Matt Effingham had been knocking the beer back pretty good the night before, so he was not exactly feeling his best when his little sister called him to the phone. “Go away,” he told the little brat. “I don’t want to talk to nobody.”

“OK, I’ll tell Frenchy you said that,” she snickered.

“Frenchy?” he said. “Oh shit, what does he want?”

“He didn’t say,” she grinned, “but if you don’t want to talk to him, that’s OK I guess, I could tell him that.”

“No. Shit, I’ll talk to him,” Matt groaned. “Tell him to keep his shirt on while I get my pants on.”

He threw the covers back, not caring if his sister saw him or not. She was always trying to get a look at his package and it seemed like she loved to get him in situations like this. He wasn’t sure if it was curiosity on her part since she was only ten, or if it was because she wanted to raise a stink if she happened to see it. “Beat it,” he said, and reached for his pants. On second thought, he didn’t want to put his pants on – when Larry hurled the night before, some of it had splashed on them, and they stank to high heaven. Stale Schadler’s and beer puke. Yuuck!

He grabbed a pair of gym shorts from the dirty laundry and figured that would be good enough. He put his legs through the holes and stood up to pull them up, but his head was still spinning so bad that it almost knocked him right back down. He couldn’t help but wonder what Frenchy wanted as he staggered down the hall to the living room. He picked up the phone and said, “Hi, Frenchy, what’s up?”

“What the fuck took you so long?”

“Shit, I was asleep, Frenchy, like you ought to be at this hour.”

“Fuck sleep,” Frenchy snorted. “Some motherfucker let all the fucking air out of my fucking tires. I’m going to fucking kick his ass from here to Camden as soon as I find him, but I got to get the fucking tires blown up so I can make a beer run.”

“Oh, hell,” Matt said, watching his language since his little sister was obviously trying to listen in on what happened, probably so she could rat to his parents on him. “Hey, have you called Rusty? He’s got that air pump thing.”

“Fucking Rusty wimped out on me,” Frenchy snarled. “The goddamn wuss won’t get off his dead ass to help out a bud, so fuck him. He’s just another name on the list of asses I’ve got to kick. Now get your ass over here.”

“All right, I’ll be along in a few minutes,” Matt sighed. “I got to get some clothes on, first.”

“Well, make it quick, I ain’t got all day.”

Fuck, Matt thought as he hung up the phone. Sometimes he wondered why he was buds with Frenchy anyway. When he wanted something, he wanted it now, and got real pissed when he didn’t get it. Real pissed meant that somebody was likely to get hurt. Then when you did anything to help him out, you never got a word of thanks, the asshole.

On the other hand, he thought as he went back to his room, he does have that secret place he gets beer. The fuckhole wouldn’t even hint about where it was, and if he pissed off Frenchy the wrong way it was going to get awful dry awful quick. Plus he stood a good chance of getting his head bashed in. The odds were pretty close that he could take Frenchy, or at least hurt him in a stand up fight, but Frenchy didn’t fight that way. He liked a fight best when a couple of buddies were holding the arms of the guy he was beating on. It always seemed like there were buds around who were willing to help, no matter how much he didn’t need help, like with that Jahnke pansy the other night. Besides, he was a big hitter on the football team, and Matt didn’t want Frenchy dogging it on blocks when he was carrying the ball. That could hurt.

In spite of everything, the bed looked awful good to Matt as he staggered back to his room. Christ, another hour or two would feel awful good, but fuck no, what Frenchy wants, Frenchy gets. There was no way in hell he was going to try to wear the pants from the night before; they almost made him hurl right there from the smell of them. There was a pair of clamdiggers that weren’t too bad, and he didn’t feel like digging around for clean ones. Fucking around with tires was going to be dirty anyway. It didn’t take him long to get changed and put on a T-shirt. Getting the shit out of the pockets of his pants was pretty bad from the smell, and they still about wanted to make him hurl, so he took them to the clothes hamper in the bathroom and took the time to tap his kidneys. It went on and on; he didn’t know how he could have held it this long, but he felt a little better as he pulled on some sneaks and headed to the door.

Matt’s Mustang may have been a dozen years old, but it still ran pretty well. Even better, it was a rag top, which was pretty cool two or three months of the year but cold as the balls on a brass monkey in winter, which was the majority of the time in Spearfish Lake. It needed some work here and there, but nothing real urgent except maybe the muffler, which wasn’t too bad most of the time but made his head hurt with the way he felt today. At least it wasn’t far to Frenchy’s house.

He turned the last corner, and caught the sight of Frenchy’s car sitting down on its knees. All four tires were just as flat as hell, and it made him want to laugh. He fought off the urge, knowing that Frenchy wouldn’t think it was all that funny and would get pissed if he thought someone was laughing at him. Now, if it had happened to someone else, Frenchy would think it was just fucking hilarious, but not if it happened to him.

Taking a deep breath to fight off the laughter, he pulled to a stop behind the super low-rider Eagle and got out to the sound of Frenchy’s “Jesus, Effingham, it fucking took you long enough.”

Matt ignored Frenchy’s comment. “Jesus, Frenchy,” he said as he got out of the car. “What the fuck happened?”

“Some fuckhead let all the fucking air out of my fucking tires, that’s what the fuck happened,” Frenchy snorted. “You better believe there’s going to be some asses kicked over this. Did you bring a pump or something?”

“I ain’t got anything like that,” Matt told him. “I could maybe go get that one Rusty has.”

“Fuck no, that fucker has shafted me once this morning, so fuck him.”

Matt shook his head. “I think Pat out at the garage has an air tank, but this is Sunday and he’s closed.”

“Fucking church rats, you can’t get a fucking thing done in this fucking town on fucking Sunday,” Frenchy replied in disgust. “Now, what the fuck do we do?”

“How about we get your jack and shit out of your trunk, jack it up, put the spare on, and take the flat down to the Fiesta station? They’ve got an air pump there. Then come back and do the next one.”

“Fuck,” Frenchy snorted. “That’ll take all goddamn morning.”

“It’ll take a fucking lot longer if we don’t,” Matt replied reasonably.

Frenchy thought it over for a moment. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said finally. “Might as well get started.”

For whatever reason, they started with the left rear. They probably could have picked a better place. Since cars don’t have real bumpers any more, they had to use the scissors jack from the trunk of the Eagle. Unfortunately, it had been sitting under the trunk’s floor mat for quite a while and it was so rusty the crank was hard to turn, so there was nothing to do but fight with it and cuss at it. There might have been a little less cussing if the car wasn’t right next to the curb, so it was difficult to get at the jack, and the car sat so low it was almost impossible to get the jack under it anyway. Finally, in about twenty minutes more than a good NASCAR pit stop time they had the car jacked up and the wheel off. Matt picked it up and carried it to the trunk of the Mustang and tossed it inside without taking a look at it, while Frenchy started to mount the spare on the car. That went fairly easy, at least, but they were hot, sweaty and dirty by the time they were done and both their heads were pounding from the effects of the bright sunlight and their hangovers.

“Fuck that fuckin’ fucker that fucking did this to me,” Frenchy said as he got into the passenger seat of the Mustang. “This is a fuckin’ bitch.”

“Fuck if you ain’t right,” Matt agreed. “Somebody deserves to get his ass kicked over this.”

It wasn’t far down to the convenience store. The air pump was one of those that had to be fed with quarters, and as luck had it neither of them had one. Matt decided he’d better go in and break a dollar bill, because he could see that Frenchy was still seething, not that he hadn’t gotten pretty pissed himself in the last half hour. He came back out, opened the trunk, shoved a quarter into the machine and set it running.

Frenchy pushed the hose onto the valve stem and heard a hiss as the air started running. The rattle of the machine covered some of the noise, and after a few seconds Matt heard Frenchy say, “Now what the fuck?”

“What?”

“The fucking thing ain’t blowing up,” he said.

Matt reached around to the back side of the tire, which was still flat. He felt around a little until he discovered air flowing out of the tire. “Aw, shit,” he said. “There’s a hole in it.”

He flipped the tire up so they could look at the flat side. There was a hole in it, with a nearly inch-wide something stuck in it. “Fuck, man,” Frenchy said. “Fucking look at that! That’s a fucking two hundred and fifty dollar tire just fucking ruined! Now, who the fuck would have the balls to do something like that to me? Fucking goddamn mother fucking bastard is fucking gonna die! Goddamn the motherfucker, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, backing away a step in hopes of getting a good start if Frenchy decided to take his mad out on him. “Some fucker really fucked you over. If whoever the fucker is did it to one tire, he probably did it to all four.”

“Fuck, fuck, fucccccck!” Frenchy screamed. “The fucker is gonna fucking die!”

Heather Callahan was just coming out of the Fiesta station as Frenchy got into a really serious rant. She’d seen him pissed before, but this was pissed. Not wanting Frenchy to see her when he was this mad, she quickly got around the corner of the station, and then turned back to watch through the glass corner of the store. Hearing what was going on was no problem since Frenchy was shouting at the top of his lungs, mostly repeating himself, and it didn’t take her long to figure out that someone had done a number on Frenchy’s tires.

Good, she thought. Serves the asshole right. He’d handed out enough shit over the years, clear back to grade school, it was nice to see him get it back for once. What’s more, it looked like Frenchy didn’t know who did it to him, although she could think of some people who would have liked to, including several girls who he had been rough with. What the fuck did Mary Lou Kempa see in an asshole like him, anyway?

It would have been fun to stand around and watch Frenchy rant some more, but once she figured out what had happened she realized it might not be the smartest thing to do to have Frenchy noticing her watching. He might think that she had something to do with it, and then she’d be in shit up to her eardrums. The best thing to do is get out of here, she thought.

Fortunately her Chevy Cobalt was parked out of sight of Frenchy and Matt, and she could get out of the Fiesta station without them noticing if she went up the side street. In seconds, she was in her car and heading away from the store. In a couple blocks, she happened to think that it might be interesting to see what Frenchy’s car looked like with all four tires flat. Figuring that Frenchy would be ranting for a while, she swung around a couple blocks to drive by his house.

There his car was, the car he was so proud of, looking like it was mostly lying on its belly, with only one tire up. God, she thought, that’s just too good a sight to miss. She stopped briefly, glad that she had a cell phone that could take photos. Not real good ones, but good enough for this. She snapped a quick shot, then got on her way again.

She started to punch Ashley Keilhorn’s number, then stopped. It might just be better if she wasn’t the source of this story, since Frenchy would likely come after her, and she wouldn’t like that one bit. Now what could she do?

It only took a moment to think about it. There was a message board about Spearfish Lake run by someone – she had no idea who, since it was supposed to be anonymous. It didn’t really get a lot of traffic, especially during the summer, but sometimes stuff from around school was on it. She’d never posted on it, but she looked at it every now and then. That would work just fine.

She hurried home. She had to go past the Fiesta station, and could see that Frenchy was still out in back of Matt’s car, ranting up a storm. Good, she thought, he wouldn’t have seen her take the picture. It took her a few minutes to get home, and a few more minutes to get her computer booted up and on the message board.

The board asked for a username to post with, and it could be something made up out of nothing. She glanced at her bookcase, and noticed Kushiel’s Dart, a fantasy that Vixen Hvalchek had turned her on to. That would work perfectly. She typed in “Kushiel” for a user name, and made up a return e-mail address: kushiel@dart.com. Then she typed in, “Somebody got Frenchy LeDroit’s car good last night.” With that done, she attached the photo from her cell phone and hit SEND.

It was a little surprising that the message board took the message; when she typed refresh there it was, with the photo of the car sitting just about belly to the ground, looking ridiculous. Though it hurt like hell, she decided to wait fifteen minutes before she called Ashley and told her to look at the message board.

Jack tried to keep from looking at Vixen, especially looking at her chest, but failed miserably. He’d been aware that she had breasts, had felt them, but with that camisole pasted on her they were very noticeable. About a B, he thought, but on her slight frame it looked like more than that. The camouflage did little to hide the fact that her headlights were pushing the fabric out remarkably. He’d felt that she had some hard and solid nipples, and the brief glance that he’d had of them while she was putting the top on confirmed that they were large and dark. Holy shit!

“Nice top,” he said, trying to sound more casual than he felt.

“It’s just an old one,” she snickered, able to see that she’d gotten the reaction she’d hoped for. “But I thought the camouflage might be good for birding.”

“Can’t hurt,” he said, wondering how much more bird watching he was going to do this morning. There was something else that was a hell of a lot more interesting to watch, after all.

Resolutely, he picked his binoculars back up and scanned around the marsh, as much as to keep his mind off of Vixen’s chest as anything else. It wasn’t easy; after all, they were supposed to be out here looking for birds, although it seemed likely that Vixen was looking for something more than that. A hawk sitting on a dead tree limb in the middle of the swamp caught his eye. That was a little strange; while he liked hawks, they didn’t usually hang around swamps. It looked like a Red-tailed Hawk, the commonest kind around here, but birds could be found anywhere. The bird mostly had his belly pointing at him, so he wasn’t real sure about the identification. After studying it in the binoculars for a moment, he realized that the belly didn’t look quite right. Immature, maybe? “Check that out,” he said to Vixen. “The hawk on the dead tree over on our left, about fifty yards out.”

She raised her own binoculars, apparently having forgotten about teasing Jack with her breasts for a moment. “Facing this way?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, setting the binoculars down and reaching for the camera. “It doesn’t look quite right for a red-tail.”

“Looks like a hawk to me,” she said, reaching for the Peterson’s while Jack shot a few frames. She flipped quickly to the pages with the hawks, looked it over, and raised the binoculars again. “Jack,” she said after a moment. “It could be a Red-shouldered Hawk. The book says they like to hang around wooded marshes.”

“Let me see,” he said, lowering his camera and glancing at the book. “You could be right. I wish the thing would turn sideways, then we’d know for sure.”

While Vixen kept her binoculars on the hawk, Jack raised the camera again. The bird moved a little, then spread its wings and dove off the branch while the motor drive of the camera whirred. “Got it,” he said as the bird disappeared off into the swamp. “I think you’re right, a Red-shouldered Hawk, but we’ll have to see the photos to be sure. They’re not real common around here, I can only think of one other time I saw one.”

“Hey, that makes me feel good,” she smiled. “That’s the first time I’ve beaten you to an identification.”

“Yeah, you get a couple points for that,” he grinned. He reached out, put his arm on her far shoulder and pulled her close to him. “I guess maybe you deserve a kiss for that.”

She raised his lips to his, and they kissed. It was a long, serious kiss, although it hadn’t been intended that way. It took them a while to stop. “Thank you, Jack,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” he said as they pulled back from each other and leaned back into their seats, birds forgotten for the moment, just looking at each other with smiles on their faces. It must have been a minute or more before Jack said, “Speaking of red shoulders, the sun is getting up a bit. You might want to think about some sunscreen.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” she said. “Although I didn’t bring any with me.”

“I’ve got some,” he said. “It’s in my field bag if you want it.”

“Probably not a big rush,” she replied. “I’ve got a little tan. I’ll put some on if we’re going to be out here much longer.”

“It’s up to you,” he shrugged. “We can head back anytime. It’s getting hotter, and it looks to me like activity is dying down some. What do you say we hang around another hour or so, then head back to town? There’s a couple of shady spots we might want to stop and take a look at, and it probably wouldn’t be best if we slid into your house for dinner at the last minute.”

“Yeah, probably not,” she said. “I know you’ve met my parents, but they’ll want to socialize a bit. What do you want to do after dinner?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Hang out a little, maybe. Or, there’s a couple places where we could go sit and look for birds in the shade, where it might be a little cooler. As far as that goes, I’d kind of like to stop off and see Alan for a few minutes, just to see how he’s doing. He was pretty bummed yesterday; I want to be friendly to him a little.”

“Fine with me,” she said. “You want to dig out that sunscreen for me? ”

“Just who the fuck could have done it?” Frenchy ranted as they drove back to his house in Matt’s Mustang. He’d cooled off a bit, not a lot, and was at least making a little sense.

“Beats the fuck out of me,” Matt replied and spent some time thinking. “I’ll tell you who might have done it,” he said finally.

“Who?” Frenchy snapped.

“You know that Jahnke kid? The one we dumped out in the swamp the other night? He’d have a real good reason to get back at you.”

“Might be,” Frenchy snorted, “but the little fuck doesn’t have the balls to do it. He knows goddamn well that if he fucks with me he’s going to get hurt. He wouldn’t try to piss me off like that.”

“True,” Matt said, “but he might be pissed off enough with you to give it a try. You gave him enough of a pounding to get him really pissed.”

“Yeah, and the little fucker deserved it for laughing at me,” Frenchy snorted. “Fucking wuss. No, he doesn’t have the balls to fuck with me on the best day he ever had. He’d have to know I’d fucking tear him to pieces if I caught him doing something like that.”

“You might be right,” Matt said. “There’s a lot of people that don’t like you or are scared of you, though. It might be someone you pissed off last winter and they just now got around to doing something.”

“That might be,” Frenchy said. “Maybe some asshole decided that he could get away with it since it’d look like that little Jahnke fuck did it. I mean, the next goddamn night, and what we did to him must have gotten all over town.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, which was not an easy thing for him since he wasn’t much of a thinker. “You know, I’ll bet I know who did it,” he said finally.

“Who?”

“That Goddamn Frankovich, that’s who,” Frenchy snapped. “Fucker has had it in for me for a while. I mean, he acted like a bud, but after he blew me off this morning with some lame-ass shit about his parents coming down on him, well, that sounds to me like he doesn’t want to get near me since he’d know I’d kick his young ass. I mean, who would get on his case for treating Summer Trevetheck like a bitch, like she deserves to be treated?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “You might have something there.”

“Fucking right I do,” Frenchy said. “That fucker deserves to have his ass kicked anyway. I’ll just have to be sure we do a damn good job of it.”

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