It was a dark night. It was a stormy night. Far down wolves howled and wailed at the black, moonless sky like clerics of some primeval sodality. Aqueous orbs tumbled and twirled from their cumulonimbeous birth to the lonely earth below, shattering into millions of featureless specks - bursting and breaking their bodies on the windows of the house where, inside, it was warm and dry.
However, despite the warmth, the mood in the house was a sniffly, miserable sort. The combined bad mood of 20 or so out-of-shape individuals who had just skied cross country for 3 hours through torrential snow. Liz had warned them. She didn’t know how this trip had ever taken off in the first place. Eric, her supervisor, had said he’d like her to plan a little outing for the office. To engender office solidarity. Liz thought that really Eric hoped having her plan it would make her feel more a part of the office team, not so new. Liz agreed to do it with some trepidation, thinking no one – except maybe a few of the student employees – would sign up to come. Not all these mothers and fathers and grandparents that worked here.
She didn’t know that Eric had sent everyone else in the office a memo “strongly encouraging” them to go on the retreat. When she’d seen that most of the office had signed up to come, she had said a swear. A very bad one.
As the day of the retreat approached Liz had hoped that the threat of a snow storm would scare everyone off. She imagined several people excusing themselves, saying, “I’m sorry but I have the most terrible fear of, um, snow.” Instead Eric assured everyone that the snow wouldn’t come until later in the day, and if they left early enough they’d be safe and warm in plenty of time. Liz had wanted to say, “No one ever leaves early enough,” but she refrained.
They did not leave early enough. And of course everyone had weighed down their packs with all the frippery items Liz had told them not to bring. She found it hard to watch her colleagues try to manage the skis with their legs wobbling here and there. It didn’t take long for people to start saying things like, “I thought you said it was flat,” with fake smiles on their strained faces.
Joey and Steve were the only student employees that had ended up coming. They were athletic and kept rushing off ahead of the group then skiing back without even working up a sweat, reminding Liz of a couple of 7 year olds and irritating everyone else. About every 15 minutes one or another of the group would ask for a rest stop. After about an hour Gerald – an older man who Liz though of as a suspicious character – said, “How close are we? It’s gotta be only a few more minutes.” When Liz said they weren’t even half way, he called her a bad word. One which even she seldom used.
Soon after that it started snowing. Hard. Most of them hadn’t worn the proper gear and were soon soaked through (“I thought you said cotton was good for wicking!” Phyllis had said.) An hour later, a few people had actually started crying, and the requests for rest stops had increased to every 5 minutes.
Liz suggested at one point that they should turn around, but Eric swore it would take less time to forge on to the house. He seemed to be having the time of his life, and Liz was pretty sure that some of her colleagues would never forgive him for it. Nor, she bet, would they forgive her.
When they finally reached the house and threw their wet, frozen bodies through the doorway, Liz thought no one except Eric, Joey, and Steve, would ever talk to her again. Everyone else huddled together near the fire, which Liz had made sure to get started as soon as she’d laid her gear to the side. They kept their backs to her. Eric sat with them, talking cheerfully, and people responded because he was their boss, though they gave him bitter looks behind his back. After getting settled Joey and Steve pulled out a couple packs of beer each. Liz looked at them in barely covered disbelief. What kind of vagaries did they think they were going to be getting up to out here?
It didn’t take long for the two boys to get stupid drunk. Some people had started talking about braving the cold again in order to use the outhouse situated several yards from the house, but no one wanted to do it. Suddenly Joey offered, “If you don’t want to walk all the way to the outhouse just go in the snow.” Someone retorted that it would be even colder.
“You just gotta brace yourself.” Joey said.
“Why don’t you do it then?” Steve said, laughing a little in a stupid drunk sort of way. I bet you can’t stay out there long enough to write your whole name in the snow.”
“I bet I can stay out there longer than you can.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Liz said. She didn’t have much patience for these sorts of competitions. But Steve and Joey didn’t listen to her. When they pulled open the door, the wind that blew in felt frigid. Everyone shouted at them until they closed the door behind them. A couple people got up to watch them through the window, but most everyone else stayed by the fire, pretending at disinterest. Liz didn’t imagine that Steve and Joey’s delicate man parts could stand up to the freezing air for long, and she was right. Steve got to the second ‘e’ in his name before zipping up and rushing back to the house, where he hopped and grunted and tried not to cradle his crotch.
Joey forced himself almost to the second to last letter of his last name, Belliozingel, then came stumbling back in, trying to force a look of triumph onto his pained face. “I’m the Wizard of Whizz!” he shouted, then crumpled up in a ball, grabbed his privates, and began to moan.
For a moment everyone stayed silent, but as they watched the two boys writhe on the floor, the humor of the situation began to overcome the bad moods brought on by the arduous cross country trek. Everyone started laughing. Eventually even Steve and Joey laughed too. 20 minutes later, a few card games and board games had broken out. Phyllis had pulled Liz into a conversation with a couple other ladies, Eric was telling some of the other men about the time he escaped an avalanche, and Steve and Joey – having changed into warmer pants – sat with Gerald, exchanging what sounded like dirty jokes. Liz looked around, and thought maybe the retreat hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
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