It turned out that the post-practice meeting was held at Kulwicki’s house. The decision wasn’t made until the last few minutes, but a quick phone call got the coach’s wife, Barbara, working on a thrown-together meal, which included burgers on the grill. A number of people showed up – all the coaches, of course, including Nathan Bolenbaugh, a college kid from Riverside Community College who had been recruited just days before to fill a hole on the JV staff. He was the only survivor of the old regime, and didn’t have any more experience with the Spearfish Lake kids than the rest of the new coaching staff. Naturally Anissa and Brandy were there too.

Kulwicki presided at the grill, of course, herding around hamburgers as the discussion went on around him. “I have to say, Brandy, a part of me that wishes you hadn’t had to can all those kids, but I can see why it had to be done. If you hadn’t done it, we would have been facing some real discipline problems.”

“I could see that even before Saturday night,” Brandy told the group – for the most part, the time for secrets was over with now – “but I couldn’t see what I could do about it. I think that will get the message out once and for all that we’re serious.”

“No doubt, that hit them up against the head with a blunt instrument,” Reardon smiled, “but wow, are we going to be thin at some positions. Most of the kids I saw really want to make it work, but damn, I don’t think I was ever that little when I was playing football, even in middle school.”

“We lost a few good kids out of that deal,” Anissa commented, “but not that many, and you really cleaned out the attitude problems once and for all. With only a couple exceptions, the kids who were tossed out for the season were a big core of the old bully crowd. Again, with a couple of exceptions, the ones you’ll eventually get back have some potential.”

“The problem is going to be reaching the point where we can get them back,” Kulwicki said, “and it wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t get them all back, especially if things aren’t going well. They’re just not going to have the motivation.”

“True, but what else could I do?” Brandy pointed out. “If we’re going to follow the rule book, we have to follow the rule book.”

“Yeah, well, that’s water over the bridge now,” Kulwicki said. “We can talk about might have beens, but we have to go from where we’re at. I agree, we’ve got some kids with some heart, or else they would have walked away from practice the way we were pushing them. Now that they realize they’re going to have to work, maybe we can start teaching them enough skills to survive.”

“It’s not all bad,” Anissa pointed out. “You have a few kids there who have the potential to be better than the ones they’re replacing. Take the Erikson kid, for example. Yeah, he’s young and he’s small, but he had good years as quarterback in seventh and eighth grade. Good arm, good moves, but still pretty green to be on varsity. I think the JVs only threw about a dozen passes last year and he threw most of them, and completed most of them, for that matter. Of course, Weber didn’t play him much.”

“Why not?” Reardon asked.

“Because he was a freshman and Lethbridge was a sophomore, even though he was just playing at being quarterback. Erikson was easily the better quarterback, but you know how that class stuff goes.”

“I understood he was a quarterback, but I didn’t realize he was that good,” Kulwicki said. “It’s good to know we have someone promising for that spot. Look, I know I don’t know you except as the local sports reporter, but how do you know all this stuff?”

“I go to the games,” she replied, “and when it comes to football, I mean all the games, clear down into middle school. I know the kids, and I like to watch them develop. We haven’t had enough of that the last few years.”

“You know the kids who were JVs pretty well, then?” Reardon said. “That’s good, we don’t have any better information. What other jewels do you think we have?”

“Why don’t I just go through the list and fill you in?” Anissa smiled. “It might be a little more organized that way.”

It took her half an hour as they ate their burgers and potato salad. She was working mostly from memory, using only the list of names as a guide. There were a few kids she didn’t know very well, but mostly she was able to give a good description of strengths and weaknesses.

“That’s going to be a big help,” Kulwicki said after she finished. “There are some things there that we might have been slow on picking up. I think we’re going to have some kids who are able to play football. I don’t want to make any promises, but we might not be quite as bad off as I thought just a few hours ago. Mitch, what does it look like from your side?”

“Well, I think we’re going to have an offense,” he said. “If the schools around here are like most high schools, they’re going to be using a running offense and the defense is going to be used to it. I’ll want to have a look at how this Erikson kid throws the ball, but we might be able to get the jump on some people by airing the ball out a little. With a little luck we might be able to get some points on the board, but I sure would like to see the kid have a little pass protection.”

“Yeah, no fooling,” Kulwicki shook his head. “I’m just afraid the line isn’t going to be very strong, either way. Those kids are just too little right now, unless everyone runs smaller than average around here. Anissa, I don’t suppose we’re going to get lucky on that?”

“No,” she said. “They’re definitely smaller than average for the typical varsity team. The line last year was one of the brighter spots, but we lost most of those kids even before the deal Saturday.”

“Graduation?” someone asked.

“Jail, at least one of them, and probation banning extracurricular activities for two more,” she replied. “No great loss in one sense, those three were the worst of the bad actors we had on last year’s team. I never thought they were that great as football players, but at least they liked to mix it up. Unfortunately, at least one of them thought that you scored points by hurting people, and he drew a lot of penalties.”

“So no great loss in that sense either,” Kulwicki nodded, “but it sure would be nice to have a bigger kid or two just to even things out a little. I don’t suppose there’s anyone in the school we could recruit, maybe someone who played football for a while and dropped out.”

“Not really,” Brandy said. “Well, there’s this one kid who played football last year who I didn’t see there today, a lineman, bigger than average and not real bad at it. The word around town is that he got into trouble with his parents and was grounded. I don’t know if talking to his parents would get him out of hack or what. About all I can do is ask.”

“That might help,” the coach replied. “Right now, just about anything would help. Anyone else?”

“If you’re looking for size on the line it gets thin real quick,” Brandy shook her head. “Well, there’s this one kid who works with me in basketball training, Lyle Angarrack. He’s almost as big as you are, got very quick hands and moves well on his feet. And he lifts weights, he’s strong as an ox.”

“Then how come he’s not on the football team?”

“Very simply, he can’t breathe. He has about the worst case of exercise-induced asthma I’ve ever seen. It works out all right on basketball practice, because he’s just a big defender the kids have to learn to get around. He doesn’t have to move very much, and I still have to be careful to not let him over-exert himself. I mean, I suppose you could have him suck on his inhaler and run a play or two so long as it only involved running a few steps, but he’d have to sit right back down for fifteen minutes afterward. And there wouldn’t be any running or conditioning, you’d have to go with what you have.”

“One or two plays at the right time might be a big help, especially down in the hole,” Kulwicki said thoughtfully. “It could upset the opponent’s balance at crucial times, even if he was nothing more than a decoy. You think he might like to help us out?”

“I can ask,” Brandy shrugged. “I don’t know if he’d say yes. Most people think he’s big and dumb, but he’s not dumb, he’s one of the smarter kids in the school, in fact. But kids have ragged on him for years about his asthma, and while he owes me a couple favors I still don’t know if he’d do it.”

“I know who you’re talking about,” Anissa said. “I don’t know much about him. But you might tell him that the kids who have been mean to him have gotten what was coming to them.”

“Well, I can ask,” Brandy sighed, “but don’t get your hopes up.”

“Any other possibilities?” Danny asked. “I’ve been sitting here wracking my brain for kids who could be asked, but I don’t know the kids like I used to.”

“Well, maybe one or two,” Brandy said. “There’s at least one kid who comes to mind who might be a prospect, but he’d have grade issues, so there’s no point in asking him. I don’t know that I’ve said it before, but there is a minimum grade standard for athletics, and I don’t intend to bend that rule either. In the past that rule book has required a minimum of a one point five GPA, to play any sport, and sometime, not real soon, I intend to ask the board to increase it to two point oh. But no point in adding that one to our problems right now.”

“And there’s no point in charging off into that side issue right now, anyway,” Kulwicki said, “especially when we’ve got other issues that need to be gone over. I just realized there’s another position question I don’t have an answer to. Do we have anybody who can kick a football?”

“The guy who did the kicking for the varsity last year graduated,” Anissa said, “not that he was anything to write home about. He could get a kickoff or a punt maybe forty yards downfield if the wind was with him. Junior varsity, well, they tried several kids, and Lethbridge, the only one with a speck of talent, got kicked off the team this afternoon. Field goals, well, I can’t tell you the last time a Spearfish Lake team kicked a field goal but it’s been years.”

“Kicking has never been a strong part of the game in Spearfish Lake,” Danny explained. “We actually won a game on a field goal back when I was playing, and that was a fluke. It was supposed to be a trick play going into a run but it got screwed up, so the kicker ended up having to kick it, and he’d never tried it, not even in practice. Wonder of wonders, he made it. I don’t think one has been tried since, not that I know of, anyway.”

“No kicks for extra points, either?”

“No,” Anissa said. “Again, I can’t tell you the last time it’s been tried, either here or in any of the schools around here. Everybody almost always goes for two points. Realistically they make it about one out of five, and everybody figures that’s better odds than a kick.”

“That’s about how they thought when I was in high school, too,” Reardon shook his head. “Then one school came up with a kicker they thought they could depend on and they had the guts to depend on him. That surprised a lot of people who didn’t know how to deal with him. His kicking was the margin of victory in something like four games over the season.”

“Yeah, but how do you find a kid like that?” Kulwicki asked, then answered his own question. “You get lucky and you hope that a natural comes out of the woodwork. I guess all we can do is look and hope for the best.”

“Shit,” Jerome Weilfahrt said despondently to George Battle over a beer at a table in the corner of the Back Street Bar, a couple blocks off Lakeshore. It was a quiet little place, never particularly busy, but a good one when you wanted a place to go and talk. In the old days neither Weilfahrt nor Battle would have been one to hang around the Pike, and tonight they were less inclined to than ever. “I never thought of that.”

“Me, either,” Battle admitted. “I mean, I’d heard they had a new owner out at the Pike, but somehow I never heard that he was a former Packer.”

“I guess I’d heard of it but I never figured that Wine bitch would tag him for the job,” Weilfahrt shook his head. “I guess that means I’m screwed.”

“Maybe for now,” Battle commiserated, trying to buck up his friend a little. “But just because the guy was once a run-of-the-mill pro football player doesn’t mean he’s going to make a good high school football coach. I mean, what is he going to know about motivating kids?”

“True,” Weilfahrt shook his head, “but since he was a pro people are going to cut him a ton of slack until he proves for sure he ain’t worth shit as a coach. Even if he steps in it, it’s going to take a while, maybe the whole season before people see the light. And that will mean the Wine bitch will have until next summer sometime to find someone else. No matter what happens she ain’t going to be coming to me for help. I guess that means I’m done coaching Spearfish Lake football.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Battle said. “There’s still a chance we may be able to salvage something. I agree that the idea I had yesterday about the board getting involved if she couldn’t come up with a coach and the season got loused up may well be out for now, but we’re not dead yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thing you have to remember is that Wine isn’t the permanent principal or athletic director yet. That’s just an interim appointment until the board confirms it, which most likely will come next Monday night. That business of throwing a dozen kids off the varsity and sitting a bunch more down for half the season didn’t sit well with me, and it didn’t sit well with a lot of people. Christ, I’ve already had calls from several parents bitching to me about it. I mean, hell, kids will be kids, they have to blow off a little steam now and then, right?”

“Right. I tried to tell that fact of life to that bitch, but she brushed me off like I was day-old dog poop. Shit, you and I did stuff like that when we were in school, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, sure,” Weilfahrt agreed. “Christ, I remember a pre-season beer bust we had back when I was a junior, I think it was. God, did I get fucked up! It was one of the best times of my life.”

“Yeah, I had some good ones back in the day, too,” Battle smiled. “Yeah, it was illegal then and it’s illegal now, but nobody ever made an issue out of it. Now you’ve got all these people that think that denying kids a little honest fun is the right thing to do. Shit, they don’t want them to be kids anymore. I don’t know where the hell Stoneslinger got the bright idea to raise hell with a little of that innocent fun, but I think I’ve got an attorney that may be able to take him down a notch or two when Shelly goes to court in October. With that I may have a little leverage to do something else.”

“That’s not going to do the football team any good this year! Christ, we may not have had the greatest season ever last year, but at least we had some kids that could play football. To tell you the truth, I’ve been a little worried about the kids coming along for next year and the year after that. There just isn’t a lot of size there. Maybe when some of those ninth and tenth graders grow a little they might be all right, but they’re just going to get fucking trampled out on the football field this year. Sitting all those kids down, well, it’s just going to get some other kids hurt in the long run. Even if I did get to take things back over next year we’d be hurting in the long run.”

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid that’s the way things are going to have to be,” Battle shook his head. “About all I can see to do is to take that fact to the school board next Monday and try to get Wine’s decision reversed. It may take not accepting her as principal and athletic director to accomplish it, if we can manage it.”

“You’d think the board would be mad as hell,” Weilfahrt observed.

“Yeah, but the math is the same as before. You have Bergen and Hodges that would like to see you run out of town on a rail, and Archer that thinks he owes them, so there’s three votes against you and for Wine, whatever else happens. You have my vote. That leaves three in the wind. Now granted, one of them is Archer’s brother, but I don’t think John controls his vote. Josh is a lot more competition oriented and results oriented, and there’s a chance we might be able to turn him. There’s also a chance we could turn the other two – maybe not a long chance, but if the board refuses Wine for the spot, then we’re rid of her and maybe Hekkinan, too. That gives us a chance to bring DeRidder and Payne back. It’s a hell of a long chance, and if we lose, we lose for the season and maybe longer.”

“Christ, what a disaster that would be.”

“Right,” Battle said, “but we have to take the chance, because if we don’t we’re costing some kids a chance to be kids. But isn’t getting the football program out of this cluster fuck and back where it belongs worth it?”

“Daddy,” Misty said, putting on the sweet, innocent face that she knew usually could get him to do whatever it was she wanted, “can we talk?”

“Sure, honey,” Bob Frankovich replied. “You know you can always talk to me.”

“Can we maybe do it out on the porch or something where we can be alone?” she asked, the sweetness of her voice capable of causing diabetic shock in anyone who had blood sugar problems.

“Want to get something out of him again?” Rusty snorted from the couch, where he was watching television – nothing very interesting, either, but since he couldn’t go outside the house he had to make do with that or nothing.

“I suppose,” Bob replied, ignoring Rusty’s rude remark and getting out of his chair. Having Rusty so thoroughly grounded the last few days had been a pain in the ass all around. A week ago Saturday Rusty had been on a date in Camden with a girl who happened to be the daughter of a co-worker. Rusty had acted a little out of line, the girl had protested, and the next thing anyone knew Rusty had headed home without her. The girl had caught a ride home with some friends she’d found at the theater, and as soon as she got home she’d told her dad about it. Her dad had come to the house with fire in his eye. No matter what the facts were, leaving her stranded had been a stupid, dangerous, and rude thing to do, and Bob had no choice but to land on the kid with both feet. Rusty lost the use of his truck, wasn’t allowed to leave the house, and was told he wouldn’t be playing football. Ever since then Rusty had been a caged lion, snapping at everyone and holding a hell of an attitude, and things around the house were more than a little tiring.

It was actually a little bit of a relief to be out on the porch where things were quiet, and where it was cooling off a little as the day died. “OK, sweetheart,” Bob said quietly to his daughter as soon as they were on a distant corner of the porch, “what do you want?”

“Daddy, I want you to ease up on Rusty a little,” she said. “I at least want you to let him play football.”

“Sweetheart, you know what he did,” her father replied gently. “He deserves punishment for what he did, and I don’t even think he realizes what he did wrong.”

“I don’t think so either,” she replied,” and what he did was pretty bad. But still, I’d like to ask you to ease up on him a little.”

“This is really a surprise,” he replied. “You’ve always had a lot of fun pulling his tail. You two have never gotten along very well. What brings this on?”

“Daddy,” Misty sighed heavily, “you know what happened with the football team this afternoon?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “A lot of Rusty’s friends got kicked off the team for being at that beer party last Saturday night.”

“Rusty would have been there too, if he weren’t grounded,” she reported. “You know that as well as I do. At least he realizes he dodged the bullet on that one.”

“So why are you being so nice to him all of a sudden?”

“I’m not trying to be nice to him,” she shook her head. “I talked to Howie on the phone after practice. Nothing is sure yet, but Howie thinks there’s a good chance he’s going to come out as the starting quarterback.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So he’s worried that he’s not going to have much blocking in front of him. It looks like it’s just going to be freshmen and sophomores and not big ones at that. Maybe if Rusty is playing there’s less of a chance of my boyfriend getting hurt. You can still keep Rusty’s truck, you can still keep him grounded, but maybe if he does real well you can let up on him some more.”

“OK, sweetheart,” Bob said, “I’ll think about it. I’m not saying yes, but I’ll think about it.”

Misty knew that her father’s statement was about as close as she was going to come to a “yes” this evening. “That’ll be fine, Daddy,” she smiled, “but if you decide to let him play, please don’t let him know that I asked you.”

“Not going to let up on him a bit, are you?” Bob smirked.

“Why should I?” Misty grinned. “He’s still my brother after all, and I still know how big a jerk he is.”

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