George Battle was still angry as he and Shelly walked out of the courthouse; they’d stayed around to watch several other kids face the judge, plead guilty and get sentences that mirrored John Bergstrom’s in every way. “I still think what the sheriff pulled was a total crock of shit,” he told his daughter. “We’re going to fight this, Shelly, and we’re going to win.”

“But Dad,” Shelly protested, “isn’t it going to be an awful lot of trouble?”

“It could take months,” he replied, his anger still showing, “but if we can get this in front of a jury, things should be fine. With any kind of luck and a halfway decent lawyer, a jury ought to see that this was a railroad job from the word go. They were all kids once and they’ll see that the whole thing was just kids having some innocent fun. They ought to understand that it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It just seems that October is an awful long time to wait. And what happens if a jury doesn’t see it that way?”

“Then we’ll appeal the decision somehow or other. Shelly, in this life, when someone does something wrong to you, you can either take it or you can fight back. Otherwise people will run right over you.”

“Yeah Dad,” she whined, “but still. Not much happened to the rest of the kids, and I’m afraid that if we lose to a jury it’s going to be worse.”

“At least we’ll have fought, rather than just rolling over and, uh,” – he’d started to say “getting fucked” but thought better of it, considering that Shelly was his daughter. “Just taking it like those kids,” he continued. “You don’t get ahead in this life if you let people crap all over you all the time.”

Once again he felt the vibration of the cell phone in his pocket. It had buzzed several times in the courtroom, but he’d known that was the last place he wanted to answer it. Just another injustice, he thought as he pulled the phone from his pocket and answered it. Don’t they realize that sometimes people have important things to do? “Yeah,” he said into it.”

“George, this is Jerome,” he heard the football coach say. “You’ve got to help me on this one.”

“What happened?” Battle asked, wondering what other bad news was happening.

“I just got canned as football coach. Some shit about not disciplining the kids over that stuff last Saturday night. Shit, the kids were just having fun, and I’m supposed to do something about it? That’s not my job.”

“Who did it?”

“That fucking Brandy Wine,” Weilfahrt replied. “She just got named high school principal and athletic director, and the first damn thing she did was call me over to her office and tell me I was out of there. I went right straight over to the superintendent’s office, and that fucking Hekkinan just laughed in my face. Can’t the board do something about this?”

“Oh, shit,” Battle said. “I hoped that stuff was going to stop with Payne. They wanted him out of there too, but he still had a year on his contract. Didn’t you have a contract with him?”

“We had a handshake agreement, but we never got around to signing the paperwork.”

That meant that he was as good as screwed, too, Battle thought. There was no way in hell someone like Wine was going to honor a verbal agreement Payne had made. Damn woman probably doesn’t understand that a man has to be as good as his word. But after what he’d just told Shelly there was no way he could roll over and play dead. “Well, we can take it to the board meeting a week from tonight, but I’ve got to tell you, right now there’s not much chance that the board is going to back you.”

“They’ve backed me on this kind of stuff in the past,” Weilfahrt protested.

“That was then, this is now,” Battle replied grumpily. “Things are different. I’m not board president anymore, there’s not much I can do. Look, up till a month ago there were two people on the board that wanted you out as football coach, just on general principles. John Archer wanted Chuck DeRidder’s ass, so he got them to go along with him on that dirty, underhanded stunt that just about got Chuck ridden out of town on a rail. Now, Archer is board president, so he just about has to back them to return the favor. Considering some of the things said in the election last spring, it’s a good bet there’ll be someone else that will go along with them.”

“So you’re telling me I’m screwed?”

“Pretty much,” Battle sighed. “Just taking a quick look at it, the only way you stand a chance of winning in front of the board is if the football practice is messed up so bad it smells, and they have to bring you back to fix things. Can they find someone to take over as coach tomorrow?”

“Well, maybe Larry Weber, the JV coach,” Weilfahrt said thoughtfully. “He might be able to handle it, he used to work with the kids we have now. The guys I have as assistants, well, maybe. I don’t think either of them would want to be head coach, anyway. The JV assistant coaches aren’t much more than kids themselves, I don’t think they could handle it.”

“Just thinking,” Battle said, stopping to sit on a park bench. “How are those guys going to feel when they hear that you’ve been canned?”

“They’re going to be pissed about it, no doubt,” Weilfahrt replied, beginning to see the drift of Battle’s thinking. “They’re all pretty good friends, too. Well, I can’t say that about the kids that are assistant coaches for the JVs, one of them is new and not a former Marlin player. I can’t really say.”

“So again just thinking,” Battle smiled. “What’s going to happen if they all were to resign in protest over your firing?”

“Things will go to hell in a hand basket on the team in a hurry,” Weilfahrt replied. “Shit, no coaches, nothing is going to happen. No practices, they might even have to cancel some games. That goddamn Wine told me right out that she doesn’t know much about football but she could still do a better job coaching than I could. That fucking yanked my chain! She may have had some basketball championships as a coach, but I’ll bet she doesn’t know that a football has ends as pointed as her head. That would really fuck things up.”

“That would go over like a lead balloon at a board meeting, too,” Battle smiled. “No matter what happens you’ve still got three votes that are going to be against you, but you’ve got mine for you, and we might be able to swing the other three. Might, I say. There are no guarantees, but it’s the only shot I see in the locker.”

“And what happens if we fail? No football season? That’s really going to go over well in this town.”

“It might come to that,” Battle grinned, “and it might come down to recall petitions on those that voted against you. Hell, we might even be able to get Chuck and Bryson back too, if they aren’t working anywhere else. We had things under control until Payne pissed off John Archer, and pissed off Ryan and Randy Clark somehow in the process. You know damn well where all that campaign money came from last spring, and it damn sure wasn’t John Archer re-mortgaging his house. That didn’t sit too well with some people and it damn sure didn’t sit well with me. Like I just told my daughter, when someone screws you, you can either accept it or fight back. That’s where we’re at. In the short run things don’t look good, but in the long run we ought to be able to get things back where they belong.”

“All right,” Weilfahrt said. “I’ll give Larry a call and sound him out.”

While the day was warming up – and it looked like it was going to be another hot one – Jack Erikson and Vixen Hvalcheck were busy, and had been for a while this morning.

For several years, Jack had supported his birding hobby by mowing a series of neighbors’ lawns. It might have been possible to find a more rewarding job, but as far as he was concerned this was just fine. Blowing up a maximum of one day a week mowing lawns gave him enough money to buy gas and the occasional roll of film for the high-quality but old fashioned film camera with the long mirror lens that he used in his hobby. Vixen had taken to helping him with the lawn mowing, and that just got it done sooner, especially if they had an early start to avoid the heat of the day.

That didn’t make it any less hot, even at this hour. There were still a couple lawns to go, big ones, and they would take some time. That was reason enough for Jack and Vixen to decide to take a break in the shade and have a pop from the cooler they had stashed in the tool trailer they towed from lawn to lawn.

“I can think of other things I’d rather be doing,” Vixen said as she leaned against a tree and took a deep drink from her can, “but I suppose this is something we pretty well have to do.”

“Another couple hours,” Jack said, “then we can head back, get on our swim suits, and head down to the beach to cool off.

“That sounds wonderful,” she replied. “For once I think I’d rather be in the cold of the lake to really get cooled off, rather than going out to the pond.”

“Yeah, and it would take a while to get out there,” Jack admitted. “But we could head there this afternoon if we wanted to.”

“I suppose,” she said, “but it’s going to be hot at the pond too. Jack, it may be un-bird watcher like of me, but right now words like ‘inside’ and ‘air conditioning’ sound pretty good to me.”

“Well, me too,” he agreed. “The heat is starting to get to me. It almost makes me want school to be back in session because it’ll be cooler.”

“There is that,” she said, “despite all the other downsides. The football players will be even worse pains in the ass after having their party broken up Saturday night, and I suppose they’ll want to take it out on everybody.”

“Yeah, true,” he said. “Fortunately we don’t have to worry about that just yet. Tell you what. Let’s just take the afternoon off from trying to do anything outside. I’m still not very happy about the maps we have to find the eagle’s nest. I’m thinking maybe we can download some high-resolution aerial photos that might give us a little better idea how to get there.”

It was a problem they’d kicked around for a couple days. Because of fenced private land and the railroad grade, also fenced, getting to the eagle’s nest was going to be a long walk in the best of circumstances. With good maps, or even better, aerial photos, it might be possible to bushwhack their way fairly close to the nest in the Jeep, which would be a lot less stressful as warm as it was.

“That’s going to be a long, slow process,” Vixen said, “but at least it would be inside.”

“There is that,” Jack agreed, draining his cola. “Let’s get these lawns done, and then we can go for a swim.” At least that would mean checking Vixen out in her bikini, something that was always rewarding. She almost looked better wearing it than she did in the nude.

“Sounds good to me,” she smirked as if she’d read his mind.

Shelly Battle’s father dropped her at home on the way back from the courthouse, and then went on to work. Shelly went up to her room, got out of her good clothes and into her grungies since she didn’t figure on doing anything much but hang around the house.

She was really disappointed the way her father had bullied her into pleading not guilty. It was clear to her that his way was going to be a whole lot more trouble, and although she was no lawyer or any kind of expert, she didn’t share his hope that a jury would let her go. In fact, she figured that when a jury convicted her that judge was going to land on her a lot harder than the other kids. Really, they’d just gotten a slap on the wrist – a humiliating one, to be sure, but still really not that bad a deal considering what could have happened. Now she was going to be the one doing something different from the crowd, and that was something she never liked.

At least the subject of slipping several Excedrin PM into Vanessa’s drink hadn’t come up. That had worked about like she hoped it would, even though she hadn’t been able to get her hands on the stronger prescription sleeping pills her mother occasionally used. It had been good enough to show Vanessa for the slut she really was, and that was all she really cared about.

With her folks hanging around yesterday and her father raging, Shelly had been disappointed that she hadn’t been able to get a good start spreading the gossip around the other kids who hadn’t been at the party of how much of a slut Vanessa had been. After all she’d spread her legs for anyone who had asked, and even some who hadn’t. The pills may or may not have had anything to do with it, and maybe Vanessa had been so drunk from that awful beer that it didn’t matter all that much.

Besides, Shelly wanted to touch base with a few of the kids who had been at the party, just to keep up on the news and share her sorrows – and, for that matter, her joys. She hadn’t been in the courtroom long enough to be sure, but from what she’d heard it looked like they planned to throw the book at Eddie Awkerman, and probably Scotty Parsons since the beer had been in his truck, even though he apparently hadn’t bought it.

Unfortunately several people she tried to call weren’t picking up – they might still be in the courtroom, for all she knew. Shelly wasn’t much of a gossip among the high school kids in Spearfish Lake. So after a while she gave up on the kids she knew best, and called Laurel Hauessler, who with Heather Callahan and Ashley Keilhorn, were probably the leading gossips in the school. At least they’d be able to spread the word about Vanessa taking on all comers better than she could, anyway.

It turned out that Laurel was home, and had just gotten up – once again, she’d spent that day working at the Fiesta station, and the evening delivering pizzas for Parker’s. Laurel had college plans and not much money, so worked at everything she could, not easy in this day and age when laid-off adults were happy to get the kind of jobs that normally went to kids. “So,” Laurel asked, “how did things go in court?”

“Most of the kids are getting off with less than I expected,” Shelly told her, and went on to detail what had gone on in the courtroom. That discussion went on for a while, with Laurel sopping up everything Shelly told her, and possibly even taking notes. Eventually, the topic managed to shift to the party itself, and Shelly managed to get in her digs about Vanessa.

“Yeah, I’d heard that from a couple other people,” Laurel replied. “It surprised a lot of people. I mean, they know she sleeps around some, but not quite that blatant. I’ve heard that some people think she was high on something.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t know,” Shelly lied. “She seemed a little out of it to me about the time the cops hit the place, but she sure managed to act like she was enjoying herself, at least as far as I could see.”

They talked that over for a couple minutes, getting nowhere since Shelly didn’t want to say anything that might hint at her involvement. After a bit, the topic drifted elsewhere. “So what did the kids at the party think about Mrs. Wine getting named principal?” she asked.

“Most of them hate the idea,” Shelly replied. “The football players especially. They think they had it real good under Payne, and that things are going to be harder with her there. But maybe that won’t last for long.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, Dad is on the school board, and he’s not real happy about the whole deal. We were just getting out of the courtroom when he got a call from Coach Weilfahrt. He told Dad that Mrs. Wine had just fired him as football coach.”

“No shit?” Laurel replied, knowing first rate news when she heard it. “That’ll really piss the football players off.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Shelly grinned. “But like I say, it may not last for long.” She’d heard a good part of the discussion her father had on his cell phone with Weilfahrt, and had been able to fill in the rest of the conversation with ease. If there had been any doubts, on the way back home her father had used the whole thing as an example of how people should fight back if they or their friends are getting screwed. Shelly didn’t leave much out, including the plan to ask the other football coaches to resign in protest of Weilfahrt’s firing, and how it might lead to the firing backfiring all the way around.

“Well, crap,” Laurel said. “I hadn’t heard any of that.”

“Well, it just happened in the last hour or so, from what I hear,” Shelly explained. “Some of it hasn’t even happened yet, they’re just working on it.”

“God,” Laurel said when Shelly had completed the story. “I’ve got to call Ashley and tell her about that. She just hates it when I scoop her big on something like that, and she thinks her shit doesn’t stink after beating me with the story about Mrs. Wine getting named principal last week. Now that she’s gotten a boyfriend, well, sort of a boyfriend if you can call it that, she’s really getting a big head.”

When it rang again, Brandy was beginning to hate the black phone on the principal’s desk. Just one damn thing after another this morning, she thought. I guess I’d better get used to it, that’s probably what life as a principal is going to be like. “Principal’s office, Mrs. Wine,” she answered.

“Hi, Mrs. Wine, it’s Ashley Keilhorn,” she heard. “I just wanted to call you up and congratulate you on being named principal. I think you’re going to do a great job, and a lot of the kids I’ve talked to think so too.”

“Well, thank you Ashley,” Brandy answered, wondering what this call was really about. Calling me up to congratulate me about being named principal is something most kids wouldn’t bother to do. Most kids are going to see me as the enemy. “That’s good to hear.”

“I just heard that you fired Coach Weilfahrt,” Ashley continued. “I think that’s pretty cool, too.”

“Let’s just say that for a number of reasons it had to be done,” Brandy replied, not wanting to say anything that could be considered an official statement as to the reasons, especially to a kid. Those might come out in time, and they might never have to, either.

“Yeah, but it’s going to cause you some problems,” Ashley told her. “I like you enough that I thought I’d better call you and warn you. I just got off the phone with Laurel Hauessler. She says that she’d talked with Shelly Battle, and her father is really pissed.”

Brandy listened to the story that Ashley told about the plan that George Battle had cooked up for the assistant coaches to resign in protest in hopes of getting the school board to reverse the decision, and maybe even go for a recall of the school board if that failed. Brandy knew that Ashley was one of the busier gossips around the school, but also knew that she’d do her best to pass along a story how she heard it. Stories get bent, shaped, and spun as they passed from gossip to gossip, but this time the line of connections was pretty short, so she felt that Ashley had to have the story pretty well right.

“Anyway,” Ashley finished up, “I thought you might like to know.”

“Thanks, Ashley,” she said, and realized that one good turn deserved another. “I really appreciate it. If you’d like something positive to pass on, don’t say it came from me, but Crystal Elsasser has been hired to replace me as a math teacher, and Amy Lowenthal is going to be replacing John Ordway teaching English. That just got settled this morning, too.”

“Good deal, Mrs. Wine. I’m not going to have either of them but I like them, and I think they ought to do pretty well.”

“I think so too,” Brandy grinned, then added. “And congratulations to you, too. Don’t be wearing Lyle out too much. Mrs. Mykelhoff is going to still need him to help with basketball training.”

“I won’t,” Ashley giggled, probably realizing that gossips get gossiped about, too. “At least, I’ll try not to.”

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