Sam LeBlanc was one of those types who could carry a pretty good load of booze without showing it much, and he was carrying one now, as he waited, fully clothed, at the first tee of the West Turtle Lake Club golf course.

Sam was no dummy, especially when it came to golf setups; he had pulled a few of them in his day. After Gil and Frank’s antics over breakfast Friday morning, it had become clear to him that the whole object of the exercise was for them to get on his nerves, and having to go bare-assed at the West Turtle Lake Club was in itself a long way toward accomplishing the desired effect.

It had taken him a while to figure out a counter-plan, and even he would have admitted that his plan wasn’t real great: get drunk enough to feel no pain, and a lot of the embarrassment would evaporate. Then, he’d just have to hope that his natural golf talent would carry through, and there was a good chance of that happening: he was a much better golfer than either Frank or Gil.

So far, it was working, although they hadn’t started to play yet. He felt a little strange, standing around the tee, wearing clothes when everybody else around him was nude, and there were several people hanging around with more coming, while he waited for Gil to show up.

He only had to stand around a couple of minutes, before a crowd of about a dozen people were walking up the driveway toward the small clubhouse. In the crowd, he could make out Frank and Diane Matson, Gil and Carrie and Jennifer Evachevski, that little broad, what’s-her-name, who sold ads for the Record-Herald, and that new reporter they had, whatever his name was; he hadn’t known that either of them hung out around here.

The reporter was pulling a child’s red wagon with an ice chest sitting in it. There were some other people, too, some of whom Sam recognized, and others he didn’t, but it was clear that a crowd had showed up to watch the game, and in the whole crowd, there wasn’t enough clothing above the ankles to dress a Barbie doll.

“You about ready, Sam?” Frank asked, pulling a wood from his bag and taking a practice swing.

“Where’s my caddie?” he demanded.

“You got to understand,” Frank said, “we don’t have any regular caddies out here, but Jennifer here volunteered to pull your cart for you.”

“Hi, Mr. LeBlanc,” Jennifer said, in a throaty voice, fluttering her eyelashes, “would you like a beer?” she asked.

Sam looked the young lady over, speechless, all thoughts of golf erased from his mind. “Yeah, sure, whatever,” he finally managed to say.

“I’ll get you one,” she said, turning to go over to the ice chest.

Mike lifted the lid, and as Jennifer bent over to grab one LeBlanc studied her backside, thinking, “God! She really has an ass that’s prettier than most people’s faces!”

Jennifer brought the beer over to him and popped the lid. “Here you go, Mr. LeBlanc,” she said sweetly.

LeBlanc took another look at her, and realized that the effect of the earlier brews had to be wearing off. He upended the can, killed it in one long swallow, and handed the empty back to the beautiful young girl. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Gil said menacingly.

“You’re going to make me do this?”

“Hell, yes,” Frank said. “That’s the whole point. Put up or shut up, Sam.”

“All right,” LeBlanc replied, unbuckling his belt. “I said I was going to beat your asses bare, and that’s how I’m going to do it.”

In a minute, LeBlanc was as bare as the rest of the players and the gallery. “You want to lead off, Sam?” Gil asked. “After all, you’re the guest here.”

“Sure, sure,” he replied, realizing that concentrating on his game might cover his embarrassment. “How does this hole lie, anyway?”

“Doglegs left, at the top of the rise,” Gil told him.

LeBlanc teed up his ball, and the crowd gathered around. Jennifer drew his bag of clubs up a few feet across from him, and turned to watch him carefully, striking a pose as she did so. Sam bent over to address the ball, then looked up again to get a feel for his position, and saw her standing there, a smile on her face, and remembered finally that he was supposed to hit the ball.

Quite amazingly, it was a relatively decent shot, if a little to the right of the center line. Sam was a long ball player, and he’d whacked the ball harder than he’d intended. The ball hit near the top of the rise, then bounced out of sight over the hill. “How do you like that?” he said.

“Good shot, Sam,” Frank conceded as he teed up his own ball, and quickly drove it down the course; it hooked a little to the left, and was considerably shorter than Sam’s, but it rolled to a stop, just at the base of the hill and almost in the rough. “Shit,” Frank said, mostly for Sam’s benefit. His ball was actually in excellent position; he could not have asked for better, even though he’d played the hole conservatively.

Gil’s drive was conservative, too, but the ball went fairly straight, and wound up in the center of the fairway, twenty or thirty yards to the right of Frank’s.

“All right, let’s go,” Frank said, as much to the gallery as to the golfing party.

LeBlanc, Jennifer, and a party of nudists forged out ahead, while Gil, Frank, and the Colonel lagged behind. “We’re off to a good start,” the Colonel said. “He hit that thing right into the sucker hole.”

“Hell,” Gil replied, “I think he hit it right through the sucker hole.”

The Colonel nodded. “Under-driving this hole is bad enough, but over-driving it is a damn sight worse.” He pushed on ahead, in hopes of catching up with Sam.

Frank and Carrie had reached his ball when Sam and Jennifer topped the rise. “You sandbagging sons of bitches,” they heard Sam yell.

“I think he’s seen the sucker hole,” Frank told his half-sister as he selected a short iron.

Sam had indeed seen it. Down on the far side of the hill was a wide pond, with a thick woods beyond it. He was still cussing when the Colonel caught up with him. “Sam,” the Colonel said. “You hit that thing so hard, I think you must have gone clear over the hazard. Maybe you ought to take a pass around the back side to see if your ball made it over the water.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Sam conceded, leading Jennifer and his share of the gallery down around one end of the pond. As he descended the hill, he heard a round of applause; he turned around to see a ball sail up the rise and land on the green, almost behind him. Somebody was on the green in two.

Sam, Jennifer, and the Colonel, along with several other people, plunged into the woods to look for the lost ball. Deep in the woods, out of the breeze and sunshine, some of the hoards of West Turtle Lake mosquitoes were spending their day. “Jesus,” Sam yelled at the Colonel, “don’t you ever spray these damn bugs?”

“Bugs?” the Colonel said. “I haven’t seen any bugs.”

“God, there’s millions of mosquitoes here!”

“I haven’t seen any,” Jennifer smiled, not mentioning that her mother had dosed her with a layer of every mosquito repellent known to man.

“Hey, Sam,” the Colonel said. “Were you shooting a Titlist 4?”

“Yeah,” he replied, swatting ineffectually at a cloud of mosquitoes.

“Here it is.”

Sam went over to check it out, finding the ball nestled between the roots of a tree. “Now what the hell?” he said, realizing that he’d have to chip a few feet out into the open, then chip again to get out of the woods. Once he had the ball in the open, he asked the Colonel, “Which direction is the green?”

The Colonel pointed off into the general direction of the southeast, and Sam squared off and whacked the ball, which disappeared up through the trees.

Back out in the open, Sam yelled at some nudists standing on the hill, “Did anybody see where that chip shot went?”

“Landed up toward the top of the hill,” someone yelled back, “But it rolled right down into the pond.”

“Sonofabitchin’ sandbaggers,” Sam mumbled, then yelled back up the hill. “Did those guys hole out yet?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d they card?”

“Par and birdie,” the nudist called back.

Sam thought quickly. That was four and three. He had three now, and if he started a new ball, couldn’t hope to get on the green in much less than another three. There was no point in continuing with a lost cause. “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said, one hole down, and signaled to Jennifer to follow along.

He started up the hill, which wasn’t that steep. How the hell could a ball get loose and roll down it? Partway up the hill, he realized that the grass was cut barely longer than a green would have been. Any ball getting loose on the backside of that hill was a goner. “Hey, Colonel,” he yelled. “How’s come the grass is so short here?”

“Been having trouble with the height control on the mower,” the Colonel said. “Got this hill mowed off, and then realized we were scalping it.”

Gil and Frank were waiting at the second tee, Frank with a big smile on his face. “By God, the first time I’ve ever birdied number one,” he said.

“All right, you sonzabitches,” LeBlanc said. “I’ll give you that one. You ain’t getting the rest that easy.”

“Mr. LeBlanc,” Mike said, “you’re all mosquito bit. You like a beer?”

“Sure, give me one, kid.” Mike handed him a can, and again the sweating LeBlanc drained it in seconds.

The second hole at the West Turtle Lake Club, a long par-four with an easy dogleg right, was LeBlanc’s kind of hole, and everyone knew it, which was why the Colonel had gone to so much trouble to trick up the first hole, to get him behind right at the beginning.

The only problem was that there was not a lot that could be done to trick up the second hole, which was a long-hitter’s hole, and Sam was known for hitting them long. Because of good luck, both Gil and Sam managed to get on the green in two, though Sam was in much better position. It took three shots, one of them badly sliced, for Frank to get on the green, then both he and Gil three-putted, to Sam’s two.

Frank and Gil were able to pull ahead again on the third green. Sam muffed his tee shot when he happened to catch sight of one of Kirsten’s patented stretches just as he started his backswing; with his attention divided between the ball and Kirsten’s awesome chest, the ball got the short end of the stick and whistled off somewhere into mosquito country. Writing off his tee shot, he teed off again, three down, and managed to make up one of them before Gil finished the hole at par.

The fourth hole was the 127 yarder that Frank had aced the week before. By now, Sam had long since figured out that he had been totally set up, and his only hope of pulling the thing out was his basic quality as a golfer. If there was any question that he was being set up, the fourth hole known as “Mandenberg’s Monster” confirmed it. He opened another proffered beer, then walked down the course a few yards to check it out.

The fourth hole, he noticed, sloped down gently from the tee to a large water hazard. The green beyond was tiny, and surrounded by sand traps. Sam checked the grass on the hill, sloping toward the pond: sure enough, it was short, just barely taller than the fuzz on an average pool table. He made the decision, normally correct, that disaster lay in any tee shot that was shorter than the green.

Though it was not Sam’s turn to lead off, he was feeling the effect of the beer that he had consumed and took the tee when Gil gestured to him. He teed off with a seven-iron, hoping to drop the ball something like an artillery round, if not onto the green, at least into the sand. The ball sailed high in the air.

Ornithologists agree that ducks don’t have great memories, and the mallard that had survived the midair the week before was again flying high over the pond, quacking, and doing whatever it is that ducks do when they fly over a pond that they don’t want to land on, when again it tried to share airspace with a golf ball at the top of its trajectory. Since it is one of the basic laws of physics that two objects can’t share the same space at the same time, there was a period in which the flight paths of both were affected, and the duck, being heavier, basically won. With another angered “Wak!” and some other duck obscenities about golf balls, it dived off for the treetops and safety, while the ball fell like a rock right into the middle of the pond.

“Does that count?” Sam asked, steamed at blowing his third tee shot in four holes.

“Sure it counts,” Frank said. “I wouldn’t have aced this hole if it didn’t.”

Sam’s second tee shot landed him safely in a sand trap on the far side of the green, just about like he intended, but again, he was three down when the others stepped up.

Frank’s strategy on the hole surprised him. Frank took a three-iron, and gave the ball an easy chip-shot, maybe twenty or thirty yards out. Sam walked forward a few feet, to see the ball roll gently down the hill, gathering speed all the way, then, when the hill leveled out just before the edge of the pond, the ball slowed suddenly and stopped, maybe twenty yards across the water from the pin. “What the hell?” he said to himself, as Gil repeated the same strategy, for much the same results.

At the bottom of the hill, he realized what had happened. While the grass on the hill was cut short, right around the pond it looked like it hadn’t been cut for weeks.

Gil blew his chip shot and landed far from the pin, but Frank’s shot wound up about six feet out, while Sam was still walking around to the trap.

Sam knew he still had a chance to win the hole, if Frank really screwed up his putt, but his sand wedge pitched a little too much; rather than winding up near the pin, the ball sailed beyond the pin, rolled across the green, and out of sight on the far side. “I think that went into the water, Mr. LeBlanc,” Jennifer told him.

“Yeah, it’s in the water, Sam,” Gil called. “You want to play that one again?”

“Go ahead and putt out, you goddamn sandbagging creeps,” he said.

So it went for the next several holes. LeBlanc went through another eight or ten cans of beer, and won half of the next dozen holes. Usually he was within one hole of the nudists, but could never quite pull even. Whenever he had trouble with a hole, and he had a lot of trouble on some of them, either Gil or Frank usually seemed to manage to put together a good one.

Sometimes all three had bad ones. Sam won “Ursula’s Revenge,” the sixteenth hole but it left him two down.

At the seventeenth tee, Sam knew that he had to win the next two holes to force a tie. Number seventeen looked easy, a 148-yard par three, with no obvious bear traps, but Sam had learned that “obvious” was not the way this course was played. The only thing strange was that it was a two-pinned green, the pin shared with the third hole.

“Sam, you want the pin on the right,” the Colonel told him.

“Right pin, gotcha,” Sam said, selecting a five-iron and trying to ignore his caddie. He made an easy iron shot; the alignment was right, the distance was perfect. The ball hit short of the green, bounced right up onto it, and rolled across the green like it had eyes.

“Looks like I aced it, by God,” Sam said. “Something went right, for once.”

“Good shot, Sam,” Frank conceded. “There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?” he said, beginning to wonder at Frank’s smile. Something was wrong. What was it?

“You just aced number three. That’s the wrong pin.”

Somehow, Sam managed to win seventeen, in spite of everything, on account of extraordinarily bad putting on both the part of Gil and Frank. He was one down. If he could win eighteen, that would force a tie, and a playoff, and he knew he wouldn’t get hooked by that slick hill on number one, again. He was tired, he was footsore, he was drunk, he was one big goddamn mosquito bite, and he was sunburned all over, but he could still win this thing.

Frank and Gil knew it too. As they walked to the eighteenth tee, they quietly talked strategy. “Sam tees off first,” Gil said. “I’ll go next and play him straight. You go last, so take the back route. You can slice over there without him suspecting, and it’ll just look like a bad shot.”

West Turtle Lake Club golfers had long ago decided that it was bad form to avoid the long, crooked, and narrow eighteenth fairway by intentionally shooting over the trees onto the wide and straight fourteenth fairway, and playing it backwards to the eighteenth green. Nevertheless, if a shot should happen to stray over the trees, then a golfer was expected to play it where it lay. There were an extraordinary number of bad tee shots to the left off the eighteenth tee.

“I’d rather both of us took the back route,” Frank said, “but he’d catch on, and our goose would be cooked.”

Sam and Gil hit fairly decent tee shots down the eighteenth fairway, though Gil’s strayed a little too close to the right side of the course for comfort. Frank stepped up to the tee, and reminded himself to make it look good. He couldn’t remember wanting to hit a slice.

He swung at the ball. It arched high in the air, floated over the row of trees, and disappeared. “Shit,” he said. “I’m gonna give up this goddamn game. I supposed I’d better go look for it.” The golfers in the crowd giggled at that; Sam and Mike were the only ones who didn’t know what was going on.

Sam’s fairway shot went into the rough on the right side, and he had to search for a few minutes to find it, then chip out to get back on the fairway and drive for the green, arriving there one over Gil, to find Frank and Carrie and the majority of the gallery waiting for him. “Find your ball?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Frank told him, pointing at the ball sitting on the green, about three feet from the pin.

With a tee shot like that, he’s got to be four or five down, Sam thought, so it’s me and Gil.

Both of them had tough putts. Gil took a long downhill putt and misjudged it; the ball rolled wide of the pin, and about ten feet past it. It would take him at least two to get back, unless he was very lucky, Sam thought. No more of this trick-course stuff; the game was won with putting, after all. Sam walked the length of his twenty-foot putt three times, checked it over carefully, took note of the wind direction.

A hush fell over the crowd, and he tapped the ball.

Sam’s putt rolled a little high of the center line on the uneven green, then a little low, then right into the cup. It was a great putt, and he knew it, and gave him par for the hole, in spite of his trouble on the fairway. Gil would have to have one at least as good to even tie the hole. “You want to concede, Gil?” he asked.

“No way,” Gil said. “Frank, you putt out.”

Casually, Frank walked over to his ball, lined up over it, and putted. The ball rolled to the lip of the cup, then slightly away, and stopped. Frank shrugged, walked it over, scooped it in, then bent over and took it out again. “I am going to gold-plate this thing,” he said.

“Mike,” Gil said, “There should be a couple of bottles of champagne down in the bottom of that cooler.”

“Ain’t you gonna putt?” LeBlanc asked Gil. Something was wrong again, and he couldn’t figure out what.

“Why bother?” Gil said. “Frank got on the green in two.”

“Huh?”

“He birdied it, Sam.”

“If I hadn’t screwed up that putt,” Frank said, “I’d have eagled it.”

“You guys are shitting me.”

“No,” Frank said. “It landed in the middle of the fourteenth fairway, there, and it was an easy chip shot onto the green.”

“You goddamn, miserable, snakebellied sonsofbitching sandbaggers,” LeBlanc said. “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars you can’t do that to me again.”

“Why the hell would we want to do it again?” Frank told him.

“Once is all it takes. See you Monday, Sam,” Gil added, flexing his muscles.

Sam grabbed his golf cart away from Jennifer, opened the side pocket, and got out his pants. He pulled them on, and stomped away across the parking lot toward his car, the sound of laughter and popping champagne corks behind him echoing and burning in his ears.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 20, 1975

POLICE NEWS

Arrests

August 16: LeBlanc, Samuel, Spearfish Lake, DUIL.

The party at the West Turtle Lake Club continued on until well after dark, although it moved into the large central room at Commons shortly after LeBlanc roared out the driveway, scattering gravel behind him. It was an extraordinarily wet party, leaning heavily toward a selection of German beer and story after story about bad shots on Ursula’s Nightmare.

Mike had a couple of beers during the party, but since he knew he was going to be driving, he nursed them along, drifting around the party, sometimes with Kristen, sometimes without her. At one point, he found himself in a discussion of organic farming with an older, but extraordinarily pretty woman, who spoke with a bit of an accent and phrasing that indicated that her native language wasn’t English. “My granddad, isn’t what you’d call organic,” he said. “He’s just old-fashioned. I don’t think he’s ever used herbicides or pesticides, and darn little fertilizer, just crop rotation and traditional farming methods.”

“That is organic farming,” the woman said.

“Not organic,” Mike protested. “Just old-fashioned. He says that you have to think in terms of profit per acre, not just yield per acre.”

“No, that is organic farming, whether he means it or not,” the woman said. “His heart, it is in the right place.”

Kirsten drifted up to his side. “Kirsten, you have brought an interesting young man to us,” the woman said.

“Thanks, Helga,” Kirsten said.

“We hope to see more of you,” Helga said. “I must go. I will see you later,” she added, and drifted off toward the kitchen.

“So that’s Helga,” Mike said.

“She’s a nice woman,” Kirsten said.

Somehow, Mike didn’t meet up with Helga again that evening. After a while, the party began to break up, and he, Kirsten, and a crowd of Evachevskis strolled down the darkened road back to the cottage.

“Hope you had a good time, Mike,” Carrie said. “Why don’t you and Kirsten slide out here tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll put some steaks on the grill?”

“You willing, Kirsten?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “You wanted to go swimming, maybe we can do that, too. Or play volleyball, or something.”

“I think I will, if you want to,” he said. “I was on a volleyball team in college, and I was pretty good.”

“There’s a mixed pairs league tournament tomorrow,” Carrie suggested. “Maybe you and Kirsten would like to play.”

“Could be,” Mike said, and laughed, “God, did you see Sam’s face when Gil told him Frank birdied eighteen? I thought we were going to have to lift his chin up out of the grass.”

“That game,” Carrie said, “is going to become a West Turtle Lake Club legend, like the Evachevski sunburn.”

“Aye, ’twas a close-run thing,” a rather drunken Gil quoted. “Closest-run thing you ever saw.”

“When he starts quoting Wellington, he’s carrying a load,” Carrie commented. “I think we’d better get the kids to bed, and then go to bed ourselves. We’ll see you two tomorrow.”

Kirsten went inside the cottage briefly to retrieve her clothes, while Mike fished his out of the back seat of his car, and began to pull his undershorts and pants on over his shoes.

Kirsten was dressed when she came out of the house; Mike was buttoning his shirt. Ces’t la vie, he thought. The fantasy of being naked with Kirsten had admittedly crossed his mind more than once, and yet when it happened, it hadn’t been anything like what he’d hoped. Interesting, but not what he had imagined.

He held the door for her and she got in the car. He walked around, got in the driver’s side, and started the car up. In a minute, they were headed back down the two-rut to the entrance driveway. They were out on the better road before she spoke. “I … I’m sorry I kind of dumped this afternoon on you like I did, but I hope you had a good time, anyway.”

“Except for maybe the first two minutes,” Mike said, “that was the best time I’ve had since I’ve been in Spearfish Lake. I just wish you’d given me a little warning, but I do thank you for bringing me.”

“I’m glad I did, then,” she said.

“You know, I’ve been kind of lonely and bored ever since I’ve been here. This afternoon, at Gil and Carrie’s cabin and then on the golf course, I was among friends, having a good time. I guess I hadn’t realized what I was missing. Yes, I’m glad I came.”

She slid across the seat to snuggle up beside him. “I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said. “Can we be friends, then?”

He put his arm around her lightly. “It’s nice to have a friend,” he said.

“We’re coming out tomorrow?” she said.

He felt a wrenching in his guts but it wasn’t from the prospect of another visit to the West Turtle Lake Club. “I will if you want me to,” he told her.

“I do,” she said.

They drove back into Spearfish Lake, holding onto each other, not saying much, just enjoying being close to each other. It was nice to have a friend.

They came to a stop at the stoplight a block up the street from the office. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I need to stop off at the shop for a minute to drop off the camera.” And, he added mentally, to try and fish that damn story out from under Webb’s door.

“Fine,” she said. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

That would make it a little harder, he knew, but he ought to have a minute or two, if he moved quickly.

The office had not entirely given up the heat of the day when they walked in and turned on the light. Mike dumped the camera on the desk, while Kirsten made a beeline for the bathroom.

She no more than had the door closed when Mike grabbed a wire coat hanger from the rack and was on his hands and knees in front of Webb’s door, his guts wrenching in pain. All of a sudden, from behind the bathroom door, he heard the last thing he’d expected to hear: an enormously noisy fart, resonating off the porcelain of the toilet. He stopped his fishing around for a second, reflecting that it was hard to believe that such a loud blast could come from such a small girl.

It had to be the chili.

And it had to be the chili that was causing the gas pressure in his own gut. What the hell, he thought, and let it go, a noisy, echoing fart of his own, giving that joy of relief in the way that only a really healthy, gassy fart can give. “Aaaah,” he said, partly out of relief from the pressure on his gut, and partly from the fact that the corner of the envelope stuck out from under the door.

Quickly he grabbed it and stood up. He was stuffing the envelope in his desk drawer when the smell hit him, a rotten, reeking, disgusting smell that hit hard and lingered. He hung the hanger back on the rack, just as the bathroom door opened and Kirsten sheepishly stepped out.

“Did you hear that?” she asked shyly.

“That cherry bomb that just went off?” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, red faced. “I didn’t think it would be so loud. It must have been the chili.”

Mike nodded. “I’ve got the same problem,” he said.

“We’re still friends, aren’t we?” she asked.

“Still friends.”

“Can we promise we won’t be embarrassed if we share our misery tonight?” she asked.

Mike shook his head, then put his arm around her to show that he still cared. “Do you mean, can we fart around each other and not be embarrassed about it?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say.”

“We’re good enough friends for that,” he said, putting his other arm around her.

She responded with a hug of her own. “Mike,” she said. “I don’t know how to say this, but can I sleep on your couch or something tonight? I don’t want to go home and upset mother with gas like this.”

“Won’t she be worried if you don’t come home?”

“No, she knows that I often stay with Gil and Carrie, and they don’t have a phone out there.”

“You can have my bed,” Mike said. “I’ll spend the night on the couch.”

“I’m not talking about fooling around,” she said, “but I think I would like to hold on to you tonight.”

“We can do that,” he said. Whatever you want to do, Kirsten, he thought, at whatever speed you want. “I won’t mind.”

She pulled away from him. “Mike, look. I’m not ready for some kind of commitment. I can’t have some kind of commitment. I have to keep my options open.”

“Henry Toivo?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “how did you know about him?”

“Carrie told me,” he said, quietly, and took her in his arms again.

Tears were running down her face, now. “Mike, I don’t know if this is fair to you or me, but I have to be fair to him. I’m willing to be your friend, maybe even your lover, so long as you understand that if he ever comes home, I’ll leave you in an instant.”

“I can live with that,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s a chance now that he’ll ever come home alive,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “But I couldn’t bear to have cut him off if he does. Until I know for sure, I don’t think I can make a commitment, to you or anyone.”

He pulled her tighter and patted her on the back. “Kirsten,” he said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“Thanks, Mike,” she said, and smiled. “Excuse me for this,” she said.

“For what?” he started to ask as she let go of another massive gut rumbler.

There was nothing he could say but to kiss her, and reply in kind.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 20, 1975

LINDAHLSEN WINS CHILI CONTEST WITH “RETROFIRE CHILI”

by Mike McMahon
Record-Herald Staff

All the chili has been tasted, and all the votes have been tallied, and the winner of last weekend’s Chili Contest at the Spearfish Lake Chili Festival was Spearfish Lake’s own Hjalmer Lindahlsen, with his “Retrofire Chili”, a mild brew with a delicate taste and a delayed wallop.

“Retrofire Chili” contains a master’s brew of chili makings, with a few exotic ones, such as mooseburger, Heineken Beer, Italian sausage, and the seasoning package from the “Hamburger Stew” Hamburger Helper. All three judges of the chili contest said that though the chili was one of the mildest offered for their inspection, it was one of the tastiest.

“It’s good to see a local person take home the prize,” Kate Ellsberg of the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club, organizer of the festival, said of Lindahlsen’s chili victory.

As winner of the festival, Lindahlsen took home a gas camp stove and a Porta-Potti from Smith’s Sporting Goods, as well as a trophy to commemorate the event.

Taking second place was Tom Macomber of Freemont, with his “Orion Nebula Chili.” Macomber took home a set of camping cooking utensils from Northern Sportsfitters. Third place went to last year’s winner, Ron Lawson of Camden, with his “Thunderbutt Chili.” Lawson won a ten-gallon aluminum cookpot donated by Spearfish Lake Hardware.

Recipes for the winning chilis can be found on Page 12 of this week’s Record-Herald.

A still very sunburned LeBlanc was sitting at the breakfast table in Rick’s when Gil and Frank walked in Monday morning, and took their customary seats across from each other.

“Hey, Gil,” LeBlanc said. “What do you call a politician with an embezzlement charge against him?”

“Oh, shit,” Frank said. “Sam …”

“Hey, you guys didn’t say anything about politician jokes.”

Gil looked at Frank, and Frank looked back for a moment before saying, “He’s right. We didn’t.”

“Sam,” Gil said expansively, “do you play volleyball?”

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