Chapter 30

The point spread following the Forestville game meant the Marlins were going for the divisional championships against the Mt. Royal Kings, a team from the far end of the Upper Peninsula with the home field advantage going to Spearfish Lake again. This was starting to get into rarified territory; the divisional game was as far as any Spearfish Lake team had gone since the start of the organized playoffs over forty years before. In spite of a cold, blustery, snowy day, the stands were just absolutely jammed. The game was played on a Saturday afternoon, mostly due to the distance the Kings had to travel, and it was only the second time since early in the season the Marlins had played in daylight. The Mt. Royal game was tough indeed, but the Marlins managed to squeeze out a victory, but by a narrow 24-21 margin, although the Spearfish Lake team led from the first score.

Evening was falling by the time Howie and his friends made it to the Gravengood hot tub. All of them were chilled, and the warm water felt good. It felt especially good to Howie and Jared, who had their fair share of bumps, bruises, and aches from the tough battle. “I’ll tell you one good thing about it,” Howie said as he sat in the hot tub while Autumn massaged his shoulders.

“What’s that?” Bree asked.

“We don’t have to play outside next weekend. We get to play in the Yooperdome.”

To say the next week in Spearfish Lake was exciting was to understate the truth. Fans and critics alike sometimes thought the town was a little football-crazy, but no one had ever seen football craziness like this before. The Marlins were the divisional champions, which amounted to the quarter-finals, and they were going to the state semifinals!

The Marlins wouldn’t get a home-field advantage this time; it had long been the practice to play the semis at a neutral site. Since it was November, things were getting cold, and in the northern part of the state, winter came even earlier than it did down south. However, the northern teams had a luxury their southern counterparts didn’t have: Northern Michigan University in Marquette had the largest wooden domed stadium in the world – colloquially but commonly referred to as the “Yooperdome.” The Marlins and their opponents, the St. Ursula Saints from a school down in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula, would get to play inside. After frankly freezing their butts the last couple weeks, the thought of playing inside at a reasonable temperature made it seem like it was September again.

Though it wasn’t a short drive for the Marlin fans, it was an even longer drive for the St. Ursula team. The game would be on a tight schedule, played early on Saturday morning: the Yooperdome had to host eight semifinal games in the various classes in a day and a half, so the athletic association had to keep things moving right along.

In spite of the 7:30 AM kickoff – an hour when most of the Spearfish Lake students would just as soon have been in bed on a Saturday morning – there was a huge crowd from Spearfish Lake there. Howie and Jared wouldn’t have wanted to guess, but there couldn’t have been many people left in town.

Probably at least partly due to the early hour, the game was relatively flat and unexciting, something the Marlins hadn’t experienced much of this year. Both the teams had strong offenses, and could move the ball, but could never quite manage to put it away on each other. It wasn’t until the third quarter that the Marlins got stopped close enough to the St. Ursula goal line for Jared to try a field goal on a fourth down; he made it easily.

Unfortunately, it was the only Marlin score of the game. Toward the end of the fourth quarter, the St. Ursula quarterback launched a desperation long bomb of a pass – and made it, making the scoreboard 6-3 with the Marlins behind. That was how the scoreboard read when the game ended; the Saints would be making another long trip, the day after Thanksgiving, this time, to Ford Field in Detroit for the state finals. The Marlins would be having their turkey dinners at home.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Coach Kulwicki told the team in the locker room after the game – they couldn’t stay there long, since another team was coming in. “Stop and think about it. No Spearfish Lake team has ever been here before. Not one. Ever. You are the first, and getting to the semis is a darn big deal. But let me tell you a secret, and it’s one I told you last year. Next year, we’re going to be bigger. We’re going to be stronger, and we’re going to be better. If we work together, and we push hard, next year we’ve got an even better chance to make the trip to Detroit.

“When we lost in the regionals last year, I told you something, and I’m going to tell you again. Next . . . year . . . starts . . . right . . . now! Now, let’s go back and celebrate what we accomplished, not feel sorry about what we failed to achieve. Come on – a year and four months ago, did any of you ever dream we’d even be in the semis? We can do better, and we will!”

As they were packing up their gear and getting set to head for the bus, Howie turned to Jared. “Well, shit,” he said. “I guess that means I get to have Thanksgiving dinner with Jack after all.”

“Look on the bright side,” Jared tried to console his friend. “If we’d gone to Detroit, you wouldn’t have much time to see him anyway.”

“I suppose,” Howie said. “God, I can look back and think of a hundred things that could have been done to break that game open. Well, shit, can’t win them all. It’d be nice, but . . .”

“Yeah,” Jared agreed. “Oh, well, the bright side for me is that I’m in damn good shape for wrestling, and I’ve got my first meet in three weeks.”

“And I get to sit home and twiddle my thumbs. At least Autumn, Bree, and I will be able to go to your meets. Maybe that’ll help the winter pass quicker.”

Spearfish Lake wasn’t quite deserted for the state semifinals. Among a few others, Misty didn’t go to the game, and neither did her mother or father. Well, her father would have liked to have gone, but things didn’t work out that way. The family didn’t even bother to listen to the game on the local radio station; Misty couldn’t have cared less.

She hadn’t been to one football game all season long, and it had been pretty damn lonely. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go, but she wanted to go with someone, not by herself. But she couldn’t get a rise out of anyone. Not one single guy. Charlotte had been dead right back there at the Frostee Freeze right after Misty came back to town the previous summer: Walt had put the word out that he’d stomp the balls off of anyone who messed with her. Even in jail, he was managing to louse up her life! How did she ever let herself get so stupid to take up with him in the first place?

Her mother hadn’t been a damn bit of help on this one, either. Oh, she told Misty to go out and try, but no matter what she did, it was like Charlotte had said: she was untouchable. And if having Walt’s threats hanging over her weren’t enough, Misty had heard some rumors going around about her, although she didn’t hear many of them directly. Apparently the word was out that she was a controlling bitch who wouldn’t let a guy rest in peace, and one who lived to get a guy out on a limb before she sawed it off.

While it was true – at least in a way, she thought – she’d heard at least a little bit here and there that made her think that the rumor must have started with Rusty. It was possible that Matt had something to do with spreading it, but he wouldn’t have known some of the details she’d heard, and Rusty had known them. As if the problems that she had with Walt weren’t enough, that made it a whole hell of a lot worse – her own damn brother, who no one had heard anything about in six months, was now haunting her. Her mother had been about ready to kill him if she ever managed to find him, she didn’t like him slipping out of her grasp, but she’d have to beat Misty to him if he ever turned up.

How could she have known that trying to bring Howie under a little closer control, over a year ago now, could have resulted in this mess? Who would have believed it?

Did it matter anymore?

There was no hope of a practice boyfriend now, or even a real one, not even some of the nerds who wouldn’t know what a girl was if she bit him on the ass. Oh, she could get along all right until next summer, when Walt got out of jail – but what would happen then? She’d still have a year of high school left! The obvious thing to do was to get through this year, then go somewhere else, maybe down to Grand Rapids where Bethany was still working in the Taco Bell and hating every minute of it, or maybe somewhere else. In any case, Spearfish Lake just wouldn’t be a safe place for her from about ten minutes after Walt got out of jail, unless her father was sitting right behind her with his shotgun on his knee. Somehow she had to get an answer to that one worked out in the next six months or so.

And her mother wasn’t being any help with that, either. This truly stank, and there didn’t seem to be much of a way out of it.

Jack, Vixen, Summer, and Alan pulled in late on Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving after driving since early in the morning. It was still before the folks got home, and that gave Howie some one-on-one time with his brother that he hadn’t had for months.

It was good to see him again. It wouldn’t be the same as it had been, and could never be again, but still, for a few days he’d have the old ties.

“Hey, Howie,” Jack said the minute he walked in the door. “You know I didn’t want to come home for Thanksgiving. I’d really rather have met you in Detroit.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out that way,” Howie replied, still a little down over getting beaten in the semis.

“Look on the bright side,” Jack replied, repeating words Howie must have heard a hundred times in the last few days. “You could have had a two and seven season like the team managed two years ago. You went twelve and one instead. That’s nothing to sneeze at.”

“I suppose,” Howie replied. “Hey, don’t try to cheer me up. You won’t be the first person to try. I figure in a month, maybe two months, I won’t feel quite as bad.”

“There is that,” Jack said. “You know, the thing I had against football all along is that it doesn’t count for a damn thing in the real world.”

“Yeah, but still,” Howie changed the subject. “So how’s college working out for you? I mean, really?”

“Let me tell you, they’re working my ass off. From what I understand they like to do that at Southern, separate those who can from those who can only talk a good battle. I got real good grades on my midterms and everything since then has been coming in solid, so I guess I can’t complain.”

“So how’s it working out with the four of you living in one apartment?”

“It has its ups and downs. The thing Alan and I never thought about was that it only has one bathroom, and you wouldn’t believe how much time Vixen and Summer can spend in there when Alan or I are tight for making it to an eight o’clock. We haven’t missed one yet, but there have been some times I’ve had to shave over the kitchen sink and find a rest room on campus before I got to class. Let me tell you, Howie, living with women isn’t always exactly what it’s cracked up to be.”

Howie really wanted to ask how they’d worked out the arrangements with the rooms, boys and girls, or what. He pretty well suspected the rooms were broken down by couples, but he didn’t think he ought to ask. Maybe it would come out before the weekend was over. “So,” he asked, “are you making any new friends down there?”

“A few,” Jack admitted. “Most of us study pretty hard, and we tend to hang out with people from our classes. There’s a lot of bookwork, Howie, and there’s nothing to do but keep up with it. Like I said, it’s not easy, but I think I’m keeping up. Have you done any more thinking about college?”

“Not really. I’ve been too busy with football since I saw you last. If I didn’t have Autumn, Jared, and Bree to hang out with and to work with, I wouldn’t be doing as well. We put together our study group from last year again, and so far it’s working out pretty well.”

“You and Autumn are still pretty close, I take it? I know I hear about you through Summer a lot.”

“Oh, yeah, closer than ever, if anything. I still don’t want to guess if there’s going to be anything between us in the long run, and if I had to bet, I’d bet against. A lot depends on where we wind up going to college, and that’s all still up in the air. It’d help if Autumn knew what she wanted to do, and if I knew what I wanted to do, for that matter.”

“You need to be thinking about it some more,” Jack told him. “I know it’s possible to go to some schools without any real plans, but you sure as hell can’t do it at Southern.”

“I guess,” Howie shrugged uncomfortably. This was an issue he knew he had to be thinking about, but up to this point he really hadn’t except for his talk with Shay last spring, and that had been a long time ago. He really hadn’t done much thinking about the idea he’d gotten from Shay, either. Howie wasn’t sure, but Shay had expected to be back in town along about this time; maybe he’d have to get together with him sometime. “You got any plans for the weekend?” he asked, mostly to change the subject.

“Not really, just hang out with the folks and you a bit and let them know I’m still alive, “I’ll probably get together with Vixen now and then, but we see an awful lot of each other as it is.”

“You’re still cool with her?”

“Oh, yeah, cooler than ever. She’s really doing well in her classes, but we don’t get the pure fun hanging out time we used to manage when we were here. Maybe we can catch up on that a little.”

Things were quieter out at the Gravengood residence. Bree had hoped to see her sister again; it had been too long. She hadn’t seen Becca since Labor Day, and at that, much of Becca’s time that weekend had been spent out at the nudist place. Although Becca and Myleen had cleaned house in the volleyball tournament, it meant Bree hadn’t seen much of her then.

As it turned out, she wasn’t going to be seeing Becca over Thanksgiving, either; Becca was going to be playing in some college tournament down south someplace, and it was going to eat up the whole weekend. There wasn’t much chance her sister would be home until Christmas, volleyball should be pretty well over by then. Maybe over the Christmas break they could catch up a little.

The last month had been on the quiet side; Jared and Autumn and Howie still had practices to go to, but that focus of her life for the last few months had now escaped from her. She tried to make it up a little by bearing down on her martial arts classes, Mr. Evachevski and Jared’s uncle Randy worked with her to push the pace of her training. She was beyond being a novice now, although she had a long way to go to catch up with either of them, if she ever could. Still, it was nice to be doing something active, even if her friends couldn’t be involved.

At least now that football was over with she could expect to spend a little more time with Autumn and Howie. Jared had gone right from football to wrestling practice, and he had some hopes of doing well over the winter; he’d made a trip downstate for the wrestling state meet back in March, and with any kind of luck he’d be doing it again.

Even so, she’d spent all too much of the month in the big living room chair, with Perky in her lap while she read another book about flying. She liked to do it whenever she could – it was just that she didn’t have the time to do it very much anymore.

Thanksgiving, of course, was just the three of them, and it really seemed lacking with Becca not there. Maybe, she thought, things would be better at Christmas.

Summer, Alan, Jack, and Vixen started back for Southern early on Sunday morning. Autumn was sorry to see them go. It had been nice to have Summer home, if only because it meant her mother’s attention was off of her for a while. That made the holiday especially pleasant, even if it had been short.

Autumn had been careful to not say anything to her friends about her mother’s beliefs in the Old Way; she’d promised she wouldn’t, and she hadn’t, even though as time passed her own belief never strong, had faded more and more.

But with Summer gone again, that meant that Autumn was more the focus of her mother’s attention on the subject, just as she’d expected. There was no good way to tell her to just quit talking about it, because if she had it would have just meant her mother would bear down on her harder. Summer and Alan still believed, more strongly if anything, and while neither of them said much about it around the girls’ mother, it appeared to Autumn that Jack and Vixen knew more than a little about their roommates’ beliefs, even though they didn’t share them. If that was the case, Jack had never said anything to Howie about it, at least that Autumn had heard – and she suspected she would have heard. There weren’t many secrets left between Autumn, Howie, Jared, and Bree any longer, and it bothered her more than a little to have to keep this one.

Of course, a big part of her mother’s worrying was that Autumn would tell her friends about it anyway. Even her mother realized she was between a rock and a hard spot on that one – she’d wanted Autumn to have friends so she could seem normal, but she didn’t want her to have friends out of fear she’d let the secret out.

There really wasn’t much Autumn could do about the whole situation besides count the days until she could leave for college, and try to not do anything that would get her mother to bear down about the Old Way stuff anymore than she already was. Cheerleading practice and the games had helped a lot, of course, and so had hanging out with Howie and her other friends – every minute she could spend outside the house was a minute she didn’t have to listen to the same old stuff. It helped her make it through, but it would have been nice if Summer had been around to spread the load.

She’d be seeing Summer in a month, and it would be good to have her around again. But now, as close as Autumn had gotten to her friends, there was a special downer coming. It had been bad in the past, but with Summer around she’d been able to make it through without having to reveal herself or the secret. But this year, the bummer seemed especially intense, and she didn’t know how she was going to manage it: Christmas was coming.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.