Brandy Wine’s reputation for being a lousy cook was a well-deserved one. She could, if she put her mind to it and was really careful, manage to open a can of soup and heat the contents, but she stood a better chance of getting it right if it was a type of soup that didn’t require mixing with anything, not even water. Her husband Phil was just about as bad. Phil was a very experienced dogsled racer, who had made the 1100 mile trip across Alaska in the Iditarod a number of times. During races he had a reputation for surviving mostly on whatever food he could cadge from rest stops, along with candy and granola bars he thawed by keeping them under several layers of clothes.

Thus it was that when Phil got back from his morning of working with dogs at the dog barn north of town he stopped off at a sub shop to get lunch for both of them, as was the normal thing this time of year. This gave them the chance to have lunch together at the umbrella table in the back yard.

His reaction to the news that Brandy had agreed to be the new high school principal was simple: “Are you sure it’s going to keep you busy enough?”

“Maybe, for a while,” Brandy admitted. “At least I haven’t committed to giving up coaching the girls, so I’ve got that to fall back on.”

This was a real concern for both of them. Brandy was an admitted workaholic – she just wasn’t happy unless she was too busy. The two of them weren’t hurting, by any means; through careful playing of the stock market, savings, and some software he’d written years before, Phil had an annual income over the six figure mark. Brandy had some money in investments, as well as royalties coming in on a gadget she’d invented years before, not to mention her teaching salary. Between them, they were worth well into eight figures, and neither of them had to work a day in their lives if they didn’t want to – but they wanted to, especially Brandy. Ten years before she’d spent several months not working and mostly looking for something to do. When Coach Hekkinan had walked into their driveway that time, the prospect of teaching and coaching girls’ basketball had come as a literal godsend – she’d been going absolutely stark raving bonkers without anything to do.

“Well, that’s good,” Phil said. “I know there’s some problems over at the school that at least ought to keep you busy until about the time basketball gets going. But I probably ought to point out to you that if you’re going to get a clean start to the football season you’re going to have to get moving pretty quickly, what with official practice starting next Tuesday.”

“Shit, don’t I know it,” Brandy snorted. “I realize I’ve really got to hit the ground running on that. They’ve got a list of problems a yard long there, and there’s not much that can be done about them at this late date. There’s no way in hell they can be fixed quick enough to get a winning season put together. I figure that about the best that can be done is to make a start, and maybe in another year things could be better.”

“About all I can say is that you’re going to have to do the best you can,” Phil told her. “Pick out some of the big problems and work on them, and some of the smaller ones will fall into place.”

“Well, the big problem is the coaching,” Brandy said, then took a bite on her sub. She chewed on it for a moment, swallowed, and went on. “All the people who say that Weilfahrt is the big problem over there have hit it just about on the nose. I know I don’t know much about football, I mean at least in any detail, but Weilfahrt and Johansen before him just have let things go off on the wrong foot. You get the first brick in crooked and you wind up with a stupid looking building, and that’s what’s happened over there.”

“So what’s the first brick?” Phil asked. He thought he knew the answer; after all, after over ten years of marriage he knew his wife pretty well. But drawing her out on the problem might help her to define what had to be done – it had worked often enough with them both ways before. For not knowing much about dogsledding in spite of having been married to him for so long, she could help him adjust his thinking to deal with a dog or racing problem, and he could help in a similar way with a basketball problem.

“The coach, of course. I agree, he’s got to go. He’s never been with the program, just like Johansen before him,” she shrugged. “Look, the big reason we’ve had so much success with the basketball program is that we’re dealing with kids who are motivated to win and work at it. That’s why I’ve spent so much time with skills drills, and emphasize conditioning. When the basketball players walk into the first practice of the season, they already know what they’re doing, and they’re in shape to do it. I’ll tell you what, I can’t recall seeing any football team member out jogging in the last month. Not a one. Hell, the coach, whoever it turns out to be, is going to have to spend most of the time in practices working on conditioning and basic skills, stuff that should already have been under way for months. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for learning to play like a team, which is why they’ve gotten their butts kicked regularly.”

“So why aren’t the kids ready?”

“Because their coach doesn’t insist on it. I don’t know where that came from, Johansen, maybe. I don’t know for sure, because all that went down in the period I was working out of town. I know that back when Coach Hekkinan was coaching he expected kids to show up for the first practice ready to play. He didn’t carry skills training to the degree that I have with the basketball players, which is probably why the basketball team has done better the last few years than the football team did back when he was coaching it. So now the football team is behind the eight ball before the coach blows the whistle for the first practice.”

“You started pretty much from scratch that first year when you had the Magnificent Seven,” Phil pointed out.

“Well, yeah,” Brandy agreed, “but I had a few things going for me, too, and damn good luck was one of them. It’s not the same thing with the football team, since you have a bunch of players with no real motivation because they don’t think they’re going to be doing any winning. So they have no real reason to get ready for practice. They have the attitude that they don’t have to get ready for the season, and don’t have to work very hard once practice gets under way. That’s built up over a number of years and there’s not going to be any easy way to break that cycle of apathy, even over two or three years. That was the real big secret of why the Magnificent Seven did so well, not that they had a great skill set, but that they didn’t have those kind of bad habits to overcome.”

“So the first step is to give the kids a decent coach,” Phil nodded in understanding. “It can’t be you, partly because you’re the principal, and partly because you don’t know much about football.”

“And partly because I’m a woman. While the Spearfish Lake sports fans may have been able to swallow my coaching boys’ basketball, there’s no way they’d buy off on me coaching football,” Brandy agreed. “So finding someone is not going to be easy, especially with practice starting in four days. There’s just no time to advertise or look around. About all I can say is that I’m just dead sure that it shouldn’t be anyone who’s affiliated with the program now, because they’ll just have the same kind of bad habits, or at least have the attitude that they’re going to condone them. It needs to be someone from outside the program, and it needs to be fast. That was another advantage I had with the Magnificent Seven – I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have a clue about what all the pissing and moaning that had gone on the previous years was all about. I wasn’t carrying that kind of baggage with me. My first thought was to ask Danny, but hell, he hasn’t had anything to do with football in almost twenty years.”

“Might be a thought,” Phil agreed. Brandy’s brother Danny Evachevski had been a legitimate star for the team in the last years of Hekkinan’s coaching days. He’d played most of a season for Athens University before a knee injury ended his football career, almost twenty years before. “He at least knows how things used to be before they went sour.”

“Yeah, and as far as I know he was about the only Spearfish Lake kid to get recruited to a Division I program ever, not that he ever got to go very far with it. But the problem with sticking Danny with the job is that he’s my brother, and boy, would that fire up the gossips and the sports freaks.”

“That could make things worse,” Phil nodded. He put down his sub, leaned back in the chair, and put his hands behind his head. “You know,” he said slowly, “if I was in your shoes, I think I’d take a run out to the Pike Bar and have a talk with the new owner out there.”

“Yeah, so?” Brandy frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I can’t think of his name right now,” Phil grinned. “It’ll come to me. I do know that he knows football as well as anyone, he’s not a local guy, not many people are going to want to push him around, and he used to play tackle for the Packers.”

“Phil,” Brandy grinned, “you might have something there.”

“I don’t know that he’d know anything about coaching,” Phil pointed out, “but he might be able to get the kids to give him some attention. Rock, uh, Kulwicki . . . no, that’s not quite right, they used to call him Rick the Rock. Not exactly an all-pro, but he was a starter for several years.”

This is getting to be a pain in the butt, Eddie Awkerman thought. Matt had a good idea, in looking for former football players who might be willing to help keep the pre-practice beer bust tradition alive. He should have been able to think of that for himself. The only thing was that he didn’t really want to have to talk to Allen Untermeyer about it as he had a reputation about as bad as Frenchy’s for liking to bust heads.

But it was turning into a no-such-luck thing. He started out looking for Jim Hotchkiss or Mike Hardnett, who Matt had recommended as former football players who liked to party in their day. He didn’t know either of them very well – they were several years ahead of him, long since graduated from high school. In a couple hours looking he never turned up a trace of Hardnett, except that several people he asked said that they hadn’t seen him around for a while and no one seemed to know what he might be doing with himself. Hotchkiss was still around town, except that during the day he wasn’t – he was working some woods job with a logging crew over around Hoselton, or at least that was what Eddie had been told, so he probably wouldn’t be back until evening.

Given enough time to pull things together, Eddie figured that he could just wait until evening for a chance to find Hotchkiss and have a friendly talk with him, but he didn’t think he had enough time. The party was supposed to be tomorrow night, and if Hotchkiss couldn’t help him he’d have to talk to Untermeyer anyway – and it would be later in the day, when Untermeyer would most likely have a few more beers in him and be more looking for a fight. So really, there wasn’t a lot of choice; he’d have to take his chances.

At least he knew where to find Untermeyer – his home was over on the far side of town, down near the rail yard. The neighborhood was something of a dump, and it was a dumpy house; that much Eddie knew. There was nothing to do but get on with it, and he figured he couldn’t put it off any longer.

It turned out that Untermeyer was easy to find – he was right at home, and came to the door with a can of Pabst in his hand. “Hey, Awkerman,” he said, “what brings your sorry ass over to this part of town?”

“I need to talk to you for a minute,” Eddie said, a little leery of the big former lineman. “I need to find out something you might know.”

“Well, shit, no point in standing out here in this heat,” Untermeyer said. “Come on in, have a brew.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that,” Eddie smiled. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as he thought.

The house was a mess inside, not that it wouldn’t still be anything but a mess if it was cleaned up. It was clear that Untermeyer was a slob among a family of slobs. He followed Untermeyer out to the kitchen, past a TV set that was blaring out a soap opera, and stood waiting while Allen pulled a Pabst out of the refrigerator. “So what are you up to these days?” he asked, hoping to get things off on a friendly note.

“Not much of shit,” Untermeyer said, popping the top on the beer can and handing it to Eddie. “Had a job out in the woods for a while but I got laid off. Fortunately I had enough time in to draw unemployment, so I figure I’m just going to sit on my ass for a while until the mosquitoes die off a bit, then go looking for another one.”

“I don’t know, man.” Eddie shook his head. “Not a lot of jobs out there, from what I hear.”

“No shit,” Untermeyer said. “When I got out of high school I thought I had a shot at a job out at Clark Plywood, but from what I hear they ain’t doing any hiring until they get their layoffs called back, and who knows when the hell that’s gonna be?”

“Yeah, I’m going to be facing that in less than a year,” Eddie agreed. “I don’t have any idea of what I’m going to do, but somehow I don’t think it’s going to be around here, whatever it is.”

“Not a bad idea,” Untermeyer said. “There ain’t shit gonna happen around here. So what can I do for you?”

“Well, football practice starts next week,” Eddie said. “So you know what tomorrow night means, the pre-season beer bust, and I need to find some beer for it.”

“Shit, I don’t know why you’re bothering,” Untermeyer sneered. “From what I hear, Frenchy LeDroit has the beer and has the captain’s spot all locked up.”

“Afraid not,” Eddie shook his head. “What’s all locked up is Frenchy, as of this morning. He got nailed with seven months for assault. No Frenchy, no beer, no party.”

“Shit, I hadn’t heard that,” Untermeyer said. “Ain’t that a bitch? You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah, I was in the courtroom when they slammed his ass,” Eddie shook his head.

“Shit, nobody tells me nothing anymore,” Untermeyer replied, also shaking his head. “So you’re looking for beer, huh? Gonna take a run at being captain?”

“Well, with Frenchy not around I thought I might as well give it a try,” Eddie smiled. “So you got any idea where I can find some beer? I mean, like, thirty or forty twelve-packs?”

“That’s a lot of beer,” Untermeyer said. “I sure can’t help you with that. I can pretty well get all I want for me, my sister buys it and she thinks her husband drinks more than he really does. I think she knows that I drink most of his but she ain’t said nothing about it. But there ain’t no way I could get my hands on that much for you. Six more months, I’ll turn twenty-one, and I’d be willing to help out, but right now I’m just about as screwed as you are, at least for getting that much.”

Well, shit, Eddie thought. Talk about farting down a dry hole! But he might still have an idea. “I was talking it around a bit with some guys earlier,” he said. “Someone pointed out that while Frenchy seems to have had a lock on getting beer like that the past couple years, he hasn’t been doing it forever. Someone had to have had a source before him, and maybe the source might still be good.”

“That might be a thought,” the big former jock said, upending his can of beer, then throwing the can in the general direction of the trash bin. “You ever hear of Brad Mueller?”

“The name sounds familiar,” Eddie admitted. “I don’t think I know him.”

“He ain’t around no more, he got smart and got the hell out of here,” Untermeyer said. “I ain’t heard of him for a while myself. But he was a couple years ahead of me, and he always used to be able to get beer over on the Three Pines Reservation. He never told me where he got it, but there was some Indian bootlegger over there that made a pretty good business out of selling beer to kids. I heard tell one time that the guy’s name was Lame Beaver or something like that. I don’t know how you’d find out for sure, but maybe you could drive over there and ask around a bit.”

“Hadn’t heard that,” Eddie said, thinking hard. Matt had said that it took Frenchy three or four hours to make a beer run, and if this Lame whoever was on the far side of the reservation, and giving time for shooting the shit and screwing around, the time seemed to be about right. Maybe that was the secret source that Frenchy had tried to cover up? Or, it might not be. Who was to say?

“No way of telling if that Indian is still doing it,” Untermeyer shrugged. “Like I said, it’s been what? Four or five years? But it might be worth looking into.”

“Yeah, it might,” Eddie agreed, still thinking furiously. Shit, even if he hit the road right now, it could still take the rest of the day to head over there and back, and if it turned out to be a dry hole, then that was several hours wasted. However, it was the closest thing to a lead he’d gotten out of anyone, and it might be worth the gamble.

“Well, let me know if it turns into the real deal,” Untermeyer said. “It might not be a bad idea for me to have someplace else to go if my sister starts to get wise to me.”

“Yeah, it might be worth looking into,” Eddie said, taking a long drink of the Pabst that he’d been holding in his hand all the time he’d been talking with the former football player. “That’s a hell of a long drive over there, but I’m not picking up anything else around here.”

“That much beer, man, yeah, that can be tough even if you have the cash to get it,” Untermeyer agreed. “That stuff that Mueller used to get was always just about the cheapest shit you ever heard of, if you ever heard of it at all. He hardly ever had anything as good as this PBR, always stuff like Schadler’s or Red and White, crap like that. All of it was real horse piss.”

“That might fit,” Eddie said thoughtfully. “Most of the time all Frenchy had was shit like that, stuff that might as well have been horse piss. At least you could get fucked up on it.”

“That’s the truth,” Untermeyer agreed. “My guess is if that’s what Brad’s source was, that Indian thought he had a lock on the kid market so could get away with selling the cheapest shit he could get by the truckload.”

“Makes sense,” Eddie replied. “It’s beer after all, that’s what matters.”

“Yeah, if you could get it cold enough it wouldn’t be too bad,” Untermeyer agreed. “That’d make it so you couldn’t quite taste how bad it really is. God, I’m glad I can get stuff off my sister. Most people think stuff like Pabst and Schlitz is pretty bad, but shit, you don’t know what bad is until you have to drink shit like Schadler’s.”

“Well, if it takes Schadler’s to get the party going, that’s what it takes,” Eddie smiled. “I’d be happy to get my hands on it.”

“I was that way when I was back in high school. Shit, the two pre-season parties I went to, one was Red and White and the other was Schadler’s, and it didn’t matter none, we had a good time and got really fucked up, with people puking all over the place. That seemed to get the football season going pretty good.”

“Like I said, I’d be glad to have it if I can get it,” Eddie smiled, taking another long drink of beer. “Thanks, Allen,” he said, taking another swig, and upending the can. “I think I might as well take a run over to the reservation and see if I can find this Indian. If it works out, you may have just made a big play for the football team.”

“I hope so,” Untermeyer said. “I didn’t get to play none my senior year, after that goddamn Cody Archer fucked up my knee. It’s all right now, but damn it hurt to be on crutches all the way through the football season. At least maybe this way I can feel like I’ve done my part.”

Eddie set the empty Pabst can on the cluttered kitchen table. “The more I think about it, the more I’m thinking it would be a good idea to take a run over there,” he said. “At least if it falls on its ass, I’ve still got tomorrow to go looking. It ain’t gonna be much of a party if there ain’t any beer.”

“Yeah, ain’t that a fact,” Untermeyer agreed. “Like I said, let me know how it comes out.”

Eddie headed out the door, thinking hard. The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t help but think that Untermeyer had put him onto something. It was hard to know if that Lame whoever was still in business, but if he was the problem might be solved.

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