It had cooled off, which was a relief after the heat of the day. Jack and Vixen had a great view of the track from their seats at the top of the stands at Camden Raceway. Though it put them a ways away from the cars, they had a great view of the action, of the colorful cars on the track.

Heat followed heat, some exciting, some just so-so. In one of the Mini-Stock heats two cars were banging on each other clear around the track, lap after lap, until finally they tangled hard, and both spun down into the infield, too wrecked to continue. The drivers were obviously unhurt but boiling; both scrambled from their cars and started for each other; in a moment fists were flying. It really wasn’t a very effective fight as both of them still had helmets on, but it was a while before race officials could get over to them to separate them.

The Vintage Racers were especially good. They looked like old-time race cars from fifty years before, fiberglass bodied replicas of thirties cars, but with six-cylinder engines. Despite only having sixes, the timer on the scoreboard said that they were getting around the track about the fastest of anything present that evening. Mr. Hvalchek said he remembered cars racing like that when he’d been a kid – except that they’d been the real thing. Jack thought they must have been a lot of fun to watch.

After a while there was a break in the action so people would have a chance to get to the concession stands again before the features got under way. Jack and Vixen offered to bring something back for her parents, who agreed that Pepsis or something would be nice, along with some popcorn. Along with a lot of other people, they headed down the grandstand and got in the long line for the concession stand.

At least the line moved quickly. As they got close to the concession stand where the light was better, they realized they were close to Mike Kovacs and Steve Sarmeinto. “Enjoying the race?” Jack asked.

“Probably a whole lot more than if I was at the beer bust,” Mike said. “I’ll bet that place is really a zoo by now.”

“Yeah, no fooling,” Vixen piped up. “Being around some of those guys when they’re sober is bad enough, but I’ll bet they’re really bad if they’re drunk.”

“You’re probably right,” Steve replied. “What a bunch of losers! I’d hate to think what it would be like if my biggest goal is to get drunk on my butt, but that’s how it is for some of those people. You can tell that they’re not going to be a lot better when they grow up, if they ever do.”

“What I can’t understand,” Jack said thoughtfully, “is why those people think they’re such big deals on the football field if they only go two and seven. You’d think they were the kings of the hill, and they don’t really have much to brag about, when you stop and think about it.”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either,” Mike sighed. “If they had any reason for their arrogance, it might be a little different, but some of them just have the idea that they’re better than anyone else, just because they’re football players.”

“Too much testosterone,” Vixen said. “When you get right down to it, that’s all it really is. Oh, well, the best thing is that I’ve only got to put up with that crap for another nine months, then I’ll be out of the place.”

“There’s a good chance Mrs. Wine is going to tone things down a bit,” Steve commented. “Maybe that will put a few people in their places.”

“We can hope,” Jack said, “but somehow I don’t think it’ll ever happen. Those guys are probably all drunk out of their gourds right now, busy bragging about what big men they are and how they’re going to kick everybody’s ass.”

“Probably so,” Mike nodded. “It sure would be nice to see some of them taken down a notch or two.”

They were getting close to the window now, so they had to break off the conversation to place their orders. The workers at the windows were quick and efficient, knowing they had to move a lot of food in a short time. In only a minute or so Jack and Vixen had their arms loaded down with food and drinks. They said a quick goodbye to Steve and Mike, saying they’d see them around, and headed back up the grandstand, with only a couple minutes to go before the announcer said the features would soon get under way. “It’s sure nice to be down here and away from all the football drama,” Vixen commented as they climbed the stairs. “We’ll be back in school all too soon and have to listen to some of those jokers brag about how drunk they got tonight, and how much fun they had.”

The crowd of Flex-Cuffed partygoers in the lights of the grader was getting smaller as the patrol cars hauled them back to town two by two. Naturally, it took a while; although they were only a few miles out of town, it took each patrol car a good fifteen or twenty minutes to make a round trip, so the process of clearing the place out was obviously going to take hours. As the number dwindled, the number of officers started to shrink as well. A few spread out on foot in the shadows alongside the road, trying to catch some of the runners who had tried to sneak back to town along the road, and not surprisingly, a few were caught.

There were probably more out there, Charlie Wexler thought, and some might well escape, but they’d made about as clean a sweep as could be expected under the circumstances – and then some. Steve’s idea of making an amphibious assault on the party to break things up into small groups that could be more easily handled by the officers on hand had not only been brilliant but had also worked very well.

About that time, Charlie noticed Cody coming up the two-rut from the road, bringing someone along with him wearing Flex-Cuffs – obviously one of the runners who had tried to walk back to town. “Got another one, Cody?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Cody said. “Seems this football player isn’t very good at evading tackles.”

“Well, that sort of makes you understand why they haven’t done a lot of winning the last few years,” Charlie laughed. “So what’s your score for tonight?”

“This one makes four,” Cody said, “two down at the fire, one of those kids fighting back at the tail end of the line, and now this one.”

“That’s about as good as anyone I’ve heard,” Wexler said, proud of his young part-time officer, who was hardly older than some of those arrested this evening. Although Cody didn’t work for the department often, Charlie considered him sort of a protégé, and had done what he could to bring the young man along after the mess with the Lufkin family not three years before. It would be nice, he thought, if Cody came back to serve on the Spearfish Lake department full time, but it wasn’t likely to happen and Charlie knew it. This kid had more in his future than being a small-town cop. “In fact,” he continued, “you might have the high score for the evening. We won’t know until we get it all sorted out.”

“That’s going to take a while, isn’t it?” Cody said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to be seeing the sun come up, but it’ll be worth it. As far as I can recall, this is the biggest number of people arrested at one time in the Spearfish Lake area, ever. I’ll bet the sheriff is going half nuts down at the jail right now.”

While it was very satisfying to watch the patrol cars disgorge the kids arrested at the party, sometimes it got boring between the arrival of the cars, but the crowd that hung around was still in a good mood, even an exceptional one. It was satisfying to Ashley to see some of those kids finally get theirs, especially those who had really been a pain in the butt to her.

Sometimes it was a long wait between cars, so naturally, the number of kids hanging around began to shrink. Even Alan and Summer took off after a while; they said they were heading home, but Ashley wouldn’t have been surprised if getting there took them a while, and a stop at some dark spot seemed pretty likely to her.

Ashley knew that Alan and Summer had only been a couple for a short time, but they really seemed to be fitting together well. It appeared they shared a lot, and from what little she’d heard about the game they were writing it seemed like they were having a lot of fun with it. It sounded as if Lyle was interested in trying it out with them, and while Ashley didn’t know much about role-playing games, it sounded like it would be fun to at least try once, especially with Lyle.

“You know,” Lyle finally said, “while it’s all well and good that we’ve gotten to see this, we probably ought to be hanging it up and heading for home.”

“I suppose,” Ashley replied, looking forward to a really good day of gossiping on the phone tomorrow. There were going to be stories on top of stories out of this, and all the people she talked with on the phone were going to be busy indeed. This was even going to be bigger news than Payne leaving and Mrs. Wine being the new principal, or even Frenchy being sentenced to seven months in jail! “This has definitely been good to see.”

Because of the number of kids coming in, and the short staff at the jail, especially in the early hours, it took a while to get each one processed. It was a couple hours after the first arrivals before Sheriff Stoneslinger began to let the less-drunk of the minors start to call their parents to come pick them up. It was amusing to sit back and watch the kids try to put the best light on things with their parents, usually with little to no success; sometimes he or the supervising deputy could hear the parents yelling through the phone from across the room. In a few of the cases he was pretty sure that the kids would have just as soon spent the night in jail.

Life got more interesting when he started having Mary Tingley, the dispatcher, call the parents of the kids in the drunk tank, the ones much too out of it to be able to call home themselves. Several of the parents said to keep the kid till morning when they had timee to sober up, and while that wasn’t policy, Stoneslinger decided that it might stretch out the hassles a little.

It started to get interesting when the parents showed up to sign out their kids. Some of them, even most of them, were embarrassed about having to pick their children up after being arrested, and most of them were pretty angry at the kids for getting into the situation. However, a few were angry at the sheriff and police for arresting the kids in the first place. “Jesus Christ,” George Battle said when he came to pick up Shelly, “what the hell did you want to do something like that for? I mean, kids will be kids! This was nothing worth making all the hassles over.”

“I hate to tell you,” Stoneslinger replied,” but it’s more than some little thing. It’s illegal for a minor to be in possession of alcohol, and there’s no doubt your daughter was at that party and in possession. She blew a 1.43 on the breathalyzer, which is pretty drunk, in fact. At least she kept her cool, because if she hadn’t we could also have tagged her for drunk and disorderly.”

“This is a bunch of shit,” Battle raged. “I’m by God going to call my lawyer about this.”

“Keep trying,” Stoneslinger smiled, “because you’re probably not going to be the only one. But I can tell you what he’s going to say: she might as well plead guilty and save you some money.”

“I don’t know what makes you think you can get away with this shit,” Battle replied, still pretty hot. “The kids were just having a little fun, that’s all.”

“It might be just as well that we arrested them for minor in possession,” Stoneslinger pointed out. “So far, every kid we’ve had on the breathalyzer has blown over a point zero eight. The ones we caught behind the wheel we can have arrested for DUI, and that’s a more serious offense.”

“My lawyer is by God going to hear about this,” Battle repeated himself.

“Be my guest.”

Battle wasn’t the only pissed off parent that evening, and some came in to pick up their kids while they had a pretty good load on themselves. The thrust of the conversations went pretty much the same way that things had gone with Battle, except that the conversations were even more profane. One parent got out of hand enough to take a swing at Aaronsen; not only did he not connect, but he wound up spending the night in jail and his kid didn’t get to go home that night, either.

He wasn’t the only kid; there were others who would be held, some just overnight, but some, like Eddie Awkerman and Scotty Parsons, would have to wait until Monday when Judge Dieball could hold a bond hearing. With so many other preliminary hearings going onto the docket for Monday, the judge was going to have a busy day.

Stoneslinger could see that it was going to take a while for the after-effects of the evening’s work to die out, and there was bound to be some static ahead – but at least nobody was going to be able to accuse him of ignoring the lawbreaking this time. With any kind of luck it was a lesson that Spearfish County would remember for a long time.

It didn’t take long for Ashley to drive Lyle home. She pulled to a stop in front of his house and shut the car off. “I’m sorry, Lyle,” she said. “I didn’t realize the evening was going to be that busy. I’d liked to have made more time for you.”

“It may be just as well,” he said. “I had a good time talking with Alan and Summer and the others. That game they’re working on sounds like lots of fun. They’re a long way from being able to play the whole thing, but there are some sections they want to test live. They’re talking about getting together with some people next week sometime to give it a run-through, and I sort of said I’d be there. I thought you might like to go, too.”

“I don’t know how interested I am in role playing games, but it would be fun to hang out with some kids,” she said. “Especially if one of them is you.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking,” he smiled. “Ashley, I had a good time being with you this afternoon and it opened the door to a pretty good evening, too. I hope we can get together some more.”

“I’d like that. You know, Lyle, you’re pretty sweet. I’m glad I found out about it.”

“Well, I am, too. This has been a fun couple of days, Ashley. The summer has been pretty dull but this will be something special.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she replied, thinking that there was something else she wanted to do. It would be nice to end the evening with a kiss, and even a little more than that, but he didn’t seem up to making the first move. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to take him by the hand, she thought. She twisted toward him as much as she could, and reached out to pull his face close to hers.

It started out as a gentle little “between-friends” kiss but didn’t stop. Things soon got a bit more serious as they pulled each other tighter. She felt his hand on her side, and on impulse she reached out with her free hand and put it on her breast, and oh man! did that feel good! She felt her excitement increasing, and hoped that they would go further. It was something she had never felt before, and she wanted more of it.

After a while – too short a time, whatever it was – she felt his lips pull back from hers. “Ashley,” she heard him whisper, “Do you like that?”

“No,” she sighed. “I love it.”

“I really hate to say this,” he said, “but we’re both too damn big to do what I think we both want to do in the front seat of this car.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “It is a little cramped in here for that.” She wasn’t sure what he was talking about, just a little better job of feeling her up, or going all the way. Either way, it didn’t matter – she was ready for it and wanted it bad.

“It’s getting a little late for it, too,” he said. “I really need to be getting in. But Ashley, maybe next week we could get together sometime when our folks are at work, and when we could have a little more room.”

“Yes, Lyle,” she said, feeling frustrated for the moment but anticipating what could happen in a couple days. “I’d love to.”

It was after one in the morning when all of the arrested kids had been hauled into the jail, and Randy had headed back to Clark Construction with the road grader. Several deputies were still busy at the scene collecting evidence and taking photographs. The party site was a mess, with lots of empty beer cans strewn around. It was clear that cleaning the place up was going to be a hassle, but it could wait for a while, since, as Sheriff Stoneslinger put it, “I suspect we’re going to have some kids needing community service projects come Monday morning.”

While there were several people happy to see the number of arrests that had been made, one of the happiest was George Rasmussen from George’s Towing. There were usually a few tows on Saturday nights – George had a standing offer to tow anyone home from a bar within ten miles of town for $20 if they felt they were too drunk to drive – towing a dozen cars to the impound lot was an absolute gold mine. In a situation like that, the basic tow fee was $50, and the storage charges at the impound lot started at $100 plus an additional $10 per day. George felt that was an adequate price for someone caught driving drunk to pay, and both the sheriff and the police chief agreed with him.

Still, hauling that many cars in was going to take a while, so George called on his brother-in-law Pete Kuhnert to help with the chore. Pete was used to the job – he often filled in – and he was going to make out pretty well on it, too.

By now all the Spearfish Lake police officers were back in town, and as they completed statements and reports over at the sheriff’s office Charlie let the extra ones head for home. With four collars, it took Cody longer to get through the paperwork, but he was glad to head for home, too. He was looking forward to getting his boots and socks off; they were still wet from running ashore from the bass boat, and he still squished when he walked.

Fortunately, it was only a few blocks back to his parents’ house, and it was a cool evening. The walk was just long enough to let things unwind in his mind and get back to thinking what would have to be done as soon as he and Jan got back down to Hawthorne. On top of everything else, there was an apartment that was going to have to be thoroughly cleaned and redecorated – while the kids who had been living there had been quiet, they had no idea of what the word “housekeeping” meant.

He walked around the back of the house and in the kitchen door. He was not surprised very much to see his father and Jan sitting up, watching a movie. In spite of all the time that had passed, Jan still got nervous at night when she was in Spearfish Lake if he wasn’t around, and his father John made a barely adequate substitute protector in her mind.

“So,” his father John asked, “anything interesting happen?”

“You might think so,” Cody grinned. “It seems that most of the football team and some of the cheerleaders had a beer bust out off 417, and somehow Charlie and Steve got wind of it. I wound up hitting the beach out of Steve’s bass boat like a Marine going ashore at Iwo Jima.”

“A big party?” John smiled, showing signs of interest.

“Yeah, something around forty kids in all,” Cody reported, seeing his father’s interest and understanding why. “The count isn’t final yet. They’re still picking up a few who were trying to walk back to town.”

“Very interesting,” John grinned. “You wouldn’t happen to have names, would you?”

“Not a complete list, but I recognized some of them,” Cody replied. “They were like freshmen the last year Jan and I were in school there.”

“Do you think you could get me a list?”

“Probably, if I asked someone nicely,” Cody grinned. “I probably ought to wait until tomorrow, though. That way it’ll be a little more complete.”

“If you could do that, I’d appreciate it,” John said with a satisfied look on his face.

“I’ll run over in the morning and see what I can do,” Cody told him. “For now, I want to go up, get out of these wet and dirty clothes, take a shower, and go to bed.”

“I might as well head up, too,” Janice said, the relief of having him home very obvious. “This movie isn’t near as good now that you’re here.”

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