Jack’s mother Barbara had often commented to him that she knew she had an unusual teenager. Other mothers complained about their kids sleeping until the crack of noon and then staying up until all hours, but Jack was a morning person. The birds had a lot to do with that, of course; dawn and pre-dawn are an excellent time to look for birds, and they’re often singing, which they may not do later in the day or in the evening. Conversely, the ten-thirty or so that Jack made it back home was late for him, late enough that there was a bit of concern before his parents heard the Jeep pulling up outside. They were still up; there was another half hour or so of the reality show they were watching, but that drew their attention more than he did at the moment, so he got off without any major conversation. They did ask how it went and he told them he’d gotten the Kirtland’s Warbler photo he’d been trying for, but the TV show was more important to them. As it was, Jack headed off to his room to shower and go to bed, but not to sleep, at least not right away.

He’d had quite a day, indeed. In his own mind, the couple hours he’d spent with Vixen was more prominent than the bird photos, and the kiss that ended the evening was much of the reason. Amazingly enough, the sight – and photos – of the nude women in the perhaps Wiccan ceremony hardly crossed his mind. Vixen’s statement that Summer seemed to know a lot about Wiccan beliefs pretty much put the question at rest. Suffice to say that he fell asleep replaying Vixen’s kiss in his mind.

It still seemed rather amazing to him when he got out of bed in the dark the next morning. True, Vixen wasn’t the prettiest girl in school, but she was no cheerleader type in the attitude department, either, and they seemed to have something of a connection. Who knew where it would lead? Most likely nowhere, but at least it might be good while it lasted.

Since Jack had only had half of his inadequate supper last night, he was hungry. He was a teenage boy, which according to his mother was the same thing as a bottomless pit. Under other circumstances he might have had a late-night snack the night before, but his head had been in the clouds a little too much from Vixen’s kiss to overcome his empty stomach. Since he was usually up before his parents, he was used to making his own breakfast, but this morning he didn’t really want to go to the trouble. After all, he was going to Camden, and that meant he could stop at a burger shack for a breakfast sandwich. That was always a treat, since McDonald’s or Burger King hadn’t managed to find Spearfish Lake yet, and there was little likelihood that they would in the near future. So he decided to not risk waking his folks this early and just threw together a sandwich from whatever happened to be in the refrigerator. It involved some roast beef from a meal earlier in the week, bologna, a little sliced turkey, a couple of tomato slices, a square of cheese and some slices of onion. It was moderately filling, enough to hold him till he got to Camden, he hoped.

While he was eating the sandwich he gave some thought to taking Stas with him. Better not, he thought; the dog might get restless having to wait for an hour or more in the open Jeep while Jack was getting the photos processed. Besides, he was getting to be an old dog; he was still asleep on Jack’s bed and probably needed his rest. Sandwich in one hand, he took a marker and left a note on the white board for his parents: Birds and Camden, back noonish.

It was too early to be heading to Camden – the photo shop in the mall probably didn’t open until nine, which was still a while off, but there were some places along the way that he wanted to check out for birds, some of which he rarely got to. It would be cool enough in the open Jeep that he’d probably want a jacket, in spite of it most likely getting warmer as the day went on, so he grabbed a birding jacket, in camouflage, naturally, and headed for the door.

The dew lay heavy on the seat of the Jeep. He grabbed a towel from under the back seat and wiped it off, then got in, belted up, and started the engine. The gas gauge was a little on the low side, somewhere under half a tank, but that was fine – he had more than enough to get down there, and there were discount gas stations in the bigger city that were well under the best prices he could expect to find in Spearfish Lake. It wasn’t worth making the trip to get gas, but as long as he was down there he figured he might as well top up on the cheap.

There was a gravel road that was a more direct route to the state road on the south side of town, and he took it as he tried to make up his mind where he wanted to go. He hadn’t been out south of the lake for a while and there were some interesting swamps out there. Might as well take a look, he thought. The bugs would probably be a little on the thick side but the cool morning temperatures might keep them down; if not, there was always bug dope.

The north side of Spearfish Lake is hilly and well above lake level, and the parts of it that weren’t state land were dotted with cottages, from town until well past half the length of the lake. However, the south side is relatively low and flat, and when the dam that raised the lake had been built a century before, it had flooded the flat area. In some places there were patches of dry ground, always squishy since it was pretty well saturated with water, although sustaining tamaracks and other trash trees. Other places were just plain swamp, with cattails and marsh grasses threaded through with channels and potholes of slightly deeper water. It mostly was a place where humans didn’t go in the summer, since much of it was too soft to walk on and too hard for boats. All in all, it added up to several square miles that were nearly inaccessible.

However, one part of it could be reached. Back when the dam was built, the builders realized the lake would inundate a narrow-gauge railroad that ran out to valuable timber on the far side of the future swamp. Since the same company owned the rail line, the timber lands, and the dam, it was decided that it would be cheapest to just use the existing rail grade to haul in fill to raise the existing grade, rather than running a new line in over higher ground. The result was a fill dike four or five feet high that ran arrow-straight for several miles near the south side of the lake. The rail line had been abandoned decades before, but for a while it had served as a road. It had been forgotten for good when the timber had mostly been cut over about the same time a bridge had made the area around the southeast end of the lake accessible. There had been all kinds of washouts and potholes and settling since that time. People who had four wheel drive and didn’t mind getting the vehicle muddy could drive clear around the lake on the grade and a network of woods roads at the east end of the lake. Jack had done it often enough; some of his favorite birding spots were out on the far side of the swamp.

Jack knew that it wasn’t a good idea to drive very fast down the old rail grade, especially in the thin light long before sunrise, but that was fine with him; he was in no hurry. There was a spot a couple miles out that he was heading for, where there was a nice juxtaposition of land forms with more open water than most. It was a good place for marsh birds, and he’d had good luck with it in the past. If, after a while, nothing interesting appeared, he could try some other places before he had to head for Camden.

As he drove along Jack was paying more attention to the road a few feet in front of him to avoid the potholes and bad spots than he was looking into the distance. He was more than a little surprised to glance up and see a small figure in front of him, waving his arms. He slammed on the brakes and then crept closer, recognizing Alan Jahnke in the headlights, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. “Alan,” he yelled. “What the fuck? ”

“Jack? Is that you? Thank God!” Alan yelled back as he started walking toward the Jeep. In the headlights, Jack could see that Alan had a lot of blood on his T- shirt, had a black eye and various bruises.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Jack asked in a voice a little quieter as Alan walked around to the passenger side.

“Fuck, I’m freezing, and I think every goddamn mosquito in five miles has had a bite out of me,” Alan replied as he got into the passenger seat.

“I mean, why the fuck are you out here?”

“A bunch of football players beat me up and dumped me out here last night,” he said in obvious exhaustion, with tears running down his face, possibly in relief at being rescued. He was literally shaking. “LeDroit, Coopshaw, Effingham, a couple cheerleaders.”

“What did you do? Piss them off?” Jack asked,

“I exist, that’s enough to piss them off, isn’t it?” Alan replied, the tears rolling even more seriously now. Jack didn’t really have to ask about that. Alan was small, and even Jack thought he was a little girlish and might be gay, although he’d never had any proof of it. Alan was damn smart, but was put down so much that he tried not to stand out. For as much shit as Jack took about his birding, Alan had it far worse from the jock crowd.

“Damn, those fuckers were getting around last night,” Jack shook his head as he peeled off his jacket and handed it to Alan. “Were you at the Frostee Freeze? ”

“Yeah, I guess I must have smiled when I saw you take LeDroit down and your dog get in his face,” Alan said, shivering as he pulled on the jacket. “I got the hell out of there since it was clear they wanted to beat someone up, but they caught me on my way home. They kicked the shit out of me, threw me in the trunk of their car and dumped me out here. I just started down the road the way they went, in hopes they were heading back to town.”

“Good move,” Jack said. “If they tried to go the other way in a regular car they’d be stuck out there somewhere. There’s a couple places up ahead where it’s iffy even in a Jeep this time of year. I’ll get you back to town, but I’ve got to go this way for a while to where I can turn around.”

“Shit, whatever. Thanks, Jack. I think you saved my life.”

“Oh, you’d have made it,” Jack replied as the Jeep started moving again. By the time he got Alan back to town it’d be too late for dawn birding out here, but that was less important now. It was clear that Alan had taken the beating that he and maybe Vixen might have gotten if they hadn’t made their move as quick as they did and hid out in the pine barrens, and Jack knew that he had to do what little he could to make things right. “It’s only a couple miles out to the state road, and the sun will be coming up before long.”

“I don’t know,” Alan replied. “I really wasn’t walking real good. I fell down several times. God, I hate those fuckers. I wish there was something someone could do about them.”

“They get away with everything under the sun,” Jack agreed. “You know, rather than just take you home, I think maybe I ought to take you to the cops.”

“Oh, fuck no,” Alan protested. “Then we’d both be in deep shit. The best they’d get is a slap on the wrist, and then they’d really be after us. Besides, it’s my word against theirs, and you know this town, everybody thinks that football player shit doesn’t stink.”

“Right, but maybe . . . well, you’re probably right but there’s a possibility that you’re not, and there’s a chance it might help. After all, I was the one who found you out here, and that guy who broke up the fight was there, I think he’d be straight.”

“Oh, yeah, the martial arts guy, Mr. Clark,” Alan said. “He sure wasn’t taking any shit from the football players. I sure wish he’d breathed on them a little harder, like about six months in casts harder.”

“I’m told he can do it,” Jack agreed, slowing the Jeep. There was a place not far ahead where he could turn around if he was careful about it. “Look, let’s go to the cops. It can’t hurt and might help, especially if they see you as fucked up as you are.”

“I’d like to believe it,” Alan sighed. “Shit, somebody ought to do something about those fuckers, but nobody will.”

Meeting Alan unexpectedly and taking him back to town shot in the butt Jack’s plan to get a little birding in before he headed to Camden.

Jack finally let Alan talk him out of going to the police station and just took him home. However, his parents had already called the police to report him missing, and his battered appearance got the duty city cop out of the doughnut shop and over to the Jahnke household. It took a little while to get through to the part-time cop that Jack was the rescuer and not the perp. They had to go over the story of finding Alan out south of the lake several times – the cop couldn’t believe that Jack could have gone out on the old rail grade before dawn for something like looking for birds. Then they had to spend about as much time on Alan’s story, with Jack’s reporting on the incident at the Frostee Freeze the night before that had apparently been the root cause of Alan’s misery. Along with that, Jack passed along the names of others had seen the incident, like Vixen and Ashley Keilhorn, as well as the martial arts guy, Randy Clark.

At that, Jack was just as happy that they hadn’t gone directly to the police station, because without Alan’s parents raising hell he figured that he’d have wound up catching a share of the blame. The cop promised that he’d look into what happened, but told them he doubted that much would come of it under the circumstances – it was just a kid thing, after all; it didn’t really mean anything.

“The chances of it actually coming to anything are slim to none,” Jack commented after the cop had left.

“Right,” Alan agreed. “He probably isn’t going to do anything about it, but that may not be all bad. If he does what I think he’s going to do that just cuts down on the risk of it getting to LeDroit and his buddies and having them come back on us.”

“Well, I intend to keep after it,” Tom Jahnke, Alan’s dad bristled. “This stuff has gone on once too often. If the cops don’t do anything I might just have to see about a civil suit.”

“As if that’s going to help,” Alan snorted. “It’ll just give LeDroit and his buddies a reason to beat me up again. I’m sick of it too, but I just want to get through the next year and get away from them.”

“Maybe you could get a personal protection order,” Alan’s mother Lisa suggested. “That way at least if they did anything again there’d be something against them.”

“Again, as if that’s going to help,” Alan said, halfway angry now. “What it’d do is just get me beat up again. Face it, these guys are football players, and that means that they think they’re some kind of gods, and in this town, they are.”

“Well, whatever happens, we can’t do anything about it until Monday,” Tom replied. “We’ll just have to wait and see if the cops do anything. Jack, thanks a lot for finding Alan and bringing him home. We were worried sick about him, after being gone all night. Maybe I could buy you breakfast or something.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Jahnke,” Jack replied politely. If he got moving, he might still have a little time to do some birding and still make it down to Camden for the opening of the photo shop. “I had a sandwich earlier, and I was planning on stopping for a bite down in Camden.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Alan said. “I think I need to get cleaned up and get some sleep. I’ve been up all night and a lot of me hurts.”

“Well, I wish you would have breakfast with me,” Alan’s father continued. “I’m in the mood for something a little more than cereal, and I’d like to talk with you a bit about your bird watching.”

“I suppose we could,” Jack admitted; his sandwich wasn’t sticking with him very well, and it would be a long way down to the breakfast sandwiches in Camden. He had the feeling, though, that Mr. Jahnke didn’t want to talk about birds, so under the circumstances he could hardly turn him down.

“Great,” Alan’s father replied. “Spearfish Lake Café sound all right to you?”

“If you’re buying, it’s all right with me,” Jack smiled and then added, “If you want, I’ll drive.”

The Spearfish Lake Cafeé is located on the corner of Central Avenue and the state road, next to the railroad tracks out on the edge of town. It’s not very different from a lot of breakfast-lunch places in any part of the country, down to the stuffed animals on the wall, the sports schedules from years gone by that no one had ever bothered to take down, and half a dozen calendars advertising various local businesses tacked to the wall here and there. Jack hadn’t been there very much, but he knew that it wasn’t a place where kids normally went to hang out.

Jack and Mr. Jahnke walked in and found a table near the kitchen. “God,” Mr. Jahnke said, “I’d forgotten how much fun it is to drive around in an open Jeep on a nice day.”

“You had a Jeep?” Jack asked casually.

“In the Army, before they came along with this Humvee crap,” Mr. Jahnke said. “God, that’s further back than I want to think about. Mark my words, the Army is going to rue the day they decided on buying that oversized gas hog.”

An older waitress – Jack guessed she might be in her thirties – in a slightly mussed blue uniform came over to the table, carrying menus and water. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.

Both of them agreed it sounded good, and she was soon on her way. Jack flipped open the menu and decided that he was fairly hungry and might as well do something about it. The Lumberjack Breakfast sounded about right – two eggs any style, hash browns, sausage patties and Texas toast. He wouldn’t have to stop at the golden arches, after all.

Mr. Jahnke didn’t open his menu; apparently he ate there often enough that he didn’t need it. “Jack, you probably guessed that I didn’t really want to talk about bird watching,” he remarked as Jack put down his menu.

“I thought that might be the case,” Jack agreed.

“Look, I know that Alan has had to put up with some shit around school, but until now I thought he was over reacting, just making a mountain out of a molehill. This incident, though, well, it bothers me.”

“It bothers me, too,” Jack agreed. “The only reason it was him instead of me is that Vixen and I got out of there before anything could happen. I’d like to think that it’s going to go away when LeDroit’s hangover wears off, but it probably won’t. He may not be ready to do anything right away, but sooner or later he’s going to feel like he needs to show everyone how big a man he is. If Alan or I are in sight and there’s no one around to stop him, then we’re going to be his targets.”

“When you get right down to it, that sounds pretty much like what happened last night. Is there anything that can be done about it?”

“I was hopeful that the cops would do something,” Jack sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with LeDroit that a year in the county pen wouldn’t cure. That’d be the year Alan and I need to get out of this town. But I’m with Alan; I don’t think it’s going to happen. Those football players get away with anything. I mean, it might not be so bad if they went seven and two last year, but at two and seven I don’t know how they have the guts to show their faces in town.”

“Well, I’m with you on that,” Mr. Jahnke nodded. “And hell, I played football back in high school. Never was any good at it, but it was a small school, a lot smaller than Spearfish Lake. But it’s more than just the football players who are causing Alan problems, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Jack nodded. “Mr. Jahnke, I really hate to say it, but Alan really isn’t that well liked, and he gets put down a lot. His size is part of it, and his grades are part of it. He’s too damn smart for some people, and they think that they have to put him in his place because of it. And there’s, well, other things.”

“They think he’s gay, right?”

“You said it, I didn’t, but yeah,” Jack nodded. “I have no idea whether there’s any truth to it, but I’ll bet that more than half the kids in school think he’s gay, or the next thing to it. I can’t tell you what to do about it. It’s a reputation that he’s stuck with, I guess. He’s got one more year, and then he’ll be out of there, like me.”

Mr. Jahnke nodded sadly. “It’s probably going to be a pretty unhappy year, too,” he said. “What do you think of my idea of a civil suit and maybe a protection order if the cops don’t do anything?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Jack said. “Bear in mind it’s still mostly Alan’s word against theirs, and there were no witnesses to the actual beating, so it might not go well in court. You’d have to talk to your lawyer about that, I sure don’t have that kind of knowledge. Of course, if the cops have a lawyer breathing down their neck they might do something, but it still comes down to Alan’s word against theirs. As far as a personal protection order goes, my guess is that if you got one LeDroit would want to try it on for size, since he thinks that nobody will do anything to him because he’s a football player, especially with football season right around the corner.”

“You make it sound like all the football players are assholes,” Mr. Jahnke shook his head.

“I can’t really say that,” Jack said, “but it’s pretty true the other way around. In this town, the assholes tend to be football players. It gives all of them a bad reputation.”

“Well, I guess there’s not much that can be done before Monday,” Mr. Jahnke sighed. “So I suppose we’ll have to see what happens. Anyway, Jack, thanks for rescuing Alan. It’s good to know that he’s got one friend.”

“Mr. Jahnke, to be real honest I can’t call Alan a friend,” Jack replied slowly. “He and I are pretty much in the same boat though. I don’t think I get it quite as bad, but then I don’t hang around with school people much. I’ve got other things I need to do.”

“I guess I understand,” the older man replied. “Let’s just say that I’d appreciate it if you could give Alan a little encouragement and support from time to time.”

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