By the time Brandy got out to the dog barn with subs and lemonade from the sub shop it was getting hot. Well, it was August and she knew she should be expecting hot, but this was getting ridiculous.

Fortunately, there was a little breeze blowing, and it was blowing from the shady picnic table toward the dog barn, which in spite of almost continual cleanup smelled a bit at the best of times, and more than a bit in this heat. “The dogs don’t want to do much in this heat,” Phil commented as he sat down at the picnic table, “and I for one can’t blame them too much. So how was your first morning as principal?”

“It could have been worse,” Brandy said, and summarized the morning. “I’ll say this much, I have to thank those kids for having their party Saturday. It gave me a solid gold excuse to fire Will-Fart, I mean, for something beyond being an incompetent jerk.”

“You have to take the breaks where you can get them,” Phil smiled, “and that was a lucky break in more ways than one.”

“No shit,” she said. “At least with that issue out of the way I can go looking for some other coaches. Rick is still with us, and I stopped off on the way over and told Danny what’s coming down, and he’s still with us. I suppose the next step is to talk to Josh.”

“You might want to think about that one a bit,” Phil counseled. “I mean, not that I don’t think Josh would do it, but he’s on the school board, too. If he’s a coach, well, it might be a conflict of interest on his part if it comes down to a board shootout.”

“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said reflecting on the wisdom of his statement. Was she ever glad she had Phil to bounce these ideas off of! “Maybe I’d better not ask him at all.”

“You could probably get away with him helping out as a volunteer or something,” Phil added. “After all, you were going to have him just concentrating on conditioning, anyway.”

“Could be,” Brandy said. “I think I’ll sit on it until tonight, anyway, and maybe I can bounce the idea off John in the afternoon to see what he thinks, well, politically speaking.”

“I know you wanted to look like you were surprised by all this,” Phil said, “so you might want to spend a little time calling around to see if you can find someone who knows high school coaching a little, at least to make it look like you’ve been surprised. You might be able to find someone who would make for a competent assistant in the process.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she sighed. “It’s not like I don’t have anything else to do today, but I didn’t expect Battle to get into the picture. That makes it more political than I hoped it would be.”

“Call Anissa,” Phil suggested. “She might know of someone from some other school, she keeps an eye on that kind of thing. And besides, she’s really the one you want to convince that this came as a surprise, anyway. You know she’s going to be writing this up for the Record-Herald. It could well be the lead story. That might get a few people on your side.”

“Not a bad idea,” Brandy said. “I sure don’t want to bring in anyone who’s been a Marlin player in the last few years, as they’re too likely to be full of Will-Fart’s bullshit. At least we’re not going to need a whole herd more, just one or two if Ron Mykelhoff will help out.”

“You’re going to go through with it, then?”

“I about have to,” Brandy sighed. “Especially after what I told Will-Fart and Georgette Kempa this morning, and not that I didn’t want to, anyway. It has to be done if we’re going to show we mean business.”

It took all morning for Judge Dieball to work through the collection of minor in possession cases resulting from the Saturday night party, a total of twelve boys and fifteen girls out of the forty-three facing charges. Only one, Michelle Battle, had pleaded not guilty to the charges, and it was clearly at the insistence of her father. That cleared out a lot of the underbrush, and was going to leave the courtroom a lot emptier for the afternoon. That was, no small thing on a day as hot as this one was likely to be; the courthouse air conditioning was good, but it wasn’t really capable of overcoming such a large crowd.

Eddie Awkerman hadn’t been present in the crowd in the morning; he was still being held in the jail since a bond hadn’t been set yet. He hadn’t heard much about what had happened in the morning, except that the limited amount of jail scuttlebutt seemed to say that most of the kids facing single charges had pled guilty.

There was no way Eddie was going to do that, not with all the more serious charges he was facing. Those included forty-three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, minor in possession, assault for the fight with Johansen and assault on a police officer for a swing and a miss he’d taken on Cody Archer, and disorderly conduct. They also included fleeing and eluding a police officer, which he figured had been thrown in on general principles.

As soon as he’d sobered up enough to think about it in the smelly and puke-stained drunk tank, Eddie had realized he was up to his ass in trouble. What’s more, he remembered Frenchy in court on Friday, and that the big reason that Frenchy was doing seven months was that he’d mouthed off to the judge, and that he hadn’t been smart enough to call in a lawyer. When the offer had been made on Sunday for the county to provide an attorney, Eddie had hopped on it about as quickly as he could.

It had Sunday afternoon before Pat Roberts could meet with him in an isolation room in the jail. Roberts quickly got the whole story out of him, the decision to hold the party, the run up to Lame Badger’s to get the beer, and everything that had happened that evening. Once they were through that, Roberts got serious with him. “I’m not going to be able to get you off on this. From what I can see, every one of the charges against you is justified, and all of them together could get you sent to the Department of Corrections.”

“Oh, God,” Eddie said. “All for a little beer party?”

“All for a very illegal beer party, which you were the main instigator of,” Roberts shook his head. “However, I think we can probably get you out of getting sent to the state prison, and no promises, maybe not much jail time. Here’s the deal. Some of these charges are, well, not bullshit, but piling on. A lot of the kids who got arrested for minor in possession could have also been charged with fleeing and eluding, at least, but they weren’t. Since the sheriff has them dead to rights on the minor in possession charges, if they have any sense they should just plead guilty, accept the slap on the wrist, and get on with their lives. The sheriff knows that if fleeing and eluding was added onto the charges, a lot of those cases would go to a jury trial, even though the fleeing and eluding charges are something of a reach. The thing of it is, trials over something that vague are expensive in both time and money. It takes time to seat a jury, and time to hold a trial. So it’s easier to just not bother.”

“Makes sense,” Eddie had nodded. “But how does that apply to me?”

“Well, you’re going to trial, unless you plead guilty. You don’t stand much chance in front of a jury, and you probably would get convicted on most if not all of those charges, and really, Judge Dieball doesn’t have much choice but give you a sentence that would send you to prison. But if you plead not guilty I can go to the prosecutor and ask him if he’ll drop some of the charges in exchange for a guilty plea. That would avoid all the expense and trouble of holding a trial, so we can strike some kind of a bargain. I can’t say what the sentence would be because I don’t know, but it would be less than it would be if you lost the case in front of a jury. It’s what’s called a ‘plea-bargain’ and really is your only hope.”

“How about my buddy Scotty Parsons? I talked him into helping me. He didn’t buy the beer, we just used his truck for a cooler.”

“That’s a different issue. I haven’t talked to him yet but I’m going to tell him about what I just told you. If he agrees to a plea-bargain, I may be able to take your statement to the prosecutor and get a somewhat more reduced sentence. And if it goes to trial you may have to testify for him.”

Thus it was that when Eddie was the first person to stand in front of the judge that afternoon, wearing orange jail coveralls, he entered a plea of not guilty.

“Very well,” Judge Dieball replied, knowing exactly what was going on even though he hadn’t talked to Eddie or Pat about it. “Your case will come to trial at nine o’clock on the morning of Wednesday, October 13, of this year. Bond is set at $5,000, payable to the clerk of the court.”

After a fast negotiation with the bail bondsman and a check written by Eddie’s very sour father, Eddie was able to get out of the jail uniform and put on the messy clothes he’d been wearing on Saturday night. The first step out of the jail into the hot afternoon was a real breath of fresh air, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to be there again, although it seemed unlikely he’d escape it.

“What the hell were you thinking of?” his father asked rather angrily. “Whatever it was, you got your ass deep in trouble over it.”

“I wanted to be team captain,” Eddie explained. “That’s sort of how it’s been done the past few years.”

“You mean the last few years the team captain is the one who provides the beer for the beer party?” his father snorted. “What a sack of shit! No wonder the team can’t get off their collective dead asses. The team captain is supposed to be someone who’s respected for their skills and sportsmanship, not a payback for being bribed with beer.”

“Well, yeah, I understand that,” Eddie said, “but that’s the way it’s been done.”

“Well, you’re not going to be team captain,” his father huffed. “I guess I should let you play while you’ve got the chance, at least if the coach will let you play with all the shit you’ve got stacked against you. But if they try to elect you captain, you will turn it down. If you don’t, you’re not going to be playing, and that’s that.”

“I don’t think there’ll be any problem with Coach Weilfahrt letting me play,” Eddie replied, very disheartened to see what he’d gone to all the trouble for get blown apart. “He’s pretty cool about stuff like that.”

“There’s a minor problem in that,” his father said. “Will-Fart got his ass canned this morning.”

“Fired? Coach Weilfahrt?” Eddie replied, further crestfallen.

“He’s not going to be the coach any longer, and from what I hear, mostly because he let kids get away with stuff like you pulled. Good riddance, too. I always thought he was a horse’s ass, and I guess this proves it. It’s just too goddamn bad that you had to be the one burned on the deal. I’d love to see his ass in court over it, but I don’t suppose that’s going to happen.”

“Well, no doubt it still needs work,” Alan summed up an hour or so later in his living room.

Along with Summer, Jack, Vixen, Lyle, and Ashley, he had been playing the more-or-less completed modules of the game for a couple hours, and it really hadn’t gone very well, partly because only Alan and Summer were gamers, and even then they didn’t have that much experience. That meant that he and his girlfriend had to teach the other four the basic principles of role playing games, and then coach everyone through the moves while they tried to play parts of the game themselves. Worse, although the modules they were trying were done enough to try out, working with them meant bringing in information that would have been generated in other, not yet completed parts of the game.

“I can see how it could be fun when you get it done,” Lyle commented. “But it’s a long way from done.”

“Yeah, it sure is,” Ashley agreed.

“Well, it’s still been valuable,” Alan sighed. “I think Summer and I learned a lot about what we need to do next, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes us a while. We have to build a few more interconnecting modules, especially basic ones, for the game to make much more sense.”

“Maybe in a month or so we could try it again,” Summer suggested, “but for now, it’s pointless to try to press on much further. Thanks a lot, everyone. You’ve all been a big help.”

“Well, it kept us inside and in the air conditioning,” Jack shrugged. “Vixen, I suppose we could go back to sticking map sections together.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I can see how it’s going to be useful, but it’s a pain in the butt. How about if we take a run out to the pond and go swimming?”

“That could be fun,” Summer smiled. “If Alan and I don’t do something like that, we’re just going to be sitting around here and picking away at this mess.”

“What pond is this?” Lyle asked. “Don’t you just go down to the beach if you want to go swimming?

“Not if we can help it,” Vixen said. “The beach is all right for a quick cold dip, but we know this pond back in the woods that’s warm enough to stay in for a while. Jack, Alan, Summer, and I have been out there a few times. There’s nobody around to bother us, no football players coming by to make crude remarks.”

“It sounds like fun,” Ashley said. Even at a private pond, this gang wouldn’t be the company she would want present to reveal the micro-bikini she’d been wearing earlier, but if she could find out where it was it might be a place where she could wear it for Lyle sometime in the future. “What do you think, Lyle?”

“I’ll go if you want to,” he smiled, obviously interested in the idea of seeing her in a swimsuit.

“I have no problem with it,” Jack said. “But the last half mile or so into the place is pretty much four wheel drive only. I can’t get all six of us in the Jeep, especially with a cooler and some extra gear.”

“No problem,” Summer said. “I know the way out there pretty well by now. I could take everybody but you and Vixen, and meet you at the turnoff. You could make a couple trips to ferry everybody back to the pond.”

“Yeah, that’d work,” Jack said.

“I’d have to run home and find a swim suit,” Ashley said. She had several, from conservative up to the micro-bikini, and rarely wore any of them in public. She could take one that was moderate and still turn Lyle on with it a little.

“Yeah, me too,” Lyle said.

“Why don’t the two of you go and get them, then meet us back here in half an hour?” Summer suggested. “We’ll go get some ice and some pop while we’re waiting for you. That’ll give Jack and Vixen enough time to get their suits and drive out there.”

“Sure, sounds like it’ll work,” Ashley said. This had to be the pond the four of them had been talking about Friday, when she’d envied them so much for having friends to hang out with. Well, now she had some too. She and Lyle might not get to do the making out she’d hoped to get in today, but having friends was almost as good and it might even be a step in the right direction with Lyle.

An hour later the six of them were out at the pond, wearing swimsuits and splashing in the water, playing grabass like kids do. Ashley thought that her rather conservative bikini might be a little risqué for the public beach as heavy as she was, but Lyle didn’t seem to mind and neither did any of the others. Lyle looked, well, Lyle looked big, and without much on in the way of clothes he proved to be a lot more muscular than she’d thought. And she soon discovered he was – in the process of fooling around, at one point he’d grabbed her by the waist, picked her up and lifted her over his head before dumping her screaming in the water. “Holy shit,” she said when she came up for air. “Lyle, I never thought you could pick me up at all. I weigh 220 pounds, for Christ’s sakes.”

“No big trick,” he smiled. “I have to do something to work out or I’ll get even heavier. Since I can’t run or do anything like that, I lift weights.”

“Wow,” she said, thoroughly impressed. “I have a big strong boyfriend! Somehow I didn’t think about that.”

“Well, that means I have a big girlfriend I don’t have to worry about breaking if I touch her,” he grinned. “I guess maybe that means we make a pretty good pair.”

They played around in the water a little more, then found a shady spot up on the shore, where the six of them talked about college plans, hobbies, people they knew, and things like that – just becoming friends. It felt awful good to Ashley to have real friends, not just telephone friends. Maybe this next year would be different.

The phone had continued to ring in Brandy’s office much of the afternoon. Refreshingly, not all the calls were negative – there had been several supportive comments, mostly from parents who had been of the opinion that Weilfahrt had been on the wrong track. They came at a good time, when Brandy had been getting a little burned out from all the uproar.

She was thinking about knocking off for the day, going home and yanking the phone out of the wall when her desk phone rang again. “Hi, Brandy, Rick Kulwicki,” she heard when she answered it. “I thought I’d let you know that I’ve been hearing some static down here about you firing the old coach, but I’m also hearing people say it’s good that he’s out of there, maybe we can win some games.”

“Good,” she said. “Getting some positive response is going to be important.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I’ve even had some people suggest that I call you up and offer my services to be coach or to help out. In fact, the people out front think that’s what I’m doing back here in my office.”

“Good,” she said again. “I thought that sitting on that word for a while would have a positive spin, and it’s good to see I’m right.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking about it,” he said, giving Brandy a severe case of the Uh-Ohs. “I mean, not trying to fault your brother or anything, but we’re definitely going to be weak on the offensive side, and I got to wondering if I could do that good a job.”

“I’m sure you can handle it,” she said. “It is high school football, after all.”

“Well, I’m really not all that sure,” he said, “but I got to thinking about it, and when I got a few minutes I decided to call up an old friend of mine. I used to play with him in college, and he went several seasons as a halfback for the Rams. It turns out he has a cabin over by Walsenberg, and he’s sitting over there all retired and bored. He’s willing to help out as an assistant, strictly as a volunteer, like I am.”

“Wow!” Brandy said. “I mean, no shit wow! Thanks, Rick!”

“He’s not going to be able to come over every day, but I think he can be a big help.”

“Anything would be a big help,” she said. “I’m not going to be able to get as much out of one guy as I’d hoped, and I’d planned on asking the basketball coach tonight to help out a little. He doesn’t know much about football but he at least knows the kids’ names. Is this friend of yours someone I would have heard of?”

“Well, maybe, if you follow football,” Rick said. “Mitch Reardon.”

“Mitch Reardon?” Brandy exclaimed, seeing a lot of problems vanish at once. “You got him as an assistant coach? Holy shit! I mean, holy shit!”

“He was a hell of a college player back in the day,” Rick explained. “He didn’t exactly set the world on fire as a pro, mostly played second string, but he had a hell of an offensive power when we were in college. You don’t mind my asking him, do you?”

“Hell no, that’s great,” Brandy exclaimed. “Having you and him on board ought to go a long way toward ending all the shit I’ve been getting about firing Weilfahrt.”

“Like I said, he’s not going to be able to be full time, and maybe not the full season, but he ought to get things going on the right track.”

“I sure hope so. Can you have him over for practice tomorrow afternoon?”

“Sure thing, he’s already said he’ll be there, to give me some moral support if nothing else. You’re still going to have the hard part, you know.”

“I know,” Brandy sighed. “I said I’ve got your back on this, and I do. There’s going to be some static, but I’ll be the one to take it.”

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