Bring Me Home for Christmas

go behind a bush to pee; at that moment, she wished she really was one of the guys! And she stood guard while one of the best-known actresses in Hollywood squatted behind a bush. “Talk about something for my Facebook page,” Becca joked.
    “Don’t even think about it, darling,” Muriel said with a smile that promised dire consequences and no sense of humor on that suggestion.
    It drizzled on and off through the early morning and even though everyone had rain slickers, Becca felt damp to her bones. There were a couple of flushes of birds, a few shots fired, but it wasn’t until 10:00 a.m. that Muriel bagged a mallard. Luce went out for the duck, brought it back to her mistress, and Muriel praised her Lab proudly, tossing the dead bird into the back of her truck.
    Becca hoped she didn’t hit anything. Though she was every inch an athlete who could keep up with the boys, she seriously didn’t want to touch a dead duck.
    “What are you going to do with that duck?” Becca asked her.
    “Eat it, hopefully.”
    “You’re a cook, too?”
    “Well, no. Not at all. I can barely slice cheese. But I very wisely found myself a guy who loves to cook and he’s brilliant at it.”
    “And will you pluck it and gut it?” Becca asked.
    “Well, I can, if it comes to that. But I think Walt will take over. He loves thinking he takes care of me.” She smiled. “And I love promoting that idea. I like to train the dogs and shoot a lot more than I like handling the game.”
    “It’s a relief to hear that. I was feeling a little out of place with the boys,” Becca said.
    Then they went back to sitting, silent and shivering, waiting for game. What about this is fun, exactly? Becca wondered. She heard soft masculine laughter now and then. What could possibly be entertaining them? The cold? The rain?
    At a little before noon, Muriel decided she’d had enough, bid everyone goodbye and took her dogs home. A little while later, Becca took refuge in her brother’s truck, drank more hot coffee and ate a sandwich. She turned on the truck to run the heater and within seconds Denny was there, telling her to kill the engine. The noise! She hadn’t gotten even an ounce of heat, but she turned the ignition off. She decided the guys could have as much wet, cold fun as they could stand, she was done for the day. She couldn’t feel her toes; her nose would never again be a normal color. At least it was a little warmer inside the truck, even without the heater. She leaned back and closed her eyes.
    She wasn’t sure how long she had dozed when the truck’s door on the driver’s side opened and caused her to wake. Smiling, Troy settled behind the wheel. “Just thought I’d grab a cup of coffee and a sandwich. You okay?”
    “Fine. Just got cold and hungry. Time for a break.”
    He reached into the back of the extended cab, into the picnic box Preacher had packed, and pulled out a sandwich. “So, what do you think of duck hunting so far?”
    “Honestly?” she asked. “A little on the, uh, boring side. Not to mention cold and wet.”
    He laughed and nodded in agreement. “Good weather for ducks, but not for us. I’d rather hunt on a clear day, but the cold doesn’t bother me. And when you actually hit your target, that’s when it’s cool. And we like to eat our kill,” he said, grinning, before taking a big bite of his sandwich.
    “How caveman of you,” she said. “Do you also like to pluck your kill?”
    “We let our women do that,” he teased. “We go out, club the beasts, drag them home and our women clean them, cook them and make our clothes out of their skins.”
    “And what tribe do you come from?” she asked, laughing at him. But he just chewed and his eyes twinkled. “Rich has mentioned you a hundred times, at least, but I don’t know that much about you. Besides being a Marine reservist, how do you earn a living?” she asked him.
    “I teach seventh-grade math. Geometry and pre-algebra.”
    “No kidding?” she asked, sitting straighter. “I teach!”
    “I know. We have a lot in common.”
    “I wonder why Rich didn’t tell me that,” she said.
    Troy laughed. “Let me guess—maybe it’s not way up there on his list of important conversational topics. I haven’t been teaching long. I did two years in the Corps, finished college, got called for Iraq again and came home to teach. I think I’ll get in a good stretch at home now.”
    “But why the Marines? I mean, why still the Marines?”
    He