God, déjà vu all over again, Harold Hekkinan thought as he opened the car door. Been here, done this.

It was almost ten years to the day since he’d done this before – maybe it was right to the day, he’d have to look at a calendar to figure it out, and he really wasn’t curious enough to go to the effort. Ten years before it had been a desperation move, but it had proved to work out better than he could possibly have dreamed. He wasn’t quite as desperate this time, but this looked like the best possible answer, both in the short run and the long run.

He got out of the car slowly. He wasn’t as spry as he had been ten years before. The years had caught up with him, and well they should – he was sixty-seven years old now, drawing Social Security on top of his pension. He’d thought this stuff was behind him, but no. The tough ones were back in his lap again.

He stood back and closed the car door, not bothering to lock it – this was Spearfish Lake, after all, not some damn city. He did take his keys; sometimes the goddamn automatic door locks would lock whether he wanted them to or not. It was still fairly early in the morning, still cool on what promised to be a hot summer day, which helped to explain why there were a number of cars parked in front of the house where he was heading. If there was any question, the familiar measured thump – thump – thump of a dribbled basketball went a long way toward explaining why this place was so busy at this hour of the morning. As he walked closer, the thumping came to a stop; there were some wordless shouts, followed by a feminine, “Oh, cool!”

“Not bad, Becca,” he heard a familiar woman’s voice say. “You could have ducked a little lower and cut him a little tighter, but you see how that works.”

“Yeah, Coach,” a teenage voice replied. “Can I try that again?”

“Go to it,” the woman’s voice replied.

Hekkinan turned the corner, to see almost exactly what he expected – half a dozen teenagers of both sexes and a couple of adults gathered around the basketball hoop in the driveway. From long experience he knew that this wasn’t a pickup game, but a training session. Almost any summer day for the last ten years when the weather was decent there would be a group out there, working on moves under the guidance of their coaches. Officially this wasn’t a practice, just playing around, although there was actually darn little play going on. This was serious, and had cost the school the price of a new trophy case a few years before.

The only thing out of place was the fact that Lyle Angarrack was the defender in front of the basket. Lyle was a big guy, about the biggest in the school, broad through the shoulders, but he didn’t play sports – a shame, Hekkinan thought, but the kid had exercise-induced asthma bad and just didn’t have the breath for a sustained effort. It was easy to see that he had been pressed into service as a simulated big defender. The kid had some good moves, Hekkinan thought as Becca dribbled the ball in front of him, faked one way, then spun and dove under his outstretched arm going the other way, using her low position to set herself up for a jump shot. A good one, too; even though Lyle knew what she was planning and had seen it coming, he wasn’t quick enough to stop her without a foul, so it was going to be two points either way.

“Not bad, Becca,” Hekkinan heard Coach Wine say. “The only thing is that you’ve been going to your strong hand and his weak one. You still OK, Lyle?”

“Sure,” the big kid said. “This isn’t hard. I could keep it up all morning.”

“OK, then,” Coach Wine said. “Becca, try it the other way this time.”

Hekkinan just stood back and watched. Again Becca set up for the move, faking to the right this time, and diving to the left – not fast enough; in the blink of an eye Lyle knocked the basketball away into the air, heading right for where Hekkinan was standing. The mostly unused reflexes of days gone by kicked in; Hekkinan snagged the ball, and passed it to Coach Wine, who hadn’t noticed him previously. “Good morning, Coach,” she said. “I didn’t know you were watching.”

“Just checking things out,” Hekkinan replied. Brandy Wine still called him “Coach” out of sheer respect, although it had been over twenty years since he’d deserved the title, nearly thirty years since he’d last coached her. “I’d ask if you were busy, but I can see you are.”

“Just the usual Friday morning messing around,” she smiled, downplaying what was going on in her driveway. “Got something on your mind?”

“Yeah, I’d like to talk to you for a couple minutes if I could,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be right now.”

“Oh, no big deal,” Brandy replied. She turned to the younger woman, Amanda Mykelhoff, a fairly new teacher and the Junior Varsity Girls Basketball coach. “Let Becca try that on Lyle a few more times and then give someone else a shot.” Hekkinan smiled inwardly; sessions like this one ten years before had inspired Amanda to set her sights in life a little higher than being a factory worker or a convenience store clerk, which was one of the unwritten things that a coach was really supposed to do. Amanda had probably been the weakest player of the legendary “Magnificent Seven” girls basketball team ten years ago, but she’d made up for her weakness as a player by developing a superb understanding of the nuances of the game. That made her a damn good coach, as well.

“Sure thing,” the big young woman said. “Becca, you see what you did wrong? You were dribbling with your right hand, and that gave Lyle a wide open shot at a steal.”

“Yeah, cripe,” the teenager said. “That was pretty dumb of me, wasn’t it?”

Brandy walked over to Hekkinan. “You want to go sit down in the shade someplace?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, “and maybe we ought to be by ourselves, too.”

There was an umbrella table with four chairs sitting over behind the house, close enough to keep an eye on what was going on, but far enough away that no one was likely to hear them talking if they kept their voices down. The two of them sat down in the shade. “So, Coach,” Brandy said, “what brings you over this way?”

“Well, Brandy,” he replied, getting right down to the point, “I’ve got a favor to ask of you.”

“And I’ll bet it’s the favor I’m expecting,” she sighed.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Hekkinan admitted. “You heard Payne resigned yesterday afternoon, didn’t you?”

“Of course I heard about it. The kids were all full of it this morning. Good riddance, too.”

“I expected you to say that,” Hekkinan smiled. There was no love whatsoever lost between Brandy and Bryson Payne, the high school principal until the day before. There were seven state championship trophies in the display case in the foyer of the high school, and Brandy had her fingerprints well and truly on every one of them. The first was the State Girls’ Softball Championship, way back in 1982; she had made a crucial unassisted double play in the last inning, and then belted a three-run homer out of a pitch intended as an intentional pass, to snatch victory from the jaws of almost certain defeat. That made Brandy something of a school legend by itself, but she’d surpassed it with six basketball state championships as a coach – four coaching girls’ teams, and two coaching the boys. But when Payne had come on board as principal after Hekkinan retired, his sense of propriety had been seriously offended by having a woman coaching something as important as a boys’ sport. The weight of six trophies in the display case – one had come later – hadn’t been enough to keep him from shoving her out of coaching the boys when the high school athletic association had pushed girls’ basketball from fall to winter two years before. That had something to do with why the previous year’s state runner-up boys’ team hadn’t made it out of the second round of the playoffs a few months later. The action burned a lot of butts around town, and no one had felt more burned about the deal than Brandy.

“I’m not sorry to see him gone, either,” Hekkinan continued. “That solved a number of problems for me, but it created some, too.”

“I’ve been doing a little thinking about it. The boys’ basketball team isn’t back where it should be, but Amanda’s husband is getting a handle on it.” The boys’ basketball coach who had tried to impose an unnecessary change on a working system had decided he didn’t need any more of the kind of abuse that had resulted, and Ron Mykelhoff had picked up the pieces. He’d had no little help from Amanda, which also led to a romance and marriage last spring.

“That was pretty close to my thinking,” Hekkinan admitted, “but it’s not something that’s concerning me right now. Look, up until three weeks ago I was retired. I didn’t want to come back to work as interim superintendent, but someone had to clean up the mess that has been made in the last few years. Now that I’ve had the chance to think about it, I guess I’m the right someone.”

“If it’s any help, I thought so too,” Brandy said. “In some respects DeRidder wasn’t that bad, but he let Payne get away with murder. I was real pleased when John Archer pulled that fast one on DeRidder to get him out of here.”

“I thought it was a little on the cute side myself,” Hekkinan admitted, “but it had to be done and it worked.”

When the dust settled after the new board was seated, Archer was the new board president and final approval of DeRidder’s contract extension wasn’t even on the agenda. What replaced that item was the hiring of an interim superintendent, and Hekkinan had already unofficially agreed to take the job, but for a limited period – he was retired, after all.

“I was a little disappointed,” Brandy said. “I’d hoped John was going to bounce Payne right out of there after him.” John was a long-time friend, and perhaps the only person in town who disliked Payne more than she did.

“He would have liked to,” Hekkinan said. “In fact, nothing would have made him happier. The only problem was that Payne still had a year on his contract. John would have liked to boot him, but it would have involved paying off his contract, which is sixty grand the board doesn’t have. Then Payne shot himself in the foot by getting busted for drunk driving, and it turned out he had two priors. The board was getting set to can him over the morals clause in the contract for that, plus falsifying his records. That was on the agenda for a week from Monday, but I guess Payne finally saw the handwriting on the wall.” Hekkinan had heard little bits and pieces of things that told him there was more to it than that, but he didn’t know enough to say anything about it.

“Getting canned for that sure wouldn’t have looked good on his résumé,” Brandy observed. “Darn.”

“Well, yeah, but he’s out of here without bloodshed, and that’s the important part,” Hekkinan told her. “Look, back when John approached me about taking over as interim superintendent, he had a list of six things he wanted to get accomplished as board president. Mind you, I agreed with every item on his list. Planting his boot mark on DeRidder’s backside was the first item on the list, and doing the same to Payne was the second. Those were the simple things, and they’re done. The rest isn’t going to be easy. The third item is cleaning up the football mess, which doesn’t mean getting a winning team, but getting football into perspective in the school. To quote John, ‘Education and teamwork have to come first, rather than turning a bunch of little tin gods loose on the school.’”

“He’s gone a long way toward clearing that up by getting Payne out of there,” Brandy smiled. “Payne was part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

“I couldn’t agree more, but that’s not all the problem. I always thought Johansen let the kids run a little wild. It wasn’t something I would have done when I was football coach, but Weilfahrt made Johansen look like a disciplinarian. Between Weilfahrt and Payne, all too many of the football players have turned into bullies with no fear of discipline since they knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

“No shit,” Brandy said. “It might not have been quite as bad if they could have had a season better than two and seven, but some of those kids were way out of line, and nothing ever happened to them. They didn’t have the slightest knowledge of what it meant to be a team; all they wanted to do was to throw their weight around.”

“Right,” Hekkinan agreed. “There was only a limited amount I could do to stop it when I was principal, and of course that went out the door when I left. Now, getting back to John, he’s no fan of Weilfahrt, but the two board members who joined him in the boycott did so with the stipulation that Weilfahrt is out of there as well. So that makes him an item on the list. The problem with that is that under school policy I have very little authority to fire Weilfahrt myself, unless it turns into a morals issue or something like that. He answers to the Athletic Director, which since we can’t afford one anymore means the high school principal.”

“If I were the principal I’d have his ass out of there so fast there’d be a sonic boom before he hit the door, and not just because John wants it,” Brandy snorted. “What an asshole. He’s a perfect example of what high school sports are not supposed to be all about.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Harold smiled, going in for the kill. “The question, then, is not ‘would you’, but ‘will you?’”

“Sure,” Brandy said, then hesitated for an instant when the implications hit her. “Hey, wait a minute!” she exclaimed. “Are you asking me to be the high school principal?”

“Darn straight I am,” Hekkinan smiled. “It’d have to be on an interim basis until all the personnel hoops get jumped through, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and I can’t think of anyone better. First, because in spite of being one of the best coaches in the state, you put education in front of athletics, every time. You understand what the perspective is supposed to be, and that’s something John was very clear to me about. Second, Weilfahrt still has his partisans, and there’s absolutely no one in town who’s going to deny it. You are tremendously respected in this town, at least partly because of the trophy case, so there aren’t many people who are going to make waves for very long when you show him the door. Third, you have a well-deserved reputation for not taking shit from anyone. Fourth, you’re a local. You know the traditions, the people, the sticking points, and where the bodies are buried. And finally, you don’t need the job. I don’t know how well off you are, Brandy, but there’s no one in town who thinks you’re putting in your thirty because you need the retirement check. Add it all up, you’re the one person who can tell the school and the community the old days are over with and make it stick when you sit down in the principal’s chair.”

“God, I never thought about it like that,” Brandy said, a little dazed at the idea. “I’ll tell you what, I’ve often thought about some things I’d do if I was the principal, and cracking down on student discipline is one of them.”

“That happens to be the fourth item on John’s list,” Hekkinan smiled. “By the way, the fifth is returning the schools to quality education, and the last is getting us back on a sound financial footing, and that’s probably going to be the tough one the way the state is jerking all the schools around on state aid. It’s probably going to be what I’m going to be spending the majority of my time on, and it’s the big reason I didn’t want the interim superintendent job in the first place. For the record, when John asked me I put him off on it, but then he had Ryan Clark twist my arm about it. I’ve known Ryan for approximately forever, and I couldn’t tell him no. But I got a promise for the return of some support from Clark Plywood and the Donna Clark Foundation as a big part of my price. It won’t be a return to what we had before Payne and DeRidder pissed him off; it’ll be down because of the economy, but at least it’ll be something.”

“Got your arm twisted pretty good, huh?” she smiled.

“Well, I did some arm twisting back while I was able,” Hekkinan grinned.

“You’re going to back me on student discipline, right?” she asked.

“Within the limits of the established rules,” the superintendent said. “You have to remember that what Payne did to piss off John Archer was to step over that line. That cost us a hundred thousand dollars in damages and six hundred thousand in contributions, but with DeRidder and Payne gone I think John has his pound of flesh, and right out of their backsides.”

“The rules are all right if they’re just followed,” she said, “but I’d have to have a free hand in dealing with kids like that goddamn Frenchy LeDroit and his asshole buddies.”

Hekkinan got a big grin on his face. “It turns out that LeDroit isn’t going to be your problem, at least not for a while. Just before I headed over here, I had a little bird call me from outside Judge Dieball’s courtroom. Frenchy is going to have three hots and a cot over at the county jail for the next seven months.”

“What the hell?”

“Frenchy got busted for assault yesterday, and made the mistake of mouthing off to Judge Dieball at the preliminary hearing today. Maybe that’ll teach him a lesson, although I doubt it. I really doubt he’s going to be a problem for the school again.”

“Hey, that’s almost as good news as Payne being out of here,” Brandy smiled. “How about those buddies of his, Effingham and Coopshaw?”

“Probation, community service, and a ban from extracurricular activities until both are completed, which means another year. By then they should be out of the schools entirely. They also got slapped with personal protection orders that state if they get personal with any of about half a dozen different kids they’re looking at time in the slammer, too.”

“Look, Coach,” Brandy grasped at a straw, “I’m not going to be able to do this and teach math, too.”

“Not a problem,” Hekkinan smiled. “Crystal Elsasser is state certified as a secondary math teacher, although she hasn’t done it in the classroom much. She was going to be laid off if we couldn’t come up with a position for her.”

“How about coaching? Can I still do that?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Hekkinan smiled. “You’d have to ask the athletic director, which would be you. I would point out that I gave up coaching football when I took the principal’s job and tried to keep my fingers off the football team. Looking back, that may have been a mistake, but I had enough else on my plate to keep me busy. But that’s advice, not an order, and nothing you have to settle for a few months, anyway.”

“I get a free hand, right?”

“Pretty much. I want a good faith effort to accomplish John Archer’s goals, and I want you to stay within the rules. Beyond that, I’m going to have enough on my desk that I don’t need to be sitting at yours.”

Brandy looked at him silently for a moment, and looked over at Amanda working with the kids in the driveway. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll give it my best shot, at least till we get things back under control. When do I start?”

“How about Monday?” Hekkinan suggested. “That’ll give Payne enough time to get his shit out of the office. There’s no point in heading over today and starting a pissing match, and it’ll give me some time to get the paperwork ball rolling.”

“Good enough,” she sighed. “Maybe when things settle down I can go back to teaching math.”

“Could be,” Hekkinan smiled noncommittally. He wasn’t about to mention it now, but he was still the interim superintendent for the next year, maybe two. But when he finally retired again, he had a damn good candidate for a replacement sitting across the table from him. A couple years in the principal’s job and she’d be ready . . .

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