Chapter 35

Bree knew that every congressman handled their nomination process a little differently, and had different criteria, some of which were probably beyond her understanding. But she had the outline of what he wanted in the application, a letter and small information packet she’d first received almost two years before, and a revised version dating from the beginning of the year, which really hadn’t changed much from the first one. It seemed pretty straightforward, consisting of things like a résumé of her accomplishments, and an essay that stated why she thought she should get the nomination, along with letters of recommendation.

However, that didn’t keep Bree from working on the letter of application, and especially the essay, for weeks. She went over it line by line, word by word, hundreds if not thousands of times, sometimes nervously changing a word here and there, then a minute or an hour or a week later changing it back again. She wasn’t alone in going over it, either; she must have had a dozen people look it over, including her three friends, to suggest changes and improvements.

She spent about as much time worrying about the recommendations. A couple were straightforward, like the one from the high school principal, but it was a little bit of a reach beyond that. She had a recommendation from Ryan Clark, the president of Clark Plywood; at one point she got the brilliant idea to get one from Dr. Tricia McMahon, her physician, which stated that not only was she in excellent physical condition and had considerable drive to accomplish her goals. Almost as an afterthought she came up with the idea of getting General Bankston out in Colorado, to give her one as well as one from Colonel Seasprunk. In the end, there were eight letters of recommendation in the packet.

Finally, as the application deadline was nearing, she couldn’t put it off any longer. The moment of truth came one day in early April at the Spearfish Lake Post Office, when she handed the brown envelope to the clerk and asked for it to be sent by certified mail. The envelope left her fingers with her best wishes and highest hopes; it was out of her hands, now. She could only hope that the congressman would remember the times she’d met with him briefly, and hope she’d made a good impression.

Now there was nothing she could do but wait, and she knew it might not be a short wait. For now, her future was out of her hands.

Linda Frankovich was uneasy. She’d been that way all of this weekend, and for days before that, but now it was time for Bethany to fish or cut bait. Bob was gone somewhere, thank God, and Misty had taken the opportunity of the Frostee Freeze opening this weekend to head over there for some ice cream. That was good; she’d rarely gotten out of the house all year. Maybe some good would come of it.

It had been a long, long wait until tax season was over with, and then some; it was now nearing the end of April. Ever since Christmas, she’d had the hope that Bethany would be able to get her act back together with Shay. While she hadn’t been directly involved, she knew that there had been some phone calls back and forth between Bethany and Shay, leading finally to an invitation for her to spend the weekend with him over at the casino in Three Pines. It was to be a long weekend, three days, and hopefully time enough for Bethany to work her magic on him. Maybe, if that worked out, she could be done with her miserable job at the Taco Bell, and back here in Spearfish Lake where Linda could help her put things back together in her life.

It was clear that Shay wasn’t exactly the winner that Derrick had been, but it beat what she had now. Bethany had been able to get a lot out of him for almost three years, and although their breakup hadn’t gone well, there was a chance that was in the past. She’d told Bethany to go along with what he wanted, and push the sex at him to get his interest built up again. Once she had her hooks in him again she could restart the process of getting him under control. That would still leave the problem with Walt and Misty, but there was the chance this weekend would finally start getting things back into order.

Linda didn’t want to appear like she was watching as closely as she wanted to; she knew that might inhibit things. But she was paying attention to what went on, and when she heard a car door slam outside she thought the waiting was near an end. Still, it was best to not appear too curious, so she stayed in the kitchen for a moment till she heard the unexpected whomp! of the front door slamming. Somehow, this didn’t sound good.

She stepped out of the kitchen where she’d been waiting. “So, Bethany,” she said, “how did it go?”

“It was a total fucking disaster,” Bethany spat. “That bastard. That miserable, no-good son of a bitch . . .”

“Bethany,” Linda asked, sure now that this had turned out even worse than she’d feared, “what happened?”

“I figured we’d have a little fun, and I’d have to do him a few times,” she replied angrily. “We didn’t even get out of the fucking room! I never saw a fucking slot machine, I was the slot machine and he kept playing me all the time. All he wanted to do was to get it on, and just about every way possible. I am so sore you wouldn’t believe it! He was a fucking animal! He was never like that when we were in high school.”

“In high school you had him under control,” Linda said. “You knew you were going to have to go to a little extra effort to get him back where you want him, so you’re the one who calls the shots.”

“As if that’s going to happen,” she sneered. “He’s leaving for his summer job in the morning. He’s not going to be working permanently for his dad like you thought. Something in the park service somewhere, I guess. I said I’d like to see him again sometime, and he said it had been fun to be together, but as far as he was concerned it was only for the weekend.”

“Oh, shit,” Linda said. “I didn’t imagine that happening.”

“It gets worse,” Bethany replied, angry enough now that tears were running down her face. “He told me just now that he’d had enough of him being my boytoy way back when, and that he hoped I liked being his fucktoy for the weekend, and maybe that would make up for some of the shit I handed him. He knows, Mom. He read me like a fucking book and took advantage of it, then just fucking dumped me.”

“There’s no hope at all?” Linda asked, disheartened at the news. How had this gotten screwed up so badly?

“Not a damn bit,” Bethany spat again. “I have never been so humiliated . . . shit, I thought I’d pretty well managed to put the Taco Bell behind me. I hoped I wouldn’t even have to go back there tomorrow. Now I’ve got to drive back, and my ass is hurting so bad I can barely sit on it.”

“Your ass? Don’t tell me!”

“Yeah, a lot,” Bethany sighed. “On the way over he told me his tastes had gotten a little rougher than they’d been back in high school, it was something he’d learned from some girl in college or something, and I figured I’d better go along with it to rope him in. I mean, once I did that I could control it, you know? So among other things he really blistered my butt, not just once but several times, and all I could do was take it.”

“I’m sorry, Bethany. That’s nothing like what I expected would happen.”

“Well, me either. Shay wasn’t like that when we were in high school. Not at all. But if that’s the way he likes it, I don’t want to have to go through the hell it would take to get him under control in the first place. Fuck knows what I’m going to do now, other than shoving tacos out of the drive-up tomorrow night. If he doesn’t want to see me again, I’m just fine as hell with that.”

Despite the weather being coolish, there was a good crowd around the Frostee Freeze a month later. It had been months since it had been open, and a lot of kids needed their fix of hanging out there. It got hard in the winter with no particular place to go, but at least the next few months looked promising.

Bree, Jared, Howie, and Autumn were all together, of course – they hung out together an awful lot, although at least this time it had been Howie’s idea to come down for ice cream. Since the place was crowded, they were lucky to get a table out near the edge of things. The boys went through their cones faster than the girls, and decided to leave the girls alone for a moment, so they could be sociable with a few of their fellow football players. “I guess I can’t blame them,” Autumn shrugged. “We keep them pretty occupied.”

“I suppose,” Bree shrugged. “But I don’t particularly want to hang out here all afternoon, either.”

Just as Autumn finished her cone – there hadn’t been much left – she happened to look up and see Misty wandering around, a small cone in her hand, and a confused look on her face. “Would you look at that,” she said to Bree. “I don’t think I’ve seen her out of the house much except to go to school all winter.”

Bree took a look at Misty. A year and a half before, even less than that, she’d been one of the popular girls around school, but the combination of Walt Lethbridge’s threats and the rumors going around about her had pretty much turned her into a pariah. While Bree didn’t like her – and considering what had happened with Howie, didn’t have much reason to – she was aware of what it was like to be an outcast who no one liked. Things had changed a lot in a year and a half, she thought.

Though Misty may have been disdained by her classmates, Bree felt a little sorry for her. It wouldn’t hurt to have a friendly greeting, maybe a friendly word or two. “Hey, Misty!” she called. “How are things going with you?”

Misty actually seemed surprised to be hailed. “Oh, hi Bree,” she said listlessly, turning toward the table. “Things are going, I guess.”

There was surprisingly little Bree could think to talk about with her, but she at least wanted to act like she was being friendly. “Looks like spring is coming after all,” was about the best she could manage.

“Yeah, I guess,” Misty replied, coming to a stop near the table where the two girls were sitting.

“You doing anything much?” Bree asked.

“Just had to get out of the house a bit,” Misty admitted. “It gets really dull to just sit at home.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bree replied, still reaching for something to say. “Have you ever heard anything about Rusty?”

“Not a word.”

“There you are, bitch!” Bree heard a male voice yell. “Where the fuck have you been?”

Bree looked up and saw Walt Lethbridge storming toward them. What the hell was he doing here? He was supposed to still be in jail!

“I’ve been home,” Misty said weakly, rightfully fearful of what was coming.

“Like hell you have,” Walt snorted, grabbing her arm. “I know what you’ve been doing, you’ve been running all over the goddamn town. I may have been in the can but I still hear things. Now I’m going to have to beat the crap out of you before we get down to what I’ve been missing out on.”

Oh, fuck! Bree thought. Misty is in trouble! Where in hell is Jared when I need him? “Get your hand off her,” Bree said, getting to her feet. “She’s hardly been out of the house all winter.”

“Fuck, I know better than that,” Walt said. “I still hear things. Come on, bitch, let’s go.” He gave Misty a jerk, and all of a sudden Bree saw a flash of light in his hand. A knife? Yes!

“I said, get your hands off her,” Bree said as threateningly as she could.

“And who the fuck are you to talk to me like that?” he said, letting go of Misty and starting to turn toward her.

There was no time to think, no time to wish that Jared was there. Bree could see that the knife was in his hand on her side, which meant he’d have to get it past Misty to use it on her, and she couldn’t let it happen. More than a year of training from Randy Clark and Gil Evachevski took over. From the relative safety of the backside of his knife arm, she shot out her arm with a slightly closed fist, right at his throat, and hit him as hard as she could.

Walt made a slightly gurgling sound and dropped the knife, even as he reached out toward her. Bree grabbed his arm, kicked at his side and yanked. All of a sudden the big former football player was falling to the ground, and hit his head heavily. The whole action couldn’t have taken more than a couple seconds.

All of a sudden Jared was there, and so was Howie, watching Walt struggle in convulsions on the ground. “Jesus, what is he doing out of jail?” Jared asked.

“Don’t know,” Bree said, breathing harder than she had any right to. “Jared, where the hell were you?”

“I was coming but couldn’t get here in time. It looks like you didn’t need my help anyway.”

“Yeah, shit,” Bree replied, still breathing heavily. She glanced up, to see Misty looking at her with pure awe in her eyes. “I was trying to buy some time for you to get here but that didn’t happen.”

“You did fine by yourself, Bree,” he smiled. “Just fine.”

Mr. Pederson, the owner of the Frostee Freeze came running up, carrying a cop’s nightstick; it wasn’t the first time he’d had a fight break out there, after all. He glanced down to see Walt’s convulsing body on the ground. “I saw the whole thing,” he said. “I didn’t expect a girl like you to take care of him that quick.” He glanced down and added, “He sure doesn’t look good.”

“Better call the cops,” Howie suggested.

“It’s worse than that,” Pederson said. “He’s turning blue. I don’t think he can get a breath.” He turned and started running for the phone at the pickup window.

“God, I think he’s right,” Autumn said. “I think he’s going to need an emergency tracheotomy. I don’t know how to do it and wouldn’t have the stuff to do it anyway.”

“What did you do, Bree? Hit him in the larynx?”

“Had to,” Bree puffed, standing there helplessly watching Walt convulse on the pavement. “He could have hurt me with that knife.” She glanced around; there were a lot of kids around who had seen the whole thing, including how quickly Bree had reacted.

“Thank you, Bree,” Misty said softly, coming over to hug her savior. “He must be high on something. I thought he was going to kill me. I think you saved my life.”

The ambulance was there and the crew was working on Lethbridge well before Chief Wexler showed up. He was relaxed, the action was clearly over with. “Another one, Jared?” he asked.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Jared said. “I would have but couldn’t get here in time. Bree laid him out quicker than I could. What’s he doing out of jail, anyway?”

“Darned if I know,” Wexler replied. “I didn’t know he was out till just now, but you can darn well believe I’ll find out. Is everyone else all right?”

“Yeah,” Bree replied, with Misty still hanging onto her like glue. “He never laid a hand on me.”

“So what happened, anyway?”

Bree told him the whole story, not that there was a great deal to tell. There were plenty of witnesses to the fact that Lethbridge had threatened Bree and Misty with the knife before Bree defended them, but there were still a lot of statements that had to be taken. Chief Wexler – and Sheriff Stoneslinger, who showed up in a few minutes – were still taking statements when the Medevac helicopter from Camden General showed up and flew the still unconscious assailant away.

“Well, Misty,” Wexler finally summarized, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about him again for a while. If he makes it out of the hospital his probation is probably going to get revoked, and there are a number of other charges he’s going to have to face.”

“How long?” she asked; even Bree could see the girl had perked up a lot in the last few minutes.

“Hard to say,” Wexler replied. “That’ll be up to the judge and you can’t always predict it, but if I had to guess I’d say he’ll eventually be going to the state pen. But I have to say that if he pulls through, he’s going to have a hard time being a tough guy around town when half the kids in the school watched a girl kick the crap out of him in about two seconds flat.”

“You might have a point,” Bree grinned. She’d recovered from the adrenaline shock by now, and mostly just felt good that she’d been able to protect an outcast like she’d once been.

“It might not do your social life much good,” Wexler laughed. “I mean, who’s going to ask out a girl who could do something like that?”

“That doesn’t bother me,” Bree said, reaching out to pull Jared close. “I know it’s not going to bother the one guy I’d go out with anyway.”

Bree may have felt a good deal of personal satisfaction from having a gold badge with two diamonds, but it was just personal satisfaction since no one around school except for her close friends knew about it. But by Monday morning at school, anyone who hadn’t been at the Frostee Freeze had heard about what had happened, and they treated Bree with considerable awe. Who would have believed the slender, quiet girl would have had it in her?

It wasn’t something Bree wanted to be proud of, not like her gold badge with the diamonds. It had just been something that had needed to be done, and she would have been just as happy if Jared had been the one to do it. But it hadn’t worked out that way.

Of course, rumors grow as rumors will, and to hear some of them it could have been thought that Bree had spent half an hour kicking Lethbridge all over the Frostee Freeze parking lot. The fact that Misty was still very much in awe of her and told everyone that Bree’s bravery had saved her life only made the story even bigger.

In spite of the past troubles between Howie and Misty, she was welcomed at the table where the four friends had eaten lunch together for almost two school years. It had been Bree who invited her and once again reached out her hand in friendship, with the thought clearly in mind that some of the respect she’d been shown might rub off on Misty, and possibly heal some of the damage of the past year.

“Howie,” Misty said flatly as soon as she sat down with them, after she got over her surprise at being invited to join them at all, “I’m sorry about the trouble I caused you, and I’m not going to do it anymore. You’re all right, Howie, and your friends are, too. I’m sorry this thing with Walt had to happen but I’m very glad to have it over with. Now all I want to do is get out of school and put all this stuff behind me.”

“I’m not so sure I won’t be happy to have it behind me, either,” Bree admitted. “I’m not sure I like being seen around school as the girl who will kill first and ask questions later.”

“Look on the bright side,” Howie grinned. “There aren’t many of the tough guys who are going to want to mess with you. What’s more, if they try, they’ll know they’ll have to deal with your boyfriend, too.”

Bree and the rest of the friends – excepting Misty, of course – had a track meet the next day. Bree ran well, winning two events outright and medaling in another; everyone else did well, too, with Howie winning the discus, proving he could throw something besides a football. Mark and Jackie were there, as they usually were at a home meet, and after it was over they went home for dinner.

They had just finished dinner when there was a light knocking on the door. Mark went to answer it, and found, a little to his surprise, his old friend Gil Evachevski standing there. “Got a minute for me?” he asked.

“Always, Gil. You know that.”

“Well, actually, I wanted to talk to Bree,” Gil told him. “But I thought you’d like to know that I talked to Charlie Wexler a little while ago. He’d talked to the people down at Camden General, and it looks like the Lethbridge kid is going to make it. He may not be talking very well for a while, if ever, but he’s got a bunch of charges written up on him. It may be a couple weeks before he’s out of the hospital, but when he is he’ll go right back to the county jail.”

“Chief Wexler said something like that,” Bree nodded. “I knew I had to stop him but I didn’t want to kill him.”

“Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” Gil told her. “We can do this alone, or you can have Mark and Jackie with us. I don’t care, but you might.”

“No, that’s fine,” Bree said. “I hope this isn’t bad news.”

“Some people might think so, but I don’t,” Gil smiled. “Bree, you remember a year ago last Christmas, when we talked about having to be in combat? I mean, how some people just can’t handle things when the chips are down?”

“I remember very well,” Bree said. “It really made me think. I mean, it’s one of those things that I sort of hoped that I’d never have to deal with, but, well . . .”

“You handled it, Bree. In fact, from all the stories I’ve heard, you didn’t flinch or stop to think about it. You just did what needed to be done, and you did it damn well. As far as I’m concerned, that means you passed the test. You may have regrets about doing it, but from here on you’re going to know deep in your gut that you can handle a situation when it happens. That’s not easy, Bree. Some people never learn it, and most people never have to face it. You’ll know you can, and I think that’s important.”

“I guess you’re right,” she nodded. “And I’m glad that you, of all people, think that way. I’ll admit, though, that I’ve been wondering if I didn’t hit him a little too hard. I mean, I used a move on him that could have been deadly.”

“In that situation, facing a knife? No way. You’re smaller than he is, and Charlie said he was high as a kite on something or other, maybe meth. They’re still waiting on the toxicology report. You had to put him down, and put him down quickly, before he could hurt you or anyone else. Once you had him down to the point where he clearly wasn’t a threat, you backed off until help arrived. Bree, don’t ever think you overdid it. I’m glad for your sake you didn’t kill him, since that can be something that can be really hard to sort out in your mind, especially in a close situation like that. You did just exactly what needed to be done. If you overdid it, it was only by a small degree and justifiable under the circumstances.”

“I’m glad you think that way,” she told him. “I mean, you understand this kind of thing better than anyone else in town, I think.”

“I’ve spent much of my life thinking about it and learning to deal with it,” Gil said. “It’s not always easy. Bree, I’ve done what I can to get you ready for the Air Force Academy, and we can continue working on it if you like. But I’ll tell you what. I know the people in the Air Force talk about fighter pilots having what they call ‘the right stuff.’ If my opinion is worth anything, I think you have it.”

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