with fiber optic lights. She didn’t turn on the lights very often, because that meant starting the generator and she hated to burn fuel for something so inconsequential, but between Christmas and New Year’s there were often park visitors who’d come out to cross-country ski and hike, and she liked to turn them on then. It seemed friendlier somehow, and God knew, she had to practice being friendly.

  After she’d struggled and banged around, she got the box downstairs and pushed it into the front room. Next there were several boxes of ornaments that glistened enough in the glow from the oil lamps to make up for not lighting the tree. She reminded herself to hang the unbreakable items down low, in case Noel decided to play with them.

  Then came a couple of boxes of other things: garlands, a wreath, bows and even bright-red Christmas stockings for no one at all. But they looked nice tacked to the wall.

  And finally her most favorite box of all: the Nativity. She’d really splurged on that. All the figures were ceramic and a foot tall. She especially liked the fact that they were darker skinned, too. That felt more realistic to her.

  Noel watched all this through drooping eyelids, surprising her once with a small belch.

  She looked at him. “I thought dogs didn’t do that.”