Linda’s Pub in Albany River is located right next to the highway bridge. There was a nice view of the river, and on this quiet summer evening it was especially nice. Most people agreed that Linda’s served a great bar burger, one that beat McDonald’s seven ways from Sunday, if there had been a McDonald’s within forty miles, which there wasn’t. A half-pound burger, nicely decked out, old-fashioned crinkle-cut French fries and a cold draft seemed to set the tone for this non-meeting that was going to have a lot of repercussions, most badly needed.

“I really hate to have to do it this way,” John Archer said as he salted down his fries heavily. He liked them that way, but his wife would get all over his case if she saw him doing it. At least they’d taste right for once. “It still seems a little underhanded to me.”

“You’re probably right,” Anissa Hodges agreed, grimacing a little at the way John spread the salt around. Like John’s wife Candice, she didn’t think it was very good for John either, but it wasn’t her place to say anything about it. “But it’s a quarter million dollars if we didn’t do it.”

“Worse, it’d be three more years if we didn’t spend the money, and we don’t have it to spend, not in this economy,” Dennis Bergen agreed. “I don’t think the school can take three more years of him. It’s been bad enough as it is, and we’d really have a fight on our hands if we didn’t do this. And we know it’s perfectly legal to do it this way.”

“All true,” John agreed, “and after some of the shit he’s pulled, we’re only doing to him as he has already done unto others.”

“You have to wonder if he’s gotten the message,” Anissa sighed, taking a bite out of her burger. She’d gotten the quarter-pounder since she was trying to watch her weight.

“Oh, I’m sure he knows what’s coming down,” Dennis agreed, taking a sip of the rich microbrew Linda’s had on draft. “I’ve had three calls in the past two days all but demanding that I be there. At least that was the message he left on the answering machine. Thank God for having that. I haven’t actually answered the phone myself in the last couple weeks.”

“Same here,” John said. “Thank goodness I have a secretary.”

“I didn’t weasel about it,” Anissa smiled. “When he called I flat told him I wasn’t going to be there, that I had something else planned.”

“You did the right thing,” Dennis said, glancing at his watch. “They ought to be trying to start anytime now. With the three of us not there, he’s dead meat. He better start packing his bags.”

“And good riddance,” John smiled. What had gotten his back up lay almost two years in the past, and though normally he was the kind of guy to forgive and forget, this was the exception to the rule. This was personal and it had been personal for a long time. Anissa and Dennis had good reason to want to see the changes, but John, somewhat uncharacteristically for him, had been out for blood. As he bit into his well-salted fry, he knew that what was happening right now – or not happening, which was more important – was the culmination of eighteen months of effort. Much was left to be done, but the key was about to fall into place. The fry was gone in a couple bites; he swallowed and said, “No one is going to be happier to see his tail lights than I will.”

Twelve miles to the north, Spearfish Lake School Superintendent Charles DeRidder looked up and down the chairs at the school board meeting and knew exactly what was happening. Those three empty seats told him all he needed to know – which was that in a few days he was out of a job. Once upon a time, he’d pretty well controlled the school board. It wasn’t a perfect control; Hodges and Bergen would sometimes vote with him, sometimes not, but the five other members of the school board would pretty well rubber stamp any of his recommendations, so in a practical sense the two didn’t matter. Most of the time he didn’t let anything serious get in front of the school board, anyway – at least nothing more than he had to. Oh, he’d let them argue over something relatively unimportant, like which school bus bid to accept, but never let the board have a decision in something that really mattered unless he had no choice or it was already a done deal.

Then, a year ago, John Archer had come onto the school board, and it was bad news from the instant that he’d filed for the board seat to run unopposed. As soon as he’d seen the name on the petition he’d realized that Archer was out for blood, and not only his blood. In the worst case, it wasn’t all that bad since he still more or less controlled the majority of the school board, although less so than before. He still had the support of his staff, and that was what mattered.

DeRidder could look back now and see that it had been a serious mistake to back his high school principal, Bryson Payne, when Payne had thrown Archer’s youngest son out of school, saying that the kid was a stone killer and a menace to the safety of the other students. Two and a half years before, Cody Archer, John’s son, had come upon a girl being beaten and raped by her father and brother and had broken it up by giving the two intense but very brief nine-millimeter headaches. Harold Hekkinan, the principal at the time, had realized that there was nothing that he could or should do about the incident – it was a civil matter, nothing the schools had been involved with. Then Hekkinan had retired, and when Payne came on board the first thing he did was give Cody Archer his walking papers. DeRidder had figured he needed to back his principal, thinking that John Archer wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. He was wrong about that – the lawsuit that had come out of it had already cost the school district a hundred thousand dollars it could ill afford in this economy, and it wasn’t over yet. There had been other costs related to the matter that had been considerably worse.

Even though the elder Archer obviously had an axe to grind, he’d basically proved to be a fairly reasonable school board member, although he watched the financial statements like the proverbial hawk – as well he should; he was a Certified Public Accountant and didn’t let much get past him. However, DeRidder figured that Archer was only laying back and biding his time.

That was dead correct, and the school board election a few weeks ago proved it. Three seats on the seven-seat board were up for election, and one of the incumbent board members had decided to not run again. DeRidder had never quite understood why Lisa Riley had decided not to run for re-election, but reading between the lines it was clear that she’d been under some pressure to step aside. Five people, including the two incumbents, had run for the three available seats, and in the most intense and expensive campaigning he’d ever seen for a school board seat the incumbents were brushed aside like so much road kill. If there was any question where the bread was buttered, all he had to do was to look at who the leading vote-getter was: John Archer’s brother, Josh. Even if the two other winners were going to be on his side – and DeRidder was sure they weren’t from the tone of the campaign – the two Archers along with Hodges and Bergen meant that he no longer had a reliable majority on the school board.

That wasn’t necessarily an overwhelming problem – he still had a lot of control on what issues went before the school board, and he could deal with a hostile board if he had to. But there was one thing that had to go before the school board: his own contract, up for renewal at the end of the month. When he realized which way the wind was blowing he ended the protracted negotiations he’d been going through for months and accepted the board’s perfectly reasonable offer; the board had approved it 4-3 at the previous meeting, Archer, Hodges, and Bergen opposed, of course.

The only fly in that ointment was that by their own longstanding rules the board had to vote to approve contracts twice, in separate meetings. The second vote had been set for the scheduled regular monthly board meeting, the last meeting of the old board, two weeks before. However, the meeting had never come off, since Archer, Hodges, and Bergen hadn’t shown up. That left the board one member shy of a quorum, so no business could be discussed. Nor had any of the three been at any of the three special board meetings that he’d been able to talk George Battle, the Board President, into calling.

There had been a little hope that at least one of them might show up at this meeting, and that the three were only bluffing. Not a chance of that: it was ten minutes after the time the meeting was supposed to have started, and there was no sign of them, and no answers on any of their cell phones.

The three empty seats up and down the table told the story as well as anything: his contract would not get approved this evening. There was no time left to try for another special meeting; the next meeting, Monday evening, would be the new board’s organizational meeting. Once that was over with, DeRidder knew that he’d be facing four actively hostile board members, three of them new, and two that were, at best, unreliable.

It wasn’t as if no one in the room knew what those empty seats meant, because every person of the handful in attendance did. The only question was whether Archer, Hodges, and Bergen would show up after all, and that seemed less and less likely by the minute.

“Charles,” the board president said after the hands of the clock had moved ten minutes past the starting time of the meeting, “we could wait a while longer if you like.”

“No,” DeRidder sighed, admitting defeat. It was clear that the renegade three weren’t going to be found around town until well after the meeting broke up. “It’s pointless, now,” he added after a moment. He had to face facts: he was out of a job as of midnight Wednesday night, the last day of his contract. There didn’t seem to be much of a chance that he’d even be asked to stay around for a transition period. He’d held off getting his home on the market in hopes that somehow things might work out, but that was proving to have been a forlorn hope, at best. Wherever he was working when school opened in the fall – if he was working at all in this bad economy – it wouldn’t be in Spearfish Lake.

“We can stick it out for a few more minutes,” Battle offered. He was feeling the defeat about as much as his friend. Years before, he’d been the one to lead the fight to bring in a new superintendent from outside the district, someone who had experience in bigger schools, someone who knew how to pull in grants to ease the dismal financial picture the school was in. In an era when the state of Michigan was in financial trouble, it had seemed like the only way to continue to provide a quality education to students of the area. At first it had been a success, but it had turned sour in a number of ways. There just hadn’t been the money available for education like there once was, the state had cut their aid again and again, and then when the business about the Archer kid had blown up they’d lost the support of their largest local contributors.

“No, no point in it,” DeRidder sighed. “George, I want to thank you and the rest of the board members who did show up tonight for all the support you’ve given me over the years, but there comes a time when we have to realize that we’ve lost. You’ve all been good friends and I’ve enjoyed working with you, but there comes a time when nothing else can be done.”

“Well,” Battle said, “I’ve enjoyed working with you, and I personally think a big mistake has been made by those board members who didn’t show up. I suppose we might as well get out of here, since we’re not going to be doing anything tonight.”

People started to pick up their things and leave – Lisa and the other two outgoing board members were a little slow to concede defeat, although they had little other choice. DeRidder solemnly put the few papers on the table in his briefcase, figuring that he might as well get started cleaning out his desk in the morning. Although he wasn’t out of a job until the next time the board actually met, he had little doubt what tonight’s events meant.

Soon, only DeRidder and Bryson Payne were left and were heading toward the front door. “Charles,” Payne said, “I’m really sorry that had to happen. They don’t know what they’re losing.”

“Maybe not,” DeRidder sighed, “but the fact is that they wanted me gone, and they’re getting what they wanted. You might as well start getting résumés out. You’re next on the hit list.”

“I’m going to try to keep the faith,” Payne said. “I have the kids I have to think about, and I’ve got a year left on my contract. If they want to get rid of me, it’s going to cost them.”

DeRidder shook his head. Payne had his good points, but he sometimes had difficulty realizing where his bread was buttered. “You don’t stand a chance,” he replied. “I have little doubt that if they want you out of here, you’re gone. You know where all that campaign money came from as well as I do, even if no one admitted it. There’s more there if they want it. I have little doubt that if the new board decides to buy up your contract that they’ll get a donation to cover it before you get the check.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Payne shrugged. “They’re going to need someone to fill in as superintendent as soon as you’re out of here, and who else are they going to ask but me? I’m the high school principal, after all; I’m pretty well next in line.”

“I haven’t talked to Archer about it,” DeRidder shook his head as they headed outside into the cool mosquito-filled air of the June evening, “but I’ll bet you a nickel that he’s the new Board President as of next Tuesday. I’ll bet another nickel that he already has who he wants as an interim superintendent lined up.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s getting into, and that’s a fact,” Payne sneered as he bent over to lock the front door of the school building. “He’s just about as arrogant as that kid of his.”

“You might be right,” DeRidder shook his head again. Payne had a habit of not being able to see how things really were, but preferred to see them the way he hoped they were. It had been a mistake to hire him in the first place, and all the problems he’d created with the Archer kid had come down to this. Payne had thought he’d been doing the right thing, even when the law and the rule books came right out and said that he’d been dead wrong. Still, even though DeRidder thought he’d been a mistake, he’d had to support his principal, at least till Payne’s contract expired. If somehow DeRidder had managed to get his own contract renewed, he’d already made up his mind that Payne would be gone at the end of his contract in another year. “But the real fact of the matter is that after tonight he’s holding all the cards, and he wants your ass even worse than he wanted mine. He might let you stay on a month, but you won’t be here when school starts. You might as well get used to the fact.”

“I’ll try to stick it out,” Payne protested. “I’ve got kids in this school who are depending on me.”

“Bry,” DeRidder sighed. “You’ve been a good and loyal trooper, but like I said earlier, there are times that you just have to admit that you’ve lost and make the best of it. This is one of those times.”

A knot of people were standing around their cars in the parking lot talking about what had happened – or hadn’t happened – this evening, and what the future would bring. One of them, teacher and JV Girls Basketball Coach Amanda Mykelhoff, took note of DeRidder and Payne getting into their cars and leaving. That was good; it was what she had come to see, and it had taken less time than she had expected. While a couple people were discussing what the evening would mean for the football team, she decided to head for her own car.

She got in, closed the door, pulled out her cell phone, and made a call. “It’s over with,” she reported simply. “They’ve locked up.”

Anissa flipped her cell phone closed. It had been nice of Amanda to volunteer to be their eyes and ears at the last four attempted board meetings. There were probably not many people who remembered that Amanda had been a good friend of her daughter Sarah, back in the days when the two had been on the girls’ basketball team that had gone from being losers to legends in one heady season. ‘The Magnificent Seven’ had been a phenomenon ten years before, and that was a long time around a high school. “That’s that,” she reported to the two men at the table with her. “They’ve locked up for the night. Now maybe we can get something done.”

“All in good time,” John said. “There’s still only a limited amount we can do, but the next steps are going to be the important ones.”

“Good,” Dennis said. “Now maybe we can get the football program back on track.”

“God knows they need something to get them straightened out,” Anissa agreed. “I agree, Weilfahrt has got to go.”

“Can’t do it just yet,” John pointed out. “That’s not our decision to make, and he can’t be canned until Payne is gone.” He personally could have cared less about the football team; their best record in years had been 4-5, back when his older son Shay was the quarterback, the only halfway bright spot in a decade and a half when the Spearfish Lake Marlin football team had been perennial doormats. They hadn’t had a good team since Harold Hekkinan had quit coaching. Once, back in the days when John had been in high school, the Spearfish Lake Marlins had been a powerful presence on the gridiron, but those days were long in the past.

Even with his older son having been a football star, such as things went in Spearfish Lake these days, John was of the opinion that football wasn’t anything he should worry about. It was supposed to help kids work off a little excess energy and maybe build some character, but in recent years the team hadn’t even done that, so an overhaul was probably needed. However, the other two people at the table were sports fanatics, especially where the Marlins were concerned. Even the fact that the girls’ basketball team had several state finals trophies in the display case dating back over the last ten years wasn’t enough to mitigate the embarrassing football record, at least as far as Anissa and Dennis were concerned. Dennis had been a better than average football player back in the good days, and Anissa was the sports reporter for the Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, so they had reason for their beliefs. Even though John didn’t care much for football, Dennis and Anissa’s support had been vital, especially the last few weeks. Supporting them in their efforts to try to move toward some winning was the price he was going to have to pay for having DeRidder’s hide nailed to the wall. He didn’t mind paying the price.

“Oh, he’s gone, we just have to make sure we do it right,” John pointed out. “We don’t have lots of time, but we do have enough. The trick is to get Payne out of there and put someone decent into the principal’s job.”

“Damn right,” Anissa said. “We’ve got some football players who need to understand that they’re part of a team, not just a bunch of little tin gods.”

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