“Howie? Is that you?” Barb Erikson said in surprise.

“What’s the big deal, Mom?” Howie shrugged.

“It’s only 7:30 in the morning!” Barb grinned. “Did someone steal my son and replace him with a pod person?”

“No, Mom,” he smiled. “It’s me. I just went to bed early because I needed some time to myself. Misty won’t be expecting me till about noon. I’m going to go drown a few worms and think about some things.”

“Misty?” she ventured.

“Yeah, that’s one of them,” he said. “I guess I need to get things straight in my own head.”

“Well, I guess,” she sighed. “It still seems strange to see you out of bed before noon. I never see you in the morning.”

“First time for everything,” he grinned.

“Would you like some breakfast?”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt. Just cereal, maybe some juice. I can get it Mom, I usually do.”

“Well, if you catch something, you clean it,” she warned.

“If I catch something, I’ll throw it back,” he said. “Like I said, I need to get a few things straight in my mind.”

“What’ll you do if you run into that LeDroit or his friends?”

“I’ll be on my bike, Mom. I can ride through the trees faster than they can run. If that doesn’t work, Jack gave me a can of that spray stuff. Besides, I’ll bet Frenchy isn’t going to be out and around this early anyway.”

Howie really was more anxious to get out of there than he appeared, but he realized that he needed to take it easy and not get her more suspicious of him than she already was. He ate the cereal, drank the juice, and took a bottle of water with him as he headed out to the garage.

It took him a few minutes to get ready to go. He found his old school backpack from the previous year, loaded a few things he’d need into it, and included his tackle box. Hell, if things went well he might even do some fishing. He really wasn’t much of a fisherman, but had realized some time ago that it was a perfectly acceptable way to sit on the bank and think about things that had nothing to do with fish.

He grabbed his fishing rod and fastened it to the frame of his bike with bungee straps. He had everything he needed, both for an explanation about where he was going and to deal with the beer he’d stashed the night before, so he stood on the pedals and got under way.

It was a heck of a lot longer ride on his bike out to the fishing hole on the Albany River than in the Jeep the night before. In not much more than a year Jack would be gone to college somewhere, and it seemed likely that the use of the Jeep would be passed down to him when he got his license. It really was a pretty cool vehicle, if not real classy, and it had been perfect for Jack. Still, Howie hoped that he might be able to get something a little less rugged, a pickup maybe, but that would cost money and the Jeep would be essentially free. Oh, well, he had some time to think about it and maybe do something about it too.

The gravel made the going slow and uncertain, even for the BMX, but the familiar miles passed under him and eventually he was at the two-rut that led back to the fishing hole. He looked at the sandy spot by the side of the road where the two-rut began, and was relieved to see that the only tracks he saw there were the Jeep tracks from the night before. Apparently no one had been back there – at least, no one had driven back there. He rode the BMX on up the two-rut, brushing ferns out of the way as he rode, and in a few more minutes was standing where he’d parked the Jeep the night before.

First things first, he thought. He headed out into the dew-wet ferns to where he’d left the garbage bags full of twelve-packs and found them quickly. He’d scattered them out a little, but really hadn’t tried to hide them. One by one he carried the garbage bags down to the shore, until there were eight of them in a big pile, then he peeled out of his clothes and pulled a pair of swim goggles out of his backpack; they would be handy for this.

Howie knew that there was a big hole back under a downed log right near the place where he was standing. He only knew about it because he’d once hung up a prized lure down there and had to go diving for it. It was big enough to hold the beer, and deep enough that it seemed unlikely that the river would freeze around it. It would darn sure make for cold beer any time of the year!

One by one, he put a couple fist sized rocks in each black garbage bag, tied them tight, and then stuffed the yellow drawstrings down inside. He had to take the bag into the water with the opening upright to squeeze all the air out of the bag. When he had that done he could just dive down and stuff the beer-filled garbage bag deep into the hole where it would be unlikely to be seen.

The water was colder than the pond had been yesterday, but not as cold as he’d experienced it here the time he had to recover the lure. He didn’t have a watch on, but the work went fairly quickly; in perhaps fifteen minutes, he had all eight bags of beer hidden in the hole under the log. He was glad to get up on shore, pull the scrap towel from his backpack and dry himself off.

Then, he checked out his work. Other than the footprints, which meant zilch, there was nothing to indicate that this was the hiding place for Frenchy’s beer. He shook his head. If he lost all of the beer for one reason or another, he really wasn’t out anything, but if it stayed there and he kept it a secret, there probably was enough to get all the way through high school and still have a heck of a graduation party. He might even be able to slip some beer to his buddies once in a while when the time seemed right. And, for that matter, did Misty like beer? He couldn’t recall asking.

For that matter, when he stopped to think about it there was a lot he didn’t know about Misty. They’d been, well, she’d been so anxious to get to the making out stage that he’d missed a lot of other information that would have been nice to know. There was the prospect of a pretty good high school romance there, he thought, but he didn’t even want to think about the long term.

Jack had thought about the long term, Howie reflected as he decided he was dry enough to start getting dressed. Christ knew how much of a living he could make with his birding, but he seemed to think he could. Howie had no idea of what he was going to do with his life, not even an inkling. He had no interests like Jack’s that might be able to be turned into a career – it was for sure that there was no way he could make a living playing Nintendo.

He was sure about a few things, he thought as he pulled on his shoes, brushing his feet carefully to get the sand off. He didn’t want to work in the fucking plywood plant like his dad, or some of the other jobs that people made a life of here. That pretty well meant that he was going to have to leave Spearfish Lake, and that pretty well meant college, but he hadn’t thought it out further than that.

And Misty? He’d never even asked her about that kind of thing, and had no idea of what she planned to do. Maybe she didn’t either. Maybe he ought to raise the issue sometime, just to see what she thought. She was fun, sure, but there was no way of telling at this point whether a future lay there. Just getting through high school was about all the future he could contemplate for including girls, at least so far anyway – past that, things seemed fuzzy.

What the hell, he thought. You said you were going fishing, you might as well do some fishing. This summer was coming to an end, no matter how well it had been going the last few days. Football practice would be starting next week, then two-a-days, which would steal a lot of the time he’d been spending on Misty. And that was assuming he even played football! With Frenchy on the varsity, maybe it would be a good idea to give it up so Frenchy wouldn’t have that chance at him.

He unwrapped his fishing rod, fastened on a small streamer and cast it out into the river almost mindlessly. Yeah, there was a lot to think about after all; maybe he’d better start thinking about it.

Ashley Keilhorn was just a little bit upset. It wasn’t fair! She’d taken the job at the pick-up window of the Frostee Freeze because it was about the best place in town to watch what was going on. Now the big event of the summer had taken place at the Fiesta and she hadn’t even seen it! To make it worse, Heather Callahan had been right there, and had been spreading the word even before Matt had driven off with Frenchy and Larry all screaming and crying.

And to top it off, she’d even gotten photos! Well, it about had to be her, since she was there and had the cell phone camera, although they had been posted anonymously on the Spearfish Lake message board. There was even a snatch of video, only seconds long, but highlighted by Frenchy crying and yelling out, “Oh, fuck it hurts!”

That put Ashley way behind on what was happening. She’d heard about it at the Frostee Freeze the night before, but hadn’t put all the pieces together at the time. But the news was still the same, and everyone she talked to was excited about it – Frenchy and his buddies had gone to kick butt and wound up crying on the pavement.

There were a lot of people to talk to this morning, even though they were pretty much exchanging the same information. No one seemed to know what had happened to Frenchy and his buddies after Matt drove off with them, but hopefully they were still hurting from the snootful of pepper spray that Vixen had laid on them. Since Frenchy had put her down and dissed her as much as any girl in the school, Ashley felt a sense of pride that it had been a girl who had evened up the score. You go, Vixen!

Ashley lay back against the lounge chair, holding the phone against the scrap of fabric of her thong panties, which was the sum total of her attire this morning. There had to be some other angle, some other something going on that might not trump the attention that the news this morning had brought, but at least divert it a little. She wracked her brain, but the only thing that seemed to hold a shred of potential was that Laurel Haeussler had reported that Summer Trevetheck’s car had been at Alan Jahnke’s most of the day, although Jack and Vixen had joined them in the evening.

That was a thought, though. Ashley hadn’t talked to Summer in days; she really wasn’t in the gossip circuit, so she might have not even heard about the big news. If she did, maybe she’d be willing to let go a little detail about what she and Alan had been doing all the time. It was hard to believe that the two of them could be getting it on, but you never knew with those quiet types.

It was easy enough to call up and find out. Her fingers danced over the keys of her cell phone, and in a few moments she had Summer on the line.

“Summer, this is Ashley,” she said. “Have you heard the news about Frenchy and his buddies?”

“That deal with Vixen and Jack last night? Sure, I heard about it not long after it happened. Alan was so happy when I talked to him last night that I thought he might be bouncing off the walls.”

“Well, I guess he has a right to be,” Ashley commented. “I mean, after that deal last Friday night.”

Summer giggled. “Alan seems to think that’s what set things off. He got a personal protection order against Frenchy, and it was served yesterday afternoon. He figures that Frenchy thought he had to go out and beat up on somebody just to show his balls.”

“That sounds about like Frenchy,” Ashley said. “So what’s the deal with you and Alan anyway?”

“We’re hanging out a little,” Summer admitted. “He’s been kind of lonely having to stay in the house all the time, so we’ve been working on a role playing game. We both like those, and we decided to write our own, witches versus inquisitors in the Middle Ages.”

“Sounds like it might be fun,” Ashley admitted. “I never got into that at all, but I always thought that I might like to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when we’re a little further along,” Summer said. “We’re not to the point of giving it a trial run yet, but it’ll be better if we have several players.”

“Well, hey,” Ashley said, a little disappointed that Summer hadn’t told her that she was head over heels in love with Alan or something juicy like that. Messing around with a game seemed, well, like messing around with a game. “It beats sitting around alone.”

“Yeah, it does,” Summer agreed. “Alan is really a pretty nice guy and we have the same approach to a lot of things in the game. I’m looking forward to trying it out, but it’s been fun to hang around with someone.”

They talked for a couple more minutes, but Ashley’s heart wasn’t in it, and the call soon came to a close. Once again she set the cell phone down on her panties and dreamed. At least Summer had someone to hang out with, whether they had something going or what. It might develop into something, but a friendship was almost as valuable as having a romance.

Why the hell couldn’t she get up the guts to call Lyle? It seemed like a logical thing, and they had some stuff in common, too. Once, twice, thrice, and again she brought the phone up to dial his number, but she could never quite seem to do it. Maybe later, she thought, as she decided to call Heather Callahan back. The news about Summer and Alan might not be much compared to what had happened to Frenchy, but at least it was something different.

Spearfish Lake Police Chief Charlie Wexler walked into his office in a good mood. He’d just had a meeting with Sheriff Steve Stoneslinger, explaining what he had in mind, and the Sheriff had not only agreed to cooperate but to also lend a hand. There were still a few things to organize, but he was getting there.

One of the loose ends he had to deal with involved getting hold of Fred Piwowar. Even though he worked second shifts, he knew that Fred usually went right to bed after he got off shift, so he and his wife would be on roughly the same schedule. As luck would have it, Fred was up, and apparently having his morning coffee.

“Fred,” Charlie said. “I need to shift your schedule around a little bit, just for tonight. I’ll get a part-timer to cover your shift if you need it, but I’d like to have you available early tomorrow morning.”

“How early?” Fred asked.

“It’s still sort of loose, but I’m thinking around seven AM,” Charlie told him. “I’ll need another hand, but Leo is still on at that time. That should be enough.”

“Yeah, hell, I can stand the overtime,” Fred replied. “Have you checked the report for last night yet?

“Haven’t had time, I just came in from the Sheriff’s office. Something interesting happen?

“Well, yeah, in a way,” the Sergeant laughed. “Frenchy LeDroit and two of his buddies were in the process of jumping a kid here in town, but the kid’s girlfriend hosed the three of them down good with pepper spray. I guess they were really hurting. I went looking for them after I took the report but I was laughing too much to want to look too hard, if you know what I mean. Then, when I went into the Frostee Freeze to see what was going on, a kid there told me that there had been a video of the whole thing online. So I came back to the station. The video isn’t of the whole thing, but it has Frenchy laying on the pavement, screaming and crying his eyes out.”

“Hey,” Charlie laughed. “That’s cool. Where did you find this video?”

“On that goofy Spearfish Lake message board, that’s where the kid told me to go. I bookmarked it on the main computer if you want to look at it.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely going to have to check that out,” Charlie smiled. “An experience like that might knock some sense into that idiot. I doubt it, but we can always hope.”

“Yeah, those kids are punks and need to get some sense knocked into them,” Fred agreed. “Oh, hey, that reminds me. I had a long talk with the kids who took the three of them out, along with their parents. They’re concerned that Frenchy and his buddies are going to want revenge, and want to talk to you about getting a PPO like you got for the Jahnke kid. There’s a note on it on the case file.”

“Yeah, that might not be a bad idea,” Charlie said thoughtfully. “I’ll check out your report then go talk to them. You weren’t thinking of charging those kids with anything, were you?”

“Hell, no, it was self-defense, open and shut. If anything, they deserve a medal, especially the girl. She did a number on those punks with her spray can.”

Charlie nodded wordlessly. One of the tougher things that can be done in a situation where you have people charging you is to just stand your ground and shoot back, rather than running. He could even think of police officers who would be tempted to run in a situation like that. The kid did good, and he needed to be sure to mention it when he saw her.

Jack, Jim, and Barb walked into the police station a little after nine, to find Vixen and her parents already there and waiting for them, talking with Chief Wexler. The chief turned to them and said, “I’m glad you could come down here today. It’s just a little simpler to do this if I don’t have to go over everything twice. If we can move this right along, we can have this in front of Judge Dieball today, and probably be able to serve the order by tomorrow.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Jack’s father said. “I think that this order is a good idea and I welcome anything that can be done to protect my kids from these young punks. But the best protection I can think of is to have them in jail.”

“It would be nice,” Chief Wexler conceded, “and there’s a chance it could happen in the next few days. However, nothing is ever certain, and it may not happen, either. Even then, depending on how things work out, they may not be in for long. A personal protection order isn’t the perfect solution, but it may prove to be an effective deterrent. If nothing else, it can prove to be a ticket to jail for them in the future.”

“I don’t like having to put up with this stuff,” Jack’s father replied. “And I don’t feel that it’s right that I have to keep my kids at home and stay in the house myself with a loaded shotgun. I hope this personal protection order thing works, but I’m half tempted to tell the kids to go hide out in my hunting cabin for a few days while this dies down.”

“Jim,” Marilyn Hvalchek said to Jack’s father. “Do you really think it’s that serious?

“I don’t know,” Jim replied. “I’d like to think it isn’t, but it might be better to be safe than it is to be sorry.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “That might be a little extreme. I would advise you to lay low until we get a chance to serve the order and not give them a chance at you. We’ve been trying to keep an eye on them, but we can’t do it all the time, for obvious reasons – we just don’t have enough manpower.”

“Well, I guess,” Jim said. “We’ll just have to work something out. You will come if you’re called, won’t you?”

“We’ll do our best,” Charlie promised. “But again, I have to warn you that we have a manpower issue, so the possibility exists that we might not be right there, and by we, I mean either the city police or the sheriff’s department. Now, I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag by giving out details, but if everything goes right by this time tomorrow the threat level may be significantly reduced. I’d prefer that news doesn’t go beyond the people in this room.”

Jack’s father got a smile on his face, a smile that was reflected on the faces of many people in the room. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying,” he said, “then all I can say is ‘more power to you.’”'

“Like I said,” Chief Wexler smiled, “I don’t want to say anything more, but even if this PPO isn’t useful in the short run, it may well be very useful in the future. So let’s get started on this, and maybe we can work it out to go in front of Judge Dieball this morning.”

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