Football season was over, now, so things didn’t seem quite so strange for Harold, but the fall had been hard – harder than he would have thought, he reflected once again as he drove home from the school.

Back in the spring, Bruce O’Conner had announced he planned on retiring as principal of the Spearfish Lake High School over the summer, and that meant the job was open. Along with coaching football, Harold had been in his twentieth year of teaching social studies and political science at Spearfish Lake, and had done phys. ed. and football for four years on top of that down in Crestone right after he got out of the service. That was an awful lot of time, and an awful lot of classes, and he felt like he was ready for a change. He applied for the job.

A little to his surprise, he got it. That meant he’d have to give up coaching football, since he’d also have to serve as athletic director, along with being principal, and it would have been too many hats to wear at a time he felt like he ought to be slowing down a little.

So, with some degree of reluctance, he’d hung up the whistle and started wearing a tie to work, instead. He wasn’t altogether happy with the change – he hadn’t realized how much he was going to miss being out on the field with the kids, teaching them the game, going to practices, the thrills and the excitement. Although he went to the games, he especially missed the routine of practices, the getting the kids up for the games, getting himself up for them.

He remembered what it had been like in high school when he and Bud Ellsberg and Frank Matson and Harry Masterfield had been some strong parts of a team that in three years had only been beaten once, back in 1956; now, over thirty years later, there were people who still complained the team had been robbed by the refs. Most of the time, Harold agreed with those people. All that time, clear back to 1952, fall had meant football – playing it from seventh grade through college. The only time he’d spent away from the football field was his time in the Army in the early sixties, and he played on a battalion team one year there, but looking forward to getting back to the real thing, especially so when he was with the 7th Cavalry, back there in the early days of Vietnam.

So, it was hard to have football practice come and not be out there where it was happening. Oh, he’d dropped in on practices a few times to see how it was going, but the Johansen kid who had taken over as coach didn’t really deserve him looking over his shoulder, so he’d pretty much stayed away.

This afternoon, he’d stayed after school, to look in on practices. The basketball team seemed to be coming along pretty good, and so did the girls’ volleyball team, although it was still a couple weeks before their first scrimmage. That was something new; there hadn’t been girls’ teams when he’d been a kid, but as athletic director, they ate up a lot of his time, not that he grudged it. Some of them were darn good athletes. He occasionally wondered what would have happened to a kid like Brandy Evachevski, back in his time. Harold had just been sitting in the stands that day back in ’83 when Brandy had made that unassisted double play, then knocked a three-run homer to win the only playoff title the school had ever won. It was something he’d never come closer to than the quarter-finals with the football team in twenty years of trying.

In all that time, he’d seen a lot of kids go through, Brandy, for example. Gil had told him not long before that Brandy had quit work on her doctorate, for Pete’s sake, to go to work for some research company out in Colorado for some ungodly amount of money. And, of course, there was Henry Toivo. He’d only coached Henry his senior year, and hadn’t really known the kid that well, but he had been a good solid football player, a hard worker, if nothing spectacular. So many kids . . . some had turned out well, some not, some just average. Maybe he’d had a positive effect on some, helped them to be better than they might have been.

He wasn’t in any hurry to get home. Martha would be off at the Women’s Club Dinner, he knew, and the house would be empty. He thought about stopping off for a burger and a beer, but decided against it. He wasn’t getting the exercise he normally got in the fall, and had put on a few pounds. There ought to be the makings for a salad in the refrigerator, he thought, but the house would be empty.

It had been empty for a few years, now. His daughters were both long gone, out of college and married. It was still hard to believe he had three grandkids, now, and another on the way. He couldn’t be that old; it had just been yesterday that they were toddlers, but now he’d bounced their toddlers on his knee and had wondered where the years had gone.

But then, there were a lot of empty nests around among his friends, now. Bud and Kate had never had kids of their own, but the two kids of her sister who they’d taken in were both gone, now – the younger one, Connie, only last spring, one of the top ten, and off at NMU. That was not bad for a kid who everyone figured was more likely to be off to reform school. Bud could be proud of that.

And, Gil – Gil had sent his last kid off to college this fall, too, Danny, down to Athens. He’d hurt a knee and hadn’t been able to play football, but Gil said he still had a shot at the baseball team. At least Gil had Jennifer, his oldest, around some of the time. She’d moved back from LA with her boyfriend or manager or whatever he was, and had bought a big house out on Point Drive, but they were on the road half the time. At least Gil got to see her pretty regularly, where both of his own daughters lived far off and seeing them was an occasion. Gil had a grandkid now, too, from his son Garth and wife Michelle, but they lived down in Milwaukee and Gil didn’t see them any more than Harold saw his own.

Ryan Clark wasn’t that far from having his first kid leave, next fall, in fact, and then before long he’d join the empty nesters among the Toivo expedition. Mark and Jackie had never had kids, but they’d been sort of a second set of parents to John and Josh. Josh had been a good football player, went all-region in his senior year, another good kid with a future, he thought. Steve had gotten a late start, and he was the only one of the group who had small kids at home. Well, Mike McMahon, too, since he was going to go if he got the chance, but he wasn’t really part of the group – he wasn’t a veteran at all, but Vietnam had given him a nasty slap in the face, anyway. Mike was a good kid; he’d known him for years, and if he wanted to go, well, he had every reason and everybody was glad to have him.

At least the kids of the kids he’d grown up with didn’t have to face the draft, face things like Vietnam, he thought. Boy, things had changed there, too. Harold could still remember John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, his Boston Irish words hanging on the wind: “Ask not what your country can do for you, rather,” – with the long “a” that still hung in the air long after the word was gone – “Ask what you can do for your country.”

He’d been in ROTC at the time, and he’d already known he was heading for the Army in a year and a few months. He’d looked forward to it as an opportunity to serve a country that he loved, that he’d grown up with. He’d been in the first major field unit sent to Vietnam, and he remembered going with enthusiasm, with the feeling he could now do something for his country. And while there had been fear, and terror, and death and wounds to some of the people around him, even to some in the platoon he’d commanded most of his tour, he’d been able to head home with the feeling he’d done something worthwhile.

But, the years came and went and the war hung on and it all turned sour. Unlike some, he’d never tried to cover up the fact that he’d served in Vietnam, and had been proud to serve. Back in the day when people looked down on you for serving, he’d been the one who had gotten the Vietnam veterans in Spearfish Lake together, so at least they could have someone who understood from having been there themselves. Sometimes, even back in those days, but often since, he’d wondered if maybe it might not have been better if he’d stayed in. He might have been able to make a difference to some kids, maybe some kid like Henry.

Over the years, he’d often wondered what had happened to Henry. Maybe they’d find out, if the Viets ever loosened up and burped up some visas, but maybe, in fact, most likely not, even then. From everything they’d ever heard, he’d been dealt a pretty rotten hand, he thought as he drove in the driveway and punched the garage door opener.

He grabbed his briefcase, got out of the car, went inside and threw it on the kitchen table. He glanced at the clock; crap, too late for the sports. He hadn’t heard how the Wings had done, but he might stay up for the eleven o’clock, just to see. Might as well watch the national news, he thought.

He flipped on the TV, to see a sight he thought he’d never see in his life. It was a party – but that was the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin! People were dancing around on top of the fucking Berlin Wall, for God’s sake, some had little hammers and hand tools and were chipping away at it. The camera cut away – some soul had liberated a big backhoe and was tearing big chunks out of it. The reporter himself was standing on top of the wall, saying the East Germans had opened the gates and were going to tear down the wall! He remembered seeing it in early ’63, before he’d come back to the states and the Cav – an evil thing that blackened his soul. Now, a lump rose in his throat.

In seconds, he reached for the phone. Gil answered, and Harold said, “You got your TV on?”

“Yeah,” Gil replied. “Ain’t that something? I never thought I’d see that happen.”

“Me either,” Harold said. “Jesus, I remember back to the Cuba thing, back in ’62. I had a track platoon in the 4th Armored, and we all just knew we were going to be up on the border, fighting off the whole damn Red Army with nukes going off all around us. And, now, it’s over.”

“I’ve been seeing it coming,” Gil said. “Back last spring, when the Reds moved their assault bridging units out of Germany, I could see the end was coming. Now, the whole damn thing is coming apart, and the Red flag is falling. I’ll bet the communists in Russia won’t even be able to hold out.”

“We won,” Harold said, with wonder in his voice. “I thought it was going to last forever, but we won.”

“Looks like it to me,” Gil agreed.

He stood there for a moment, phone to his ear, but watching the unbelievable scene on the TV screen. “I wonder,” he said.

“Wonder what?”

“If this could affect our chances of going to look for Henry.”

“I don’t know,” Gil said. “It may take some time for things to settle out, but, in the long run, I don’t think it’s going to hurt them.”