People often refer to small towns like Spearfish Lake as being “sleepy”, and to some degree it’s true. It’s especially true at three in the morning. But even in the wee small hours there’s usually someone awake, like the overnight police officer if he wasn’t taking a nap in some dark place, the dispatcher down at the call center, and maybe the odd insomniac. On weekdays, a handful of maintenance people would be doing odd jobs at the plywood plant – which didn’t make plywood anymore and hadn’t for over twenty years, having converted to various forms of wafer and composition board. Since this was Saturday night – well, early Sunday morning – even they were off duty and for the most part asleep, although a few had chosen to not screw up their sleep schedules and were watching old movies or something on their satellite dishes.

But this morning, Alan Jahnke was awake.

Alan’s sleep schedule was severely messed up. He’d been up all night Friday night, hurting and in a situation of some stress. His anger had carried him through until shortly after the police and Jack had left, when he’d collapsed into his bed and slept almost around the clock. It was not a particularly good sleep; it was filled with dreams of trouble with Frenchy and his buddies, always with him coming out on the losing end. It would be hard to say all that he experienced in his dreams, but it wasn’t nice, any of it.

The end result was that about the time Jack, Vixen, and Summer were getting back to Spearfish Lake, he was sitting up in his bed, even angrier than he’d been before going to sleep. From the fact that no one had woken him up, he concluded that the police hadn’t done anything about what Frenchy and his buddies had done, and based on past experience, it seemed likely that would be what happened again. Somebody needs to do something about those guys, he thought. Especially Frenchy; he had taken the lead on what had happened Friday night, and it seemed to Alan that it had been Frenchy’s idea.

Since no one else would do anything about them, then he’d have to. That seemed pretty clear, and it also seemed clear that vengeance would help his anger a little. But for him to take some sort of physical action seemed pretty extreme and unlikely; he wasn’t that sort of person. If he did something, it was obvious that it couldn’t be done directly; it would take years to get skills like Mr. Clark’s, and years were something he didn’t have right then.

Alan’s normal interest in life was computers. He was the school math whiz, and that carried right over into programming, which he enjoyed. It was a solitary activity, which was good since he didn’t have any close friends to speak of. Jack wasn’t a friend, when you got right down to it – just a guy who’d had it about as bad from Frenchy as he did. Could he get Jack to help him with some sort of revenge?

No, better not, he thought as soon as the idea emerged. The way to keep a secret is to not tell anyone, especially in a town like Spearfish Lake where stuff got flashed around almost as soon as it happened. If he did something to Frenchy, it’d have to be done alone, and with no hints that could lead back to him. It’d have to be something that would hurt him and not give him anyone to strike back at.

There were possibilities. His mind explored ways that Frenchy’s grade point average could be messed with. Alan wasn’t a first rate hacker, but he knew more than he should have about the security for the school’s computers. However, if he did anything along that line, someone would figure out that the system had been tampered with, and there would be fingers pointed at him just because of who he was. To top it off, he’d have to wait for months before it could be done with the best effect. Right now, his attitude was that revenge delayed was revenge denied, and anything he could think of doing with a computer wouldn’t take effect soon enough.

No, it needed to be something easy, quick, safe, and anonymous. Something out of character. There had to be some way that Frenchy was vulnerable. He was a pretty simple person when you got down to it, a classic dumb jock who thought since he was big no one would fuck with him. There had to be some way that stealth and indirection could be used to get to him.

Fuck up his car, maybe? Now, there was an idea, he thought. It would only take seconds in the middle of the night to lean some fairly big nails up against his tires in the direction he’d be planning to go in the morning. He’d know that someone would have fucked with him, but it was the kind of thing that anybody could do, and Frenchy had made a lot of enemies over the years, some of them even on the football team. He wouldn’t know who to blame . . .

The problem with that was nail holes in tires could be fixed – just an easy plug with a little adhesive, blow them up again, and they were good as new. Frenchy drove an old Eagle Talon, mostly because it was a fast car and looked cool, for not costing very much. The odds were that he didn’t have discount tires store cheapies on the car, but good tires. If they could be fucked up so bad they couldn’t be repaired, then he’d have quite a hit in his wallet. That could hurt. How do you really fuck up a tire without taking a shotgun to the sidewall? A good slash with a box cutter might work, he thought, and that would be easy.

Or . . . yeah, it appealed to him. He’d have to be careful, but it would be easy enough. He could visualize everything he would need, and it wouldn’t take long.

About the time Summer’s father was raising hell with Rusty’s father, Alan got up, got dressed, and headed downstairs. His folks were watching TV, some stupid reality show he couldn’t stand. “You feeling better, son?” his dad asked.

“Yeah, a little,” Alan said, really anxious to go do what he needed to do but aware of the need to not be suspicious. “I think I’ll head out to the kitchen and get something to eat.”

“I can make you something,” his mother offered.

“Naw, don’t get up. I know how much you like that show,” he said with a smile. “There has to be something in the refrigerator.”

There was – leftovers from dinner. Good stuff, too, a casserole that he didn’t mind too badly. He warmed it in the microwave, dumped about half of it onto a plate, and ate it so quickly he couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t eaten in more than a day, he realized, and that made it taste extra good. The plate was quickly clean, so he dumped the rest of the casserole on it and polished it off, then put the casserole dish in the sink to soak and the plate in the dishwasher. Then, to allay a little suspicion, he headed back into the living room and watched the tail end of the show. Right, stupid. How could people be such assholes? Then, he thought of Frenchy and realized it was easy.

“Well, that was fun,” his mother said as she switched off the TV. “Guess it’s time to head in for the night. Are you going to bed soon, Alan? ”

“Not after sleeping all day,” Alan said. “My sleep schedule is all messed up and it’s probably going to take a while to get it back to normal. I’ve got a couple things I want to mess with out in the shop, and then I think I’ll get on the computer for a while.”

“You’re not planning on going anywhere, are you?” his father asked.

“Not if I can help it,” he replied. As his parents headed for bed, he headed for the shop. Alan wasn’t a great expert with shop tools but he was at least relatively handy with some of them, having had worked on projects with his dad from time to time. This wouldn’t take great skill, just the right junk.

The right junk was in the junk bin under the workbench. Some time ago, his father had picked up a number of cheap screwdrivers at a garage sale. They really were cheap, and most of them junk to begin with, so he’d quickly wound up tossing them in the junk bin in case a use for them ever came along. Alan selected four fairly heavy screwdrivers and spent a few minutes looking at them, trying to figure out how to make them do what he wanted them to do. It was simple; once he figured it out, he put each one in the vise and cut the shaft down to where it was only about two inches long, and shortened the handle about that much as well.

Then, he headed over to the grinder, switched it on, and went to work. The grinder made quick work of bringing the shaft down to a sharp point. It was a little trickier to grind the lower part of the shaft into a broad cone, but nothing he couldn’t handle. In fifteen minutes, he’d made four of his little toys and wiped them off with a cloth, then gave them a quick blast of fast-drying black spray paint from a pressurized can. While it was drying, he wiped down what was left over, cleaned up what little mess he’d made, and as soon as the paint was dry tossed everything into a paper sack, setting it on the workbench.

Now came the worst part – waiting until he dared to put his plan into effect. It seemed like sometime between three and four would be about right, and that meant several hours to kill. Oh, well, that was what the computer was for. He headed into the house, noted that his parents were asleep, washed his hands, and headed into his room to boot it up.

He was right. The hours really dragged along, and he soon ran out of things he wanted to do on-line; he’d hit all his regular sites, messed around some others, and thought about working on a program he’d been desultorily messing with, but his interest wasn’t there. Finally, a little after three, he decided it was time to do it if it was going to be done tonight.

He started out by changing clothes – black jeans, a black long-sleeve shirt he wore occasionally, and some black tenny-runners. He had to dig in a drawer to come up with some dark brown jersey gloves, and a navy blue balaclava that he usually only wore on really cold days. He decided not to put it on right away, but stuffed it in his pocket along with the gloves.

It had taken a little thought to decide how to get over to Frenchy’s house without being seen. The direct route, up the street, seemed too much in the open with too many street lights. After thinking about it a little, he realized that if he went the other way and cut over a couple blocks, he could go up the rail line where it led from the main tracks down to the railroad yard. That had some lights, but only down near the end; there were a couple of alleys and a park that would be pretty dark, too.

It was very dark outside, as dark as it would get, and the moon had long set. He got his paper bag from the shop, and, walking as fast as he could, took the streets to the rail line. He didn’t know if the trains ran on Saturday night – sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t – but figured that he’d hear an oncoming train long before he saw it, and would have plenty of time to hide. The walking wasn’t easy on the big stones of the railway ballast and the occasional tie sticking up, but it wasn’t too bad. He made a quick stop at one crossing to take his little toys out of the paper bag and put them in a pocket, then tossed the bag with the leftover pieces in the dumpster of a small restaurant. From there on, he wore the gloves and balaclava.

He wasn’t keeping close track of time, but it must have been a little after four when he walked down the right alley, through a yard, and crossed the street to where Frenchy’s car was parked in front of his house. He spent a few moments looking at it, and figured that with the driveway right in front of the car Frenchy wasn’t likely to back up before he drove off. It was only the work of a few seconds to prop one of his little toys in front of each tire, and hit it with his hand to be sure it stayed there. Then, moving quickly but silently, he headed back across the street and into the shadows.

Well up the railroad line he took off the balaclava and gloves, stuffing them back into his pockets, and taking his time in the deep darkness. There was a darn good chance that no one had seen him; he hadn’t even had any dogs barking at him, and by now the balaclava and gloves would look more suspicious on than they would off.

It wasn’t yet five when he tiptoed back into the house. He went right to his room, put away the gloves and balaclava, then took off the black shirt and pants, putting on shorts and a T-shirt again. He still wasn’t sleepy – his excitement made sure of that. God, was Frenchy going to be pissed! The only thing wrong about the whole affair was that he couldn’t be around to see it, since that would be too much of a risk. Oh, to be a bird on the wire looking at it, though!

It wouldn’t pay back Frenchy enough for Friday night and all the other shit he’d caused over the years but it was a start, and Alan was getting some other ideas, too. There was no point in doing anything too soon; timing was everything.

Alan was back home, messing around on the net and feeling rather pleased with himself when Jack pulled the Jeep to a stop in front of Vixen’s house. There was beginning to be a little light in the sky to the east; maybe he was a little early, but it didn’t matter much.

One of the things that Jack and Vixen hadn’t worked out was how to let her know he was there – it didn’t seem like a good idea to just go up and knock on the door for fear of waking her parents. It turned out to not be a problem; Vixen was sitting in a lounge chair on the front porch as he drove up, and she headed out to meet him. “Good God, Jack,” she said as she tossed a backpack into the back where Stas was waiting, and got into the right seat. “I can’t believe that I’m actually out of bed this early.”

“Yeah, we probably could have held it back half an hour,” he said, looking at her in the light of the street light near the house. It was coolish, as he had expected; she wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt, which would probably be enough for now. He knew she’d planned on bringing cooler clothes for when it warmed up a little later on. “The days are really getting shorter, now.”

“I can’t believe any self-respecting bird would be awake at this hour,” she yawned.

“Oh, there’s some activity,” Jack said as he started the Jeep and got it moving. “Not much. But we want to be in position before things get going. We’re going to add a few entries to your life list today, Vixen.”

“Where are we heading, anyway?”

Jack let out a sigh. “I’d originally thought about going back out on the point, but I got to thinking that I’m not all that anxious to head out there after yesterday.”

“Yeah, me either, I guess,” she replied sleepily.

“Probably nothing wrong with it, but I think I’d just as soon give it a rest for a few days. I thought maybe we could head out south of the lake, out where I was going when I found Alan yesterday. It gets a little buggy there, but it’s cool enough that it shouldn’t be bad for a while.”

“How long are we going to stay out there?”

“Probably not all that long,” Jack said. “Two, maybe three hours, until we get bored or it gets too buggy. You got something in mind?”

“Well, not me, but Mom was talking that she wanted you to come for dinner this afternoon, that’ll be about one. We’re having roast beef.”

“I suppose there’s no reason I couldn’t,” he said. “I’ll have to let Mom know I won’t be at our place for dinner, but I can call her on your cell phone if I need to. Did you bring it?”

“Yeah, Mom wants me to call before church so she’ll know we’re coming. That’ll give her time to throw a little extra in the crock pot. I wouldn’t want to call her this early, though.”

“Well, let’s try to remember to do it a little later,” he nodded.

A few miles of driving at highway speed took them to the old rail grade along the south side of the lake, and that meant there was too much wind noise in the Jeep for comfortable conversation. Once they got on the rail grade their speed slowed considerably, though right then neither of them felt like talking. Jack was used to being up at this hour, even though it was a shorter night than usual, but Vixen’s internal clock kept telling her “sleepy-time,” and several times she found herself nodding off, only to be jolted awake when the Jeep hit a bump that was bigger than normal.

At one point, Jack commented, “It was along in here that I found Alan yesterday morning. I can’t believe that idiot Frenchy could have been so stupid to drive that car of his out there. He must have banged up the bottom pretty bad.”

“Serves him right if he did,” she snorted. “God, this really is the middle of nowhere, isn’t it?”

“About as close as you can get around Spearfish Lake,” Jack agreed. “I don’t blame Alan for being scared. Hell, I’d have been scared if I’d been dumped out here like that, not knowing where I was.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Vixen agreed. “I wonder how he’s doing?

“Don’t know. At one point I was thinking about calling him up yesterday afternoon just to check in on him. But we got all tangled up with that Ordway business, then making the run down to Camden, and I just plain forgot about it, not that I’d had the time to do it anyway. I think I’d better call him today though.”

“You know, that’s really a shame,” she commented. “He really is a pretty nice guy, even if he’s a loner and wrapped up with his computer all the time.”

“Yeah, and that computer stuff sells, too,” Jack agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if he winds up being the richest person of all of us, if he can survive his last year in high school.”

“What, are you trying to get me to date him?” she grinned.

“No,” he sighed, “but I wish someone would. I can’t tell you why, but I think he’s about that close to a breakthrough on a lot of things. But it’s going to take him getting out of Spearfish Lake to do it.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” she agreed. “You know, more than anything else, I think he just needs a friend. All of us need a friend or two, and at least I’m glad I finally realized that you were the friend I was looking for.”

Another mile or so up the grade, Jack intentionally passed the place he wanted to stop, and continued on till he could find a place to turn around, then drove back to the spot. “This’ll mean we can stay in the Jeep and have the light behind us,” he explained to Vixen as he stopped the Jeep and shut it off.

She looked around. They were in the middle of a stretch of open swamp, with a large pond to their left filled with marsh grasses and long-dead tree trunks sticking up here and there. To the right of the grade, things were similar, except that a few hundred yards away the more distant trees opened up with a view of the lake. Stas gave a sniff or two and decided he was more interested in getting a little more sleep, so returned to his normal curled up position on the back seat. It was getting light enough now that Vixen could make out the point where they’d been yesterday; the far shore of the lake was lost in the early morning haze. “God, it really is kind of neat back here, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yeah, not many people come back this way,” he agreed. “Oh, there’s some traffic in the fall, since some people like to go deer hunting out behind us, but not many. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re the only ones who come back this far today. You like some coffee?”

“I’d love some coffee,” she replied. “It may be the only thing that stands between me and what I really want to do, which is sleep for another few hours.”

“I guess I’ll just have to get you used to getting up a little earlier,” he said, reaching behind the seat to pull out a large thermos. “Black all right?”

“Fine, that’s how I like it,” she said. “As far as getting up early, I don’t get up this early for school, and I don’t want to have to think about getting up for school, at least not yet.”

“Trust me, it’ll get easier if you get used to the idea. I’ll admit I don’t go out birding early very often when school is on. Of course, there usually isn’t enough light to do it early anyway.”

“You go out in the winter, too?”

“Well, yeah, not as much,” he admitted, opening the thermos and pouring part of the contents into a paper cup. “But there are some interesting birds from the far north that winter over, so it’s worth the trouble. I’ll have the top back on the Jeep then, so it’s not quite as bad. It does get a little brisk at times, though.” He handed her the cup, and poured one for himself.

She took a tentative sip of the coffee. “Hey, that’s just right, and God, does it ever taste good.”

He took a sip of his, and yes, it did taste good. He was still a little foggy, although the way he’d been spouting off to Vixen he didn’t want to admit it. He leaned back in the seat. Life was good; it was still a little early for bird activity, but they were in the right place and had a chance to settle in. More importantly, he had a friend sitting next to him, and that made things even better. Once again he hoped to himself that he could get Vixen hooked on birding, really, really hooked. He could envision all sorts of exciting trips to interesting places with her if she turned out to be more than mildly interested in it. So far, it looked promising, but there was still a question in his mind of whether she was with him for the sake of birds, or for the sake of being with him. Either way, the future was looking up.

“You know,” she said out of nowhere. “It’s really nice out here. Really, really peaceful. It’s like another world from being in town, just the two of us when we don’t have to look over our shoulders.”

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “I like being out here with you.”

“So do I,” she smiled, and unfastened her seat belt. She slid over onto the box that rested between the seats to snuggle up next to him. “There,” she said. “That feels even better.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” he said softly as a perfect morning became even better. He put his arm around her and pulled her tight as she laid her head on his shoulder. Almost automatically, his right hand slid down her chest, to come to a rest on her breast. It felt, well, different, than last night. Softer, more tactile or something. All of a sudden, he realized that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She made some soft, contented noises as he squeezed the globe in his hand, rubbed it a little. He loved the touch, but couldn’t help but wonder if she’d planned it that way because she liked the feeling too.

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