Last Chance Llama Ranch

by Hilary Fields

Thad went down—thankfully into the pile of leaves they’d gathered for insulation, and not the fire. He sprawled out in an undignified tangle of arms and legs, sending leaves scattering in all directions.

  No one laughed.

  “Who did that?”

  “Musta been a tree root,” Bernie said. “That or you’re a total klutz, brah.”

  The redness in Thad’s face was evident even in the waning light of approaching nightfall.

  Joey stepped forward before Thad could jump back to his feet, quicker even than Sam, who had moved to intercept him. The slender kid stuck his hand in front of Thaddeus’s face. “Take it or break it, Thaddeus,” he said quietly. “But either way I’m not backing down.”

  For a moment Merry thought Thad would choose the latter, and she bit her lip, thinking how little fun it would be to cart the kids down the mountain in the middle of the night in search of medical attention—and perhaps the aid of law enforcement.

  Then Thaddeus cracked a smile. It lit up his face and showed Merry for a second what a heartbreaker he was going to be when he was fully grown. “Good for you, Joe.” He took the smaller boy’s hand and let him help him to his feet, though the assist was clearly not needed. “Maybe you aren’t a total pussy after all.”

  “And maybe you’re not a total asshat, but the jury’s still out,” Joey said.

  The two other boys loosened up visibly. Zelda, stroking Cleese’s shell, was smiling at Thad in a way that told Merry she was no more immune to his charms than he was to hers. “We could teach you to read, you know,” she said. “All of us could take turns. We’d never tell anyone.”

  The other kids looked solemnly back at Thaddeus, nodding.

  Now it was Thad’s turn to have tears in his eyes, though he scrubbed them away before they could fall. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Dude,” Bernie said. “We’re like the Three Musketeers. Or five, or whatever. Anyway, we stick together when it counts.”

  “We’ll sort you out, Thad,” Mikey said. “Just stop acting like such a jerk, okay? It’s really uncool.”

  Thad scooped up a pile of leaves and tossed it at Mikey, but he was smiling. “Deal.”

  “Hey, Sammy,” Bernie called, “all this chest thumping is hungry work. Did Dolly pack any dessert?”

  * * *

  With a lean-to built of branches tied with dogbane-husk cordage to keep the warmth of our fire at least ostensibly from escaping, we bedded down at last between a layer of scrounged-up leaves and our garbage bag comforters. However, precious little comfort was to be had as the stars wheeled into view, and all trace of warmth stole away like a thief in the night.

  Actually, a thief in the night would have been welcome, so long as he was willing to spoon.

  There’s one piece of advice I will share about overnight outdoor survival, dear friends, and that is: Do not be the outside penguin.

  Remember March of the Penguins? Where all the roly-poly emperor penguins huddle in a big stinky circle on an ice floe in Antarctica for like, ten hundred months? Well, some unlucky bastard has to be the outside penguin. And since I couldn’t very well cuddle up with a bunch of teenaged boys (this is a PG magazine column, after all) and I was busy keeping dear Zel from a frozen grave by being “big spoon” to her little, yours truly played OP for the night. Even Snape stood me up, content to kush all by his lonesome closer to the stream. (Honestly, he farts, so I wasn’t too broken up about it.)

  But what of Studly Sam? Wouldn’t his arms have made the perfect haven of warmth and security a girl dreams of in a dark forest echoing with the cackles of coyotes and screeching of owls in the night? Well, perhaps, but our fearless leader had to stand sentry, did he not? Lay wakeful through the night to feed the fire and keep us all safe?

  Indeed. Sam took that bullet for us, and, cold posterior notwithstanding, I was most grateful.

  * * *

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—GNUP!

  Haaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwww—shwishwishwi!

  The sound of someone sawing logs with a wood chipper made of pure Satanism woke Merry. And not for the first time. Throughout the course of this most miserable night of her life, someone—namely the rather unstudly Sam—had been snoring fit to wake the dead. The pile of leaves he’d burrowed under for shelter fairly shuddered with the force of his stentorian snores. Or perhaps they were his defense mechanism—no woodland beast in its right mind would disturb anything making such a monstrous ruckus.

  Merry, who had slept approximately one third of a wink, scrubbed her hands over her face and gave sleep up as a bad job. The trash bag full of last year’s leaves may have served Sam’s intrepid young squirts fairly well, but a six-three Amazon wasn’t getting much coverage from a contractor bag. And damn, it was cold out here overnight. Merry had plowed into snowbanks that felt less chilly. Of course, in those days she’d been clad in space-age fabrics designed to keep competitors in peak condition, not the remains of one woefully insufficient Burberry windbreaker and a pair of skinny jeans she was coming to loathe with a passion fiery enough that it probably should have kept her warm. At one point, Merry had even tried to climb inside her leaf-stuffed bag instead of just using it as a blanket, but the resulting fiasco was worse than what little she cared to remember of prom night—all wrestling, rustling, and ultimately, disappointment.

  Sam obviously had no such struggles. After the evening’s dramatic confrontation, he’d made sure the kids dropped off to sleep okay, then tromped off to his own private pile of leaves, declining even a trash bag, as he’d been “training his mitochondria” for over a decade to keep his temperature optimally regulated, he said, and never felt the cold.

  Bully for you, Sam Cassidy.

  She snuggled deeper into her personal mulch pile, putting her arm back around Zelda to keep the girl warm. At least one of them should get some rest, she thought. I’ll just lie here and dream of Mother’s Austrian goose-down feather beds, the ones at the winter chalet where we spent so many Christmases pretending to get along. Merry started to slip back into some semblance of slumber.

  This time it wasn’t Sam’s attempts at New Age nasal symphonics that woke her. “Um, Miss Manning?” A voice piped up in Merry’s ear.

  Surely the voice would go away if she ignored it. Surely the gods would not be so cruel as to snatch this last chance of rest from her, just as she was so close to achieving it?

  A finger poked at the arm Merry had wrapped around her young charge. Tentative, but insistent. “Miss Manning?”

  Merry said a silent prayer for generosity of spirit. “Wassup, kiddo?” she asked, scrubbing a hand over her weary face again. She looked down at the kid she’d been spooning. Zel had rolled over on her back, her dyed hair looking black in the faint light.

  “I, um…that is, I have to…” The girl nibbled on her lip piercing. “Would you come with me to the bathroom?” she blurted. “I’m scared of, um…everything. Plus,” she added with more spirit, “I don’t want those pervs staring at my ass.”

  Merry felt a little bit flattered to be needed, even for so basic a function. Sleep can wait. “Sure, Zel. I don’t know about a bathroom, but I can probably scope out a suitable tree. And I’ll totally keep those pervs”—currently sleeping angelically like a pile of puppies across the fire—“from gawking where they shouldn’t.” With a repressed groan, she rolled stiffly to her feet, every muscle a scream after the night spent in frigid temperatures.

  Zel bounced up with enviable grace, ponytail swinging as she headed out from camp. She’d found a suitable thatch of cover and had her jeans down before Merry even caught up. Somehow I don’t think she needs my help, Merry thought. At least not with pissing in the woods.

  When in Rome…Merry found her own bush and attended to nature’s call a few feet away.

  “So, ah, Miss Manning…” Zel said from her hiding place.

  “Please, Zel, call me Merry. Once you’ve peed in the trees with someone, formalities seem a bit absurd.” Merry pulled out some of the velvet
y wipe-safe leaves she’d stashed in her pockets and did the necessary, hoping her skin wouldn’t have some horrible delayed reaction.

  “Um, okay…Merry. So, like, I had a question. Can I ask you a question?”

  Merry zipped up. “I think you just did.”

  “Um, like, another one?” Zelda rustled around, finishing up her own business. Her footsteps were muffled on the leaf duff as she tromped over.

  Merry left off teasing. “Of course. What’s on your mind?”

  Zel leaned her back against an aspen tree, whose trunk barely shone white in the predawn light. She shivered, but Merry thought it was more nerves than the temperature. “So, like, you probably had a boyfriend or two, when you were younger?”

  Ouch, kid. “Well, back in those days, it was all arranged marriages between us knights and damsels,” she quipped. “Of course, gals like me and Brienne of Tarth, well, we weren’t exactly hot commodities, but I did have one or two suitors vying to carry my favors in the lists.”

  Zelda colored, but wouldn’t be deterred by Merry’s teasing. “Yeah, um, right. So, like, what do you do if you like a guy, but he’s kinda…I don’t know, like…not in your same league?”

  Merry’s lips quirked. Well, that’s one I know plenty about, she thought. When you were bigger and stronger than 90 percent of them, somehow that tended to have a paradoxical effect on your league stats with men. But Zelda—zesty, conventionally pretty—she’d be unlikely to have the same issues. “I don’t think anyone’s out of your league, sweetheart,” she said to the girl. “Just in one day of knowing you, I’ve seen enough to know that. You’re smart, you’re lovely, and you’re kind—a lot kinder than I bet you want people to know.”

  Zel blushed at the compliment, but she brushed it off. “Not that kind of league,” she said, with an arrogance that made Merry smile inwardly. She tossed her hair. “I mean money.”

  “Ah,” said Merry. She knew a lot about that too. Having come from more wealth than she knew what to do with, she’d met her share of guys who felt intimidated by her family’s fortune and prestige. She hated to think of Zel feeling that way. “I’m sure no one would judge you for not having a lot of money, Zelda—” she started.

  “No, I mean, I have money. Like, a lot of money. And he doesn’t.”

  “Ah,” she said again. Merry looked the girl over, noting belatedly how her hair’s dye job, even as punked-out as it was, had been done with an expert hand, and her clothes, while as trashed as the others’, looked to have been deliberately demolished by a designer’s fashion-conscious hand. Even her body jewelry was obviously quality, now that Merry looked. “I’m guessing you don’t want him to know.”

  “I don’t want anyone to know.” Zelda kicked the dirt at her feet, sending leaves scattering. “Money ruins everything,” she said. “My PUs are, like, these tech meganerds who made a zillion in some dot-something bubble thing way back in the nineties, and they’re, like, totally clueless.”

  “PUs?”

  “Parental units,” Zel said, as if it should be obvious. “They moved out here to the middle of nowhere to ‘retire’ and they dragged my ass with them. I’m supposed to be in school in Taos right now with the other kids whose parents are, like, movie stars and oil billionaires and shit, but I ditched ’cause I can’t stand their whiny bullshit, and how they look down on the people who really live here.”

  “Like Thaddeus?” Merry asked gently. “That is who we’re talking about, right?”

  Zelda colored nearly as purple as her hair. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Maybe,” she muttered.

  “Oh, kiddo. That boy’s so head over heels for you, you could be the queen of England and he’d still pull on your pigtails to get your attention.”

  “Pull wha—?” Zelda looked alarmed.

  “Never mind. It’s just something we used to say back in the dawn of time, where I’m from. It means he likes you.”

  “Oh. Um, cool.” Zelda blushed again. “But, like, wouldn’t he get all tweaked if he knew? I mean, he’s worried about real stuff, like whether he can get his grandma her medicine. All I have to worry about is which college my folks are going to donate a library to, to get me in. Should I try to help his family out? Give them some money…or would he hate that? I thought maybe, with all those ski bucks you have, you’d know what to do.”

  Ski bucks. Ha. Ha-hahahahahaha. Ski bucks. But Merry did know plenty about family money, and the perils thereof. “Well, honey. I think you’re right to be cautious about that kind of thing. Your boy Thad is obviously very proud. I think just being his friend is probably the best thing. What you did earlier, offering to help him with his reading…that’s the kind of thing friends do for each other.” And of course, we all know what happens when teenagers study together, she thought with an inner smile. “If, after a while, you want to let him know about your circumstances, let it come out naturally.”

  “You think he’ll be cool?”

  “Yo, Zel, you get chomped by a bear or some shit? We’re about to break camp, so get your sweet butt back here!” Thad’s voice, shouted through the trees, was full of energy and enthusiasm once more, as if the events of the night before had never happened.

  “Yeah,” Merry said, grinning. “Somehow I think he’ll be cool. C’mon, let’s get back to the others and see what Sam’s got in store for us this morning.”

  They turned to head back, but Zelda stopped before they could enter the campsite, pulling her ponytail higher and tighter atop her head. She looked back at Merry with a shy gaze. “I’m sorry for what I said before. About the Brienne thing. I can be a real bitch sometimes, like, when I’m nervous or something. You’re actually pretty cool, for a grown-up.” She trotted down the trail to catch up with the others.

  Merry smiled. I am, aren’t I?

  * * *

  She wasn’t the only one who had a scintillating experience camping with the kids.

  When Merry unpacked the terrarium from Snape’s pannier upon returning to the ranch that afternoon, she blinked in disbelief, turning her turtle this way and that. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she murmured, biting her lip.

  Someone had bedazzled Cleese.

  His shell sparkled with tiny rhinestones set in star shapes, hearts, sunbursts, and flowers. Even his tiny toes had received an expertly done pedicure—a purple pedicure. He cast a forlorn look at Merry, as if to say, “the things I put up with for you, woman.”

  “Zellllddddaaaa!”

  The Last Chance Llama Ranch is, you might say, about second chances as much as anything else. My overnight outing with the inimitable Zel, Thad, Joey, Mikey, and Beebs was some of the best fun I’ve enjoyed in all my time as a travel writer. While I will say spending the night in the mountains with nothing but a trash bag to keep your buns toasty definitely falls into the “don’t do what I did” category, if you gotta do it, you really wanna find yourself in the company of Sam and his crew, who’ll teach you how to make it through the night with aplomb, if not camping gear. You can find Sam’s class schedule on his website (linked here), and he’ll be happy to arrange a little adventure for you and any teens you might have in tow.

  The takeaway, dear readers, is this: Whether you’re a llama that’s been left out in the cold, or a kid who just needs a little extra love and attention, you’ll find what you need to thrive and survive in Dolly and Sam Cassidy’s little slice of paradise. Come on by, friends. They’ll take care of you proper.

  * * *

  TravelBiatch: That got me right in the feelz! Someone’s been chopping onions again, dammit.

  GrlyGrl: Inorite? I think we should do something nice for those kiddos. Who’s with me?

  Borgormeister: I’d like to *get* with you.

  GrlyGrl: Dream on. Now shut up, I’m trying to be altitudistic.

  Grammahnazi: You mean *altruistic*?

  GrlyGrl: Whatevs! Sheesh! Can we just focus on the point here?

  Schwingbat: What *is* the point?

  GrlyGrl: The poin
t is, these kids deserve a break!

  TravelBiatch: They deserve better than a damn trash bag anyway. Studly Sam loses points there, IMHO. What, he couldn’t give them a tent, some sleeping bags? SOMETHING???

  HansBlowHole: I got an awesome Tauntaun sleeping bag on ThinkGeek. But I’m keeping it.

  Schwingbat: Nobody wants to know about your sleeping arrangements, dorkus.

  GrlyGrl: That’s *it*! Let’s get them a gift certificate to L.L. Bean or wherever for some real camping gear. And maybe matching “Sam’s Club” tee shirts. Because awesome!

  Grammahnazi: Um, there’s already a Sam’s Club, Grly. I do not think it means what you think it means.

  GrlyGrl: Grammah, did you forget your anti-troll tea? Coz someone’s got a gnarly case of the b*tchies this morning.

  TravelBiatch: Hey, I resemble that remark!

  HansBlowHole: Done and done. While you kittens were busy being catty, *I* just started a Kickstarter. Check it out, I’ve already tweeted the URL and started a FB page. Now let’s fund this thing and go home.

  Open mic night at Café Con Kvetch is something to see.

  Actually, it’s the only thing to see, on a Friday night in Aguas Milagros. But don’t worry. If you come with your ears, your mind, and your heart open, you’ll leave happy.

  * * *

  Merry was filled with dread.

  Pure, unadulterated dread.

  When she arrived at Café Con Kvetch, courtesy of Dolly’s pickup truck, where she’d been wedged inescapably between her hostess and a very voluble Jane Kraslowski, there was scarcely a parking spot to be found. The three women ended up hoofing it from halfway down Main Street—the sign for which, Merry noticed, some wag had crossed out and replaced with “Only Street.” Merry was serenaded along the way by a toe-tapping country duet that leaked out the wide-open windows of the diner-cum-general store, and her path was lit by the glow of light spilling from the propped-open door. It was brisk, she noticed, with a chill in the air that said autumn was well and truly settling in. It was getting darker earlier too, reminding her that Thanksgiving was fast approaching. With the golden aspen and cottonwood leaves skittering down the road in the twilight juxtaposed against the warmth of the inviting café, Aguas Milagros was the very picture of small-town conviviality tonight, exactly the sort of thing her readers would eat up with the proverbial spoon.