Writers Guild of America

The black-clad shapes moving through the heavy canopy could sense that it was almost over, Halliday thought. You just don’t give up, do you? I’ve been eighteen months in this amazing bloody, beautiful country of yours and you don’t give up. Well neither do I.

He tapped the shoulder of last member in the Battalion command post still firing at the advancing Viet Cong. “Corporal, keep firing and keep your head down like you never did before. I’m calling in Artie.’

The young soldier looked him in the eyes for a long moment and said,” Yes sir, I understand. Let‘s take ‘em with us.” Halliday nodded and slapped him on the back as he grabbed the field radio.

“ Alpha Bravo, Alpha Bravo, fire on our position, repeat, fire on our positions, we’re being overrun. I haven’t got time to play games, God damn it, this is Halliday. We’re bring overrun.”

He threw the radio into the dirt and picked up an M 16 from a dead Sergeant and opened up on the VC who were emerging from the jungle, firing as they came. He dropped four before he ran out of ammunition and reached for his .45 caliber sidearm when the grenade fell five feet from him. His finger locked on the trigger as Corporal Kirkpatrick grabbed the grenade and was in the act of throwing it back when it went off taking out a large part of his chest. Halliday grabbed his face and arm simultaneously as the first rounds of American artillery fire ripped the laterite earth.

He looked up at the hospital ceiling as if it held answers to a question he had thus far refused to answer. He turned his head and winced at the pain in his right eye and surrounding area. It’s taking a long time to heal, he thought as the advancing senior officers stopped at his bed.

Major General Darby O’Bannion smiled and saluted. Halliday, eye bandaged and arm in a sling, came to an upright sitting position

“Good to see you “Nails,’ nothing but glad tidings. First, you’ve been recommended for the Medal of Honor, second, you’ve been jumped two grades, congratulations Brigadier, you sent a lot of Charlies to their ancestors and gave us enough time to clobber half the 25th Viet Cong Regiment.

The president is going to present the medal and pin on the stars in two weeks. From buck assed private to General Officer, some jump and now the army is yours. You’ll get your own brigade soon and you’ve earned it.” O’Bannion smiled, “I’m told you’ll get most of the vision back in your right eye and will regain full use of that arm.”

O’Bannion held his grin as now Brigadier General Frank “Nails,” Halliday digested the information. He smiled ruefully for a moment. “You know, the army has been my life. I was an orphan and the army became family. Almost thirty years and I’ve seen and done it all. But I’ve had it John, no more gunships, M 16’s, body counts and troopers dying with their eyes open. I don’t know what’s gonna happen but it’s time to say “Sayonara.”

O’ Bannion looked genuinely upset, “Are you nuts, what the hell are you going to do on civvy street? Admittedly you’ve been through a lot but the army is everything to you, wife and mistress. Think this over “Nails,” when you’ve had a little time back in the states.”

Halliday nodded, “It would take an act of congress for me to change my mind, but I’ll think it over. Would you do me a small favor? Would you give me the name of Corporal Kirkpatrick’s folks and their home address? I’m putting him in for the Silver Star and want to present it myself. He held them off just long enough for us to send them to their ancestors.”

O’Bannion nodded, “Whatever you want Nails, you’ve got the Medal of Honor, that’s better than being president. I’ll tell you one thing though, Vietnam veterans aren’t entirely welcome in some quarters back in the states. You won’t believe some of the things that have happened. Some how we’ve become the enemy, the bad guys. Whatever happened to honor and service to country? Maybe you’re right, maybe you can start over but I sincerely doubt it. Remember we’ve always got a place for Medal of Honor winners if you find the climate inhospitable out there.

He stepped back, saluted and shook Halliday’s hand. “You’re one helluva soldier, Nails, and its been an honor serving with you.” The other officers saluted as well, turned, left the room and started down the long hospital ward with its rows of deeply tanned young Americans in clean white beds., Halliday stared at the ceiling again for a while and went into a restless, dream filled sleep from which he awoke with a start, covered in sweat. He reached for a couple of pills he’d secreted in his bedside drawer. A veteran Army nurse watched him and pursed her lips but said nothing. “You paid a terrible price for that medal, General,” she thought and turned away.

Two months later in in the full dress uniform of a Brigadier General, Halliday approached an airport car rental desk, asked for and got a mid sized car. He opened it, threw his bags into the trunk, got in, started the engine and headed for “Winsome,
Michigan” for a medal presentation of a different sort.

“Wonder what she’ll be like and how she’ll respond. It’s a small comfort but at least I’m making the effort. From what I’ve seen thus far there will be repressed tears and an attempt at bravery. A mother’s bravery. A patriot’s bravery. But at what price, Will she keep his room intact, make a mini-shrine of it? How long will it take to accept the fact that her fine Corporal son will never come back from a place 12,000 miles from here? It sure as hell will be a closed casket ceremony if there is one. God help her.

But after that, what? You haven’t a clue and O’Bannion was right, the whole country seems to be on fire. Saw where a good union man, a wire lather, punched his anti-war son in the face. Is this to be our legacy? He loosened his tie, something he had never done while on active duty, looked in the rear view mirror and adjusted the patch over his eye.

Slowly he headed into farm country and rolling hills. The sense of peace was unreal and he felt out of place and time. The American panorama became more pronounced as he head for the Upper Peninsula, a ruggedly beautiful area of lakes and forests, some of which were showing signs of deterioration due to acid rain. He passed areas of denuded trees and was puzzled. “Why would we use Agent Orange in this country, that stuff is murder?” he thought.

At dusk he passed a sign declaring, “Winsome, Michigan, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damned world.’ his face broke into a lopsided grin. He turned and briefly stared at the boxes holding the “Silver Star” and the Purple Heart, rubbed his hands over both medal cases and began a slow journey through the once pretty town which now shows signs of deterioration.

Several storefronts were boarded up and a group of able bodied men lounged outside a diner. The idlers looked intently in his direction and some nudged others to do likewise. They continued to stare as he drove up the street to the Majestic Hotel, which, like the town, looked tired..

Halliday emerged, unlocked the trunk, picked up his bags and entered through an archway that needed painting, rang an old fashioned bell on the front desk and when no one appeared, headed toward the sounds of a jukebox playing 60’s rock music. The bartender was wiping a glass when he looked up and immediately stiffened to attention. His right hand involuntarily snapped to a salute when he realized what he had been doing and lowered it sheepishly.

Halliday smiled, “Relax soldier, we’re both out of it now.’ But he returned the salute.

Oscar Pederman grinned. “ You had me there for a minute General, I only got back from Nam eleven months ago.” Without thinking he asked the first thing that came to his mind, “What are you doing in a town like this?”

Halliday sat on a bar stool and looked at a thin array of bottles. “First I’ll have a Black Label on the rocks, with a local beer back, then we’ll talk.”
Pederman smiled, reached to the top shelf and poured the drink into a cocktail glass and opened a bottle of the local brew. “That ought to start it General. If among those two thousand decorations I think I see a good conduct medal. You were a G.I. At one time…..” he paused and said, “ Jesus, that’s the Medal of Honor. I’ve never seen one before.’

“Take a good look, it and the uniform come off tomorrow after I perform a chore I’m not looking forward to. Do you know where Mrs. Kate Kirkatrick lives?”
Pederman nodded , “The beautiful widow Kirkatrick, sure, she lives along her beloved lake. Oh wow, you are going to see that angry lady. She lost her only kid in Nam a couple of months ago. Some jerk said he died a ‘good’ death. There are no good deaths, only good lives. Timmy was a fine young guy and should have been in college but he lost his father years ago and its been rough on them. I think I know why you’re here.”

Halliday reached for the glass, downed it in one swallow and pushed it back toward the bartender. “Yeah, but let’s keep it to ourselves, o.k.?

“My name’s Oscar Pederman, former Sergeant Oscar Pederman, and the drinks are on me, sir.”

Halliday looked at him, then at the room itself and out into the street. “Seems to me you could use the money, Sergeant, looks like this whole town could some an infusion of capital. Half of it is boarded up, quite a change from bustling downtown Saigon. Or should I mention Vietnam, seems to be a dirty word in certain quarters?”

Oscar frowned, “People don’t know what to think. Doesn’t seem that we’re winning this war and we ain’t too much for not winning. Losing Timmy shook us hard.”

Halliday’s hand tightened around the beer bottle and he took a swallow. “That’s precisely it. Guess what? We’re not going to win this thing and I for one have grown convinced that we should never have been there in the first place. Uncle Ho wanted to be buddies years ago, even fought on our side against the Japanese. Commie or not the Vietnamese don’t want any part of the Chinese. They will take their help, but they’ve been fighting them on and off for hundreds of years.

The hell with it, as I said, I have a chore to perform which I’m not looking forward to…..but the weather’s fine, the beer cold and the conversation not bad. Here’s looking at you, Sergeant, no more Vietnams and everyone lives forever.”

Pederman grinned, “General, you are one strange breed of officer. Stick around, this town has a helluva fight on its hands and both sides would love to have you on their side. We may have a mini war here next month. Let me give you the straight poop, sir.’

Pederman leaned over on the bar and for the next ten minutes held Halliday’s attention, who despite himself found the story interesting.

Afterwards Pederman picked up his gear, walked him to a ground floor room and Halliday prepared to spend the first night of the rest of his life in the strange, civilian world.

The room was circa 1940’s, clean if worn. He looked at the black and white TV set in a corner and a radio, started to unpack, stopped and reached for the local telephone directory. He thumbed through it until he found Kate Kirkpatrick’s number, dialed it and hung up after the sixth ring. He gently put the phone in its cradle and grim faced, reached for the two medal cases.

“A lot of young men have earned these Mrs. K. but young Timmy earned them the hard way. I hope these ease the pain somewhat but I sure as hell doubt it.” He put both decorations in the bedside table drawer, lay back with hands behind his head and was asleep in ten minutes.

After a breakfast, at the only local diner still operating, and where he was the total center of attention, Halliday was about to pay his check when the owner came over and said, “I’m the owner General and unless I’m very much mistaken that’s the Medal of Honor. People around here think it’s a fine thing you’re doing, going to see Kate but be prepared, she has very strong feelings about the war and Timmy was her only child. I don‘t envy you and I would like to shake your hand.”

Saying “Thanks for the kind words,’ Halliday stood and offered a ten dollar bill which was refused. He smiled tossed a half salute at the owner as the entire place watched. The proprietor snapped to attention, “1^st Marine Division, General, in the Pacific. But that was a different kind of war.” Halliday nodded and headed for the door as half the men in the room came to attention.

In the car minutes later he shook his head and surreptitiously wiped his face. “What a town, what fine people. As he took a turn at the foot of the lake he saw a canoe being paddled effortlessly. He slowed, then stopped the car, alighted and looked intently as it came within fifty feet of the shoreline.

Involuntarily he said, “Stop me if I’m wrong, but that is one beautiful thing and it looks hand made.”.

The powerfully built Chippewa Indian stopped his stroke and smiled, “Come on over to the other side of the lake, General, and I’ll make you one. Captain John Hawk, ex chopper pilot in the Delta. Now an American success story. Incidentally around here they call me Tall Tree Hawk, I’m six four in my moccasins.”

Halliday laughed, “Is everyone in this town ex-military? But let’s get back to that canoe. It is hand made, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Hawk said as he rested the paddle on the gunnels. “Went into Cherokee country in North Carolina for a conference and saw how they had made native crafts into a full time business. Two hundred bucks for baskets. My dad didn’t earn two hundred bucks a month before WWII. Got me an MBA at Dartmouth and the rest is history. Hell I’ve even got myself a two man chopper. Now its your turn.”

Halliday laughed, “I think I know how Custer felt. I’m not intent on staying long, but maybe I’ll see you later, I’ve got a chore to do.’

“Good luck with Kate, General, you are riding into the Little Big Horn. Come on over to the trading post tomorrow and we’ll eat fresh trout for breakfast.”

Halliday hesitated then finally agreed, and watched as Hawk resumed paddling. Halliday stared after him for a moment and marveled at the local grapevine.

“Does everyone in this town know where I’m headed?“

He got back into the car after a last glance at Hawk’s canoe gliding effortlessly across the beautiful, tranquil lake The water was crystalline and for just a moment he felt peace until he turned the ignition and headed for Kate Kirkpatrick’s modest bungalow a half mile north.

“Maybe it is the most beautiful lake in the whole damn world.” he thought as he pulled into her driveway. He knocked, waited and soon heard footsteps. The door opened and a beautiful woman, totally without makeup, looked at him.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Halliday was temporarily non plussed but pulled it together. “Mrs. Kirkpatrick? I was Tim’s commanding officer in Vietnam. My name is Halliday, Frank Halliday.”

She stared at him for a moment then said, “I see, please come in, I’m forgetting my manners.”

She opened the door and he entered a room where russets and gold predominated in the late morning light. There was little ornamentation but many pieces of furniture made of aged oak and pine. The living room had the faint scent of burned wood and he saw a fireplace with a small pile of ashes.

“I sit by the fire these nights. Sometimes I drink too much wine and forget to clean out the grate,” she said as she looked out the window at the lake. Please sit down, “General isn’t it, if I have my nomenclature right, Tim said you were a colonel. Sit down, please, you’ve come a long way, it must be important. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?

“ No, nothing thank you. I haven’t come too far, I was in a military hospital in Washington for a month. But yes, what I’ve got to do and say I think are important. I was with Corporal Kirkpatrick the day he was killed. He died alongside me.”

He looked at her waiting for some response, anything, but she just stared at him without showing any emotion whatsoever.

Disconcerted he began to speak. “Would you, would you like to know what happened?”

Still she stared at him without displaying one iota of feeling. “I know what happened, General, my son was sacrificed in a totally inhospitable land fighting for something he didn’t believe in against a people he genuinely liked. Can you believe anything can be so tragically stupid? My son is dead and that’s part of a madness which has gripped this country.

It seems to me we are a very warlike people, we’ve been in a dozen wars since the turn of the century. What is it in the American psyche that caused my son to bleed to death in a place nobody heard of a dozen years ago? His father was killed in a truck accident ten years ago. It was an accident, the roads were slick and he was on a blind curve. Those terrible things happen but frankly General, this is an obscenity. Will what you have to say make any sense of it, will it take the pain away, the cold rage I feel when I think I will never see him again? Are you a miracle worker, General? Can you raise the futile dead?”

Halliday continued to stare at the floor. “No maam, I’m just someone who was there when it happened. I’m not a healer and I don’t know any words of comfort. I don’t think there are any. But I have the Silver Star and the Purple Heart which he was awarded for heroism. I thought you would like to have them…that you should have them.”

He handed the decorations to her and she looked at them a long moment.” How much are these worth, General? No, let me rephrase that, you wouldn’t know. How much do you imagine it cost to make these?”

Halliday looked totally confused, then asked, “Come again?”

“Perhaps this is a better way to phrase it. How much did it cost to cast these medals? Halliday, taken aback, stammered, “I have no way of knowing.”

“ Take a guess, General. Would you say that they cost about fifty dollars apiece, a hundred for the pair. Would that be a fair guess?”

Halliday began to get the drift of her terrible questions and straightened. “I don’t know Mrs. Kirkpatrick.” She held them for a moment. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m right. A hundred dollars for the pair of them. Throw in another ten dollars for the pretty ribbons and you come one hundred and twenty and of course with inflation that will increase over the years. But no matter, our grateful government has given me a couple of hundred dollars worth of metal and cloth for nineteen years of love, pain and hope. How dare you warriors come to the grieving mother’s home with your bits of junk as some form of consolation. The obscenity continues, do you think this even begins to make anything right with your honorable warrior’s gesture?

Your values remain the same, thunder and gunfire and glory and blood every few years. Our values are changing in this country and we are damned well not going to rush into another war so that you soldiers can perfect your disgusting trade. Perhaps we are learning a terrible lesson in Vietnam. Perhaps we are coming to cherish life as the beautiful gift it is and not try to prove a point at the business end of a gun. Leave my house, General, but before you do take these, and as the kids say, shove it.’

With this the now silently crying woman threw the medals which bounced of Halliday’s chest. He bent and picked them as if some sacrilege has been committed.

“I’m so sorry, so very sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I have no children of my own, I once had the army, only the army, but it was enough.“ Suddenly he straightened. “I’ll show myself out.”

He opened the door, closed it and got into his car. Grasping the wheel he slowly lowered his head to it and stayed that way for a long moment. Kate Kirkpatrick watched behind closed curtains until he pulled away.

He alighted and went into the Majestic where again he heard the jukebox. He glanced at the clock over the bar and sat silently for a moment. Pederman had watched him from the moment he entered the room and without being asked reached for the Black Label, got a beer and put them in front of Halliday. He picked them up and downed both within thirty seconds.

He stared at Pederman for a moment and tried to make conversation despite the terrible turmoil he felt. “Is it always like this? I get the felling I’m the only one in town who drinks”.

The former Sergeant smiled, “ A lot of folks are having a tough time of it and if they do any drinking get their stuff from a liquor store and pour it down at home. Course if you are looking for company you can always go to the American Legion hall, there’s always someone there nursing a beer. They would love to see a General officer with the Medal of Honor.”

“I’m gonna’ take it off tonight and this will be the last time I ever wear it. I think I got a big stain on it today. Give me another and keep the jug close to hand.”

Pederson compressed his lips. “ I don’t mean to pry general, but I kinda figure you went out to see the widow Kirkpatrick to pay your respects and it didn’t go too well. She is the most angry woman I’ve ever known and it is sucking the life out of her. Damn that war anyway.”

“You must be psychic Oscar. About the only good thing that’s happened thus far, I met a big Indian, that would be Chippewa, if I’m not mistaken, paddling a beautiful hand made canoe. He called me by my military rank and he couldn’t have seen the stars from that distance. Is he psychic too?

“ Like everyone else Tall Tree Hawk knows why you came. This is a small town, General, and you are a major event. People think what you did was a fine thing. Young Tim was a good kid. Went a little wild after his daddy got killed but straightened out and even got a scholarship to state but he figured his country needed him and joined up. Halliday stared at his glass for a moment and Pederman continued, “ Stick around, the main event happens Monday.”

Halliday stared at the hardwood bar for a moment, “You know a helluva lot about him than I did and he died ten feet from me. He was my radioman, picked up a grenade that had my name on it and it killed him ten times over. That was all I knew.’

Pederman refilled his glass without asking, “I don’t mean to pry but everyone knows everyone around here, sometimes too well I think.”

Halliday looked at him for the first time in two minutes. “You’re not prying. I’ve never met anyone who knew him. He died bravely and what the hell is wrong with bravery? What’s wrong with fighting for your country? What’s wrong with tradition and loving this land of ours? When you lose those values your society goes right down the toilet. Have our values gone up with the gun smoke and the stink of marijuana?

Do we throw out our traditions like a used tire? What happened to honest to God patriotism and love of what we stand for. We are a fine if wounded people and we stand for something decent, something worthwhile and lasting.”

His hand made a sweeping gesture and knocked over the whiskey glass but he doesn’t notice.

“And that woman, that extraordinary woman, made me feel twisted and tawdry as if I represented something dirty. I have spent my life in service to my country and have been privileged to do so. Yet she made me feel dishonorable, what the hell is going on?

“You’re a good man, General Halliday, but your confusion is reflected all across this country and its tearing us apart. A lot of commanding officers would have felt their duty was complete when they wrote a letter expressing their condolences. But you made a long trip because you felt it was the right thing to do.

But as to what’s wrong, this country is facing up to the fact that it’s mandate is not gospel to other people and that rocks us. There’s two topics that will start an argument in this town, one is Vietnam, the other that stripping operation.

Holliday waved off another drink. “Thanks for the kind words, Oscar. A stripping operation, as in lumber operation? Are you talking about a lumber operation?”

“Yeah but the hell with it, let’s go sit on the porch, it’s what I do half the time anyway.” Both men emerged from the bar and sat on old but clean wicker furniture.

“Yeah, a logging operation. Used to be a time when this was a big tourist area in both summer and hunting season, got some good skiing too. But jet planes made the Caribbean a nearby lake. We need jobs around here desperately. All our young people are moving to Lansing or even Detroit to find work. Lumber means jobs, but lumber needs water for stripping and water and means ruining that beautiful little lake and this town and people like Kate Kirkpatrick will fight you to the death if you fool with that lake, let me tell you.”

Halliday nodded, “I’ve seen what a stripping operation can do.. It ain’t pretty and it sure as hell stinks. But I guess you have to balance that with the town dying otherwise. Tough call, glad I don’t have to make it.”

The bartender/philosopher crossed his legs, “Kate made it hers. She loves that lake and she’s one of the anti-war organizers. Newspapers and TV stations all over this region are watching this fight, things like this seem to be happening all over America. You see big malls going up all over the place and downtowns shriveling up. Big malls and small towns don’t mix, we are losing something mighty fine, General.

But you can see the drama personally if you stick around a couple of days. I guarantee you a front row seat and you will see people who’ve lived alongside each other for dozens of years hollering and screaming at each other.

“All I’ve got is time and the only invitation I’ve had thus far is from John Hawk to go fishing tomorrow. Lord, am I getting a little self pitying?”

“ Welcome home, General, you left something solid when you left the army, but come to think of it you’re still on active duty for a month or so. Anyway, this is a tidal change. In WW II we were one people and we were absolutely extraordinary. Now we’re two peoples and I don’t know as to whether we will ever get back together. You stick around and I might even consider cleaning your room.”

Pederman and raised his glass to his guest who frowned. “You’re going fishing with Tall Tree, wait ’till you see his boat.”

The next morning Halliday visited a local Army Navy store and bought what he thought were the right trappings for Winsome. As he moved into the sunlight he suddenly rubbed his eye from which he had removed the patch. A pair of old timers watched intently from the front porch and one said, “You O.K General Halliday?”

He smiled, nodded and headed for the hotel where he changed into jeans, a lumber shirt, and lace up moccasins. He looked briefly in the mirror before putting on a pair of sunglasses and headed out into the street where he immediately heard a horn blowing. He continued on thinking, “ No one here knew who I am,” then smiled ruefully, “everybody here knows who I am.” The horn sounded again and he looked to the curb where John Hawk leaned out the window of his antique truck.

“You look like a tin horn trying to look like a local, General. On closer inspection you also look a little hung over. That Oscar can certainly hold his firewater. Get in and I’ll catch us a coupla trout for breakfast and fry ‘em right on the shores of the lake.

Halliday smiled, “ All I want at this moment is a gentle, cool hand caressing my fevered brow. I won’t even ask how you know I was swapping war stories with Oscar last night, the grapevine in this town works far better than the C.I.A. Let’s go fishing and I’ll look at a canoe.”

Hawk put the old, but prime condition truck into gear and they proceeded to drive along the shore of the lake and Halliday once again was reminded that there are things that are immutable and beautiful if people don’t abuse them. He got a sense of the significance of the lake to the townspeople.

Hawk paid attention to his driving and switched on the radio which was tuned to an NPR station. The strains of Sabelius “ Finlandia” came from the speakers and Hawk took note. “A portion of that magnificence piece of music became a nation’s national anthem, as I’m sure you know. How about me calling you Frank, or even, ”Nails,” henceforth, You gotta get used to it sooner or later.”

“”Frank will do fine, enough of the macho stuff. I got the “Nails” moniker in Ranger Training. Had to be the toughest, the absolute best. Man they don’t know how many times I just wanted to lay down and say the hell with it.”

Hawk nodded and they stayed silent as the twin esthetic assaults of the lake and the music washed over them. Without thinking about what he was doing, Halliday let his head rest on the back of the seat. His eyes closed and Hawk looked at him for a moment and thought,” “Get well General because what you are going to experience hardly fits in to the term culture shock.”

Two canoes came by and Hawk raised a hand to both who raised their paddles in salute.

They arrived at a beautiful, two storied log trading post and Halliday awoke. He was impressed with the surroundings and the fact that there were already a dozen cars in the parking area despite the early hour.

He turned and looked startled as they headed for the dock. Instead of a fishing boat a two person helicopter equipped with pontoons nudged the pilings. “Man, you live well Hawk. Are those collapsible fishing poles across the seats?”

“Yeah, Vietnam hooked me onto one good thing. I love choppers, did two tours in them. Got enough to go to school and start this business. My two sons will get it all one day if Wildrose, my wife and Scandinavian minder, doesn’t have them being professors or musicians or teachers.

She is something else, let me tell ya and she doesn’t take any lip from yours truly. I’ll introduce you later, I’m playing hooky, but what the hell I keep telling myself I’m the boss although she runs it better than I ever will. I’d rather hand make canoes or go into the woods. They are part of me and my ancestors, I don’t want any outsiders coming in here with chain saws or bulldozers. I’ve bought up every acre I could get my hands on but I keep looking back over my shoulder.

These operators coming in don’t take prisoners and they have lots of cash. The Japanese demand for wood is inexhaustible and the profit motive rules this country. We’re fighting back but I’m really worried about this one. Reminds me of Nam in a strange way. A new wave and traditions going by the board.

Before this damn war is over several millions of us will have invaded that poor country. It’s the least exclusive club in the world. Many will never leave V.A. hospitals but the old men who send young men to die just don’t get it.”

They arrived at the chopper and Halliday stared in admiration. “I love these crazy things, think I can even fly this bird myself, but was never easy as a passenger in Nam unless we were way above the range of small arms. I remember one night coming back when tracers came up. The pilot laconically remarked, “Some poor lonely Charlie letting us know he’s there.” I wouldn’t describe chopper duty as a desk job. Versatile but very vulnerable. It took guts.”

Hawk smiled, as they walked toward a beautiful, hand crafted canoe. “Better than humping it with forty pounds on your back and leeches for company. Beside I was young and stupid but knew anything was better than pounding the boonies.

I knew those people were fighting for their land and maybe Uncle Ho. But I doubt that communism played that big a part in it, but nationalism sure did. They wanted their families, their rice paddies and their ancestral graves nearby. And the land, always the land, that’s what creating all the hell around here.”

They settled themselves into the canoe and started paddling and it wasn’t long before Halliday broke into a sweat. He forced a smile, “Man it’s been a long time since I did anything remotely physical other than throwing down a nightly drink or two.

For whatever reason both men stopped talking and even thinking and became part of the fragile craft. They moved in perfect symmetry, without haste, with nary a sound other than the faint rushing of the water past the hull.

At one point they entered a shallow, sand bottom area and Halliday stopped paddling to look at the mergence of old pine branches, leaves and other detritus which had been forming the bed of the lake for thousands of years. He sensed rather than thought of being a very tiny member of a far greater whole.

After an hour they returned to the trading post and went ashore after securing the canoe. Halliday stopped for a moment, “You sound bitter as hell about what is or isn‘t happening around here.”

Hawk looked across the lake, “What’s to tell?. The town is hurting for jobs, so they grasp at the first offer, a stripping plant of all insane things.. They don’t look far enough ahead to know the lumber will run out, we’ll ship it all to Japan, the land will be denuded and the lake killed, it’s body and spirit destroyed. We learn nothing.”

They fell in step and walk toward the main log building when Hawk stopped and stared at the ground. “My people have been here for hundreds of years and I’ve lived to see half this region raped. The acid rain is eating everything and folks refuse to see what’s coming. But the spirit of that lake is the spirit of my people and it, and they, are going to survive. Let’s me tell you something Nails, that lake ain’t gonna’ be turned in to a stinking swamp and you have the word of a former officer and a gentleman.. You can bet your mustering out money on it.”

Halliday’s face registered a certain amount of confusion when something approaching awareness registered. He is about to say something but Hawk interrupts. “Cheer up, it ain’t your fight.” He grinned suddenly and proceeded into the trading post. It gleamed in pine tones, the varnish had changed to deeper hues over the years. The showcases were full of native American artifacts, everything from baskets to war bonnets, from inexpensive souvenirs to hand sown moccasins, lay in profusion. The displays and lighting were attractive but Hawk hardly looked at them,. Halliday is impressed after seeing a catalog on a counter.

“Nice stuff, I’m almost afraid to look at the bottom of one of these and find, ‘’Made in Hong Kong,’ on it.”

Hawk grinned, “Eat your tongue. Every member of my family and a dozen members of our tribe contribute. Ten percent of all profits go into a scholarship fund and ten percent goes into the purchase of more land, we never stray far from the land and that lake. We farm some of it, hunt on some and replenish it. It makes us remember that the earth is sacred. It is a the pale face who really believes he owns the land, its like owning the air we breathe. We are stewards. We can also kill it but in doing so we destroy ourselves. How’s that for a little down home Indian philosophy?”

“Kill it huh, I’ve seen enough of that to last me twenty lifetimes. There’s a Hebrew word, “L chaim,” it means, “To life.” The Jews use it in toast, it’s a very good toast.”

Hawk smiled, “I like it, now come on and we’ll play with my toy.”

They left after Hawk spoke briefly to a clerk and walked behind a building where the small, pontoon rigged, helicopter bobbed gently in the chop.

Halliday nodded in appreciation, “Nice, but it sure don’t look like a Huey. Every time we flew I sat next to the pilot if they’d let me fly and I got pretty good.’

Hawk started to release a line, “C’mon, I’ll take you for your first peacetime ride.

Sorry there’s only one set of controls.”

’I’ll watch what you do. It won’t be any fun without the ground fire, but I’m game.”

Both men got aboard, Hawk went through the check list and within a minute or two he lifted the small craft over the lake.

There were an abundance of cumulus clouds and the chopper flew beneath them into shafts of sunlight. Hawk brought the “bird” to within a dozen feet of the lake and wavelets form. After twenty minutes he sets the helicopter down on its pontoons, slowed, then stopped the rotor. He reached for a tube behind his seat and urged Halliday to do the same. They withdrew collapsible rods, attached lures from a small case and fished from the open cockpit doors.

“This is really conspicuous consumption, fishing from a chopper.”

Hawk laughed, “Ten bucks says I get a bite within ten minutes.”

Halliday, “ Oh wily redman, “a bite or catch one?”

Hawk laughed aloud, “Man you catch on fast. O.K., I catch one.”

Suddenly Halliday’s line jerked and grew taught, “Beat ya to it. Now what?“ He started laughing as a very large fish fought for its life, Indeed it started to pull the chopper in its attempt to get free.

Halliday continued to reel it in as Hawk suddenly grabbed the line and hauled an enormous bass into the cockpit. It flopped desperately and both had their hands full. Hawk looked at Halliday who just looked at the exhausted fish.

“Well, what do you want to do?”

Halliday looks puzzled, “What do you mean, what do I want to do? Cook him up, I guess.”

Hawk mused, “He looks like the granddaddy of all the fish in this lake. Bet he’s spawned thousands of little ones.”

Halliday looked puzzled, “What are you getting it?”

Hawk shrugged, “I’m not sure but it seems like a helluva end for an old tiger like him.”

“Let me get this straight, you want, Halliday looked at him with his mouth open, “you want me to put him back, don’t you?”

“That’s up to you, but you better make up your mind, he looks a little weary.” Halliday looked at Hawk, then at the fish and slowly removed the hook and suspended the Bass over the lake. He reached down and released it and it lingered just beneath the surface for a moment before slowly diving to safety.

Hawk laughed aloud, “Good show, General, that fish and future generations are in your debt. Welcome to the environmentalists.“

He started the helicopter, they alighted and flew beneath the clouds and Halliday felt the first semblance of peace, to him the strangest commodity in the world.

Hawk set the bird down near the dock, they secured it and headed for his truck. Halliday shook his head, “Man what a morning, what a lifestyle. All the beauty in the world, we caught the world’s greatest fish, gave it a new lease on life and I’m genuinely hungry for the first time in months.”

Hawk started the ignition, “It’s the past time for the idle rich. Another interesting past time will be at the town meeting tonight. Why don’t you sit in, I guarantee you’ll find it interesting. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring a flak jacket.” Halliday looked at him as they drove off, expecting to see a smile but Hawk was somber faced.

“You can’t believe the depth of feelings of most of these folk, myself included. People who have been neighbors for years barely speak to each other. This is a new experience for much of small town America and they feel threatened. Hear there’s a big time p.r. firm being called into action by those that want the stripping operation. No holds barred and we aint gonna’ take prisoners.”

Halliday looked at him. “ Seems not only to be the only game in town but truly important. Oscar talked about it last night. I think I’ll come just to see what’s going on in this America. Hell, I’ve got literally nothing else to do.” Hawk turned and stared at him intently for a moment, then resumed driving.

Even as he spoke an important conference was taking place in the twelfth story offices of George Barnum, “Public and Corporate Relations.” Barnum himself sat in front of his ceiling to floor, double glazed windows and studied Cliff Hubbard, Mayor of Winsome, car dealer and current director of the Chamber of Commerce.

Hubbard wiped his face with a handkerchief for the fourth time since sitting down despite the air conditioning. His dilemma was new to him. He could sell a questionable car to an unsuspecting woman, jack up the price with truly unnecessary added features and make hundreds of exaggerated dollars with “32” point check ups which literally did nothing for the car or its driver except clear out his or her wallet. But Hubbard was being assailed by the first genuine twinge of conscience he had felt in years and his family was dead set against his political moves.

His marriage was shaky at best after that fling he’s had with the new woman salesperson. He kept searching for something in sex that kept alluding him. She’d taken him for a bundle and his wife had her suspicions. He stared at the floor as Barnum watched the “tells’ like any good gambler. Hubbard was coming apart and Barnum had an enormous stake in the paper mill’s victory, the lumber barons had hired him months ago unbeknownst to Hubbard.

He was double dipping for all his was worth and was verging on desperation what with two ex wives jacking up their demands for alimony and a girl friend with expensive tastes. Briefly he wondered what had gone wrong, but that was for the briefest moment. He watched his prey carefully.

Barnum registered Hubbard’s discomfiture and raised the ante in his mind. “Yeah, you got a problem, it’s tough but with a full bore campaign we can make it go away. It won’t be cheap but the rewards are money in the bank, jobs and a future for the town not to mention that offer the lumber folks are making you regarding new cars and trucks. You’ve got a lot riding on this personally.”

Hubbard stopped wiping his face, being a car dealer he knew a hustle when he heard one. “Look, let’s stop playing games. We’ve got a certain limited amount of money to spend and no more. You’ve got a hard assed reputation and you’ve won some. We’re small town, don’t forget it. But if you pull it off you may get a regional reputation, I hear that several TV stations are gonna’ show tonight.

We want our side explained in very human terms, jobs, families growing in Winsome, Main Street looking like it used to, a sense of pride. The whole thing revolves around that lake and the tree huggers who feel it’s the holy grail,” Hubbard surprised himself with his eloquence.

Barnum was aware of the potential if he won this one. “O.K. I’ll low ball it for now, but if it gets out of the local market, if the networks get involved, you’re going to make some tough decisions. You better get home, that meeting is tonight and I’ve got a couple of people there to raise some interesting questions about jobs and the future. We will also have press kits available for the local guys. Play it sincere, like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and you want to do the right thing. Your only thinking of the town and its future. Let me get to work.” Barnum escorted him to the door.

Hubbard went to his Lincoln. He didn’t start it immediately but sat there while he tried to bring his blood pressure down with breathing exercises.

“Where the hell did it all go wrong? he thought for the tenth time. I’ve made it from nothing, from hard scrabble. I go to church, am active in just about everything that counts in Winsome and its come to this,’ little realizing what the climb from hardscrabble had cost him in terms he hadn’t realized.

Lately he had taken to driving down to the lake and starting at it for long periods of time. He remembered his childhood and adolescent times with John Kirkpatrick, Jimmy’s dad. He had idealized him, loved him like a brother and sought his approbation at every turn then John had married Kate and he had lost the only person he had ever truly loved. It was at such moments that the unsparing truth pushed against the borders of his consciousness but he couldn’t, wouldn’t acknowledged them for the picture they painted was a distortion of the manly image he professed in his every action and manner.

They had a name for such thoughts but he refused to recognize it. He believed he loved his wife and certainly his children so how could these other, frightening images find room in his psyche? He put his head down for a moment, sobbed once, caught himself and shook it off. He started the car and made the first turn in his return to Winsome.

As was his wont, Brigadier General Frank “Nails” Halliday, USA, recently retired, arrived at the town assembly hall early. He was surprised when he discovered standing room only. There were more than four hundred people already gathered and others were arriving in droves. Most were dressed in jeans and casual clothes, many well worn. Their faces reflected time spent out of doors or long hours of worry.

They were lined, serious faces, American faces looking at a reality which was never part of the American dream. The same dilemma was being played out all across this giant and wounded nation, he thought. The whole fabric of rural America was changing for the worse and they were part of it and angry.

Halliday registered the tension in the room, there was little of the banter intrinsic to such gatherings with other agendas. What the hell, they are looking at an uncertain and troubled future. There were conversations which sometimes grew heated but others prevailed.

He noticed several local station television cameras and crews, bored, waiting, something they did most of their working days. He realized that a couple of the local reporters were staring in his direction. The last thing he sought was celebrity hood, it was absolutely the last thing he desired.

He thought for the twentieth time of Kate Halliday, of her anger and integrity and saw her speaking to several people simultaneously. She was animated, this was her fight. He also noticed several rather well dressed people handing out literature and was mildly interested. They didn’t belong to this town, they had a bigger city look and he realized that they were probably public relations types hyping something and he immediately knew what it was.

Halliday frowned, Small town, small town people and big city flacks, interesting, someone was spending money to get that stripping operation working. He remembered visiting a town which had one working and the almost overwhelming odor which emanated from the smokestacks.

He looked toward the large, curved desk which faced the room and plaques with the names of different officials and their ranks printed on them.

Kate Kirkpatrick glanced over and saw him leaning against the wall. “He’s removed his eye patch, I wonder if he has any vision in that eye. My God he may have gotten hurt the same time Jimmy died.” Her feelings were confused, pitying and angry at the same moment.

“Damn him, if only he hadn’t been so noble, if only he had been slick but he obviously meant what said. Shit, shit, shit, damn him and this terrible, terrible war” and suddenly she was crying, the tears rolling down her face. It was at that moment that Halliday saw her and the full meaning of her loss hit him.

“What was I thinking? I brought it all back and she is torn apart.’ He wanted more than anything to go to her and beg her forgiveness, the hell with the audience but he realized it couldn’t be and felt disconsolate.

It was at that me moment that council members started filing in and the hubbub started to die down. Cliff Hubbard sat in the center chair and wiped his brow. He stood up and banged his gavel for silence.

“OK folks, this is an informal meeting to clear the air a bit so there won’t be any written record but we must have some structure. We have a couple of dozen speakers’ at which point a man yelled, “a couple of hundred more’n likely,” and the audience started yelling.

Hubbard banged his hand against the table. “Please, please let’s get started, some of us have to get up and go to work tomorrow” whereupon another voice from the audience yelled, “Yeah, but half the town doesn’t have any work and these tree huggers are busy counting the beaver.”

Again there is shouting and catcalling. Hubbard lost his temper and said, “Sit down, you’re acting like a bunch of spoiled schoolchildren. Behave, act grown up, try it, you’ll like it.

The throng responded to this and he shakily reached for his pipe and lit it while he glared at them. Not seeing an ashtray he put the burnt match in his shirt pocket. Another voice shouted, “Times must be mighty hard if you’re saving burnt matches, Cliff,” and laughed at his own remark as did several others and it served to take some of the tension out of the gathering.

“Just trying to do my part in cleaning up the environment,” he said, and immediately realized his mistake.

Immediately another voice was heard, “Is that how you want to vote?”

There is an increase in noise with a dozen people yelling at the same time. Hubbard had his hands full as he banged the gavel. It quieted down after a minute and he continued.

“Let’s get her rolling, first on my list of speakers is Mike McCall, everyone’s’ favorite banker because he’s the only one left in town.’ There are a number of snickers and cat calls along with a smattering of applause but they are ignored and he continued.

‘…and a man with roots in this community. Let’s do it the democratic way and let him speak his piece without interruption,” when someone yell, “Good luck, fella,” to more laughter.”

Mike McCall rose slowly. A man of infinite self confidence, he looked over the audience for a moment before starting. “O.K. most of you know where I’m coming from. I was brought up here and spent most of my life along the shores of the lake or on it. In summers its what make this town a tourist haven and in winters in gave it a Currier and Ives feeling what with the skaters and all.

Lord knows I’ve split many a jug with some of you while we were supposed to be doing some ice fishing, strange how we always went home and slept for three hours. Must have been the cold.”

There are several guffaws as McCall skillfully established his bona fidas with his fellow townspeople.

“Well I love the lake as well as the next guy but there’s going to be no one here in the next ten years to look at it, to sail or fish on it if we don’t get some jobs in this town.”

Instantly there were cries of “No, no,” “We know where you’re coming from,” “Sell out, Sell out,” and “You got that right Mike. ‘ the audience ignited over the statement.

Hubbard jumped up, ‘Whether you like what he has to say or not he’s entitled to his right to say it. Now either we conduct this meeting with some respect for the speakers or we’ll damn well cancel…..Damn it, be quiet.”

He slammed the gavel again and again until the noise level dropped. As several Auricon camera lenses swept the room. One focused on Kate Kirkpatrick who can barely control herself, Halliday observed. He looked over to where John Hawk, his wife and sons sat immobile. Hawk is grim faced, he has heard it all before. He looked up, spotted Halliday and slowly shook his head.

Hubbard shouted, ’Go on Mike, don’t let ’em Buffalo you.”

McCall shouted, “ I was brought up here, raised a family and even my two kids have moved away. This town is dying because there’s no opportunity here and everyone damn well knows it. What the hell is the sense pf working all your life and not having your kids take up the reins?

We were a small time tourist town in the summer, the hunters shot the hell out of everything in the winter and that’s all we had and you know it. Now the tourists are in Cozumel and we’re up the well known creek.”

At this, Kate Kirkpatrick jumped to her feet.

“Can’t we change this record? I’ve heard this hogwash fifty times and you don’t even have the grace to change the phrasing. If your really give a damn about this town you should be out beating the bushes for industry that doesn’t pollute.

If that stripping plant comes here it may make your bank suddenly prosperous for a time, create a couple of dozen jobs but you will kill the lake and it will smell like a cesspool.”

With that the audience exploded with people screaming at each other. Hubbard kept banging his gavel but it was beyond his capacity to control the tempers and even rage that ran through the audience like a wild fire.

Suddenly a chair was thrown and one man punched another. Halliday is caught totally unaware as Kate is suddenly forced against a wall by a man twice her size. Another jumped on his back and they all went down in a frenzy or fists, arms and legs intent upon doing as much damage as possible. Halliday raced across the room literally hurtling over the top of two women who were rolling on the floor.

The cameras were sweeping the hall like vacuum cleaners and the footage would be all over the country in the morning shows and all over the world by nightfall. American democratic procedures were taking a pummeling along with the local citizens.

Halliday reached toward Kate as the huge man roared to his feet and threw a haymaker toward him which he ducked, slammed a foot into his instep whereupon the big assailant went down again landing on his original target, Kate Kirkpatrick.

Arm injury and all Halliday became “Nails” Halliday without realizing it and threw an arm lock on his bigger opponent who immediately rose from the floor like Moby Dick chasing Ahab. Halliday rode him for a moment and saw Kate start to rise. He slammed both cupped palms against his opponent’s ears and the other man screamed, grabbed his ears and bent over, his last mistake.

Halliday punted and the ox of a man flew straight into the wall as Kate went to her knees again.

John Hawk and his sons were in the middle of a free for all and the former Captain was throwing karate chops left and right, the Marquis of Queensbury left in a pile of bodies. Police sirens were heard in the distance as he herded his family toward an exit where people were fighting each other to get out of the way of the melee, thus adding to the insanity.

A young police officer took one look then went down under a press of people streaming into the night air. Ambulances were arriving on the scene as were State Police vehicles and a news helicopter hovered, throwing its ghastly light on running, screaming people. The coverage was caught on film and the late night news shows would lead with it. The 11 :00 o’clock news would opening Pandora’s box but nobody on the ground knew or cared.

Halliday got beneath Kate and picked her up in the fireman’s carry and headed toward another door. He saw Hawk beckon toward him as the tall Indian cleared a path and he and Kate were outside on the lawn along with fifty other people. Hawk tossed him a salute and headed for his truck, one of his son’s had a bloody nose.

Halliday laid his burden down gently and said to himself, “Welcome to America, General, these folks really know how to have a good time.” suddenly Kate reared up and hit him just above his bad eye.” Halliday pulled back, “Whoa lady, I’m the cavalry, I pulled you out of there.”

Kirkpatrick suddenly put a hand to her mouth, “Oh my God, I remember, that big lump was going to stomp me. What did I ever do to him?.”

Halliday’s mouth went open, and without thinking said, ”You probably had him singing soprano. Mrs. Kirkpatrick you may have just started World War III. This is going to be the hottest story in the country within hours. This town is going to be overrun with news types of every description and caliber.”“

Kirkpatrick realized what he was saying, “Wow, we did it. They can’t play games now. Oh, oh, I think I owe you an apology and I just slugged you. Lord, you’re bleeding. Is that your bad eye? Oh my God I’m so sorry.”

Halliday put a handkerchief to staunch the small trickle of blood. “God had nothing to do with that mess. Lady, I’m a war hero unless you haven’t noticed. Saving a Damsel in distress was a momentary aberration, I’m normally seen with grenades and flame thrower going full bore.”

That stopped her totally, “Oh you poor man, and you half blind already. What came over me? I can’t apologize enough. You were in the midst of it and you were trying to help me.”

Halliday smiled ruefully,” What ever happened to that ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ line, for that matter what the hell is wrong with this town, this is absolute madness, isn’t there enough violence and rage in this torn up world. I know feelings are intense but this is way over the line.

Those cameras caught the whole thing and believe it lady you are going to be as famous by tomorrow night as the Joan of Arc of environmentalists and you throw a mean left hook.”

“Was that what it was? But seriously, it was worth it. They can’t push this back under a rock. Come to think of it, what are you doing here?”

Halliday looked at his hankie then put it back in his pocket. “Hawk said I would see America in action.”

Kirkpatrick looked amused, “Hawk, you and Hawk, what a pair. You think I’m intense about this, spent some more time with your new friend and you will be looking to pick up a musket or a tomahawk. He is really on the warpath and some of those meatheads inside hate his guts. He is a principled man and he won’t back down. He feels this land belongs to his people and they’ve been pushed far enough. Strange, but I would have thought you would have been on the side of the bankers and commercial types and the Chamber of Commerce.”

Halliday paused, “I make up my own mind on just about everything and for your information I donate to the Sierra club, I love this land too and don’t want to see it ravaged anymore. The buck rules supreme and we are denying children their heritage. I’m conservative about some things but just because I wear a uniform doesn’t mean I can’t think for myself.

Frankly, I resent being categorized. Just may interest you to know I think you have a valid reason for the fight you’re waging but you sure as hell have a strange way of presenting your case.”

At that moment they heard still another roar from within the hall and the sound of a gavel banging, which suddenly ceased. “I guess Hubbard’s finished speaking now,” Kate observed. “Somehow I don’t think he’s going to get much cooperation. Now can we go somewhere where I can put some ice on my eye, I refuse to have a shiner administered by a beautiful woman.”

He suddenly realizes he may have made a gaff but Kate looks at him intently for a moment, “You know, that’s the first compliment I’ve heard and accepted in months. Come on general, I’ll buy you an ice pack.”

With those words a compact of sorts has been signed although neither for the life of them could figure out just what was happening. High on adrenalin they walked six blocks to an ice cream parlor cum drug store and Kate immediately went behind the soda bar, grabbed some ice out of a bin, wrapped it is a towel and returned to their table.

“I was overwrought the other afternoon and you caught me completely by surprise.I was making you the scapegoat for the whole damned war. I apologize, how can I do otherwise when you grabbed my aging carcass out of that melee and I thanked you again by slugging you? Truce General? “

“It’s Frank, or if you prefer my military sobriquet, ‘Nails‘ as in ten penny.”

“Nails, you gotta be kidding me, I put you down with one punch.’ she laughed out loud causing a stir in the shop where everyone was talking about the riot in the town hall. The more she thought about it the louder she laughed until Halliday joined her and everyone in the place was looking in their direction. He stopped for a second, ‘but or you can call me Galahad,” at which she laughed all the louder.

He removed the ice pack and the druggist came over and looked at him. “You may have a little mouse, General, but from what I hear you already have the Purple Heart and just about every other medal in the world so all I can give you is a free cup of coffee. What in the world happened in there tonight?”

“Kate Kirpatrick happened, that’s what happened” and he chuckled.

She looked intently at him, “Weren’t you wearing an eye patch when you came to town? Half the widows and spinster ladies were gunning for you the moment you went into the Imperial. Isn’t Oscar a hoot? He’s got some decorations too although he never mentions them.”

“It’s considered bad form in certain quarters to talk about what’s going on over there. Truth be told I have nothing but respect for those small, tough, gritty men and women who frequently lived underground but came up to fight us everyway they knew how and believe me they are warriors of the first rank. The French raped them, the Chinese have been invading them for hundreds of years and along we come and support those thieves in Saigon.”

“I love my country, Kate, but I believe we are going to leave with a bloody nose and a wave of uncertainty about who and what we are. The American psyche is so tuned to being in the right we will be punch drunk after this one. How we are going to get out I just don’t know but it will probably be without honor.”

She looked at himn intently. ‘I was asking about the patch.”

“Yeah, sometimes I just damn well take it off. I look like a pirate anyway and the eye is slowly healing, have about sixty per cent of its use. May never get better than that but the other one is O.K. Your’s are almost violet in color.” He suddenly looked embarrassed.

“Forgive me Nails, but are those harmones rushing to the surface? Must have been all that action tonight.” He suddenly broke out laughing again, “Kate, you are something else” and with those words they were operating on more than one level.

She smiled and took a sip of her coffee, “What are you going to do with the rest of your life? After tonight you are going to be the talk of the town and the locals will have you in my bedchamber by tomorrow morning. I’m only half kidding but you rescuing me is going to be interpreted as your aligning yourself with our side. This really isn’t your fight, you could bow out gracefully.”

He lifted his cup, “You are a very direct person and you are intense as hell about this town and that little lake.”

“Let’s talk about you, general, what are you going to do with the rest of your life. After tonight you are going to be the talk of the town and rescuing me is going to put you right straight up against the power brokers.

Sipping his coffee Halliday paused for a moment and avoided an answer with a question of his own. “You are a very direct person. And your involvement is intense, how come?”

I hate waste, blame it on my many Scotch ancestors. Waste whether human or otherwise. Vietnam is a waste of epic proportions. I would hate to think we will ever be that stupid again but I wouldn’t bet on it. Granted we had to fight World War II, but next time lets send the politicians and only those over sixty five. I wonder how long it would last”

Halliday’s face wore a wry grin, “ An interesting thought and one that has crossed my mind more than as hundred times. But rest assured if another big one comes babies and old people will be on the front line and it will probably be over in less than an hour. I wouldn’t want to be a survivor of that one, I know what the aftermath would be like.

I believe in this wonderful, confused country and the things it really believes in. Those freedoms are sacred to me and I don’t find anything wrong with patriotism, honor, bravery and those other gallant words. I think there are bad guys out there and the psychopaths with guns don’t lay them down in the name of peace.”

“We fought well and died bravely in Vietnam, it’s just lately I’ve begun to wonder if we are fighting in the wrong place for the wrong reasons.”

Kate stared intently at him for a long moment and it was obvious that it was the first time she had looked at him as a man.

“You make some good points, Frank, I get the feeling that your face isn’t used to smiling all that often or laughing all that much.’

“I didn’t think it showed, or perhaps there just hasn’t been too much to smile or laugh about these past few years, kind of figure I lost the knack.”

She continued her intense scrutiny, “ Your right there hasn’t been all that to smile about in the past several years. Do you know what will happen to this town if that plant opens? Can you understand just how intensely we feel about it, how we can become enraged?”

“It’s not that hard, he replied, frankly I’ve only recently come to understand that the environment is not just the province of the very young or the very old. I think we are just running out of space and we are certainly running out of time. I think you are fighting for something very decent, very worthwhile. Perhaps you can understand the way I feel about my country.”

Kate looked down at the table then at him again, “Now don’t interrupt me for a minute. When I eat crow it sticks in my craw, there’s a pun in there somewhere. I apologize to you Frank “Nails” Halliday, you were doing something beyond the call of duty.”

Halliday visibly squirming, “In the army you didn’t apologize. I don’t know what to do with one.”

Kate continued as if he hadn’t interrupted,” We will never agree about war because I see man at his lowest, most destructive worst. It never does anything but bring sorrow to wives, mothers and sweethearts. O.K. WWII had to be fought because Hitler was the universal aberration. I think he literally came from the depths of hell but this conflict is a perversion.”

Halliday smiled, “As I’ve said, what I admire about you Kirkpatrick, is your subtlety, the way you beat around the bush. But maybe this time we have learned something and we have to live together on this poor, tired old planet. None of the rest of the solar system looks particularly promising.”

Hate suddenly reached across the table and touched just above his eye. “Does it hurt?”

Halliday is startled, “what?”

’I asked, does it hurt?”

Halliday looked at her face for a moment before answering, “Not much anymore.”

“Army all the way, huh?”

“Loved it. My first and only home. Wife, mistress, cause, everything. Bugles and taps and parades and marching formations and the stars and stripes forever. Love it all…”

Kate smiled, “you just changed tense. You miss it don’t you.”

“Yeah, big time, but I’m slowly coming to the realization that there’s other forms of life all around me and they don’t wear khaki. Yeah, I miss it but how the hell did we get on this subject?”

‘It’s simple, we are trying to talk to each other. But you’re right, we’ve turned this planet into an enormous garbage dump, the whole country is beginning to see this. A big chemical company dumps poisonous sludge and the earth is expected to swallow it. The earth is vomiting up poisons and man is starting to die.

There are thousands of sites filled to capacity yet we continue to dump. Maybe it’s all about greed. Check out the drug companies, their profits and some of the cute ingredients they put into their products. O.K. mon general, stick around and help us fight the monster the town fathers call our salvation.”

“Another battle, huh, what can I do that others can’t?”

“Straight talk; you are a war hero and a general officer and you know how to organize, you’ve led campaigns, you’ve led men. We need heroes, we need people who are believers and believe me you are a first class draw, the reporters will be all over you and wait ‘till they find out you are a closet environmentalist.”

Halliday looked into the dregs of his coffee, “You don’t futz around. “

“Kate, mildly irritated, “Look, Caring about this country isn’t just about putting on a uniform and carrying a rifle. John Hawk says you are an honorable man and that you earned that blue ribbon with the stars on it. You could open a fruit stand with all the decorations you’re entitled to wear. Combat General leads the charge….wow.”

Halliday broke out laughing, “I’m on expert on infantry tactics but what I don’t know about women would fill a library but I’m pretty sure they broke the mold with you Kirkpatrick. Obviously you and that smart Indian have done some talking.”

Kate grimaced, “It’s the one commodity we have plenty of. I won’t beg, the Scotch-Irish blood doesn’t permit it. I love this town and that lake and so did my son. His father brought him up on it. He fished in it, swam in it and spent years in a canoe on it. It was more than a body of water to him, it was everything beautiful. It’s your turn Frank.”

“O.K., you win. I’ll do it for Tim. You’ve touched the vital chord. I owe him big time.”

Kate paused then nodded, “Hawk said it was the one argument you wouldn’t fight. He was right. Wow, you and former Captain John Tall Tree Hawk fighting along side each other, Custer would have had a heart attack.”

They looked at each other and both realized that a compact had been formed which carried other ramifications and suddenly both were slightly embarrassed.

Suddenly Kate’s smile froze, and Halliday watched the transition.

“Wait a long minute, wait a minute. That guy who jumped me, he doesn’t live here, I’ve never seen him before in my life. Come to think of it that other dude who put down was a stranger too. There were half a dozen in that crowd that aren’t from around her. What’s going on?”

Halliday set down his cup. “You would know, this is a small town. Did someone import heavies? They came after you. You are a focal point ”

At that moment p.r. man Link Rodgers was making a phone call to his boss despite the late hour. It only rang twice before George Barnum, snatched up the receiver.

“Was it really as wild as they are saying on the late news?” Rodgers, mildly disconcerted because he thought he would be breaking the good tidings, answered, “Wilder, there were fights all over the floor, chairs were thrown and some people got bacnged up. It was everything you hoped for and more. The networks will make it top story for the next couple of days.” He hesitated, “But there may be a new element. There is a bona fide war hero who got into the act. He is Brigadier General Frank Halliday,” before he could finished Barnum interrupted. “What the hell, he was just awarded ythe Medal of Honor, what is he doing in that jerk town?”

Rodgers had regained his poise, good p.r. flack that he was. “Apparently he came to give a couple of medals to Kate Kirkpatrick, he was her son’s commanding officer. in Nam. The kid got the Silver Star and a Purple Heart posthumously.”

Barnum looked out into the night, “I don’t like this one damned bit. First Kirkpatrick, then that nut case Indian, Hawk now a big time war hero.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Halliday he pounded two of our guys. He carried Kirkpatrick out of the hall.”

“What the hell? Was she banged up badly? I don’t want a martyr on my hands.”

“Naw, she and Halliday are down at the local coffe shop looking deep into each others eyes. “

“Worse and worse but we’ve got outselves our network story and its us and the town fathers concerned about no jobs for their kids and her and her tree huggers. We got it by the ass.” Without farewell Barnum hung up. Rodgers looked at the phone for amoment and slowly returned it to its cradle.

He muttered to himself, “It’s good to be such a whore, Rodgers. Speaking of whores, that cocktail waitress almost dropped her pants when I laid a tenner on her. As it was said by a wise man eons ago, any port in a storm.” he smiled ruefully and headed for his rental car aware that this night was only a skirmish.

His boss stared out his high rise window without seeing much of anything. He looked at the twinkling lights of the city, put his hand to his mouth and covered a smile which was forming. The young girl snored peacefully after their ten round bout. He looked at her totally without interest as he would at something he had decided to discard. His nearly inexhaustible sexual need was saited for the moment and he relized it was the scene at the Winsome town hall that was responsible, not the young hooker.

Barnum knew himself well and was a strategic planner of the first water. The battle for Winsome, as he chose to call it, was the first major encounter, one which would propel him from Michigian to California or New York.

“They haven’t a clue, those good burghers, those pathetic types who cling to a piece of floatsom in a major storm. You are riding a corpse, folks, and it ain’t going to stay afloat much longer. Small town America is headed for the last roundup and the kids migration was always a sure indication that the end was near.”

His thoughts veered for a moment and his face registered anger, a svage, total anger directed at one person, Kate Kirkpatrick.

“Who is this ex soldier who came to her rescue? Hear he’s some kinda super hero. What the hell is he doing in a jerk town like Winsome. Something about the big medal but medals and ex soldier boys are not the thing these days.”

He walked to a sidebar where he unrocked an exquisite cut glass decanter which held a ridiculously expensive single malt Scotch whiksey, a drinkers trend which was just catching on. He smelled it, made a wry face, shrugged then poured it into a glass and topped it off with Coca Cola and threw it down, liking the taste of the coke more than the whiskey.

The hooker stirred, perhaps at the sound of the ice cubes hitting the glass and opened her eyes. She looked straight at him with a totally feral look. He hesitated for a moment as she threw back the sheets and ran her hand down to between her thighs. He place his glass near the edge of the sidebar without looking and it slipped and fell to the marble floor and broke into a hundred pieces but by that time he was already halfway across the room toward the bed and his insatiable teenager.

“Life was good and getting better, “he thought.as he viciously yanked her hair and slapped her across the face. She raked his back and laughed a hyena’s laugh.

The next morning Halliday stared at the ceiling but didn’t see the slight discolorations, indeed he was reviewing the event of the previous evening, especially Kate’s last remark about ‘strangers’ being involved. The new element troubled him as he rellized that the free for all of the previous evening was far more than that, it had been orchestrated and Kate and other innocents could have been seriously hurt or even crippled.

He stared unblinking for several more moments and started down a road which had several turnings, none of which he liked and he had learned to pay heed to the warning signs of impending danger and even ambush. It had served him well overseas.

He was thinking not as a general but as a jungle savvy army ranger. Withsout realizing it he glanced toward his duffel bag and thought about the .45 caliber sidearm he had carried for many years.

The phone rang and he picked it up and said without thinking,

“Colonel Halliday, I mean General Halliday.” He heard a laugh, “We will make you a field marshall now that you’r a part of this campaign. Join me and I’ll teach you about some of Crzay Horses’ tactics.’

Halliday grinned, recognizing John Hawk’s voice, “Custer beat himself, his ego triumphed and a lot of good troopers died. He split his forces in lousy terrain and went in against overwhelming odds.”

Hawk’s voice was totally serious, “Maybe the Indians had a lot more to lose. But enough, how about a little early morning fishing?

“Great, but this time its into the frying pan and no lectures about future generations. I’ll meet you down at the town dock in half an hour.’
“You’re on Nails, I’ll bring my extra mackinaw, it gets cold out there this early.”

Halliday hung up and realized that he was looking forward to the day, something he had not done in months. “Must be the mountain air he thought as he laced up his moccasins…or something. “

He waved at Oscar, grinned and tossed him salute as he headed for the door. He no sooner alighted than people started to address him by his title and some his first name. ‘Man, you got all the moves, general, “ a couple of them dudes are going to walk bent over for a week. “ Another grizzled type said, ‘Welcome to Winsome, a peace loving town,” and cackled. Halliday laughed aloud as two women eyed him in his new, civilian attire.

“One muttered to the other. He’s good looking in a rugged way, wonder if he’s married.” The other opted for a superior look, “If you had seen him and Kayte Kirkpatrick last night after that brawl you’d know he’s spoken for.”

The first said, “The ice maiden thawing, well I’ll be darned. That outtas stop my Willie from fawning over her every time she passes on the street or when she’s working in the library.” Their eyes followed him as he walked toward the dock where Hawk was waiting with his arms crossed. He had picked up on the womens’ glances.

“Man, you’re only in town a couple of days, you’ve been in major combat, wooed one of our most eligible and incidentally, beautiful people, and got other ladies looking in your direction. Careful, General, your virtue may be threatened.” He grinned as Halliday shook his head.

“It must be in the water, everybody in this town knows what everyone else is doing morning noon and night. Let’s get out of here before those morning TV shows start showing the delights of fair Winsome, Michigan, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damned world.”

They pushed off in the canoe together and immediately picked up the rhythm of experienced woodsmen.About a quarter of a mile distant from shore they put lures on their lines and dropped them over the side, neither caring about whether they caught anything or not. For Hawk is was listening to a strange, personal melody which he felt rather than conjured.

Halliday looked at the placid waters and neither thought nor felt anything for the first moments then he too picked up vibrations of a different sort, stirrings of a yearning that he had left behind in his youth, the thought of permanency and the remote possibility of peace.’

“I wonder if a warrior can change stripes? I have caused the deaths of many men very few of whom I knew personally and I’m sure they thought their cause was every bit as important as mine. We were patriots but wasn’t it Samuel Johnson who said that ’patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.’

“I did my country’s bidding and served her well and God help me I still choke up when a good choir sings ‘America the Beautiful’ or a regiment of fine soldiers passes in full review. My beloved country and he thought of another general’s observation, Carl Shurz who fought in the Civil war, “My country, my country, my country right or wrong but when it is wrong let me make it right.” or something to that effect.’

He spoke to Hawk without turning his head, “There was a German American immigrant, a Civil War General and later U.S. Senator who said something about making his adopted country right when he felt it was wrong. Are we wrong over there, John? Are we going about things the right way here?”

Hawk paused before speaking, a habit he had cultivated as an native Aamerica in the US Army. “I think that we are developing less tolerance, more reluctance to acknowledge that anyone else is also entitled to what we take for granted. Look at the civil rights struggle, the emerging gay and lesbian movement. They, and by they I mean the haters and psychos, killed Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Dr. King and the South is in near open rebellion over the young, scared activists who dare to spread the new gospel in the Southland. “

“This country is ill prepared for a different kind of revolution. We speak of equality but perhaps not living next door to a black or Asian. New York and west coast liberals donate to civil rights causes with great panache but mark me well, there will be a counter swing to this pendelum, the wee people are feeling threatened and when that happens they look for a powerful champion who will reflect their good old boy views, not those who are different in any way from them.

We worship Baal, and the bitch goddess ‘success’ and money is synomonous with that holy grail, wealth. We worship at the altar of Wall Street and it will eventually fail us.”

Despite the cramped confines of the canoe Halliday half turned. “Methinks I have not noticed nor professed too much, to paraphrase Shakespeare. But like it or not I seem to be involved. Last night Kate said those guys who jumped her were strangers. Did you know ’em?”

Hawk looked at the shoreline, “No it didn’t immediately register on me until I was half way out the door. They weren’t boy scouts and I think I saw a sap in the back pocket of one of them. A blackjack in a town hall meeting is hardly de regieur for this part of the world. I think they were semi pros at least and they were intent into beating up on your fair damsel who won’t bend easy. This thing is taking on dimensions nobody thought of before. Any chance you’ve got a couple of contacts in the F.B.I. Or Army intelligence who would do you a favor?”

Halliday smiled, “That big medal will probably open every door in this country except Fort Knox. But we need a little more to work with.”

Hawk smiled, “How about a wallet discreetly lifted from one of their recumbent forms,” and with that he handed it to Halliday who broke out laughing.

“I put em down and you grab a wallet, why didn’t I think of that?”

It was Hawk’s turn to smile, “You didn’t know they weren’t local. Bet you a buck they hang out in low life bars in Lansing or Detroit. I think I’m gonna reach for my granddaddys old .44 pistola. We may be back in Charlie country.”

“You are one strange Indian,” Halliday observed as he looked through the wallet.

Hawk picked up his paddle and began turning the canoe, “Vietnam traumatized me. The juices are flowing again just like before we entered a hot zone. But these sons a bitches are hiring heavies by the look of it, they don’t want any part of the up front and personal. I would check out that lumber operation while your at it. But one thing is certain, we are gonna prevail here, Frank. Nobdy is going to rape this land any more than it has already been defiled.”

Halliday frowned, and spoke over his shoulder, “Are you so sure the vote is going to go your way?”

“You can take it to the bank, that stripping operation is not going to open its doors.”

“No matter how the vote goes, am I reading you five by five?”

“Like I said, no way no how, we’ll talk about it some other time. Maybe now Kate can fix you up a nice plate of eggs and trout, I just happen to have a couple we caught yesterday and they are in my creel.They just happen to be her favorite dish.”

Halliday broke out laughing as they head toward Kate home.

Mike McCall lowered his binoculars and watched the pair propel the canoe effortlessly across the lake. His face tightened into a grimace. “Damn it to hell, our local hero is in town for a few days and now he’s lining up with the enemy.”

He watched intently for a few more moments and saw Hawk’s head turn in his direction and suddenly he knew the Chippewa had registered who he was. He turned quickly and got into his Cadillac, fired it up and turned toward Main Street.

He pulled in a space before an office whose sign read, “Cliff Hubbard, Real Estate, own a piece of heaven.” he went through the front door without acknowledging the secretary and pushed open the door to Hubbard’s private office.

Hubbard saw him and said into the phone, “I’ll call you back later,’ and hung up. “You don’t have to say a word. I’ve watched the big TV trucks rolling in, its hit the fan. Several people are in the hospital and two combatants went AWOL during the night but they weren’t even local. Who the hell are these guys and what the hell is really going on here?”

McCall looked at him for a moment, “The Sheriff is asking the same question. Who were those guys, someone said they jumped all over Kirkpatrick and that that super hero Halliday came on like a King fu master?”

Hubbard pulled a hankie and wiped his face. “This thing is getting out of hand. What are they beginning to call it these days, ‘a media event?’ But to get back, those two guys have gone missing and they weren’t here for the fishing. They were store bought and if they had really hurt her we would have had Joan of Arc right here in Winsome.

I know you had nothing to do with it so that only leaves the lumber outfit but I’ve gotten two calls from them this morning and they are mighly pissed and claim to know nothing about any hired guns, in fact they were furious about it. If this happens again we could lose the whole damned thing and the town slowly goes down the drain.”

MC Call walked to the window which fronted on the lake, “ Yeah, it’s hit the fan and this morning I saw Tall Tree Hawk and our hero/general in a canoe together and they were heading for Kirkpatrick’s house. Hit the fan, hell its all over the walls. You had better get Barnum’s ass here pronto and apply some salve to the wounds. I don’t trust that s.o.b. but he’s supposed to know what he’s doing and now we’re going network.” Hubbard’s face suddenly froze, “You know, he said yesterday, before the circus, that if this went national he had to jack up the price. You don’t think for a moment that he engineered that fracas last night?”

Mc Call turned abruptly, “What the hell are we in the middle of? We are trying to save this one horse town and now we are wearing black hats and mustaches while Hawk, Kate and Halliday are rallying the troops. You’re looking at Hitler, Stalin and Simon Legree all rolled into one.” That damned brawl last night, and that’s what it was, was made to order for the other side and Kirkpatrick is the center piece, the widow who lost her only son fighting for his country. The Lady of the Lake.

“We’re fighting against virture, motherhood, the environment and the American way. I’ve just been asked to appear on network TV and they are going ape with that local footage shot last night. Now I’m the hungry banker only interested in making a buck out of everyone’s else’s misery.

I’m raping Mother Nature! he shouted little knowing that the secretary, Francie, who despised him, was taking shorthand of everything she could hear. She liked Kate and thought her fight just. She couldn’t wait for lunch hour and quick stop at Kirkpatrick house but first she would make a transcript of his remarks.

The two men, unaware, paused then continued. Hubbard shook his head,” Damn it I know this is serious, we’re up the creek with this new development and we have a lot of company up there, probably half the town. Getting rattled is precisely what will swing votes and make us look like a bunch of incompetents and uncaring bustards. Their crowd is celebrating this morning. If you don’t want to get the bank spattered, well hell, I’ll be the spokesman, I’ve been head of this town for years and I don’t see any real competition.

“Buddy, I wont stand in your way,” McCall said,” What’s with this Army General? Last night he is Lancelot, this morning he is fishing with John hawk. What an infield, Hawk to Kirkpatrick to Halliday. This thing aint simple anymore. Seems the soldier has declared himself. I wonder what he’s doing here in the first place?”

Hubbard frowned, “What’s the matter with your antenna? He came here to give Kate the medals her son won in Vietnam. Two medals, I think. Gotta’ admit it was a nice gesture, he was Tim’s commanding officer.

“Well he came on like the 101^st airborne last night, even carried her out that front door. What the hell is wrong with that woman anyhow?”

Hubbard looked at thim and shook his head, “Man I would be mightly pissed too if my only son had been killed in Vietnam. That damn war is screwing up this country big time.”

“I thought you were in favor of out stepping in over there. Stopping the red tide and all that stuff. What the hell has gotten into you?”

“My son got his draft notice two days ago,” Hubbard said, “I gotta get him into some college somewhere but it could be too late. His grades stink, he was more interested in football and girls than studying.”

Hubbard nodded, ‘It does raise a question, though. What about all the kids who can’t get into college? Is this to be a poor man’s war?”

“It won’t be the first time. If you had the money you could get someone to take your place in the Civil War.”

“Damn it , don’t you start. You sound like a hippie for God’s sake. All that kinda talk does is help the commies. Damn this war anyway, how did we get into it in the first place?”

Neither man attempted an answer and depressed, they looked at each other in silence.

There was anything but silence in a hotel room in an adjacent town. Friskey Roman, and his partner, Pete Styles, thugs in the employe of George Barnum, were nursing their wounds. Roman, arm in a sling, turned on the room TV set and immediately Styles shouted at him.

“Turn that damn thing off. My head is ringing after that rotten bastard clapped his hands over my ears. My hearing could be shot forever. I swear I’ll kill that son of a bitch before this is over.”

Roman smirked, “Just how are you gonaa’ pull that off, he beat the piss out of both of us, or are you forgetting?”

“He sly rapped me, you asshole, I’ve got forty pounds on him and I was semi pro, could have gone all the way, if I’d had a mind.”

His partner adjusted the sling which held his arm. “ He’s ripped my shoulder and I was out of it. He could have murdered us both but he pulled that broad out of there. What’s with him and her?”

Styles lay back against the headboard. “That’s what we are gonna’ find out. That’s how I will get to him, everyone has a weak point and she’s his. I’m thinking that maybe the best thing for this town would be for her to disappear for awhile. He goes hunting her, and I hunt him.”

“Are you totally out of your mind. That’s kidnapping, they do nasty things to clowns to do that, permament things. Nobody is paying me that kind of money, nobody.”

Sytles sat up abruptly, “Just stay out of my way, faggot, or you could disappear too. Nobody does to me what he did. I have a rep to protect and no ex soldier asshole is gonna’ take it away from me. I’ve done worse before.”

Suddenly Roman realized with whom he was working. They had only come together for this job of raising hell in Winsome two weeks before and now his partner was talking capital crime. Roman immediately began thinking of an escape hatch as Style watched him intently, reading him like a book.

Styles grinned, “Don’t even think about it baby, you are in all the way and I’m calling all the shots and I don’t give a rat’s ass what Barnum says or thinks. He hired a pro and you are gonn’a act like one.”

Roman felt for the stiletto he had secreted in his sling, he was never far from it. He had used it half a dozen times over the years and he knew anatomy, especially that area around the heart. He neither spoke nor seemed worried and after a moment he smiled and remained silent and it was Styles turn to think about protecting his back. What had started out as a rough job had assumed deadly proportions and both knew it, and both calculated how much more it would be worth if only one would collect the money.

Back in Winsome a network news crew showed up and Jason Roebuck, correspondent, just returned from Vietnam, emerged looking rumpled. He stretched and immediately began assessing the town, something second nature to him after eighteen years in the news game, half a dozen in newspapers. Those early years gave him a decided edge over the TV types who had never had to check out their facts themselves, never had to go to a hall of records or got back through a morgue for past information. It made him more disciplined and a better reporter and that was about all that he lived for now.

The day after he had turned after his war tour home his wife of six years told him she wanted a divorce and it had torn him up. He was nowhere near to picking up the pieces and had totally emmersed himself in his work.

It was either that or pub crawling with all its concomitant tears and rents. He had latched on to the knowledge that bars were about the loneliest places known to man. In this country they didn’t serve the function that did in Ireland or Europe, social gathering places where families met and functioned as communities. A gin mill here was a far cry from the Irish pub, he had come to believe.

He stretched as his cameramn Larry Goldman, came out the other door and did precisely the same thing. Goldman turned to their sound man and light technician and they too emerged to look the town over. Ronnie, the light man, immediately started his insatiable hunt for women while Frank, a distinguished light complexioned black man, and his partner, looked quietly at the town, its beauty and its decay.

Goldman turned to Roebuck, “O.K. Captain Courageous, my ass is numb after those mountain roads. This is one remote place, nice town though, if a little shopworn. I’m looking forward to seeing the lake they are fighting over.”

Roebuck frowned, “It’s a battleground, don’t let its bucolic appearance fool you. Why don’t you guys look for a restaurant while I go check in with the Mayor?”

His camerman nodded, “Thought we’d better check into whatever passes for a hotel here, its going to fill up real quick. This is a numero uno story now. That free for all footage was a producer’s dream.”

“I should have thought of that. Go for it kimosabe, we have to get settled.” they looked at each for a moment and both grinned. They had worked together on and off for many years and each could think for the other. Goldman also knew Roebuck was doing an emotional tight rope act and needed help. He nodded and threw a playful punch at Roebuck’s arm and the reporter immediately went into a boxer’s crouch, flipped him the bird and headed for the mayor’s office.

He checked out everything as he instinctively headed for the only building in town that looked official. “Another American success story. The decay is pronounced and there’s too many men just hanging out. They have a treasure here but it looks like a town on the economic brink.”

He had visited literally hundreds of American communities, large and small over the years, and was witness to a changing land with less serenity, more hyperactivity. Something in him longed for a permanence but it was not his lot.

“O.K. hotshot, let’s speak to his honor.” He broke into a laugh when he recalled his early days as a WCBS TV reporter in New York City. He had been sent to do a feature on a group of Irish harriers who had been imported to teach horseshoeing to personnel in the police department. A more taciturn bunch of Micks he had never encountered, they just wouldn’t talk to him. Ever resourceful he had gone to a nearby fruit market, bought half a dozen apples and fed them to the horses and pretended to be having a conversation with the huge animals. He had pulled it off.

The next night “His Honor” Robert Wagner, Mayor of the City of New York, had showed up at the station on 57^th street for a function and Roebuck was waiting for his crew to give him an “rolling” cue when the mayor had observed, “Last time I saw you, you were talking to a horse,” to which he had replied without hesitation, “Yeah, Mr. Mayor, it was a pleasure to be speaking to the other end for a change.”

The Mayor of the great city had merely looked at him pityingly and said, “You are headed for a bad end,” and the interview started. A lighter moment and he chuckled at the memory, there had been little to smile about lately and his thoughts immediately turned to his soon to be ex-wife.

“Why couldn’t you have given us a second chance? Why when I just got off the plane from Vietnam? I’ve changed, can’t you see it or is the accumulated baggage of too many years impossible to ignore?” and he knew the answer to that. He almost bumped into a woman descending the city hall steps and got back to what he was doing and where he was. He shook his head and pushed through the front door and walk to what looked to be a hundred year old receptionist.

“Howdy. Would it be possible to speak to the Mayor, I’m Jason Roebuck and I called him late yesterday.” She looked at him intently for a moment, “You re much better looking in person than on the idiot tube. If I were fifty years younger you wouldn’t be safe.”

He broke out laughing, “If you were ten years younger we would rattle the cage,” and she roared. “First door at the top of the stairs, “I’ll tell him you’re on the way up.” She smiled a wonderful smile and he returned it as he went up the stairs.

He knocked and heard a voice telling him to come in. No secretary, the mayor rose to meet him and offered his hand. “Had to let the secretary go a few years back, she was just one of the victims. Grab a chair, want some tired coffee?”

He got up to pour it and Roebuck shook his head, “My urine analysis at the moment would read 90 per cent caffeine. We are wired and it was a rough ride. Looks like you’re having a rough ride here too.”

Hubbard looked at hime intently. “That’s the underswtatement of this or any other year. Straight talk, this town is going down the tubes and we are just one of thousands heading in the same direction. Either we get some industry in here or we are looking at a pretty but decaying American tragedy. Damn it, I love this town and its people but there’s no easy ansswer.

Roebuck nodded, “The signs are everywhere but is a stripping operation the only answer?”

Hubbard frowned, “You’ve done some homework, you’re not just a pretty face. We only have limited resources and that lumber offer was the first real shot we had. I would never say it on camera but we don’t have any other options and it has ripped this town in twain.’

They continued talking as Pete Styles headed over the mountains to make a purchase at an arms dealer he had looked up in the telephone directory. He flicked a cigarette butt out the window

“Yeah, baby, an “ought six,” the preferred weapon of snipers for decades. Never a bolt action rifle to compare with it. A decent scope, twenty rounds and its round two for me and the soldier boy. Cash purchase, no questions asked, hell you can buy a cannon in this country with shells intact and nobody would ask you a question. What a wonderful place to live,” he grinned and accelerated at the town line.

Hawk and halliday slowed their stroke as they approached the shoreline in front of Kate Kirkpatrick’s home.

“You sure this is such a good idea, me barging in on her without a call?”

Hawk brought the canoe lengthwise along the sand and stepped out without getting his feet wet while Halliday waited. “Would you have called otherwise? Besides you have me along as a chaperone, what could be more innocent,” he said as he looked at the driveway and saw Hubbard business secretary, Francie’s, car. “Looks like she has company.”

They walked to the front door, knocked and it was opened immediately by Francie. “It’s about time you guys stopped having a good time and did some work. Wait ‘till you hear what I’ve got, you’re going to be reaching for your squirrel rifles.”

Halliday paused with the fishing creel in his hands. He looked slightly crestfallen and Hawk burst out laughing. “We’ve got to listen for our breakfast,” and proceeded toward Kate who kissed him on the cheek.” Serious stuff, we are facing more than just local opposition.” With that, Francie, who was bursting with impatience, began to relate everything that had transpired between McCall and Hubbard earlier.

Twenty minutes later all thoughts of breakfast were gone and both men kept their silence for several moments before Francie fairly exploded, “Well, what are we going to do about it? We have hired goons who slap women around and a big time p.r. company hired by the town, with our money, I’ll bet. The mayor is playing games that could get him landed in jail. The town is fairly crawling with news people, I saw Jason Roebuck heading toward city hall.
Halliday looked at her, “Jason huh, he’s lucky to be alive. I told him once that if he continued humping it with the grunts or riding armored personnel carriers he was going to be a statistic. He was at Khe Sanh and Hue during the Tet offensive and those were not pleasure spots, a lot of those men got killed or wounded.”

Kate interjected, “How do you feel about our fight, really feel, no reservations. Please, it’s important.”

“I thought about it last night, couldn’t sleep and I think your cause is righteous. There’s got to be a line drawn somewhere and Winsome is as good a place as any. We just can’t keep raping this planet. I’m with you and will help in any way I can.”

Hawk smiled and both women embraced him and he found himself grinning.

“O.K., here goes. Would you help us with these newsmen? You are a super hero and you feel our cause is just. Would you?”

Halliday pulled back, “Man, or rather woman, I’m the new boy in town, I still don’t know some of the ramifications.”

Kate immediately spoke, “We’ll fill you in, believe me, you know what is really going on here and across this country and frankly your celebrity hood would be an enormous asset.”

Halliday frowned, then shrugged, “O.K. Galahad to the resuce.” With that Hawk rose, ’I’ve got a lot to do, this is jno longer a Marquis of Queensbury contest, these s.o.b.’s are playing by Vietnam rules. My sons and I have a lot of ground to cover in the next few weeks, miles to go before I sleep.” He stopped, realizing that perhaps he had said too much and Kate picked up on his discomforture,” Are you going somewhere, we need you here like never before?”

“I gurantee you Kate, I’ll be here for the fireworks,’ and with that he turned and walked out the door. Kate followed him as Francie rose, “I’ve gotta get back, his honor will raise hell, I’m sort of running the car business these days his nose is way out of joint. Funny, he was your husband’s best pal, you’d think he would be on your side.” She nodded, then opened the door and left as Kate watched her retreating back.

“That was a long time ago,’ Kate said as Halliday rose with the fishing creel.

“Look, maybe you’re not up to making breakfast after all this, maybe I should skeedadle.”

Kate turned, grinned and said, “I like having you around. Are those trout you have in that creel? If so stretch out, use the facilities, plan strategy or whatever it is that generals do.”

His face opened to a full smile, “ You’re on Kirkpatrick. What did you read into Hawk’s comment about miles to go before he sleeps. Robert Frost had something tragic on his mind when he wrote those words.”

“He’s anything but a frivolous man, but I wouldn’t take that too literally. He’s got skills they don’t teach in Social Studies 101 and he has a big grievance, all native Americans do. He volunteered, went to officers’ candidate school and did two bloody tours in Vietnam. He feels that this country, the country for which he fought, screwed the Indians and they have, he’s absolutely right. It’s still going on.

He feels passionately about this lake, this area. He feels the same way you felt about your army, perhaps even more so. This is where we’ve spent our lives, we have deep roots and we will not be driven off or made to live in a dead community alongside a stinking, dead lake. Look at what’s happened to Lake Erie and hundreds of others around this country.

Yeah John Hawk has been bitten by the bug, it must be infectious. Seems maybe you too are picking it up too,” and with that she walked into the kitchen and Halliday frowned.

“What the hell, these are good people, honest people and they feel that the skirmish lines are drawn, from now on its going to be the real thing. In a few days your thinking has changed and you feel something you haven’t felt in a long time. Raise your right hand soldier and repeat after me, I Frank Halliday, about to be retired Brigadier General, United States Army, am about to get into the fight to save planet earth., unbelievable. Wonder if that beautiful lady in the kitchen has something to do with it.“ He grinned as he looked out the window at the lake.

Jason Roebuck headed toward the bar as his exhausted crew went to their rooms. He approached and saw Oscar was placing glasses on the shelves.

“Sir Oscar, give me a passable brandy, s’il vous plait.” Oscar turned and looked at him and placed his hands on the bar. “A grape, is a grape, is a grape.”

Roebuck grinned, “That much of a selection, huh. Give me anything you’ve got handy.” Oscar smiled in return, “That’s what I like, a discriminating customer. Drink while you can, we’re getting calls from all your competitors, this place is going to be crawling with you overpaid network types.”

As Oscar walked to get the bottle, Roebuck heard a familiar voice, “Thought you were a ’ba me va” man, and only if someone else was buying.”

He turned and his mouth fell open, “Ba me va,” what the hell, I don’t believe it. Colonel Frank “Nails” Haliday, the one and only, the original. Hey, you got the big medal and a couple of promotions. What in the name of hell are you doing in this poor little town. A touch of something real, shades of the Caravelle Hotel.” He jumped up and shook hands with Halliday who was grinning.

“Came to do an errand, give a couple of medals to a woman whose Corporal son saved my life. Unfortunately they were posthumous.”

“No fun, how did she take it? “

“She threw them at me and made me feel one foot tall. Taught me a lesson at the same time. She’s a fine person and vunerable as hell.”

Roebuck’s face saddened, “Yeah, everything seems to have turned to dog shit. What are you doing in civvies?
“I’m done my time lad, I’m one tired, old soldier.”

Roebuck looked closely, “You were a lifer, I’m sorry Nails, you were among the very best, from buck assed private to Brigadier General. Let me buy you a shout as the Aussies say. Oscar, come fill our cup from we yet may spend, ashes to ashes to descend, sans wine sans song, sans singer, sans end.”

Oscar studied his face, “And what was that? Sounded vaguely poetical.”

“The Rubiat of Omar Kayham my good man. Come to think of it, have a taste yourself,” and with that he turned back to Halliday.” Why are you sticking around?”

“Seems as if there’s another rather unique war brewing right here in Winsome. The warrior is gone, I’m a man of peace now but this fight is damned interesting. Getting to like this town and some of its inhabitants. Guess I’ve taken sides, I want to save the lake.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised, you good army types don’t usually speak out on domestic isssues. I wouldn’t bet on winning this one, Frank. I’ve already interviewed the lumber company types and they couldn’t care less about this one, small lake. Hell, acid rain is killing off hundreds of them and all we ever get is another presidential commission and they already know the answers. Stop fossel fuel burning in antiquated plants and half the battle is won.

This lake is perfect for them and their stripping operation. Its close to the source and there’s a ready manpower pool willing to work for little money. They aren’t concerned about the environment but they worry about bad press. They are hard knuckled, short sighted businessmen out to make a buck and they don’t want any waves.

They put up the plant, depreciate it that’s to our incredible tax laws, take the lumber, strip it and go one to the next site in a dozen years or so.”

Halliday picked up his drink,“ What about conservation and reforestation? Everything on this earth is finite, including us.”

Roebuck hesitated for a moment, “You sound committed Nails, are you speaking to me as an advocate or an old Vietnam buddy?”

“I’m just Joe civilian now and I’m committed to saving that pretty lake. On the way in I spotted thousands of stunted, dying trees, I thought we had used agent Orange here. This is insane.”

“God help the lumber operation. Gotta admit I can understand how these folks feel but there’s some here say that the plant is the answer, without those jobs there will be no Winsome.”

“It’s a quick fix, Jason, not a real answer.There has to be more than one kind of industry for a town like this. I know a Chippewa Indian, did two tours as a chopper pilot, and he’s a success story with specialty items. I’ll introduce you manana. Fact is I’ll introduce you to a lot of people who make very good sense.

“Nails Halliday and Concise, the bad dudes don’t stand a chance.I’ll speak to your folks tomorrow and you as well. Nice feature angle, you with the Medal of Honor. Now let’s get down to some serious drinking and bullshitting. You tell me some of your war stories and I will tell you mine.”

Halliday grinned and raised his glass, “Oscar, check his dipstick and fill up your jug. You may be permitted to interject but not too often. “

Oscar grinned and said, “Here’s to all the heroes everywhere,” and the three raised their glasses in toast.

Friskey Roman and Pete Styles were also drinking but their beverage of choice was boilermakers, they were rapidly getting loaded but there was no conviviality whatsoever. The enmity was growing by the hour and only the thought of a big payoff kept them together.

Frank Chisholm, the owner, had made two bad mistakes, one is serving them as much as he had, and two, he had left the Jack Daniels bottle sitting on the bar between them. Cute drinkers could pour their own when the bartender’s back was turned and the bottle itself was a potential weapon. Chisholm has momentarily forgotten the jug because he had answered a late night call from his wife.

Styles rapped his empty beer glass on the bar and Chisholm, looked up, annoyed. “He’s a creep and his partner is no better,” he thought but came toward them.

“This beer is flat, how about opening a fresh keg, ‘ Stles said as Roman glanced at him.” “We just opened it this afternoon, it can’t be flat,” Chisholm said although it wasn’t the truth. He wasn’t about to waste half a keg of beer even if had mold on it and these two guys were nasty losers.

“Don’t give me that shit, “Styles said, “you don’t pour a keg a month in this rathole.” he rose from the stool but the owner was quicker and his hand went under the bar and emerged with a small baseball bat.
“Don’t even think about it, now get out or I’ll add a couple of new bumps to that fat head of yours…and don’t come back.

Styles was livid and Roman reached into the sling on his arm. Spittle flared from Styles mouth, “You asshsole, who the…” and with he broke the bottle, hurled it and it hit Chisholm in the arm. He reeled back and immediately went beneath the bar and emerged with a pump shotgun and aimed it right at Styles head then moved it toward Roman who immediately withdrew his hand from the sling without the knife. He winced and it was at that stroke of luck that Roman withdrew and threw the perfectly balanced knife which glanced off the side of the shotgun which went off and blew a two foot hole in the ceiling.

Chisholm, wounded, reeled back and the two thugs ran toward out door.

The owner retrieved the weapon and chased them despite bleeding profusely from the bottle wound. They pulled out burning rubber as he fired two rounds in their direction then fell back against the door.

He gritted his teeth and went behind the bar, got a clean bar towel, and wrapped it around the wound only to discover that a piece of glass had embedded itself. Almost fainting from the pain he pulled it free, tied the towel and dialed 911.

It rang four times and he cursed the night dispatcher who was probably watching TV. Finally he got him, “God damn it, this is Frank Chisholm, two punks just attacked me and cut me up. I’m at my place, get me an ambulance quick and connect me to the sheriff at home.

Chisholm identified himself and realted the whole incident, paused then added, I’ll give you odds they are muscle and they were the same pair that General Halliday dumped on their butts when they tried to stomp Kirkpatrick.”

There was silence on the other end for a minute. “You did good, let’s see where these vermin are holed up and bring them in for a session. I’ll put a BOLO for ‘em pronto and we‘ll check out the dirt bag motels. One more thing, watch your ass. ”Even as he was about to hang up he heard the explosion as Chisholm‘s truck blew up behind the building..

The owner dropped the phone and raced out the back door but there was nobody around and he cursed aloud. He went back inside and picked up the phone, “Guess what, someone just blew up my truck. I wonder who that could be.”

Browder didn’t hesitate, “Wait for ambulance, we’re going let our fingers do the walking and check the local motels and I’m calling in three deputies. These clowns are not gonna’ play games with us.”

But he was too late for both men were already preparing to leave the motel immediately after Styles stunt. He was raging and Roman was stunned but had to go along with the move. They had to get out of town fast.

“You asshole,what have you got for brains? That jerk is on the phone right now and every jerk cop for a hundred miles is gonna’ be looking for us in the next ten minutes. Barnum is going to join in the hunt and we’ve blown the money.”

Styles whirled on him with a gun in his fist. “You’ve got ten seconds to live if you don’t shut up. You’re too cute anyway, that throwing knife in your in that sling is just you’re style, you’re a knife man and I hate knife men. Now get that gear and put it next that black Pontiac next to our car.

Roman didn’t hesitate and picked up the bags and headed for the other vehicle. Within ten second Styles had the other car door open and jammed a screwdriver into the ignition lock, twisted and the vehcile immediately started.

Roman barely had time to jump into the passenger seat when they roared out of the motel parking lot. Instead of heading out of town Styles drove back into it. He figured correctly that the local cops would be blocking the main arteries. He started laughing, the sound increasing it volume as Roman looked straight ahead.

“I would have given ten grand to see his face when we blew his truck. Punk, pulling a gun on us. The bottle saved our asses, that and your cute stunt with that throwing blade. Got another one handy? I goota’ keep an eye on you, baby, you’re too cute.”

“Yeah and you out of your mind, there’s already an all points bulletin out on us, you can bet your ass. How will we get out of this burg without face five to ten, answer me that one.”

“We are going to help our selves to not one but two cars, they will be looking for two of us, but not before I perform a little chore. I’ve got as surprise for that broad. I’ve watched her through binoculars, I knew her habits, did you know she is quite a seamstress?”

With that he started laughing again, turning his head to look at the rifle case in the back seat, then laughed even louder as Roman desperately tried to figure out a way to get away from the scene.

Theys stopped at a wayside phone booth for a moment. Styles called 911 and told them of a fire at two neighboring houses on Elm Street and of seeing someone at the window of one trying to get out. He hung up quickly and Roman immediately jumped in, called a number in Lansing, dumped in four quarters and got Barnum on the third ring.

He had been exhausting his young companion with more and more sexual demands. He still had a small whip in his hands while he listened to Roman’s report, when the hoodlum hung up abruptly.

He flailed the phone with the whip and his companion pulled the sheets around her in a pathetic attempt to protect herself. She screamed and cringed as he pulled them away. . The escort service would have to do without her services for several weeks and she would be the object of pity for those looking at her face for years to come.

Hours later he would dump her into an alleyway and she would be discovered more dead than alive by a local merchant. It was hours later before she could make a call to her service and she told them what had happened.

Francine Merriwether, owner and Madame, took less than a minute to search and find a number in her personal phone book. She gave very explicit instructions as to what she wanted and when, when being the important part of it. She couldn’t retaliate immediately because of the cause and effect factor, but she remembered the old Mafia adage that revenge was best satisfied hunger when it was eaten cold. She would wait ninety days and pay Barnum back in most most terrible manner.

She took a phone call minutes later and was all cordiality as she supplied a visiting busnessman who she knew well with one of her “protégées,” for a long and exhausting weekened. Merriwhether prided herself on knowing her clientele and their needs but Barnum had broken all the rules and she ground her teeth then smiled as thought of what her minions would do to him. He wouldn’t have to worry about satisfying his sadistic urges henceforth. “Ninety days, just ninety days.”

Kate Kirkpatrick knew nothing of what had happened the previous night and her thoughts were of Halliday and she paused over he second cup of coffee. She didn’t see the black car with the man behind the wheel but he immediately spotted her.

She went into the living room, turned on the light and was approaching the sewing mannequin when the window glass shattered and the dummy’s head blew off. She immediately threw herself to the floor scared but enraged, and she crawled to the closet on all fours, the closet with her hasband’s .30 caliber hunting rifle.

She grabbed the case, removed the weapon, put in a five round clip and jacked one into the chamer and moved toward the far window within thirty seconds.

. She saw Styles, recognized him immediately as he looked toward the house. The car had made a U turn and was pulling slowly away as to not attract attention when she fired through the window and saw the rear glass of the vehicle shatter. She pumped another round in and missed with her second shot as it roared up the street.

“You bastard, you bastard, I hope I took a piece of you, I hope I blew your damned head off.”

She didn’t get her wish and Styles was in still another of his rages, he had missed and she had fired back and he could feel blood trickling down his neck from the several small pieces of glass had cut him in the neck and head.

He headed toward the local shopping mall and parked the car as far from the big supermarket entrance as possible. He backed it so as to not reveal the blown back window and began searching for the small shards in his head and neck. He removed them and applied a dirty hankey to the wounds and immediately began looking for the most inconspicuous vehicle he could find and was driving it away with five minutes.

The sheriff’s car and a state police vehicle were already in the driveway when Hawk arrived with Halliday, both men raced to the front door and were blocked by a deputy until Kate literally brushed by him, looked at them, then put her arms around Halliday to both his and Hawk’s absolute surprise.

Halliday responded immediately and her heard her cursing the attempted killer and crying at the same time. Sheriff Browder immediately tried to reestablish command of the situation.

“You are screwing up a crime scene.I want you both out of here and I mean now.” Halliday looked at him for a minute, looked at a scowling Hawk for an instant, “We will take her out of here.”

“You will like hell, General, or whatever you are these days. She was both victim and witness and she stays here. We’ve got hours of questioning yet.”

Suddenly Kate wheeled on him, “Give start acting like you know what you

are doing now. The best thing you ever do is cozy up to people when you want to get reelected. You haven’t done a damn thing about finding those thugs who wanted to beat me to a pulp and I have. That son of a bitch who jumped at me is the same guy who was in the car. He’s trying to kill me and you should be looking for him all over the state instead of playing tinpot dictator.”

Both Hawk and Halliday turned on him simultaneously as a State Trooper ran to his car to broacast the information throughout the Upper Peninsula, his voice could be heard until Hawk turned on Sheriff Browder.

“You’ve been in the pocket of the business interests of this town for twelve years and you live high off the hog for a guy who makes what you do. You’re the sorriest excuse for law enforcement I’ve ever seen and now you are harassing the victim in an attempted assassination.”

Halliday was riveted on what he was saying. “Are you saying this is a pre-meditated act, that its all part of the campaign to get that lumber operation in here? Am I reading you five by five?”

The Sheriff lunged at Hawk at that very second and both went onto the ground with Hawk emerging first. His first punch landed against the sheriff’s belt buckle and for a second he though he had broken his hand but it didn’t prevent him from throwing a karate chop to the back of the law officer’s head. He went down for the count as the deputy drew his gun and leveled it at Hawk’s head.

“You’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer, put your god damned hands in the air and turn around.”

Halliday chopped the deputy’s gun hand and the weapon went into the driveway and the scene rapidly attracted several neighbors. Frank Pritchard, her nearest neighbor, retrieved the weapon and put it into his pocket.

“Are you all nuts? Somebody tried to kill Kate, or haven’t you noticed. Turning to the trooper, “Georgie, pick up that sad sack of a sheriff and put him into his car, I’ll give you your gun back in a minute. And I’ll give you something to think about before they arrest your ass. The sheriff jumped an unarmed civilian and you fought with a man holds the Congressional Medal of Honor who is personally known to the President of the United States.Think about that when you fill out your resume for your next job. Goddamnit can’t anything be done right in this God forsaken town?”

Everyone stopped at looked at him, realizing for the first time they were fighting each other rather than looking for a killer.The state trooper looked into the sheriff’s car and shook his head.

Pritchard turned to Hawk, “Looks to me like you got the makings of a case here, Tall Tree.” Turning to the deputy he shook his head again. “Unless you want to be counting ducks up North I suggest, repeat suggest, you apologize to the general here and really mean it.”

The confused peace officer looked from the Corporal trooper to Halliday, stood erect and said, “I’m sorry sir, when I saw the sheriff go down, I blew it. He is still the sheriff and this is working itself into a holy mess.”

Kate took control, “O.K., O.K., this is the height of stupidity, a real screw up, and if the papers pick this up we will look like greater fools than we already are. The sheriff doesn’t look like he’s hurt and John, stop looking like a Sioux warrior. That s.o.b. who shot at me may be bleeding to death at this moment. I think I hit him and the rear window of that black car is blown out.”

The trooper interjected, “Word’s already out and we’ve got road blocks up everywhere. Time to concentrate our efforts back in town.” turning to deputy Jerry Hines he said, “ Come on Jerry, get the Sheriff back to his office and call in the cavalry. This thing is going to end up with the Feebies playing their cute games. What a total snafu.”

Even as he spoke a local newspaperman arrived and starting running to the driveway but as one they retreated into the house as the Sheriff’s car pulled away and the trooper went to his car. The bewildered reporter suddenly was looking to the crowd that had gathered and started asking questions.He pulled a camera from his satchel and start taking pictures of the blown window and anything else he could see. The circus had begun.

Minutes after the police had left, the council of war inside was in full swing after they had lifted the phone receiver. when Hawk suddenly rose, “Sorry to break up the party but I got my own council at home. Wildrose and the boys and waiting and by now they will have heard about the shooting. Nails, Kate, call me at the trading post or at the unlisted home number. I don’t have to tell you to be super cautious.”

He rose and walked out the door, got into his truck and drove around the lake road. He emerged and his family came to meet him.

“It’s hit the fan and someone tried to take Kate Kirkpatrick out. Fired a round through her window and got a lot more than they bargained for because she fired back and may even have hit him. On top of that she swears it was the same guy who tried to cripple here the night of the hearing. Unbelievable and all of this in Winsome, quiet, dying Winsome.”

Wildrose looked intently at her imposing hubsand and read all the auguries. He was going to do something so monumentally stupid, and insane and decent and she was torn in forty directions simultaneously because her sons were also going to be involved.

If it went wrong her whole life would change and become totally fallow. She had decided that morning that she was going to be involved regarless of how her husband carried on and he wasn’ going to pull that stoic red man routine. Not with this daughter of Swedish-Irish ancestors who had settled half of the region several hundreds years ago.

Now was as good a time as any, she thought. “O.K. I’ve listened and spent half of every night tearing myself up and that’s the end of that. I may have played the role of mommy and loyal wife/squaw for more then twenty years but I’ve just emanciated myself and I did it without the womens’ movement, Betty Friedan be damned. Despite you’re being elliptical about your plans, I’m in. If things go wrong I don’t want to be around. I’m your driver whether you like it or not and don’t even think about trying to change my mind, you know better.”

Very rarely was John Hawk taken aback by anything but his mouth hung open as did those of his two sons, George and Kyle. They knew their mother’s resolve and her strengths and she’d handled two wild young ones while her husband fought in a faraway land..

They had battled prejudice which was only beginning to abate, largely due to the prowess of her sons in football, baseball and LaCrosse which was part of their genetic makeup. Blacks were doing it big time in national sports and her sons had accomplished the same thing on a very local level. They were celebrities in a town that gorged itself on high school sports.

Hawk’s economic success was both a source of envy and pride locally and he was thinking of trying to get his wares known outside the state of Michigan, perhaps through some mail order outlet or giant chain. None of them particularly cared all that much about money but they were standing tall and together on the rape of Winsome.

Hawk searched the face of the Nordic princess who meant everything to him, then the faces of his sons. George, who resembled his mother, and Kyle who looked more like a Chippewa brave. He looked and realized they thought she was part of everything. “O.K., it’s the Hawks against the bad guys and we‘ve got to win this one and come out of it together, as a family, a strong, fine family and while I‘m not one for preaching or making fine speeches, it‘s the right way to be.

“I figure we’ve got about four to six months at the maximum. McCall has the support because he’s got a hammerlock on the finances of so many of these folks who can barely carry a mortgage. We are dealing with a Neanderthal lumber company, a throw back to the days of take the money and run. Extreme issues, extreme tactics,”

Wildrose looked at him for several seconds, “ Stop sounding like Tactitus. This is only a last resort, remember that, don’t get all fouled up in the macho image of you riding against Custer or Phil Sheridan. I won’t have it for a moment and get that straight, all three of you“ She nailed her sons and Hawk with her eyes, they saw her resolve, knew total strength when they saw it and they respected her intelligence and loved her without reservation.

Back in the Kirkpatrick household, Halliday was undergoing a purge, he was in tears.He held a sometimes struggling sometimes sobbing Kate Halliday and his shirt front was wet from her tears. But his own absolutely reaction confounded him.

“This is not General Frank “Nails” Halliday, holder of the Medal of Honor and leader of men quietly crying like a child, so sir, not me. Yet my cheeks are wet and I can’t release a gentle hold on this extraordinary woman and I feel I owe her my life, and in a way that is absolute truth. But it doesn’t explain this other feeling. I want to protect her, to be with her to just look at her. What am I, eighteen years old and smitten?”

He rocked her gently and she raised her arms inside his embrace and physically vented her loneliness and need. Neither felt the slightest discomfort, they were not just entwined physically, even their heartbeats and respiration were synchronized. After what seemed an hour she sighed and moved away.

“I don’t want you to say a word until I’m finished. I needed you after what happened and I need you to listen to me now. Regardless of what you may have heard I’m definitely not the ice maiden. I sleep badly and alone and suddenly you march into my life.I never thought I could feel so terribly, terribly alone and I know now that loneliness leads to bitterness and I have no intention of going down that road.

I’ve been fighting the good fight, I stay busy and keep a primal scream contained for I know if I every let it out it will destroy me and everything around me. You are uncapping the cap I have on that scream and you had better know what you are doing. No games, Frank, we’re both too old and we’ve both got too much scar tissue. I’m grateful for you have done so far and your commitment to our fight but we both know this is different.”

She withdrew from his embrace and looked him in the eyes and waited and he found a strange totally new feeling coursing through him, he wanted to talk to this woman about strange things and faraway places, about dreams realized and dreams shattered, about being the handmaiden of death and loneliness.

He drew her to the coach, brushed off the last remnants of glass after the forensics people had finished.

“Kate Halliday, I’ve not known all that many women and have always observed from the sidelines and wondered about the union struck by two people, such strange mixtures of experience and emotions. How do they make it work, what is the chemistry which permits them to anneal? How do they submerge their personalities into a totally new entity, a new, joined being?

I’m army, old army, total army and I find myself adrift and yet involved with a bunch of people I didn’t know a couple of weeks ago. I find myself thinking about you when I’m driving or having a cup of coffee or even when someone else is talking to me. I don’t need an emotional road map to tell me what this is really all about.

I’m hugging fifty, have neither wife nor kids and until recently could tell myself I had the army. Now that’s nearly enough. I want to be with you Kate Halliday and its not sir Galahad again. Somebody is definitely trying to kill you and they will literally have to do it over my dead body. But I’m really pissed and that ain’t going to happen. We are going to take a shot a life so let’s start thinking about taking the war over to them, believe me I’m good at it.”

Kate put her hand over his mouth and kissed him ever so gently. “Let me put on the kettle, “let’s have tea,” she said and smiled a strange smile which further confused Halliday.

A victim of the war, Styles clumsily applied a large bandage to the wounds on his neck and cursed when the antiseptic bite him. He had lost whatever semblance of bravado which was his mask. Beneath it there was fear and rage, both being instilled in childhood and the abuses he had suffered from the slattern of a mother who had semi raised him and a particularly sadistic keeper at the state reform school in his region.

He graduated a punk and because of his size, an enforcer of small jobs but this one had implanted a totally new concept, killing as many people as he could in the shortest possible time.

He had already started and he smirked as he looked at the body of Frisky Roman which lay sprawled alongside the bed. He had killed him with a knife which he thought supremely appropriate. He had maintained a penetrating look into his former partner’s eyes as he watched life leave and the blackness begin. At one point shortly before the end he imagined he saw pure, absolute terror, but he couldn’t be sure.

Later this night he would put his body in the car, dump it in the woods for the coyotes and vultures and stalk the big Indian and his family.

He would be in place near the trading post, alongside the trail used to run every morning at six a.m. He never varied and he always stopped at the greatest tree in the area, a hundred foot giant where he looked at its uppermost branches and raised his arms skyward.

Styles hadn’t figure that one out but it was the perfect spot for an ambush, an execution actually and he would only need one head shot. He waited for midnight when the rest of the motel was presumably asleep, opened the trunk of his newly stolen car, dragged Roman’s body to it and dumped it in.

He closed the trunk lid and wiped a smear of blood from the bumper, got his bags and weapon and drove off having previously delineated the way toward the trading post via a back road. He stopped, got Roman’s body and dragged it into the woods. He stripped it bare, smashed the butt of the rifle into his teeth then deliberately cut off every digit no longer having to worry about bleeding.

He put the fingers in a small paper bag and threw them into the woods two hundred yards further down the road and prepared to wait for John Hawk who was fitfully looking out the window of his home while. Wild rose stirred restively next to him. She slept without pajamas and he looked at her body and something primal woke and he wakened her with a kiss on the throat and she threw her arms about his neck and they made instant, total love.

After he feel asleep and she looked at his scarred, muscular body.

“You are my total experience, my fine Chippewa brave. We have weathered every conceivable obstacle including separation, lack of money, no direction until something deep within you changed the course of our lives.

We have beaten back the haters and raised two fine sons who would storm the gates of heel for you and now we are threatened but God knows what. My great ancestors threatened all of Europe centuries ago and there is Viking blood in me and our children and you never needed it.

You restrung your fifty pound test bow last night and tested a dozen hunting arrows for their straightness. You are going on the warpath and I am going to watch your back, you better believe it and God help those that would bring harm to this family.” She kissed him, rolled over and was instantly asleep.

As twenty of six he was dressed in leather breeches, a doeskin shirt and had put a quiver of arrows over his shoulder, lifted the bow and started his run. He had visions, strange dreams probably as a result of the incident at Kate Kirkpatrick’s home. He thought briefly of Halliday and sensed that he too was thinking not of himself.

As he approached the great tree he felt something was amiss. The normal small forest sounds of scurrying, awakening animals was missing as was the birdsong. He slowed his pace and moved abruptly off the trail searching for he didn’t know what but he would recognize it when he found it and find it he did.

The small paper package had already been scavenged by a raccoon or other nocturnal creature but one finger was left. The was a white band where a ring had been removed so someone had rifled the body before killing him. The finger were blunt, scarred, but showed no sign of heavy work.

He left the bag and marked the spot because the police would have to find it later. Now he became part of the forest, the muted colors of his clothes blended perfectly and his moccasin clad feet were soundless as he moved into heavier foliage.

He stopped and held his breath for a moment then began slow breathing exercises and his pulse rate dropped. He withdrew an arrow, notched it and prepared to wait for whatever had disturbed the sanctity of the woods, his woods, the forest of his people.

He didn’t have long to wait before he heard the telltale sound of a muffled cough, only man made that particular sound and he slowly moved toward it. He needed an absolutely clear field of vision for and branch would interfere with the flight of the arrow and he was infinitely patient.

A small animals scurried across his path and he lowered himself but not before Styles saw him, brought the rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger but nothing happened except the click sound, he hadn’t removed the safety and it was that fraction of a second which Hawk used and let fly the heavy duty hunting arrow which pierced Styles left eye.

He screamed, rose, and another arrow went deep into his chest. With an arrow imbedded in his brain, his last mortal sight was the arrow sticking out of his chest. He feel against a tree and remained upright and remained that position as the last breath left his body.

Hawk lowered the bow which had a third arrow set to fly and released the pressure. He stared at Styles, recognized him from the town hall fracas. He pulled both arrows from the corpse after several tries, then carefully lifted the rifle to leave few of any fingerprints and fired two rounds into precisely the same wounds he had already inflicted.

The body jumped then slowly slid to one side and he searched the surrounding area for any sign of his passage and finding none, he wiped his prints from the areas he had touched and using the same piece of cloth hurled it into the woods and headed back toward the trading post.

He again stopped at the great tall, tree closed his eyes and lifted his arms in supplication. A breeze came up and the upper branches of the trees moved restlessly and Hawk dropped his head and listened. He sank to his knees then lay prone with his arms extended for nearly half an hour. He rose finally, again checked the vicinity, and headed home.

He entered the clearing, where Wild rose stood waiting. “I heard shots,” and he stared at her. She nodded and said nothing further and they went back to their cabin where he stumbled into their bed and she closed the door.

Six hours later he went to his sweat lodge and detoxified himself for hours.

By the time he emerged George Barnum was checking into a small hotel thirty miles from Winsome. He immediately went to a public phone and pumped in a couple of waters and reached Link Rodgers on the second ring.

“Have you seen any of the early shows? This story is numero uno because some psychopath took a shot at Kirkpatrick and I think we both know who that psycho is.”

Rodgers stroked his throbbing head,” Yeah and both he and his playmate have famished into the ether. The cops are looking everywhere for them and there’s even talk of the FBI getting into the act although for know I don’t see that this is in their purview although I wouldn‘t be surprised if Halliday pulled some strings. I hear the President thinks he‘s a sterling character, an American success story, from private to general.”

Barnum made his decision, “I’m coming to town tomorrow and we will have a council of war with McCall and that idiot mayor. They are going to get clobbered unless we can somehow convince them to double and triple the budget. Its time to call in experts, friendly experts. Get on that in the a.m.

Ask the lumber company for help and start to drop some letters to the editor from our known allies. We will take out ads on all the local TV channels and see how much money they have and what they are willing to spend. A full bore approach and we will triple the expenses if necessary. I know where I can come up with others monies but we will sell our souls to the devil but I’m going to’ win this one.”

Rodgers continued to massage his aching head, “Sounds good to me and this is a friendly town. Maybe we ought to spread a little good will money in the local stores, contribute to local charities, show up at every meeting with presentations. Be available to the local news people, they really are a sorry bunch.

Barnum nodded his head, “You know these jerk town papers depend on the revenue from the mayor’s office to survive. You ought to remind Hubbard of that fact. Go see the local editor tomorrow and start spending some add money. I don’t think they can handle that much pressure .I suggest we let the heat from this attack on Kirkpatrick die down a little, within a week most of the heavies will be going elsewhere. What’s the local action like?”

Rodgers didn’t have to thin, he was prepared as usual. “A couple of cuties. I took one out last night and will be recovering from it for a week. She has a friend who looks a little world weary and I think is into putting candy in her nose. I’ll set something up.”

Barnum looked out the phone booth window, “Yeah, you do that. I’ll see you at your motel tomorrow morning.”

Rodgers put on his most informal attire, a woolen jacket and shirt without tie and a pair of slacks and prepared to meet Charlie Gardner, editor of the “Winsome Window,” the twice weekly paper which printed everything from legal notices to recipes when it could get them.

Gardner was past retirement age, sometimes he thought he was past everything since his wife died and his kids had all moved away. They sporadically called and occasionally came to visit but the winters were long in Winsome and he felt a coldness in his soul which was also part of his wife’s dying.

Fact was Gardner was also dying but that was a well kept secret between him and old Doctor Ted Gillespie whom he saw every couple of weeks. Gardner’s sole remaining ambition was to turn the paper over to someone who cared about the town and didn’t expect to get rich. There were no takers. Seemed of those in “J” schools these days were more interested in public relations than in old fashioned news papering..

He sighed and lit up his favorite briar when Rodgers walked through the door. His eyes narrowed and he nodded as the flack moved toward him.

‘Howdy, I‘m Link Rodgers and I represent George Barnum Public Relations, perhaps you‘ve heard of us. “ Gardner finished lighting the pipe,

“Yeah, big time p.r. firm, handled the clean water dispute in that Lansing suburb last year and everything is tied up in litigation and the water over there still isn‘t fit to drink.

You represented an Indian tribe downstate in their efforts to put in a casino and won that one, you must have socked it to ‘em. Do you want me to continue?”

Rodgers tried to smile but it was forced. “Yeah, you know what’s going on, frankly I’m surprised.”

“Sure, some jerk town editor tries to understand what makes this country tick and public relations is suddenly the way to go, but don‘t let my prejudices put you off, the lumber company will get a fair shake, that‘s the way we are.”

There was silence for a moment until a slightly shaken Rodgers spoke. “Look when things settle down a little we would like to take out full page ads explaining our position in dollars and sense terms.” Gardner looked at him and blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke which caused Rodgers to pull back.

“Always glad of a little business, as a matter of fact the other side was in here just two hours ago taking out a full page add and they seem to have a reasonable argument. That and that maniac that took a shot at Kate, now that set your cause back a couple of light years. Sure would like to get a lead on that dude, let me tell you. Every paper in the country is chasing that one,” and he wasn’t exaggerating for at that moment Winsome was playing host to more than one hundred and fifty reporters of various stripes including network correspondents and their crews.

Gardner grinned and looked at Rodgers, “Just bring in the copy and a certified check

For four hundred dollars and we’re in business.” Rodgers blinked, “But you rate book said two hundred dollars a page, when did the rate double?”

“Ten minutes ago. See you in the morning, sleep tight.”

Rodgers scowled and said, “Yeah, I get your message and I suppose the other side got in under the wire.” Gardner smiled slowly, “They haven’t got your deep pockets and, incidentally, we are the only paper of record, the only game in town. Welcome to Winsome, home of the most beautiful; lake in the whole damned world.”

Those one hundred and fifty newsmen were so frustrated they were quoting each other, a not unusual occurrence with the demands of television and newspaper deadlines and unless there was a new development the story would fade fast.

That was exactly what was on John Hawks mind when he went to a pay phone, He muffled his voice and told police there was a dead body in the woods with two bullet holes in it and the victim may have been the man who attacked Kate Kirkpatrick.” he didn’t elaborate and made exactly the same call to the “Winsome Window” and Charlie Gardner ran to his car after grabbing a camera and got there before the short handed police.

He had a field day but within an hour the place was crawling with harried local cops, state police and the curious from town. It was a cop’s nightmare and Gardner grinned as he prepared to put out a special edition of the paper.

Jason Roebuck wasn’t grinning but neither was he shook up because he had a edge. He was having breakfast with Halliday that morning after which he had been promised the first and exclusive interview with Kate Kirkpatrick. His friendship and their mutual respect had paid off for Halliday trusted him implicitly.

It was a full blown front page, over the fold story again and would lead the network news shows. The tactics worked out by Halliday and Hawk were paying off.

Roebuck had hired the last available civilian car he could find and his crew had loaded everything it they would need. They stopped at the out of town diner, and Roebuck entered alone. He spotted Halliday wearing a baseball hat sitting at a back table, approached him and sat down.

“That’s what I’ve always liked about, Roebuck, you have a singularly dirty mind. What possible motive would I have for wearing an eye patch which covers the eye wounded in Vietnam while in the service of my country which gave me a general’s stars and the Medal of Honor, “ he said grinning.

“Good Lord, when did you develop that public relations sense?. Too bad you’re not in with all that fruit salad. One look at you and every veteran from here to Key West will immediately be on your side.”

“No, the uniform is something else again but this is another form of war and its being waged more and more on Television. Hasn’t Vietnam been described as TV’s war? You guys dump the gore in peoples’ living rooms and devil take the hindmost. O.K. we’re willing to play by the new rules so let’s get your flabby ass in gear and we will do your interview on the shores of the lake.”

“Speaking of which, you should speak to Tall Tree Hawk about this town and that lake. Now there’s a very interesting perspective.”

“Tall tree Hawk, wow, that name alone is going to give this story still another perspective. Maybe I’ll come back here after this is all over and build a cabin with my bonus money. Why did you come here in the first place?”

Halliday looked at him intently for a moment and made up his mind. “I came to give the Silver star and the Purple Hear to Kate Kirkpatrick, whose son Timmy died alongside me trying to save my life. She threw the medals at me and made me feel two feet tall. She is one of the most courageous people I’ve ever come across and now some son of a bitch has tried to kill her. Ask me about it in the interview.”

Roebuck sat silent, “Jesus, why does it always happen to the good guys? You’re out of the army and you were a “lifer.” I’m sorry Nails, you were one of the best and it sounds like Timmy was too. You bet it will be in the story.

“Yeah I’m out and I miss it like hell but the old warrior may have some good mileage left in him after all. I’m slowly accepting the new role and I like this town and the people in it and am watching it be torn apart. They’ve got their own intense little firefight going and I’ve taken sides. I want to help save the lake.”

They left the diner together, went to their separate cars and drove to a remote site on the lake where the sun, wind and water were the backdrop.

While Artie Goldman was putting the film into the African camera, John Hawk appeared and Roebuck was impressed.. Hawk was wearing beautifully cured deer hide with beads around the pockets. His hair hung in a pony tail down his neck and roebuck was in reporter’s heaven.

Halliday grinned, “No cracks, Roebuck, or I’ll be giving this first interview to CBS. One more thing, you can’t use it until the day after tomorrow, deal? Nobody else will speak to him in the meantime.” Roebuck nodded and grinned, “Deal.”

As he and Hawk had rehearsed it Halliday pitched the story to small town America being strangled by bigness and the uncaring. He pointed out that the small communities were still the source bed of American strength and values and that in a town like Winsome when you gave someone your word it was cut into stone. He talked of the lake and its meaning, how it was an intrinsic part of the town’s character, he then spoke of Timmy Kirkpatrick the reason he’d come to this small Michigan community and although he heard it before Roebuck was speechless as were his crew. Halliday finished the interview for him by saying that a town that could produce young men like Timmy Kirkpatrick were at the heart and soul of these United States.”

Roebuck slowly lowered the microphone. “My God Nails, you make this stripping operation sound like an attack on the constitution of the United States. I will buy a cabin here and we can go ice fishing or something.”

Halliday grinned, “Talk to Tall Tree Hawk, here and he will give you a different perspective.”

Roebuck grinned, “Man I like the sound of Tall Tree Hawk, it will make ‘em weak in the knees in New York and the native dress is inspired.’

Hawk didn’t respond until Roebuck asked the first question and he told of how Indians didn’t look upon land, sky or water as belonging to anyone, but were part of the eternal mystery, the gift of a great spirit and to defile the delicate balance, as it was being defiled all across America, was to abuse that spirit and eventually invite disaster.

He spoke of acid rain and the incidence of emphysema skyrocketing in New York City and people being poisoned while they lived unsuspecting above toxic waste dumps. He spoke of what freedom was to his people, the freedom to worship that great spirit and protect the land, earth and sky. He spoke of the rape of native Americans which now continued in another form, the rape of the beautiful environment which was a gift to all Americans.

He asked whether these were the things we were fighting about all over the world but whether American armies were the tools of the industrial military complex which waved the bloody shirt of communism. By the time he was finished Roebuck knew he had enough for a half hour special and he wouldn’t even have to pitch it to his bosses. Wait ’till they saw it.

After shaking hands Hawk and Halliday left and Artie Goldman looked at the ground and spoke, “I’m going to tell you something amigo, I’m willing to pick up a gun and join these guys. What a pair, what a story, the fight to save planet Earth and we are in the middle of it. By the way you have an appointment to see that old curmudgeon who’s the editor of the local paper. By the time he rolls this stuff will be on the air, spoke to him for a few minutes this morning and he was extra excited about something. Covered some copy on his desk when I came in.”

Roebuck nodded, “Always check in with the local news folk, they know the town like no one else and the usually don’t mind sharing with us gaudy TV types. Let’s wrap it up and call on him.

In their unmarked car they attracted no attention as they pulled into a slot in front of the “Winsome Window.” Roebuck knocked despite the “closed” sign in the window which he found odd. Gardner peeked around the drawn shade and Roebuck introduced himself and the editor recognized the name. He recognized it because Halliday had dropped in the day before and they had had a long talk which ended in an unwritten compact and both men would keep their word. Gardner had momentarily wondered about that talk after he had hung on the phone from the tipster who had sent him straight to the body.

He found nothing unusual about Hawk and Halliday joining forces, both were warriors of a different stripe and both had served their nation well and shared experiences which would horrify many. Gardner had served in the Big Red One during WWII in its onslaught across Europe and he had seen the bodies of too many innocents staring vacantly into the sky.

He admitted Roebuck and quickly closed the door, escorted him to a chair next to his desk and lit his pipe.

“Well, Jason Roebuck of television fame, what do you want of a cranky old newspaper editor in a tiny town, of course we have the most beautiful lake in the whole damn world, but I don’t think that’s the attraction.”

Roebuck liked him immediately and he saw through the old curmudgeon role and thought of his tired old dream about putting out a small town paper, getting to know everything about it and now it struck him, putting down roots.

Grinning he loosened his tie, “I’ve just finished interviewing John Hawk and Nails Halliday, the general and I go back a couple of years. We belong to the least exclusive club in the land, the ragged rats of Vietnam.”

“You know him there, huh, and Hawk must’ve sent you to me. We’re not competitors and my paper has already gone to bed and will be delivered by tomorrow a.m. and I’ve got one helluva scoop. How about that?”

And Roebuck now knew why he was sitting in this quaint, worn and wonderful newspaper office, the good guys wanted him to know something and this sickly looking old timer was prepared to tell him if he didn’t act like a wiseass.

“I always wanted to do what you do, to get to know a place, sink down some roots and be able to know my neighbors, to get to like ‘em, trust ‘em, but the road took a different turning. I’ve had about all the glamour and planes, and schedules and ego-maniacs and producers and hungry new comers sniffing at my heels. Believe me I envy you.”

Gardner looked at him intently for a moment, “I’ve got no kids, my wife is dead and I’m dying, wont be around for more than another three or four months if that. Believe me I’ve done it all in this town, still like it and want it to be healthy and stay small and beautiful.”

Roebuck found himself startled beyond words, “I don’t know what to say that’s a most unusual revelation.”

Gardner grinned, “Now you, me and the town doctor know it and that’s where I want it to stay. But before I go beneath the sod I’m going go after these nature rapists who will strip Winsome of the one thing disappearing in this world, nature’s bounty. They are not going to poison that lake, take a look at Lake Erie.

Now what I’m going to say is for your ears only and you’ve got about twenty minutes to listen then get your overpaid ass out of here and cover a breaking story.

Somebody called in a couple of hours ago and told me there was a body in the woods with a couple of slugs in it and the dude carrying those slugs was the one who tried to kill Kate Kirkpatrick.”

Roebuck, started to rise, thought better of it and sat again, at a loss for words. “Why are you telling me, this, we met ten minutes ago.”

“Being an old curmudgeon I learned to trust my instincts and they are good about you. I’ll tell you where the body is, there should be cops all over the place by now, and you can take your chances. With luck you can get to the local county airport and have that footage in Detroit by midnight and on your early show tomorrow if the gods are willing. The reason I’m telling you this is because you come highly recommend and I‘ll say no more about that.

Tomorrow, if you have time to breathe you can pick up a couple of tuna sandwiches from the diner, a couple of cokes and I’ll point out the villains to you. Now get your ass outta here” and with that he gave the correspondent explicit directions and Roebuck headed out of town hoping the light would hold enough to get the crime scene footage, maybe get a local cop to talk and do a stand upper at the scene. It was going to be pandemonium tomorrow but he was going to keep that lunch date.

Gardner watched the tall gray haired reporter walk out the door and hurried to his unmarked car. He tapped his pipe against his teeth and gave an barely noticeable nod and for the first time in months he smiled totally. He would help this world weary reporter in whom he discerned the glimmering of, what was the word coming into vogue, burn out? He came highly recommended. “

“Wonder what his wife and kids are like. They must be nearly grown, in college perhaps. I’ll find out. Maybe I’ll do a feature on the hot shot types covering this story, ask for a resume from the network in New York. “ He grinned again and turned back to his ancient typewriter.

Sheriff Browder was not a happy law enforcement officer. He spent most of his time in his snug office doing the paperwork which was synonymous with police work these days. Now he had an attempted assassination, and that’s how he viewed the attack on Kate Kirkpatrick, and a neat as you please murder in the woods.

There were absolutely no clues but the identification has been made by a couple of gawkers of whom there were far too many milling around and it looked more like a fairground than a crime scene. One of his deputies had thought to bring some yellow tape and it was a good thing he did for there wasn’t any in the office to the best of his knowledge.

“”What the hell, “ he thought as he finished his fourth cup of coffee in three hours. “This ain’t Detroit or Chicago, this was Winsome, Michigan, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damn world. He threw the paper cup twenty feet and watched as the local ambulance picked up the remains and took off for town and the preliminary exam by the local undertaker. There wasn’t question as to what had killed this thug, the wounds were pronounced and there was blood enough for a hog butchering which told him the first shot had hit him in the head for the heart must have pumped for a short while before the second shot stopped it

There had not been a capital crime in this region in fourteen years, the first being a wife who calmly went to a bad news gin mill along the state road and blew her husband and his girlfriend to the happy hunting grounds. No sooner had he thought that phrase than he started to think about John Hawk whom he detested. The tall Indian walked too tall for his liking and now he was in the middle of the fight over the lake. He would act as a magnet for all those overpaid TV newsmen with their expensive hair do’s and handy pocket comb. He suspected, rightly, that some of them carried small make up kits.

He remembered that fateful night of the basketball championship when he’d pulled a ligament and an exhausted Hawk, suffering from the flu, had been pulled off the bench, been fouled immediately, and sunk two points to win the game and promptly fell to the gym floor.

There was pandemonium. He had been furious when the team and half the stands ran out, lifted him from the floor and cheered Hawk as if he had single handedly clinched the championship when he, George Browder, had scored two more points than Hawk. In his view the Indians belonged on reservation where tuberculosis and poverty and alcoholism and despair took them at an early age.

He remembered when Hawk had volunteered for Vietnam and quietly hoped he wouldn’t come home or if he did not in one piece. But he’d come home a hero, a commissioned officer with a chest full of fruit salad. Then he made that trip to the Cherokee nation and came back and started a mini boom for his people. He heard that hawk was seriously thinking of branching out and he knew that a lot of townspeople wanted any kind of job. The thought of white people working for Indians filled his mouth with acid spittle and he spat at a tree.

Browder refused to acknowledge that he was prejudiced it was just that Hawk was uppity, didn’t know his place. And his kids were worse, they were treated as sports heroes, local celebrities. He had even seen his own daughter casting calf eyes at young George Hawk. She had been made aware of the error of her ways. His cowed wife never interfered in his disciplines and she was a mere adjunct to his every need and wish and that’s the way he wanted it.

He looked at his watch and realized that he had to get back to town and meet quietly with McCall who had a side arrangement with him every two weeks. McCall used money for his own purposes and it was said he had political ambitions which went all the way to the state house. He was leader of the local Republican organization and got his name in the paper every couple of weeks. Smart cookie, then he thought of Hubbard.

To his thinking Hubbard was a castrated bull, an ox who was good at blowing smoke and selling used cars. His expression turned into a sneer as he thought of the mayor, maybe he would take a crack at that job next. Nice to get a second pension. He had always considered himself a pragmatic man, a player who played the cards dealt and didn’t go in for long term strategy. This mess, this unbelievable situation, could very well turn him into a celebrity but he had to come out on top and that meant staying one step ahead of the “staties” whom he considered second echelon soldier boys with their disciplines and shined leather boots.

He knew his town and the players and could call in chits for now ‘till kingdom come. First thing was to make his peace with Kate Kirkpatrick, come out as the law enforcement officer, the sympathetic little town sheriff who has the makings of a hero.

The same Kate was in command of herself again as she looked out at the lake, her primary source of strength, but now perhaps second or third as she listened to Halliday making coffee. He entered, and smiled at her.

“The networks and local stations are sending in reinforcements, the discovery of that body in the woods has given enormous impetus to the story. This has become a nationwide saga and, god help us, that body will act as a magnifying glass. Roebuck is all excited, seems somehow he got to the corpus not so delectus and filed a story on the spot. He got there minutes before the feds, and guess what, Browder gave him a civil interview, playing the part of local, homespun sheriff to the hilt. He must think he’s Andy Griffith and this is Mayberry.

I’m going to get on the horn and call a few reporter types who owe me big ones from our time overseas. I never looked upon the good ones as parasites. They had perspective and many have formed world opinion about our little Asian excursion.”

Kate frowned, “Yeah, his timely demise was made to order for us. But how did the word get out so fast, there are tens of thousands of acres of woods out there and a call comes to Charlie Gardner, then the cops. The order of those calls is significant, the press knew about it before the police. Someone wanted that story to hit every paper in the country, to focus attention on us and this town. Someone on our side. What happened out there? A whacko is shot twice from what I’ve heard and the weapon disappears. Many I’ll bet you Browder is going out of his mind” and at that moment the law officer appeared at the front door and knocked.

Kate peeked out, and frowning, let him in. To his credit he looked sheepish. Halliday didn’t bid him any greeting, just sipped his coffee and looked at him. Browder took off his hand and twirled it in his hands and registered Halliday’s presence and things started to click.

“Look, I don’t like apologizing, it sticks in my craw, but I know I owe everyone here an apology for acting like a damned fool, the proverbial bull in the china shop. This thing is way beyond anything we’ve tackled before and I’m even getting calls from the state capitol. Seems they don’t like towns being torn up and bodies in the woods. I hope you will accept the way I feel and maybe we could pull together on this thing.

Kate looked at him for a long minute, something she was very good at, then nodded slowly. She wasn’t buying his contrition for a moment but was intrigued.

“Sure, sheriff, come on and have a cup of coffee.” She turned to Halliday and winked, “General did you make enough for another cup or two? Halliday raised his eyebrows at being addressed by his military rank and suppressed a smile, “Sure thing, always in favor of cooperating with the law,” and turned back to the kitchen.

For a moment Browder felt like he was being put on but smothered that in his new, warm and fizzy masquerade.

“If you know anything, anything about this guy buying it in the woods, I sure wish you would let us know. We’ve got to pull together, its this town against the world as far as I’m concerned. We’re looking like a carnival out there what with the brawl the other night, someone taking a shot at you and you making like Annie Oakley. Incidentally we found that car and you nicked him, there was shattered rear glass and blood on the front seat.”

Suddenly Kate’s face turned grim. “I’ll bet that corpse has wounds on the back of his neck, didn’t he? You took a good look I’m sure. Was he wounded in the back of the neck and head? “

Browder scowled, “She was dead on the money but he hadn’t revealed that fact to anyone and Gardner hadn’t been able to see the rear of the victim.”

“You are one smart lady, Kate, yeah, it was your boy, the one that blew out your window and your mannequin. This guy wasn’t lucky around guns. But we don’t want to release that information yet.”

Halliday interjected, “Why the hell not? You can bet your weenie this punk was paid by someone, he wasn’t from around here and I’ll bet he has a rap sheet as long as your arm. That information about him being Kate’s attacker is vital information. Someone paid an assassin and that leads to some interesting areas. Who would want to kill a woman who is leading the fight to save a little lake in a miniscule town in northern Michigan?

Someone who wants that stripping plant here, that’s who. This thing is going to be as big a story as the Lindbergh trial. That lumber company must be doing some serious thinking about locating here.”

Browder maintained his cool despite the sudden onslaught. “Look this thing has gotten out of control. We are going to get to the bottom of this no matter where it takes us but I find it very hard to believe with a big company worth hundreds of millions is going to that extent, or anywhere near that extent, to open a plant in a one horse town.”

He paused and looked at both of them and Kate nodded, “Then you will have to look elsewhere. Who else profits from this scene.? Who’s got a vital interest in fight. Follow the money, sheriff, follow the money. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m going to hold a press conference and I kind of think you’ve given me a couple of ideas.’

Browder’s eyes bulged for a moment, “Kate, do you think that’s a good idea It will only fan the flames, this thing has enough publicity already.”

She smiled a small, crooked smile, “I’m tired of leaving the phone off the hook and having to look out at the lawn and these guys are very messy, believe me. I’m thinking of telling the town that they had better patrol in front of my house and get a sanitation crew out here. Now, as I said, Sheriff, you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got things to do.” and with that she ushered him to the door.

Halliday stood there grinning and shaking his head. “ A news conference. You outta be in the p.r. business, you are making all the right moves. “ She looked at him oddly for a moment as if he had touched on something but the look disappeared. “God help us but this was made to order, the little town that could. We can beat these bastards,” but she was wrong for there were others making moves.

McCall had too much riding on the outcome of the forthcoming vote and was going down the list of the non paid but sometimes very vocal town commissioners. He knew it was a tie vote but he had a big trump card and he would play it and hop the furor died down and that the town would slip back into the ether of one time stories. He picked up the phone and called Jessie Jones who, unbeknownst to his wife, had not only a gambling problem but a blowsy girl friend and was in hock up to his clavicle. McCall owned him and he was the tie breaker. He spoke into the phone for a couple of minutes and twenty minutes later was meeting the harried Jones who knew what was coming.

The nervous, copiously sweating little man was sheer energy and nerves. He rattled the favorite dice he kept in his pocket as McCall pulled up and walked to his car, neither one knew that a man with a camera nearby was busy.

Neither did they know that McCall’s private phone had been successfully bugged and that his transactions with business associates and men like Jones were filed in a dozen boxes of audio tape. Browder was a thorough man and he loved having an edge. He had four conversations with McCall and Jones and the second one would hang them both if he needed it.

McCall hadn’t called in Jones notes, had let the interest accumulate ‘till he had the bent little man even more twisted. He held the mortgage to his home and the loan on his car and boat, in essence he owned Jones and he never brought it up because Jones would vote the way he dictated in the meeting on the stripping plant.

Jessie Jones was if nothing if not a realist. He fully realized his shortcomings and often mused that gambling was not the greatest sin by far, avarice was and gluttony of many faces was and deceit and pain the larger inflicted on the smaller. He remembered the marvelous line by Thornton Wilder in his “Matchmaker,“ something about ‘not trusting people without vices for they tended to turn their virtues into vices.” He always smiled when he thought of the line. Yeah, he was a realist and could calculate the odds on dice and poker better than the experts who seemed to make money gambling.

He never spent the food money nor the money for the kid’s and his long suffering wife. Jones had his own set of principles and he tried to be decent about most things. The plant vote gnawed at him and McCall knew it. He had one faint retaliation he could and would use and it had happened because he had had to use the john.

He was waiting for McCall and the banker’s secretary had stepped away from her desk. Knowing McCall’s office had a bathroom he looked around and figured he had time for a fast pee before anyone came back. He had just finished and was about to turn the handle when he heard McCall come back into the office and he had instinctively jumped behind the door.

He was wondering what to do next when he heard the banker yelling at the person on the other end of the phone and although he could only hear half the conversation he stood riveted to the spot because McCall threatened dire consequences if the caller used information about the banks financial situation. Something about imbalances and “cute” accounting practices. Scared witless he waited to be discovered when the banker had rushed back out of the office and went down the corridor.

When he returned Jesse Jones was sitting meekly, apparently submissively, for his appointment and McCall had given him an ass reaming. Jones was used to that but he realized he had something potentially very damaging on the banker but had to be ultra careful about how and when to use it.

If he had any way out he would have jumped at it because the lake and this town were important to him so he sweated with what remained of his conscience and hated this encounter as he had hated others before this one.

McCall climbed into the cab of his 15 year old truck which was clean if five years beyond the junk yard.

The banker was all smiles, he always smiled and Jones wondered if he smiled at funerals. What he didn’t know was that McCall’s debts made his own seem miniscule and he had to have that lumber company operation to keep the bank solvent. He had successfully juggled the banks books and deliberately hired a demi-alcoholic accountant to justify his rigging but he was close to the edge and knew it. One federal audit and he was going to be away for an indeterminate number of years.

“Hiya Jesse, how’s tricks. How are the ponies treating you?” he said never letting Jones forget his addiction and his precarious financial state for a moment. In a way he felt sorry for the little man but he would save his own ass or be in the Cayman Islands via Canada within forty eight hours of it hitting the fan. He had squirreled away a quarter of a million bucks and while it wasn’t a fortune he could live like a prince in Brazil which didn’t have extradition. He thought of himself as a careful man in many ways, that the felt the clutch of circumstance because some terrible insider tips had caused his empire to loose its underpinnings.

He looked at the little man behind the wheel. “I’m not going to give you a song and dance about how this town needs jobs, how’s the downtown is turning into a slum, about the young moving away in droves. You know it as well as I do.

I’ll be frank with you, you’re getting elected one of the seven commissioners happened almost by default and the fact that you had a big family and they voted. But we both know of your gambling habits and frankly if I had your luck I would have turned the car on in the garage and locked the doors. But that’s neither here nor there. I am depending on your vote and it will be the tie breaker and we both know it.

I’m willing to forgive the back interest and I’ll even throw in your mortgage but you’ve gotta’ vote the right way. I know I can count on you.”

It was at that moment that Jesse Jones, no account Jesse Jones, had the glimmerings of an idea that could cause the avaricious banker a lot of grief, maybe behind bars grief. He turned and looked at the banker face on which was not his habit.

“I want a sweetener. I want five big ones in a check made out to me for services rendered or whatever but I want the five grand and I won’t back off. That lumber company’s accounts are going to bail you out and make you a rich man.” Almost immediately he realized his mistake as did McCall.

“What did you mean ‘bail me out,’ you know something that I don’t know about?” with more poise that he knew he possessed Jones continued looking straight at him. “you know what I mean, and he hesitated for several seconds, “ the bank prospers if they come to town.”

McCall, who played a tough brand of poker, stared at him intently and thought of who he was dealing with, a nebbish, a noodnick, a nobody. Finally he smiled, “You’re smarter than I thought Jesse, but don’t get too smart or you’ve be camping out with your family instead of getting the mortgage retired. Your vote will decide it and I know how you’re going to vote, am I not right.’

For a moment Jesse stared at him, “Yeah, you win, you always do Mr. Banker sir, but one day you’ll be dancing to the devil’s tune.”

McCall roared at the little man’s rejoinder, how very like the little creep to depend on later retribution. He was powerless and he knew it. He was still laughing when he left the truck and headed for his car and Browder’s camera clicked merrily on.

The Sheriff had also bugged the banker’s car and he had fervently wished the conversation had taken place in the Cadillac sold to him by Hubbard, but such was not to be but he had more than enough to fry McCall’s ass five times over and knew his “retainer” was going to be ten times as big when the dust settled and the strip operation came in. What Browder didn’t realize was that there was another bug planted in McCall’s office and in his own as well. There were hour of tapes being stored elsewhere and his voice was also on them, tapes that included those transactions between himself and Hubbard, conversations that submerged him in corruption. Those tapes were part of a dossier which would take a legal form but enough evidence was accrued.

But Browder smiled his smile and dreamed his dreams of opulence and power, infinite power in a small town which he considered totally his.

The hunter watched as his big, old Retriever sniffed the air and started acting strangely. He frowned but headed in the direction the dog indicated, aware that he might flush game before he was ready to shoot. The dog started whining and withdrawing from the site when he discovered what looked like a pile of rags.

He approached closer, suddenly realized what he was viewing and promptly lost his breakfast. He half ran, half staggered toward his truck and he and the animal jumped into the cab simultaneously and headed for the nearest pay phone.

Browder being away, Deputy Hines answered the call without early interest then froze at the mention of the mutilated body. He got directions, got the name of the caller and bolted for his car. He roared out of the police parking lot as Charlie Gardner turned the corner in his old Lincoln and realized that the devil was chasing the young cop and headed after him.

Hines ran from his car leaving the door open and Gardner listened as the dispatcher said that a reserve deputy was on his way to where the body was located. Gardner grabbed his camera bag and despite a pronounced pain in his stomach followed the young man to the scene where the deputy was leaning against a tree with his face a chalky white. He was about to pull his gun when he recognized Gardner .and lowered his hand.

“Good lord, someone tried to remove his face….and… and he has no fingers.”

Gardner immediately recognized the murder, for that is what it was, as a professional’s doing, for without prints or dental records the victim could remain anonymous. Gardner took half a dozen shots knowing full well that most were probably unusable. But had a story which he was going to share.

“If I were you Jerry I would get on the horn to the state police barracks and get some of their forensics types here pronto. Seems we may be in the middle of a killing spree. Maybe they’re related, who knows.”

“I know with his face half gone its almost impossible to tell who he was. But somehow he doesn’t seem to be from around here. Those fancy hunting clothes are too new and they look top of the line.”

Gardner nodded and knew how he could find out in a hurry. “Good luck Jerry, I may have to put out still another extra.”

Someone else was thinking about the story because he lusted for a beautiful 26 year old neophyte TV reporter who was half his age. E. Cummings Nesbit, he’d changed it from Charles years ago, looked out his corner office in the network headquarters New York building and thought of her fine young bod in a series of compromising positions with himself playing ringmaster.

He felt the tumescence, a nearly constant state, and forced it back because he was sitting with a dozen show producers in the a.m. news briefing and the story from tiny Winsome was suddenly among the top three for the 6:30 news. He listened to the mixture of new and old breed newsmen, only one female being present in 1969 network briefings, and began comparing her to Emmy Lou Pearson his aspiring and hungry TV producer. Emmy Lou came out looking even better.

Lou Weinstein, the Producer of the show and a print and TV journalism with more than thirty years in the business, kept praising Jason Roebuck for not only his reporting but his enterprise.

“He went into that tank town with no preparation to do a one or two day story and has been leagues ahead of the competition from the get go. From Vietnam to Winsome in less than a month, Roebuck is the consummate pro,” Waters smiled and attempted to pat down his always wandering hair.”

E. Cummings saw his chance, “Couldn’t agree more but he has to be exhausted, he picked up several nasty Asian viruses and he looks gaunt. I’m thinking he could use a little backup, him being top dog but he can use a little help and it would shake up the competition if we had two reporters there.”

Wine stein studied him before answering because he knew E. Cummings would head the news division one day and he would go to Key west and become a demi bum but he was prepared to take him on in the meantime. “Who would you have in mind,” he said with a straight face. He had already figured it would be the sexy newcomer and E. Cummings didn’t fail the test.

“I was just thinking,” “Just thinking my ass, Weinstein thought,” that perhaps we should try one of our super bright fledgling reporters, say someone like Emmy Lou Pearson, she’s good and has that all American farm girl look.

“Yeah, Weinstein thought, “and a 35 C bust, gorgeous legs and a keister that would make me leave my wife if I had a wife. She’s an angel face with a total lack of heart. They were made for each other.”

’Look, Mary Simpson deserves a shot at it, she’s a fine reporter and has valid experience, and its really her turn.”. Cummings couldn’t hold back a frown. “I’ll make up my mind this afternoon and whoever it is will be on a red eye tonight. I’ve got a series of heavy duty meetings for the rest of the morning so let’s call a break.”

The problem with Mary Simpson is that she had originally flunked the Executive Producer’s coach test. She wouldn’t put out and he had the feeling that if he pushed her too far she would be calling in one of the nascent women’s’ right organizations and he would face a certain degree of embarrassment. “Thank God it’s still a man’s world” he smiled when he thought of the night before him and as many as he wanted henceforth. “Yeah, it’s still a man’s world. Man I love this job, it‘s a happy hunting ground.” and he entered his office and told his choice to report to him pronto.

Emmy Lou was there in five minutes, gave him a flash of thigh, a modified “come hither” smile and they came to terms immediately. She had already decided it was worth the price and she would break off any ongoing sexual relationship when she was further up the ladder and she was determined to go to the top rung.

She left and he told his secretary he had a sudden, blazing toothache and had to go to the dentist immediately. She commiserated and started canceling his appointments and was puzzled as he left his office whistling.
“Dentist my ass,” she thought, “he’s got some floozy waiting for him at his penthouse. He ranks as one of the great if lesser assholes in this chauvinistic damned business. I would like to bring his ass down some day. I’ll ask Jeanine before we hit the hay tonight. She’s think of something, she hates his cute little buns.” She laughed and had her own sexual fancies and reached for the phone again.

Emmy Lou took an early morning flight after attempting to repair the ravages of four hours sleep, more than three quarters of a bottle of champagne and a mini hangover. But she was flying in more ways than one. Twenty six and on her way to becoming a network hot shot. She wondered if there would ever be a woman anchor and thought it a worthy ambition. She also thought briefly of E. Cummings and realized he was one piss poor performer. One shot and roll over, wham bam and thank you maam. But a small price to pay as she looked out at a still beautiful America. She slept and didn’t read the files that had been given her my messenger early this a.m.

Jason Roebuck reached for the early morning call and recognized Weinstein’s voice and was instantly awake. He listened, asked a few questions and thought about the new addition and was under whelmed. The gods were laying signs for him and he thought about his future for several minutes and for the first time thought there was another life other than that of correspondent.

He’s covered every story from tiny town council meetings to the JFK assassination and was life weary. The big stories were becoming just stories to him after Vietnam, everything seemed reduced in size.

Despite himself he remembered that helicopter trip as if it had happened yesterday. You took choppers over there was you would a taxi in New York city or Chicago, he thought. But it had a wonderful advantage, it was cool, wonderfully cool as you hurtled at 125 miles eight thousand feet above terra firma to escape small arms ground fire. You came to see the country as a composite of small towns, immense rice fields, bomb craters, people working the soil and children riding the backs of water buffalo, which, according to local custom, didn’t like the smell of Caucasians.

That particular ascent was all the more welcome because we had been in the boondocks for a week, saw little action, and wore the same fatigues we had started out in and more than exhausted.

His Vietnamese crew were asleep on the aluminum floor with minutes of taking off s. The Vietnamese were the best sleepers in the world, he had thought with affection. They had paid little attention to the several bound women and the terrified children who clung to their mothers as they hurtled to Saigon.

He knew they had seen these foreign birds of prey hundreds of times but now they were aboard one of the terrifying machines, essentially prisoners of war because they had been picked up in a village suspected of being sympathetic to the Vietcong Adding to their terror was the fact that the sliding doors of the chopper had been left open, deliberately to take advantage of the fast flowing air.

He remembered taking off his helmet and looking at the closest woman who hand her hands bound behind her back as did they all. She could not hold her terrified two year old son. There was no comfort for the child who was beyond the crying stage, now struck dumb with terror.

She was a typical peasant in black pajamas, with the prematurely lined face of one who tilled the fields alone while trying to provide for her elders and the young son. He remembered thinking that God only knows where her husband was, either with a Viet Cong unit somewhere in the neighborhood or on the run from the South Vietnamese and allied troops.

She had looked at me straight in the eyes without any apparent malice and with that incredible Vietnamese stoicism. For a moment I saw her glance toward the open hatch of the chopper and I realized there was nothing between her and that void and should we make a fast move she and her child could be hurled to their deaths.

He remembered moving his body so that one foot jammed against the hatch door and the rest provided an obstacle to her rolling in that direction. She had stared at me without any indication that she recognized what I was doing but I knew because she relaxed her body a trifle, or as much as she could with the ropes biting into her wrists.

What must she have thought of this big American “round eye” with the rapidly graying hair who wore an American uniform but who carried no visible weapon? Actually I had a .45 caliber colt in my knapsack for all the good it would have done me in a fire fight or against an enemy mortar attack. It was a tiny macho gesture.

The casualty figures had soared during that year of the Tet offensive. The weapon was just adding weight to equipment which was already more than sixty pounds. Sixty pounds on my back, he had thought, to be humped among American and ARVN troops who were, for the most part, in their late teens, or in the Vietnamese ranks anywhere from their teens to their late forties.

I had reached for my canteen and she watched me intently, then wetted her lips. She was thirsty as the other women and children must have been. Without thinking about it I slid across the aluminum plating and held the canteen to her lips. She started at me for a moment, didn’t make a sound, but parted her lips and I poured warm water into her mouth and the mouth of her son.

The other women looked at my actions and I did the same for them. Soon the canteen was empty and I removed Vo Su’s my cameraman and comrade. He didn’t even stir and I often envied him his seemingly dreamless nights. As I said, the Vietnamese are the best sleepers in the world. I put the empty canteens next to my gear and went back to my position guarding the open hatch.

At about the same time Kyle entered an old brick building through a set of doors and observed that it was busy which was exactly the way his father had planned it. He fingered the three hundred dollars in used twenties in his pocket and gulping, went to the desk and pushed across a plain piece of common white bond with his order and the amount on it. No names, just a piece of white paper which would be discarded within minutes. The clerk looked at him without expression, “two cases huh,“ and Kyle responded as he had rehearsed it, “Yeah, we’ve got twenty acres of stumps and are on a schedule.“

The clerk nodded, gave him a price, he paid a price and went to the loading dock and was back on the turnpike within minutes.

He pulled off and took major state roads and never went but a few miles above the limit which was what everyone else was doing. He stayed in the traffic flow and crossed the Illinois line, pulled into a truck stop and looking like a young trucker ordered bacon and eggs with white bread and coffee. Standard trucker’s fare and th4e heavyset woman behind the counter served them within four minutes, he ate everything in five, paid up and was out the door within ten minutes of arriving. He startled as a state trooper pulled in and brushed by him but he didn’t flinch nor show any interest. He was one of the million pieces of flotsam on America’s highways. He started whistling and tasted the remnants of his meal and started to think about a cheerleader he had noticed during a couple of games and he felt sure she had noticed him.

Back at the trading post Wildrose came out and looked at the deer hide Hawk had stretched over a frame. “They are not up to par this year. Both boys are o.k., one called in fifteen minutes after the other. Kyle said it was a ’piece of cake.”

Hawk let out a long breath, “One down, six to go. Got to admit I was sweating bullets but maybe it’s that it’s so damn risky and I can’t believe they’ve become young men.”

But her thoughts were elsewhere, “I just can’t believe that they are that stupid, that there must be another way. Isn’t there any other way of beating them with other means. We would have to break up, we could be fugitives for the rest of our lives if anything goes wrong.”

Hawk deliberately did not take her into his arms but looked straight at her instead, “This is a last resort but we must take it. Reason just hasn’t prevailed with these idiots. Reason, poor twisted reason, that twisted, mocked, term, should dictate to these idiots that once that lake is gone there is no reason to live in a ghost town. There have to be other light industries, other sources of jobs but these jokers jump at the first real offer.

Wildrose looked at him directly, “But they say they have checked out other sources that companies just don’t want to move this far North.”

“That’s hoodaw and we both know it, that stripping plant will make big bucks for damned few for awhile and I’m willing to bet that McCall’s prints are all over this scheme. The so called town fathers haven’t really begun to look. How about some of these nascent computer companies that are starting up. A whole new breed of industry and they are the coming revolution, the advent of a new, information age.

Wildrose hugged herself for a moment, “After all the sweat and prejudice, all the effort and worries, we have made it. We have two fine sons and a future. What happens if even the slightest thing goes wrong. “ she bit off her words realizing that she had revealed herself despite earlier pronouncements. . “God help me and forgive me, love, sometimes the fear just overwhelms my resolve.

Hawk smiled, ’ How many times do I have to tell you, woman, nobody gets hurt and nobody gets recognized. The land and the lake stay the same and the story creates the kind of publicity and people will see justice here and courage.”

Mary Lou Pearson was slowly going out of her mind. With nothing new developing she was reduced to looking for scraps and the latest call from E. Cummings was anything but cordial. She was frantic and couldn’t understand how Roebuck was still getting enough human interest pieces together to make a story every third or fourth day. She was praying that she could hang on until the big town meeting and the fateful vote in six days time.

To add to her consternation there had been a media blitz orchestrated by Barnum with radio, local TV advertising and full page ads appearing in the local paper extolling the virtues of industry, a restored town, prosperity instead of stores closing.

They featured everything from scare ads showing boarded up store fronts to optimistic forecasts fronted by Hubbard or McCall who predicted a boom town. The money was flowing and McCall was going deeper into funds which didn’t belong to him. It was all or nothing now.

For his part Jason Roebuck was having the time of his life. Gardner had been a Godsend and he had been ahead of the completion on every story thus far. He took Goldman, Ronnie and Frank and they headed for the trading post and a story from a new angle, shot from a helicopter. Hawk had agreed to spend the morning with him, first doing an interview then flying Goldman over the same ground for the silent footage which would be played over the narrative.

He encountered Hawk waiting by the small chopper. “How’s your stomach? Can you handle this little beastie.”

Roebuck grinned, “Come on John Hawk, you know us TV types took Nam choppers like people catch cabs in New York City.”

Hawk grinned “Yeah, I made a couple of chauffeur runs myself. Almost got one or two of you guys scragged. Can’t win ‘em all.” he laughed aloud as did Roebuck and as so often the case, through laughter they trusted each other. Laughter is permitting oneself to be vulnerable for a moment, it is a bi-way into knowledge of a major part of another’s psyche. Genuine laughter was a tonic, a rare indicator that life held funny surprises and that another found them amusing as well. Common ground, it is called.

“Come to think of it that could have been me. One cutie Major left me and my crew on a hilltop for a couple of hours, he thought that was cute as did his crew .I dissuaded him of that notion when we returned to terra firma. But enough of that. “

“I will have to make two trips so that your amigo with that ugly, heavy camera can get some footage.”

Roebuck grinned, “Yeah, but be gentle, he gets sick on a rowboat in Central Park. He and Hawk alighted and as Hawk was starting the ignition procedure he looked at Roebuck, “saw some of your jazz from Vietnam. You looked a little fool hearty, thought I detected that thousand yard stare. They don’t give Purple hearts or disability pensions to you guys..”

Flippantly Roebuck stared out his window and said, “Did it for glory and the buck” but couldn’t for a moment explain why he had taken the chances he had. His family responsibilities hadn’t entered his consciousness for they would have interfered with the beau geste. He had faith in his experience and above all his Vietnamese crew who took their destinies in their hands everyday.

They would go into the combat of Tet during the morning, have lunch at home, then do it all over again before dinner and they thought it was all in a day’s work. Incredible. He loved and missed them and would never forget them but he wasn’t about to go into a soliloquy.

He vividly remembered explaining to Vo Suu, his wonderful and award winning cameraman, about catching the 6:27 to Stamford, how so many in New York commuted to work and Vo Suu thought about it for a moment and said, incredibly, “We do that too.”

No bar car but plenty of small arms fire, yeah he did it too, “ Roebuck thought and brought himself back to the present.

Hawk turned and looked at him for a moment, ‘Our mutual friend said you were a good man, a fair man and did your best to try to understand and explain what was happening over there. We ask no more than that here.

“Nails said that, high praise from that total soldier. Understand that you flew choppers over there for two tours, you guys had to be a little nuts yourselves flying those pieces of aluminum into ground fire.”

Hawk smiled, “I did it strictly for the glory and the buck but the question is why did you volunteer to go over there?”

“O.K. as long as this doesn’t go anywhere. I wanted to personally find out if what we were doing was the right thing to do.

Hawk looked back at the instrument panel as the rotor gained speed.
“I would be interested in your answer.”

Roebuck looked at him briefly, “No, we should not have been there. We didn’t read their history, we didn’t appreciate that they had been fighting for 800 years or more and we paid for it with tens of thousands dead and more than 200,000 wounded and many of those guys will never leave V.A. hospitals or will be wounded psychologically for the rest of their lives. They are calling it post traumatic stress syndrome now.

That domino theory is for the commie haters and the boys making the big bucks out of a war. Every notice a new merchant class emanates from a war? Somebody has to produce all those wonderful toys, things like Agent Orange and flamethrowers. Maybe we’ve learned something this time but I doubt it. Someday count the number of wars we’ve been in in the past 75 years and you won’t believe it. But, as I said, I don’t believe we will learn this terrible lesson.”

Hawk paused and looked at him again, Yeah, me too. This is another form of the big battle. We are also killing off pieces of these wonderful country every day. If that vote goes in favor of the stripping operation we will kill off another piece and I ain’t gopnna’ let that happen. It’s, its obscene.”

Roebuck looked at him intently, I don’t know what to make of that remark and I’m getting a funny feeling. I will do what I can for you Tall Tree but you’ve got to trust me. Lordly, another of God’s angry men. I’m going to cover this story straight and go home and ask my wife to stay my wife and maybe, God help me, find some other line of work.”

The revolutions increased and Hawk lifted the bird off and headed it straight across the water at no more than forty feet. He paid total attention to his flying until they were at about one hundred feet and both were silent for a long moment looking at the shoreline and the islands as the flew past. Some had small cabins and smoke was curling from the chimneys and roebuck had a sudden longing for what that represented. Jason roebuck suddenly wanted a cabin and his wife and a dog and good bucks and people whom he didn’t have to pry information out of, people who said good morning as if it meant something, people who would be real neighbors, not those in the next overheated co-operative apartment next door in a city where the snow fell as slush and you carried an armor which was invisible but tough to penetrate.

Hawk raised his voice to make himself heard, “If guys like you don’t really grasp what is going on we are in deep shit. You TV types are no longer just the fourth estate, you are among the new power brokers and you damn well know it and some of you look more like players than reporters.

You can slant stories ever so slightly and the uninitiated don’t spot it. You can send people into an outrage. You don’t report on the big time lobbyists turning the congress into an extension of their clients and the ones with the biggest bucks wins and where does that leave the American people?

I hear your mantra about objectivity but you’ve got to register those deep human feelings and the nuances too, go beneath the surface of this story and find the spirit of that lake and these woods and the game therein. There is a sacred quality to this fight, and we’ve got another war on our hands, Roebuck.”

“Man, the stories and characters I get assigned to, yeah it is definitely time to seek another line of work. “ He smiled but suddenly realized he meant it.

Hawk grinned, “Let’s fly, birdman, maybe I can bomb the bank building and blow moneybags McCall all to hell.”

Knowing the answer, Roebuck asked the question anyway, “This little lake, is it really that important to the overall scheme of things?”

Hawk banked the helicopter over town and headed over the nearby mountains where the evidence of acid rain was pronounced.

’Mans human cells divide in laboratory cultures about every fifty years and once every several years we do it too, then its over, a hundred years maximum. But a lake can live tens of thousands of years going through its natural cycle. Then we come merrily along, dump in toxins, poison it and it can die in a few years. But this one won’t be poisoned as I said before, you can make book on that.”

Charlie Gardner emerged from his doctor’s office and carefully looked at the prescription for heavy duty barbiturates. He also noticed that it was for a three months supply and wondered if he had gotten Gillespie’s unspoken message. There were enough to kill a pachyderm or three strong horses. He hadn’t asked for a lethal cocktail but both men had known each other for decades. He nodded to himself and went to the drug store where tom Conway the druggist had looked at the prescription for a long minute, then at him and finally said, “coming right up,” and he had the way out if things got too rough and he was fully expecting them to get that rough after the past few weeks. He was determined however to see the fight through and it was shaping up as a full fledged brawl and he was quietly on the side of the angels.

Gardner stopped to pack and light his pipe then walked a block and a half to Fred Jenks, his lawyer’s office. He walked in and found him standing reading a legal notice. He was greeted with good humor until the attorney knew his errand and sobered.

Gardner emphasized the changes in his will, checked them for accuracy and swore Jenks to absolute silence about the changes. He couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer, “Charlie, why him? You haven’t know the dude for more than a week. What would he know about running a local newspaper, he’s a well established TV correspondent with world wide credentials?”

Gardner smiled, “Because he’s got a bad case of the burn out blues, he’s decent, he’s smart and he’s got integrity. He also indicated one day that he envied me, of all people. If you don’t work you can auction the whole kit and keeboddle and give it to the library building fund.” Jenks smiled, “They broke the mold with you Charlie. I know you’re real ill and I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Don’t get maudlin on me Fred, you’re too fat and I would burst out laughing. I’ve had a helluva ride and the best is yet to come. Off the record, how do you think the vote is going to go?”

Jenks didn’t hesitate, “You know the count as well as I do. McCall and Hubbard have this thing sown up unless a miracle happens. What a mess, a rock and hard place thing.”

Charlie nodded, they shook hands and Gardner left feeling a lot better about things.

Despite the impending clash Kate and Halliday were exploring feelings that had long lay dormant, and in Halliday’s case, feelings that he had never been exposed. They had carried picnic fixings to her canoe and shoved off and leisurely crossed to one of the more remote and uninhabited islands.

There was grace and symmetry in their progress as there was in their emotions. They had both been through the cauldron more than once and subterfuge and evasion was not in their makeup. Their new found devotion to each other was in the form of openness to the vibrations and expressions they voiced on every conceivable subject.

He broke a sweat and wiped his face to find her looking at him with a soft smile, she shook her head and went back to paddling. A loon cried and broke the surface of the water.

He spoke quietly, “You know, I went down to the Florida Keys for some SCUBA diving several years ago and saw Osprey’s nesting on specially constructed perches on telephone poles. They are raptors of the first order, superb fishing machines. Fierce in appearance but you know what, they mate for life and the male arrives first.

His cries would break your heart, they sound lost and he just keeps on crying till his mate shows up. Then he quiets down and they mate and raise their young and the cycle resumes the following year. Now why does that come to mind, maybe it was the sound of that Loon, that’s a haunting sound if I’ve ever heard one.”

She stopped paddling and half turned, “You are exposing a part of you that you haven’t dealt with before. You’ve been a warrior, or raptor, if you will, for nearly thirty years and you were very good at it. Now the hunter male comes to roost and calls to his mate and that is exactly what you’re doing and I love it.’

He broke into a laugh, “ Thank you doctor Freud. How long have I been here?”

“Three weeks, two days and about fourteen hours but who’s counting?” she is suddenly caught up in that small revelation and it is the open door to her heart and she is momentarily disconcerted.

“We’ll as Jean Paul Sartre once said, “No exit.” I let down the ramparts with that remark and I’m all aflutter as the ladies used to say. Second time at bat and I want to belt a home run with the bases loaded.”

Halliday grinned, “Aw shucks, you make me all drooly and tangle footed.”

They beached the canoe and she alighted,” You can make fun of me now but you’ve got to sleep some time.”

He started laughing and couldn’t stop for a memory of an old conversation came to mind. Finally he got control and told her the story of a friend who traveled extensively who had finally run from a totally unsatisfactory marriage.
“Friend of mine finally got loose from a shrew and married, of all things, a part Polynesian, part French woman who was just about the most beautiful, exotic creature I’ve ever seen…present company excluded. Anyway he told me over his third martini that one night in bed his new wife said to him, ”I come from a very sophisticated and male dominated culture and I can understand it if you stray, want to share your bed with another woman from time to time.

I understand that but one thing you should know, if I find out about it one night when you’re asleep, snip.”

Halliday broke into a laugh again, stood up too fast, lost his balance and promptly toppled into the shallow water. He was still laughing his head off when he emerged and she just stood there with a strange look on her face.

“I really like that woman and her views on infidelity. As a matter of fact imagine if you will that it was me who said that to you,” and with that she started to laugh and Halliday looked startled for a moment and laughed all the louder.

“I’ll have to sleep with one eye open, come to think of it, I only have one good eye.”

He stood and she waded into the water and held him as if it were to last to the last second of time. They stayed that way for several moments and finally disentangled themselves and brought the makings of lunch ashore to the small, deserted, sandy bottomed, cove.

He poured a fruity red wine and she unwrapped sandwiches and fruit and they dined as one entity for two are better than one. A Chipmunk stared at them and Halliday threw it a piece of grain bread and it promptly stashed it in its cheeks as it did with several others till it appeared near bursting. He grinned at it, “I know just the feeling partner, get it while you can.”

He grew serious for a moment, “There’s something unique, quieting about this place, this lake and this time. The ocean is subject to cataclysmic forces and seems to have whims of its own but this lake seems to posses a spirit of tranquility. It seems somehow ageless.”

Kate rested her head on his chest. “There is a very special quality to this place. John Hawk says it can heal. I would stare at it for hours after my husband was killed in that accident and after, after….”

Halliday said gently, “Do you hold me responsible for Tim’s death?”

Kate pressed her lips together and looked at him. “No, I think I’d go crazy if that were the case. Seeing you for the first time permitted to explode, my feelings had remained dormant, suppressed for too long.

No, you are not to blame, I could blame the Viet Cong, the war, foreign policy our paranoia with communism which contains the seeds of its own destruction. No, you are not to blame. Blame the chicken hawks, the great minds that got us mixed up over there in the first place, the creators of the domino theory. Wasn’t it Mac Arthur who warned Johnson not to get involved in another Asian war? But Johnson got caught up in it, didn’t run for another term and was dead within a year. The ultimate irony.

I blame those who see war as righteous for whatever reason is current, the righteous who see war as God’s gift to country and manhood. Every notice that they always, repeat always, claim that God is on their side? During World War I the German soldier’s belt buckle said, “Gott mi uns,” ‘God is with us’ but we praised the Lord and passed the ammunition and God granted us victory.

You are a decent man, Frank Halliday and I believed you also grieved over Tim’s death and would have sacrificed your life to save his. That’s the way you are.”

She paused and looked out over the lake.

Halliday studied every line in her face which while relatively new to him was imbedded in his consciousness. “Thank you Kate. I guess I’ve wanted your forgiveness more than anything in this life. This is tough for me to say but I want you to respond to me, for what I am, warts and all. I suddenly feel like a teenager on his first real date with the prom queen with whom he’s been in love with for years.”

Kate suddenly burst into a grin, “So you want me to respond, do you general, you want me to be the general’s lady. We’ve known each other for three incredible weeks and the neighbors are talking and the rumors are flying but they ain’t sure you’ve bedded me yet so the gossip just gets better and better.

What, pray tell, gallant soldier, holder of the Medal of Honor, did you think I was doing? I don’t play that kind of game, I don’t play bridge or Mah jong. I don’t play adult games although spin the bottle was terrific a thousand years ago. What do you think I’m doing if not responding?

“I wasn’t sure, I’m way out of practice.

Kate shook her head, “God help us, men run this country. I’m joining the women’s’ movement, its about time we really got into the act.”

It was Halliday’s turn to grin and it turned lewd, “There are differences for which I am eternally grateful.”

Kate looked at him for a long moment, “Let’s not get into this any deeper Halliday unless you are really sure, in fact positive. I’ve been on my own now for a long time and, as I’ve said, they may think I’m the ice maiden around here. Little do they know. Fact is I’m reaching out too, lover, friend, companion, even wife. Do you understand?”

“I like the way you beat around the bush, Kate. So very feminine.”

Kate suddenly gave him a thoroughly provocative look, “Enough of this sloppy, emotional stuff, let’s go swimming.”

With that she jumped up, removed her jeans, shirt, loafers, bra and underpants and walked slowly into the water and plunged in. Halliday stood there with half a sandwich in his hand, threw it to the Chipmunk and was totally naked by the time he hit the water.

They did a ‘pas de duo’ for long moments when she slid over and brought her arms around him and her breasts flattened against his chest. His feet hit the bottom and her hands roamed and within minutes he was inside her and they were one.

Later, lying naked on the tiny beach, they watched thunderheads gather and Halliday wondered if it were a metaphor for what was to come, bliss then turmoil, the Ying and Yang and was momentarily discomforted when she nestled her head against his chest and quietly slept and he thought he give his life for her and he once swore he would give his life for his country, then he too slept.

An hour later they awoke, dressed started to arouse each other, thought better of it as the first thunder was heard and paddled quickly toward shore and her house. They ran through the door as the deluge descended. Kate unpacked the picnic things, looked at him for a long minute and he was wise enough not to say anything but smiled gently. She nodded and started to wash the dishes. He pushed her aside and took her place. She thought about that for a moment, turned him gently and put her arms around him. She kissed him deeply and again he responded.

“Come on General, let’s wash off all that sand and get into bed.” she grinned and left him standing there with a dishtowel in his hands.

Later she ran her hands over his back and pushed him sideways and looked over his muscular body and saw several scars.

“I thought you would be all gnarly and full of scar tissue, you look great for a guy hugging fifty.”

“You were doing just fine until that line about looking like a guy hugging fifty. Incidentally you have a total, mature, sexy bod and I’m laying claim to it. Just thought you should know.” she smiled. She looked closely, “My god, you actually look like some old alley cat that’s had a terrific night and has come home to eat and snooze.”

Halliday continued to grin, “I ain’t talking while the flavor lasts.’ Kate smiled wickedly, “Come again? “ and started to laugh.

“You are one saucy baggage as our limey cousins used to say.”

“You bet your bippie…I wonder what a bippie really is. Sounds dirty. ‘

He looked at her, “Listen to me a second…” But she interrupted, “No, enough talk.”

‘What do you mean enough talk/”

“Just what I said.”

“Are you telling me to be quiet, I’m a Brigadier General in the United States Army, commander of thousands of men.!

“General, shut up.”

“O.K. as long as you use my rank,’ and grinned and they quietly went to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, the afternoon of the day before the vote which would determine the future of the small town of ‘ Winsome, Michigan, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damned world.”

The next time there was a sense of excitement in the town as people began to gather hours before the vote. Roebuck started his ‘stand up’ before the entrance to the building as people watched, fascinated at the miracle of television which was being enacted throughout the community. Amy Lou Pearson watched as her rival looked at his notes for the last time, nodded to Goldman and commenced to speak into the camera.

“In the small town of Winsome one year was very much like another. The spring and summer were treasures, the Autumn was always golden, the winters cold and some says, beautiful. This town is more than one hundred years old and got by pretty well on its own industry and the folks who came to enjoy its beauty.

It got harder to make a living and the small farmers were the first to go under and the restless young began to look toward the great cities as Mecca and a place where dreams were to be had on any street corner.

The thing that had held this town together was that lake, that beautiful lake, some say the most beautiful lake in the whole of the upper peninsula which was known for its forests and lakes and great forests.

Now the forests are succumbing to acid rain and jet travel and makes the Caribbean easier to get to than Winsome. Jobs are almost impossible to come by and some folks want a stripping plant here which would imperil the lake according to its opponents.

It’s jobs versus the lake to simplify it and the issue has divided this town, folks here are fretful and angry. It may well be the story of much of small town America from which this country drew its strengths.

The future of this town and its people and lake will be decided here late this afternoon.”

He handed the microphone back to Frank who carefully wrapped it in a case. The inside microphone would be jacked into a central system inside when the meeting took place.

“Well oh wily one, what did you think of it?”

“Goldman nodded as he finished removing the film from the “Mickey Mouse” ears and putting into a film can using a black bag to prevent light exposure. I liked it but then I’m pro lake, anti stripping plant.”

“It was supposed to be an objective report not pro or anti anything.”

“Oh it was oh mighty journalist. You ran it right down the middle both sides could argue their case from that stand upper. It’s a damned shame that this fine little, down at the heels town, is ripping itself apart and the combatants both have valid positions.”

“Yeah, it is a story being repeated all over this country. Let’s go inside and set up, there’s going to be twenty cameras vying for space within the next half an hour and we could see a repeat of the last mob scene.”

Amy Lou Pearson watched them enter and got her crew together. It was rare when more than one unit was dispatched top a story but that riot had set everyone up. She was privately praying for a repeat and swore she would stick closer to Kirkpatrick and her Romeo that a second skin.

She wondered idly whether the two of them were making it but decided that Kirkpatrick was an icicle and Halliday not much hotter. She moved her crew inside and realized immediately that the hall wouldn’t accommodate the people arriving in droves, people and other camera crews. She immediately jockeyed for position and was ready, she thought, for everything from a free for all to an orderly vote which she dreaded.

Roebuck started for the mayor’s office and people watched him pass. Some nodded approval and a couple said hello while still others looked away.

He entered the mayor’s outer office, identified himself and the secretary identified him and call the mayor who sighed and said, “show him in.” the first hurdle passed thought roebuck. “Now the games begin.”

Hubbard rose and ushered him to a seat. The office was comfortable with the compulsory pictures on the wall and a dozen certificates of merit.

“Have a seat Jason, I hope you’ve found the town officials and its inhabitants cooperative although they are under an enormous amount of stress.”

Roebuck thought for the thousandth time in his life how officialdom always used his first name when they wanted to appear warm and friendly. He adjusted his mental sights.

“Thank you mayor. No one has called me an sob. yet, maybe I’m not doing my job right. We’re setting up our cameras inside the hall and it looks like standing room only. “

Hubbard, unused to this sort of non fawning, non puff piece approach frowned,” We have a natural concern that those folks are going to be playing to the camera rather than trying to resolve this issue and you know it’s a hot one. The way I see it the town could end it a loser no matter which way that vote goes.” he glanced down at his empty hands and picked up a paper clip and started to unfold it and roebuck realized that the strain was having its effect on this not too strong man. He suddenly felt sorry for him and caught himself in time. “Right down the middle, he thought, right down the middle.”

“My. Mayor I’ve had that camera and a thousand like it inside that many meetings and people soon start to forget we’re there. Frankly it sounds like you’re going to have twenty cameras in that place and more trying to get in. Those two killings and that assault on Kate Kirkpatrick have made you a national focus.

Hubbard continued toying with the paper clip then looked up, “ this town is usually pretty sensible. Decent people here and some have been here for several generations. This issue is tearing us apart and making enemies out of neighbors. I believe in freedom of the press providing the press is responsible and we get a fair shake.

Roebuck nodded, “I appreciate your candor and believe me I grown to really like this town and its people. Its that strange thing that occurs in small American communities. People do know each other and they mean it when they say ‘good morning or how are ya?’ My wife and I are seriously thinking of taking a look outside the fabled confines of Manhattan. Maybe you will be getting a couple of new constituents. “ he smiled and the mayor looked intently at him.

“You are a breed apart, your erstwhile partner Mary Lou what’s her name seems to spend half her time on make up if you don’t mind my saying so. Forget I said that, “ and Roebuck suppressed a smile. “something about the new breed but its just her ambition showing and its hard for women to break into this racket. I wish her well although sometimes I think she starts sharpening her nails when she sees me coming.”

Hubbard broke out into a laugh. God help us everyone one. We are going to need divine intervention before this is over.”

Both men were silent until Hubbard rose, “Good luck to the both of us and this community, it’s such a good place but it is really hurting.”
Roebuck nodded, “ I can see that Mayor, good luck to you all and you’ll get a fair shake tonight.” with that he left and thought about what it was like for a mayor in a small town where everyone move, every nuance was scrutinized and he thought briefly of Charlie Gardner and decided to drop in for a moment.

He entered the news office without knocking and was shocked to see Gardner grimacing with both hands pressed tightly into his stomach. He had his eyes closed and apparently hadn’t heard the TV newsman enter. Roebuck waited until the editor finally opened his eyes and started when he saw him.

“Sometimes it get real bad and I kinda think you know what I’m talking about. I’ve got the “Big Casino.” Most of the time I can control the pain but it can creep up on you. Give me a glass of water, will you?”

Roebuck got it for him without speaking and Gardner grabbed three of the powerful pain killers and threw them down and waited for surcease. It took a couple of minutes and he dried the sweat from his face and nodded. “Some folks know but I’d prefer the rest didn’t. So what can a broken down country newspaperman do for one of you gaudy TV types?”

Roebuck looked at him and said simply, “We’ve got two hours before the games begin. Tell me everything you know and love about Winsome.” Gardner smiled and began a story which had taken him a life to cover.

There was a council of war going on in Kate Kirkpatrick’s living room. Halliday carried a sheaf of notes and read from them.” Each of you has been assigned a radio station to call this afternoon before the vote. They will probably want to do a quick interview about the feelings in the town and the possible outcome of the vote. Don’t play games, don’t make it an optimistic forecast because everything we hear indicates we could well lose.

You all have prepared statements and Hawk, Kate and I are as rehearsed as we will ever be and we don’t want to waste our voices in the dressing room. So far we’ve gotten an enormous amount of sympathetic response but no real counter offers to the plant. Maybe all the coverage will have some impact.

Kate frowned, “I just don’t think so. Maybe our best hope is that hawk can branch out through that big retail chain. You’re even thinking about a catalog of genuine native American products and I’m sure you’re not talking about tomahawks made in Hong Kong.”

Hawk looked up, don’t anyone count on it. It’s a big leap and I don’t know that this country is prepared for this kind of merchandizing although the American Indian civil rights movement is attracting a lot of attention these days and guys like Marlon Brando are a new and odd mix. Brando and Crazy Horse, why not? But we’ve got to think of the vote and it don’t look like we can win it.”

“I agree with you, best we I can gather is its four to three and likely to stay that way. McCall is calling in all his markers.” Kate shook her head,” the more pressure exerted, the more people become entrenched in their positions.”

Kyle looked up, “we made the papers in New York and Los anglese again but when you come down to it this is the battleground, this is where the rubber meets the road.”

Halliday smiled ruefully, “it just doesn’t seem to do that much good. I was interviewed five time in two days and don’t know if it helped at all.”

Elderly James Gleason, a thorney old timer spoke up, “You’re doing just fine. We needed a voice like yours to prove that we weren’t a bunch of tree huggers. Thanks for the help general, hope you’ll stick around.”

“Speaking of tree huggers, the number of hippies in this town has tripled, “Kyle threw in. “Yeah, from three to nine,’ George interjected but Kyle wasn’t going to swerve. Yeah, wise guy, well I saw a half a dozen new faces going into Slim’s general store and they were coming out with bags of groceries.” “Yeah, and I’m sure they stole half of it,” George put in to Kyle’s annoyance.”

Hawk returned to the subject of Halliday’ participation but filed away the information about the “drop out” generation kids. He smiled at looked at Wildrose who grinned back at him. The Nordic princess couldn‘t help herself, “ I think our population has increased by one,” and broke into a total laugh and Kate grinned along with her and Halliday felt the power of the feminine mystique.

Gleason grinned a nearly toothless grin, “You can take over my hardware store although you could fir the profits in a small shoe these days. My wife and I would love to hit the road, see the grandkids for a few months then head for Florida and watch all those teenyboppers in their bikinis.”

Liz Gleason whacked him on the arm, “ Teenyboppers, bikinis! Dream on you old goat. I’ll take the wind out of your whistle when we get home,” the room exploded and Halliday knew without reservation that he was seeing the best of America.

Hawk smiled a rueful smile, “I don’t want to be the wet blanket and I’m glad we can laugh, but like Kate, unless I’ve miscounted we’ve lost the battle, but perhaps not the war.”

Halliday studied him carefully and sat alongside him as the conversation picked up in tempo among the other ten in the room. “Tall tree you give me some cause for concern. Lately when this comes up I get the feeling at the base of my neck that I used to get when we figured the Viet Cong were about to pay a courtesy call.”

“Maybe it’s Vietnamese dandruff, every disease known to mind was bigger and tougher out there.”

Halliday wasn’t put off for a minute. Could very well be and maybe I’m worrying about a friend. Don’t do anything stupid. This is a long way from being over. We may have other courses even if the vote does go against us. Nothing rash or stupid, right?”

Hawk looked at him with a lopsided grin, “How can I do anything stupid when I have a Masters Degree from a prestigious white man’s university?

Kyle and George hawk watched their father intensely and Wildrose caught the look and again was sick at heart but forced the anxiety into a small recess where it would give her little peace. She got up and went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. Kate followed thirty seconds later and without preamble asked, “Is there some other agenda that I’m not aware of? John just isn’t the type to accept a vote against everything he believes in and you have a look I recognize, I used to wear it all the time when Timmy was overseas.”

Widlrose almost let the glass fall into the sink and Kate had her confirmation.” I don’t know what he’s intending but you’re stretched thin. Do you want to talk about it?” Wildrose looked at her and clasped the other woman to her and wept quietly, then they talked with Wildrose swearing her to secrecy.

Within minutes Kate knew it all and made a decision that no matter what happened she would cover Hawk is anything went wrong and she was convinced that the action was frought with peril. She decided that for the first and she hoped the last time that she would not tell Hailliday something that involved them all, she would keep her word to the other woman. They looked at each other for a long moment then went back into the living room where the conversation had abated somewhat and people were starting to head for the meeting.

It was almost zoo time again in the hall with literally fifty news people adding to the tumult. Every seat was filled with a surprising number of hippies standing out with their distinctive attire, and someone had started bringing in collapsible chairs from the undertaker down the street. The volunteer Fire Chief shook his head but said nothing, he was out of his depth here. Hubbard looked like he was in a trance but finally roused himself and stood.

“Come on folks, lets settle down, we don’t need a repeat of what happened last time.” Link and Barnum looked across the room at each other without expression. They had already had a long, hard talk with Hubbard and McCall and they all knew that there was an extra contingent of state police in the audience, some in mufti. Reserve sheriffs had been called in and made themselves very visible, Sheriff Browder wasn’t taking any chances.

Press credentials had been checked twice. Browder’s people had given some of the hippies a hard time but one of their number had surprisingly produced a lawyer’s card and they were admitted. He didn’t want anything to ignite a powder train. He knew where his destiny lie and would be the first to put down any hint of violence. They last thing they wanted was another riot which would reverberate all over the country. They had the votes and wanted it to go smoothly. The deal was in.

Hubbard semed to gain assurance as the room gradually came to order.

“O.k., you all know why we’re here. But please, in the name of God, whatever happens lets act like we are all from the same town, that we care about Winsome and we all do.” For once there was silence in the hall with cameras rolling and reporters taking notes. Mary Lou pearson stood next to her crew and felt a loss of momentum. She had not opened up a new angle, not drawn the attention to herself that she desperately needed, that was the intrinsic part of her character, and she knew it. Like all the others she would be rolling out of Winsome tomorrow a.m. and that she had not pulled off a coup galled her immensely. She was frustrated and had sworn that tonight, after the vote, she would have too many drinks and not think about her future.

Hubbard looked at the audience and they felt his intensity. “Where once we we’re a town with common roots we are now a town divided. We’ve known each other for years, our kids have grown up alongside each other and we’ve reduced to name calling and even fistfights. I know this issue is loaded, that it will profoundly affect out lives but we can’t let it destroy this town. Let’s have acommon community after the vote. The hell with Roberts rules of order, here we go, I’m calling the vote without preamble.”

“Todd, how do you vote, for or against the plant coming to town?” the time worn father of five shook his head for he was tormented by what he was about to do. He hesitated put his head down and said, “I vote aye.”

There was immediately a stir in the audience but Hubbard wasn’t about to be deterred.

“Richard, your vote. “ The retired school teacher stood up, ’I’m standing for what I believe in, this is insane, I vote nay.”

There is cheering from from Kate’s quarter and hubbard had to gavel for order but wisely didn’t admonish the pro lake loyalists. “Please, folks, we’ll never finish if we don’t get on with it.”

He looked at the bank of television cameras, gulped and turned to a slender, elderly woman whose face registered years of being ignored, of bottled up anger, now she would have a say and it wouldn’t be for Kirkpatrick and her group. She detested the beautiful, popular, vibrant woman. This vote was very personal.

“I vote nay.”

Hubbard immediately looked toward the next man, “Frank, how do you vote, and he answered immediately, “I’ve got a conscience too and there’s got to be a better way. I vote nay.” this time there was quelling the vote with the hippies jumping to their feet first, no question about where their sympathies lay. Browder was in a near rage and swore yhe would find out where they were camped out and make life very, very unpleasant for them. They would enjoy his hospitality after getting a bath with very cold water from a fire hose.

Hubbard repeatedly rapped for order. “That’s two for and two against.” Willie how do you vote?”

Willie, real name William Nelson Reilly, had lived alone since his wife had died and spent every afternoon in the public library. He figured he had read just about half of all the books there and people saw him as part of the fixtures. But he had nursed a bitterness toward those who had ignored him both during his marriage, and that had hurt his wife, and since her passing. His vote was a weapon.

“I vote for the plant’s coming,” and this time there was a ragged cheer from some of the proponents of the operation.

Hubbard wiped his face, “That’s three to two for the plant” and immediately turned to Francine Hyman who has seriously thought of running against him as mayor but realized that she didn’t have the capitol even if she felt she had more brains.”I still have a conscince and wonder if yours is in the pocket of that damned lumber company. I most emphatically vote NAY.”

He shouted response touched off the crowd and there was cheering and foot stamping and calls for “quiet, pipe down, shut up,” and the tempers started to rise.

The cameras were registering every vote, every spiking of the temper of the audience and roebuck found himself caught up in it. He looked over at goldman who had his eye glued to the view finder. “Goldman was laughing, “ I love that lady, she’s got big ones. She could turn me into a feminist.” Roebuck broke out laughing but Hubbard was sweating bullets.

It had gone precisely as he had planned it with McCall’s heavy hand behind the next vote. There would be no question now all that remained was keeping this thing under control and he literally prayed for divine guidance.

“O.K., that ties it,” and he turned to Jesse who felt he had aligned himself to the devil.

“Jesse, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, how do you vote?” In the small voice the tortured man, said quietly, “I vote Aye.”

There was a momentary silence which was broken finally by Kate, “You’ve sold out this town,” and this time there was no restraing the energy and bound up passions. People jumped up either applauding the vote or screaming “Sell out, sell out,” and Browder’s men tensed and the panel quietly walked out a back door into the history of the town.

A chair was knocked over and a woman screamed and it was near riot time when Halliday intervened. He jumped to a chair, and bellowed, “Its not over ‘till its over. Don’t let this country see you ripping each other apart, ‘ and his words had the effect of ice water.

His presence in the community was by this time powerful and charismatic. His leadership abilities were never higher and they weren’t being backed by the force of the United States Army but solely on his integrity and his ability lead. Some resented his rise to this position but the big medal was respected by all and no one critized him aloud.

The cameras had picked up his message and the reporters fanned out around the room as the camermen place their cameras on should mounts and followed with the light and sound men. Spot interviews were going on all over the place with one notable exception, Mary Lou Pearson had simply disappeared and her crew were confounded but followed Roebuck’s. The cemramen picked up targets of opportunity or cribbed interviews being held by other reporters.

Mary Lou was already half way to her motel. Once there she got out of her business suit and put on jeans and a western shirt and moccasins. Without looking in the mirror for the first time in yhears, she got back into her car and headed for the roughest roadhouse in the region some thirty miles away. The parking lot was full of pick ups and motorcycles of every description.

She parked went into the smokey, noisy room where a couple of hard cases were playing pool for money and there was the faint smell of pot in the air. She went straight to the bar but not before half the bikers and locals ate her up.

She ordered a martini and the bald, pot bellied bartender who wore a leather jacket over his paunch and nothing else asked, “What the hell is a martini?”

She thought, ‘the hell with it” and ordered the local beer and a shot to go with it. She diowned it and half the bottle of beer and was aware of his smell before she glanced sideways.

He was huge and dressed in filthy leaters, wore tatoos with death’s heads and Iron Crosses predominating and had a joint going. He looked at her like a customer looks at a piece of meat and smiled/sneared at her urban tidiness.

“Looking for some Grizzly, bitch? You can stop looking I’m it and every mother in this room knows it,” and she believed him without reservation. The room was mesmerized by the seduction if it was that. She reached for the remains of her beer and threw it down and when he walked to the front door she followed him to the cheers and jeers and catcalls of the room. She perched herself on the back of his Harley as if she belonged there and he turned and said, “We’ll get you some leathers in the morning” and she tried to put her arms around his huge chest and he roared off.

Later that night lying alongside the monster biker she smiled a triumphant smile and slept until the morning when she rode him into the dust. It was 11:00 a.m. before he lurched out the door with her preceeding him. “You said something about leathers?” and he just stood and look at her one hundred pound gorgeous body and there was fear in his eyes and he wondered if he would survive. She smiled and waited while he strated up the hog and they headed for the border.

At her whim they stopped half a dozen times that day and she took him into convenient wooded areas and he was a quivering mass by the time the Canadian border officials looked at him oddly. Three weeks later she emerged from a crummy motel, turned, looked at the pathetic, wraith of a man that had once been a grizzly, sneered, jumped on the Harley and rode off to Haight Asbury where she figured there would still be plenty of action.

The construction crews arrived during the early morning hours and immediately began clearing the site at the north end of the lake and soon there were people picketing the construction area and several of the late arriving hippies placed their bodies in front of the giant earth moving vehicles and there were a few desultory stories filed but the Vietnam war wound its bloody way on and their protests all over the nation of every conceivable hue and stripe and Jason Roebuck ended up in New York for several days R&R and he and his wife dined at a wonderful Spanish restauirant in the Village, ate superb paiella and drink more sangria than was good for them and he walked several blocks west toward the Hudson River and he told her he had fallen in love and her face fell until he told her is was with a small, dying town in the hinterlands of Northern Michigian and she placed her hand behind his neck and kissed him for all his sensitivity and dreams and felt that she would follow him to the ends of the earth.

They headed back to their West end co-op and found the postman waiting with a registered letter. They opened it and found a lengthy communication from Charlie Gardner’s attorney. They read it in silence and Faye Roebuck looked at her exhausted husband and said quietly, “We can sell this place for five times what we paid for it and tell the kids about it later.

He looked at the attractive woman who had endured his protracted absences for years and said, “You know me better than I do but remember unless some miracle happens Winsome, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damn world,’ could, and probably will, become a ghost town.”

She looked out their tall living room window at very similar windows across the street and smiled, “It’s in God’s hands and yours as well. Didn’t you tell me that some wonderful people are fighting to save the lake and that you’d gotten to know them and more importantly, liked them immensely.

C’mon my wayfaring husband, let’s go back and join the fight.

Within two weeks the legalities had been formalized and Jason Roebuck found himself the editor of the Winsome Window and owner of the building and an old, lovely home four blocks from it. Faye was in heaven and soon met Wildrose, Hawk and their sons and Halliday and Kate Kirkpatrick who were looking for legal ways of preventing the construction which was in full swing.

Their major opponent, McCall, watched with satisfaction as trees were leveled and bulldozers scraped away the thin mountain soil which had taken millenia to cover the terrain. He spoke briefly to the foreman and thought of the money pouring into the bank and began to feel he could cover the the hundreds of thousands he had purloined.

McCall got into his car and went to Hubbard’s office and found him white faced staring at a document a dozen pages long.

The banker frowned, you looked like you’ve just swallowed rotten fish,”

And the mayor replied tartly, “I have. God help us they were right and we were wrong when we listened to those glib lumber guys told us that we wouldn’t face any real pollution problems.

“These are the environmental Protection Agency findings on that small lake in Louisiana where they put in the same type plant.”

McCall didn’t even bother to look at the findings. “So what the big deal? I don’t want to read four hundred pages. What did they say?

Hubbard looked stricken, “They killed the lake in five years, five lousy years and those bastards assured us that the damage would be minimal, that we had twenty years to figure out an answer. It was shallow, just like ours is and it couldn’t cleanse itself. It’s now a swamp and the environmental Protection Agency now cites it as an example of what not to do with such an operation.

The nearby town is on its ass and people have left in droves and that my banker friend is precisely what is going to happen to our fair town of Winsome where we raised those families you’re always talking about, where we’ve shed blood, sweat and tears and professed undying love. We screwed the town and we screwed ourselves.”

Hubbard wasn’t nearly finished and vented his wrath on the one person in this town other than himself who was hugely responsible for the impending catastrophe.

‘The tree hugers, Kirkpatrick and Hawk were right, we’re gonna’ kill the lake. How would you like to look out the front door of your mansion and see weeds and smell skunk cabbage fumes and all those wonderful gasses that will come from those lumber peelings? Maybe the stink will reach all the way downtown and I’ll be able to watch the folks go by from my front porch cause I’m going to have all the time in the world to do it when I’m run out of office.” he swept the papers off his desk and McCall looked at him without any sympathy.

“Don’t give me that self pitying crap, you knew we were playing an all or nothing game. There’s no way we are going to stop that consturction, we would face multi million dollar lawsuits if we tried. So blubber all you want to and go back to seeling cars but I for one am gonna fight to find an answer.”

Hubbard turned slowly and looked at him, “Don’t go noble on me. You were in it for the buck and the rumors about your bank have been around for years but people believed your line of hogwash. You are probably bailing out big time with that new cash coming into town, boomtown for the next five years and you dreaming of the Caribben and pina coladas.

Both men quieted for an exhausted moment, “And to top it all off now that clown Roebuck is beating an editorial drum about possible sweeheart contracts and under the table deals since he’s taken over the “Window,“ where does he get off anyway? He wasn’t born and raised here, he’s a god damned interloper who can afford not to worry about jobs and the kids leaving.”

McCall had difficulty keeping a snear from his face and voice. “He ain’t worth a cuspidor of warm spit, he’s looking for a Pulitizer but the story has passed him by. Now he and his wife are cozier than hell with Kirpatrick et all and you can bet your ass they are looking to stop the building but they haven’t gotten anything to take its place.”

Hubbard frowned, “didn’t I hear he’s trying to spread his winds with that trading post, that he’s in some kind of negotiations with a big retail fir,m. did you hear anything?

Mcall raised as dismissive hand,” What can he do, can he suddenly employ a hundred or so people, that would be a first step? Can he create a national industry with beads and feathers? He’s smoking something and it aint a peace pipe. Come to think of it he’s been strangely quiet about the new plant.”

McCall realized that Hubbard wasn’t really listening to him, that he was having his own thoughts and he instinctely knew that Hubbard was drifting away from him. “Look, let’s find out if maybe theres some kinda sewage treament plant that would handle the effleuvia from the operation. Let’s call in the town engineer and let him give it a try. It would at least look good.”

Hubbard looked at him intently, ‘Sewage ttreament plant, don’t you get it? The folks in this town would tear us apart, insisting that we knew it would destroy the lake but were only after the fast buck which ain’t too far from the truth. What the hell do you think they’re building, an incinerator? You don’t know the first thing about it and you’ve never wanted to know. That stripped lumber will force feed all the algae and water grasses and will eventually suck the oxygen out of the lake what with all the chemicals that will be dumped into it. The fish will suffocate and we will end up with a swamp just like they said. All your thinking about is your pocketbook and maybe a publrelations fix to a terrible problem.

McCall rose suddenly from his chair and shouted, “How dare you, I gave my life to this town.”

“And now you’re willing to see it straining in its own swill. We drink this warer, we bathe in it and fish in it. I feel almost as sorry for you as I do this town.”

A livid McCall turned and bolted through the door as Jeanine quickly closed her steno-pad and knew she had to get to a public phone as soon as possible.

A moment later Hubbard left after making a call to his wife who agreed to meet him at a small park on the edge of the lake. She was waiting when he drove up and had a curious look on her face. She got out when he did and they approached the same bench where he had asked her to marry him a quarter century before.

Clara Hubbard knew her husband better than she knew herself and had abided his peccadilloes when they had wounded her deeply. She never wavered in her love for him while always knowing there was a part of him she could never reach. She had settled for what she could take from this flawed man.

He looked at her and saw the years and the gentle flaws which had genuinely endeared her to him and suddenly realized that she was the most precious thing in his life and he very quietly told her of what he’d learned and what it meant and how terribly sorry he was not only for his human frailtie and needs and she gently shushed him.

Kate was undeterred, “Can’t we ask the Environmental Protection Agency to make a move? They’ve got to be good for something. There’s gotta be a ray of hope here somewhere.”

Hawk shook his head, “I’m afraid his act of contrition is too late but there’s other means and ways and I’m working on it. By the by, I may have a big retail chain willing to take some of my stuff on consignment. Could means jobs if the locals ever really get over their prejudice about us Red men.”

Halliday turned on him and stopped before he spoke, “John, that’s the way to go, that’s an answer, a tangible, real solution to a town like this. Let’s get the drum beating on this thing, let’s make it a town wide effort to seek other light industries and we’ll get the whole damned town to write that company and tell them what a helluva an idea this is and it’s the American way, that you show your patriotism by supporting native Americans.”

He was grinning but Hawk took it seriously, “What changed his mind so suddenly?”

Halliday handed him the paper, “Seems they unearthed an E.P.A. study on a small lake down south which was turned into the abysmal swamp by exactly the same process they’re talking about here.”

“That’s my point exactly, can’t we get those bureaucrats to stop this monster?, Kate said.”

Halliday shook his head, “Ever watch molasses flowing uphill in the winter? That’s fast as opposed to what a governmental agency considers fast action.The only get which can prompt action is a press coverage and this one fact won’t appear on any newscast or big city papers. We’re a backwater now and there’s nothing even Jason can do.”

Kate bunched up the paper, “That damn plant is going to open in the next few weeks and we’ve got to do something. We can talk ‘till the cows come home. Say, mon general, do you think you could call the grateful president, after all the nice things he said about you?”

Halliday’s face tightened, “I’m ahead of you kid, I’ve tried, seems the President is totally wrapped up in the war, guns and buter, that sort of thing but I can write him if I chose. Write him through some minor bureaucrat who knows better than to trouble his boss with the writhings of a small American town. We are yesterday’s news. We need some for an encore and frankly I don’t know what that could possible being other than finding gold in the county and you know what happends to gold rush towns.for the nonce, I’m stymied.

Kate threw out her hands, “Damn it at least we’re turning them around, Hubbard would have been the last I expected to see the light.”

“Yeah converts are always welcome but again what can we possibly do for an encore.?” Halliday observed more to himself than anyone else in the room.

At the last remark Hawk looked up and lock his gaze with Halliday’s. “something can always happen, maybe an Ex Deux Machina, maybe the Hand of god will intervene.” He suddenly smiled, rose and headed for the door. “Whatever happens I will always stay in touch, remember that. If anything this town and that lake may mean more to me than anyone else. We’ve been here for centuries.” with that he opened the door and headed for his old truck.

Both Halliday and Kate looked at him, then at each other.

“I won’t pretend to know what he is talking about but it gives me the shivers. It wouldn’t do anything totally crazy, or would he?”

Halliday looked at her, “Time for kiss and tell. I’ve seen a lot of gunshot wounds and without saying anything to anyone I walked into the funeral parlor and headed for their autopsy room or what passes for it. Made sure most folks were at lunch and the one saleman in attendance was talking to the recently bereaved. In order to shoot a man with that accuracy you would have to be within thirty feet and easy distance with a refile, not so easy with a hand gun.

There was something odd about the wounds on that hoodlum. Entrance wounds are usually round with the exit wound being a mess. But both wounds were unsually in that the were lateral, as if someone had used a knife or other sharp object. I think he was killed twice although that sounds crazy. I think a superb man with a knife or hunting bow could have administered those wounds, then shot him to cover it up and I don’t know anyone around here with that kind of skill, do you?

She was stunned at what he had revealed, “Tall Tree is a superb hunter with a bow, considers it part of his legacy and he’s taught his sons how to be bow hunters. Good God are you saying that John killed that vermin?”

’Yeah, woman of the year, that’s precisely what I think but I also think that piece of garbage wasn’t in the woods on a nature hike, that it is very possible he was stalking Hawk and that woud have been a fool’s errand at the best of times. Muhammed Allie against one of the Three Stooges. John is going to do something and I guarantee it will be dramatic and possibly total and while I’ve always been a law abiding citizen I’m going to help him anyway I can. Some time ago a writer, I think it was D.H. Lawrence, said, ’If I have to choose between my friend and my country grant me the strength to choose my friend.” Well in a strange way that’s precisely how I feel about Hawk. He’s a solider and he’s fighting for what he believes in, in fact its at the very fibre of his being. He is one and part of these woods and that lake and he will not be denied.

I don’t give a damn what Hubbard does now, in fact there’s a rumor abroad that he is going to resign as mayor. His heroic act comes too late, if he had stood up before maybe it would have copunted for something. “

She nodded, “I wonder why he waited so long. He’s a complex man, the last person I can imagine who would end up selling cars.He was my husband’s closet friend ’till we married then they just seem to drift apart. Somehow I felt he resented me because of that. He married Clara a year of so later but we never mingled and I always thought that strange. Lord who really knows what goes on in the deep recesses of the human psyche. But that’s neither here nor there, we’ve got to take some additional action. That plant will be opening in a few weeks.

“You know, I think I’m going to have a very serious talk with our Indian brave but only after a conversation with Roebuck. He’s certainly become part of this community and he’s resourceful as hell.”

The object of his remarks was looking at the old briar Charlie Gardner had smoked and was having a quiet inner conversation with with the founder of the paper. “Well, it looks like the bottom of the ninth, were looking at the bottom of the batting order and we are way the hell out of it. This thing can’t end this way. What words of wisdom now tiger, what the hell more can I do that you’ve done and done very ably indeed. The plant is going up as if the devil is behind the builders and I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a bonus in it in order to finish it on time. The lumber company wants it in operation and has already hired about twenty people. “

His dialogue was interrupted when John Hawk walked into the room, pushed open the small swining gate and sat down immediately next to him and reached for the pipe.

“Yeah, what would Charlie have done that we’re not doing? Well now we are going to go off the record, this is not for attrubition and frankly it would be smart to be prepared but I must have your solemn word that anything I say in the next few minutes will remain something between the two of us and nobody else. Agreed?”

Jason looked at him then reached out and shook his hand. “Deal.”

“O.K. Mr. newsman, that plant will never open and you can make book on it. No questions, none, just know that to be gospel and be prepared for whatever happens. You can’t alert anyone including your old buddies at the network but believe me this town will become a symbol of a new kind of revolution. Just be prepared and wait for my call the day before the big doings.”

Roebuck’s life had been replete with tips from informed sources and he knew the difference between being cute and being real and Hawk was very real indeed.

“Jesus, Hawk, watch your ass. You’ve got me worried and thinking overtime. Somehow you are singlehandedly going to stop the opening of that facility and its gonna’ make headlines across this country. You’ve army trained and I have no doubt at all that you can stop it using very extreme means and methods but I’m also sure you could go down for it. Don’t tell me anymore, but if I can help in anyway remember I’m a fast learner and have been around this block dozens of times.

Hawk grinned at him, “And old fire horse chomping at the bit. Just remmber our deal, not a word and be prepared just like the Boy Scouts. See ya around laddie and Vaya con Dios’ and with that he rose and left the office with Roebuck watching his retrating back. He would also have to watch his own because if it were ever revealed that Hawk had tipped him to a future, violent, action, he would be in an ethical quandary and possibly a legal quagmire as well. He suddenly smiled and thought,” and you figures the life of a small town editor was going to be dull.

Then a totally selfish thought pushed to the forefront of his mind. He had a couple of EMMY’s over the twenty odd years he’d been reporting for TV but now a different thought hit him, there were other. More prestigious and he swallowed and grinned, yeah that would be the icing on the cake.

That night he was totally preoccupied as he watched Huntley-Brinkley and the NBC Nightly news. He couldn’t have told Faye whether he was watching Howdy Doody, Milton Berle or Bugs Bunny and Faye picked up the vibrations.

‘It’s a shame about those twenty virgins being sacrificed to that volcano god in the wilds of Sumatra, don’t you think?” he grunted assent and she continued,” I deposited that million plus check into our account today and that makes it an even four million dollars” and again he said, “That’s nice, honey.”

Then something registered, “What did you say? “I was telling you that

I’ve missed my period and that we may be the oldest parents in beautiful Winsome, Home of the Most Beautiful Lake in the whole Damned world’ and I want you to move mountains, maybe call in some of your old federal pals, maybe there was some shenanigans in this lumber deal, it sure smells to high heaven and now hubbard has quit. Somethings rotten not only in Denmark.”

He sat there with his mouth open. “Pregnant, we’ve got two sons in college, I will be on social security when this whelp starts school. I’m stunned, no, I’m pretty sure I’m delighted, I don’t believe it. It must have been that second bottle of wine we consumed the day we finally moved in. this is amazing, this is……” and she shut him up with a kiss and started to take off her blouse. “Just think, no precautions, get horney big boy.” he burst out laughing and they made love on the couch in front of Chet Huntley.”

On the shores of the lake Halliday knew the signs of exhaustion both mental and physical and suddenly he wanted to get into the woods and told Kate so.

She looked t him, “There’s a remedy for that. We can go to Hawk’s cabin, its about eight miles due north of here and you have to hike in for the last two miles. Theres a little lake, more a pond and he flies up there in that little helicopter of his, talk about wilderness safaris. It’s sort of his secret place. You outta’ be able to handle the north woods after your sojourn in sunny southeast Asia.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

She suddenly grinned, “Do I see the emergence of the Green eyes monster? Actually John Hawk was wonderful to us after my husband died and he would give us free use of the place anytime we wanted to go. Haven’t been there in years and I even know where the spare key is. A pot bellied stove, outhouse, cold water and heaven if you like really cold lake swimming.”

“A perfect answer to the small town blues. Come on and let’s pack a lunch, for that matter a dinner too. I’ve gotten too close to this thing and am repeating myself all over the place. I know there are answers to this thing but I’m tripping over myself and I could sure use the exercise.”

She grinned a totally evil grin, “what’s the matter big boy, don’t I give you enough exercise?”

“Lady you are better than all those weight loss programps, I’ve lost four pounds this week alone” and she threw a pillow at him. He ducked, “maybe we can even get some sleep, I swear widda lady you are gonna put this ol soldier in an earlay grave.”

Getting very salty look indeed Kate said with a face of little girl innocence, “At least you’ll go with your flag up!”

They loaded up the car with enough rations for several days and drove to the spot where the road ended and the trail began. It took them a hour to make it to the cabin which was neat and the grounds around it were in a ntural state with trees growing within twenty five feet of the door. The small lake glistened and Halliday knew this was a special place.But something caught his eye which had escaped kate. There was a small outbuilding which seemed out of place in the absolute pristine environment and he wondered as to its use.He would find out later and the key piece to the puzzle would fall into place and his life would take an extraordinary turning so totally different from anything he had ever experienced before. But for the moment he entered the cabin and envied John Hawk’s skill with hand tools.

It had two slylights which flooded it with light. There were beautiful Indian blankets draped not only across the queen sized bed but on a couple of the walls as well.

He looked toward the small fireplace and the neatly stacked kindling and logs and knew that this tiny piece of foreest heaven was well cared for. One odd note, there were several military manuals on the floor beside one of two hnd made Airondack chairs. He would look at them later.

The object of his musings was standing barefoot with ceremonial war paint on his face and a solitary feather in the back of his hair. He raised his arms before an enormous fir tree and his hands held a wampum belt. his eyes were closed and his face serene. He opened them and began to speak.

“I have asked the same question many times, ‘when will they ever learn/” They kill the land and pour poisons chemicals into the sky and spill oil all over the beautiful earth and they call it the price of doing business. When will they ever learn that you can not really own anything, time and the grave robs you of that.

They worship money. Is it good to taste, is it agreeable to look upon, does it smell like the wild honeysuckle? They do not know or ignore the earth’s real treasures,sparkling, talking water, the cobalt blue of the great Gulf Stream, the sunrise of the great canyon, the flight of the eagle. Oh Ojibwa, I am but one man and they are many. I can not ask those who have gained wisdom to do what I must do for I am one of your smallest guardians. Now I will move against the spoilers and it may bring great trouble to your people. If it is your wish that I make this step give me one sign. I will wait through this day for your wisdom.”

But he had his answer immediately as a hawk appeared in the sky above the great tree and it soared over him again and again and he lowered his arms, closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time.

Halliday wandered around the periphery of the cabin before approaching the outbuilding. He circled it once and found a small chink in the curtains hiding its interior. He wiped the glass and studied what he saw for a moment, pulled back when he registered what he had seen and its probably use. Instead of immediately going back to the cabin he stared across the pond for a moment and that is when Kyle Hawk spotted him.

The youngster’s moccasin clad feet had made no noise as he had circled the cabin after seeing the smoke rise from its chimney. He had not recognized Halliday’s new car and was deeply troubled and concerned about his course of action when he saw Halliday and his reaction to what was in the small building.

The young man’s frown deepened as he hurried back to the road and a meeting with his father. John hawk had washed the paint from his face and donned one of two beaded leather jackets he favored as his son walked in breathless. Hawk listened intently until his son had finished.

“It’s show and tell time, Halliday is no fool and he can put two and two together. You stay here and keep what you’ve see to yourself. I’m going up the cabin.

He started for the pontoon equipped helicopter and within minutes he was aloft and headed north. Both kate and Halliday walked toward the tony dock as he brought the chooper down and Kate received the slender nylon line he threw them.

He tied up and looked at halliday, “Welcome to casa Hawk. it’s a good trek general, that’s why I took the chopper.” He grinned and Halliday stared for a moment.

“How did you know we were here, or did you?”

He betrayed none of the tension he had felt earlier, accepting that there was a course of action about to b undertaken that that could have extraordinary consequences. His thoughts were interrupted by Kate who had no inkling of what was stacked in the outbuilding,.

‘What do you think about Hubbard’s actions, the whole town is stirring but it hasn’t stopped construction. They could be ready to open in ten days from what I’ve heard. That wouldn’t give us much time. Or do we have any time left at all?”

Hawk looked at her for a moment, ‘We’ve known each other all our lives, kate and I’ve got to be straight with you of all people. We’ve run out of time. You’re good folks the both of you although you don’t have a drop of Indian blood in your veins.

I’m not going to sit around and stroke myself waiting for the federal government to move its iron bound ass.”

He looked straight at halliday and knew, without uncertainty that the professional soldier knew what he was about.

Halliday returned his look and finally responded. “I can’t tell a man what to do and what not to do anymore, I left that in the Army. You are a sound thinking hombre and a passionate man and that can be a lethal combination. I pray to god you know what you’re doing, Tall Tree, have thought it through real well.”

Hawk read him well, “Five by five, general, this abomination just isn’t going to destroy this town on that we’re agreed. How I intend to stop it is no longer open for discussion. The dye is cast. Stay with me on this Frank, it’s a tough call.”

Kate frowned but didn’t interrupt and Halliday put out his hand. “Go with God, amigo, you know what you’re doing.”

Hawk nodded and turned to Kate, ’You’ve got a good man, lady, my blessings.” then he did something totally unprecedented, he took her in his ar,ms and held her for a moment, then released her and headed back to his chopper. She stared open mouthed at his action as he cast off the nylon line and started up the small ’bird” and was airborne within three minutes.

She was full of question but he kept his council and was unusually quiet around her as they trekked out, arriving at her home at dusk.They made dinner then sat before the fireplace and watched the flames dance as they drank the fruity wine that was popular thereabouts.

Kate spoke as she continued staring into her glass. “O.K. kemosabe, what’s going on? John Hawk looks exhausted and you’ve been contemplating your navel for the past six hours. Are you going to confide in the widow lady or continue staring into the fire?”

“Kate, I think I know what Tall tree is planning and it scares the bejesus out of me. What I thinking is very dangerous stuff and you had better be prepared to lie like hell if what I’m thinking is correct cause he sure as hell ain’t going to tell you. If you don’t know something then you won’t have to lie. Right now I’m on the edge of knowing but could raise my hand in a court of law and say that anything I thought would be just that, though, speculation.”

“O.K., I’m getting the message here, you want me to know something and not know it at the same time. I think I can live with that as long as it doesn’t jeopardize what we have. I never thought that I could love again, I’ve just lost too much, but I love you Frank Halliday, gallant warrior and passionate mate. Don’t say a word. I know what your feelings are for me, you’ve had it written on your face since the day I’ve slugged you and you probably didn’t even notice. Women are far better than men at reading signs as long as they aren’t all screwed up and believe me I’m not. But to get back, you’re saying John is going to something drastic about that plant, aren’t you?”

“Let me backtrack for a moment. You know his little helicopter, well he’s added an additional fuel tank so I think he is heading for a trip somewhere. He’s gota collapsible raft behind the seat and he’s packed it with survival gear and a .30 caliber Winchester. Our good friend is planning a trip and he may be gone for a while.”

“What does all this mean, what are you getting at?”

“Hawk says the plant ain’t gonna’ open no how. I believe him and you have to figure that out for yourself.”

She stared then awareness dawned. “Good Lord, is he crazy, if what I’m thinking is correct he could be on the run forever. What can we do to stop him?”

Halliday had to switch gears quickly. He was tremendously moved by what she had said. “Stop before you go any further. Don’t tell me what you’re thinking, this thing could get very nasty and very legal and I don’t want either one of us to commit perjury. As for what we should do, damned if I know. e are not going to change his mind and if we confront him its going to add to his woes. I think the best plan would be to watch and be prepared at a moment’s notice to help him in any way we can. I know that’s vague but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances. And incidentally, I love the hell out of you and would even consider making an honest woman out of you.”

‘We’ll think about that good stuff later and the answer is yes so you don’t even have to pop the question.”

Halliday stood, kissed her and grinned, “You sure beat around the bush, lady. But as to our immediate concern, I don’t want any part of that damned stripping operation and I feel a powerful sense of allegiance to Tall Tree. To my surprise he’s become a friend, a very rare commodity. Friends are very precious, so John Tall Tree hawk is precious and so are you” and he kissed her gently.

About ten days later Roebuck.was smiling at his wife who had taken to the town and the paper with gusto. She had always had a writing talent and had blossomed as a reporter/columnist and had become immediately well nown in the community and more importantly, liked.

She had thrown herself into every drive or function benefiting Winsome whether it was baking for a church group or offering her services to the Girl Scout’s local chapter. Her column became a “nary a sparrow falls” kind of thing and people began to read it over their coffee in the morning and half the calls to the paper were for her and she gobbled it, vibrant, alive and for no reason what so ever she began to want a baby.

She at typing furiously when he called to her,” Can it wait, I’ve got to get this thing done then I’m off to speak to Kate and Wild Rose; they are going out of their minds what with the plant opening scheduled for the day after tomorrow,” she said without looking up and Roebuck broke out laughing.

“Don’t you miss Zabar’s and the Village Arts shows, Riverside Park and the Guggenheim concerts? How about the Thalia, you ain’t going to find a movie house showing Berman films here, come to think of it the only theater in town closed six years ago.”

That stopped her, “Jason yours is a purely rhetorical question and the week before Christmas we can both go back and eat Bistro Burgers at the Corner Bistro in the Village, visit the Cloisters in Fort Tyron Park which I adore if you don’t mind seeing an occasional rat on the premises. New York is a cornicopia of things too good to be real, everything from the Museum of Modern Art to the Museum of Natural History to the lake in Central Park and I love it all and miss is sometimes but I love this town more. Now let me finish this piece and and we can go home and make a real New York City Martini stirred, not shaken, and the hell with James Bond, you bruise the olive far more shaking it than stirring it with love.”

Seven minutes later she finished and looked at her disheveled husband who wore jeans, a frayed botton down shirt, moccasins from John Hawk’s expanding business and the newly minted beard he was forever scratching. But both knew that the events of the next few days could eventually change everything.

“I haven’t see Hawk in a week, where’s he been hiding?, Jason asked while rubbing Charlie Gardner’s old pipe which had become a talisman. She stretched, yawned and hesitated before answering. “ I knew he went to the state capitol to speak to our eunuch of a legislator and came back grim faced. He seems absolutely sure that the plant won’t open and they are already preparing the bleechers for the opening day ceremonies. I just don’t get it.”

It was at that precise moment that Jason roebuck, recently back from VietNam

had an epiphany and the pieces of the puzzle joined together. He looked startled and Faye registered it.

“What is it, what are you thinking?”

He shook his head, ’This is insane but I’ll bet two to one that our mutual friend is going to do something drastic and considering what he did with his life for six years he may be uniquely qualified to do it.”

She looked at him and got the message, ’Oh my God, what are going to do? We can’t let him do anything that could make him a wanted man. We just can’t.”

Jason looked at Gardner’s pipe and spoke slowly, “John Hawk holds the Silver Star, the Bronze star and has a Purple Heart and he earned every damn one of them. He has fought and killed men who sought to kill him because of an alien ideology. You and the entire Soviet Army couldn’t change his mind nor perhaps should we even try. He knows what he is doing and I just pray that he doesn’t hurt himself or any others if he does what I think he is going to do. Our thoughts are just that, thoughts and we smust keep them to ourselves. I wonder if Halliday knows, you can bet your bippie he does and he hasn’t said a word. I don’t think we should either“ and his wife agreed with him and they were silent and troubled for a long while.

The preparations were all made, the bunting hung from every tree and rafter around the front entrance of the large plant building, they even festooned the great pumps that would take the lake water for the operation. American flags were everywhere had been hoisted the afternoon before in a rehearsal. Link had gone over every speech, every gesture and had personally rehearsed the chairman of the lumber company the day before and even Barnum had worn a smile. d McCall was absolutely ecstatic having now become the key player with Hubbard’s defection. The plant was opening.

The day before Hawk had flown to his cabin and loaded his copter with the boxes which had been in the outbuilding. Just before three a.m. he and his sons reloaded them into their twenty two foot work boat and covered the outboard with a heavy layer of insulation, it was almost silent when run at low speed for he knew how sound would travel over water.

They launched it in heavy rain with Wild Rose at the stern steering the heavily laden boat toward the lake end of the plant. She cut the motor when they were about ten feet from the shore and it beached silently.

While Kyle and George unloaded the cases in the downpour Hawk reached the plant fence and cut the heavy mesh wire with a bolt cutter and waited for any reaction from the night watchman. He hurried back to the boat and all three carried the wrapped packages to several locations around the plant site.

The tough part was to come and they looked at each other as they heard the quiet motor take the boat across the lake. They made virtually no sound as they headed for the watchman’s hut. Hawk quickly looked in, the blacking on his face making him nearly invisible. He saw the old man sound asleep with his chair tilted back against th shack wall. Old George Wilson snored heavily and for a moment Hawk shook his head, then grinned, and made his move. He tried to open the door silently but it squeeked and the old man started, shook his head and managed to say, “What the hell,’ before they covered his mouth with masking tape, then his head with a paper sack with breathing holes but the precaution wasn’t enough, the old man seemed to recognize him.

Hawk muffled his voice, “We’re not hear to hurt you, you know that. We’re going to lift you outside and place you nearby.”

With that his sons, wearing latex gloves, lifted Wilson, chair and all, out the door and through the fence opening and remembering their father‘s instructions, they hadn’t uttered a word but they did a lot of grunting. Wilson muttered imprecations about their ancestors and their future. It was the high point of his life and he knew what was about to happen and started to think about that as he was unceremoniously carried to a nearby back yard and planted under a tree.

That done they returned to their father who ordered them to skirt the lake and join their mother while he went back and set the cheap clocks which would act as timers for the hundreds of sticks of dynamite he had placed in bundles at more than twenty locations including the motor pool and maintenance areas which had big diesel and gas tanks.

It took him longer than he’d planned and it was near daylight when he emerged. His family was back in their home and frantically wondering what was taking so long. Twenty minutes later the entire town of Winsome Came awake with a roar. The entire lumber complex was either totally destroyed or fully ablaze and the light lit up the entire community. Some windows were broken and a lot of folks later claimed it threw them out of bed and there were half a dozen insurance claims which the insurance company fought but finally paid.

Due to the placement of the explosives there was no jumping of flame, the nearest houses were at least three blocks from the devastated plant but there was pandemonium and soon the sound of the volunteer fire siren blew its code and many knew it to be the site of the new plant. Nearly a hundred men jumped into their vehicles and headed for the fire house where the trucks were ready to roll.

By the time they got there they were treated to the biggest fire in the history of the region. Due to unceasing rain there was little they could do but watch the periphery.

Hubbard, who had been sleeping badly, had run for his car still wearing his pajama tops and was soon drenched as was McCall who stood open mouthed at the end of his dreams and schemes. He made immediate plans.

George Barnum looked out his motel room window and watched his dreams fade and the coming financial reality and his probably ruin. No one would pay him now. Link Rodgers was among those watching and he suddenly found himself smiling and people saw him nod and thought it strange. He decided there and then that he was through with the p.r. game and would make a bid on that old roadhouse which was up for sale. Booze and floozies within an arm’s reach, he thought. Strange how the Good Lord works and he grinned some more as the water ran off his newly acquired hunter’s cap.

Halliday jumped out of bed and was half into his pants as Kate look at him. They didn’t say a word but like everyone else they headed for the plant site and both wondered if Hawk had made it out.

The object of their concern was in trouble and he knew it. The delay had blown his plans to hell and he saw men running near where he had stashed his truck and he had to find whatever shelter he could as the rain continued. He wondered about his family but those plans he felt sure had worked well. But how the hell was he going to get out of town if his only means of transportation was found? He had to get to that chopper and it would take him hours by foot. He was trying to figure another means as sheriff Browder started harassing George Wilson was wasn’t taking it too kindly at all.

Browder was in a total rage and was taking it out on the old who was now kicking his ass that he had tentatively identified John Hawk as the ringleader of the gang. He started to qualify the I.D. but Browder was having none of it.

The all points bulletin had gone out immediately and the biggest manhunt in the upper pennsila’s history was in progress. Drenched deputies and state police, a deputized posse, reserve fire police were scouring the woods for Hawk who wisely had waited, but had waited too long for they found his truck.

He had climbed a big pine and saw the activity two hundred yards away and thought they were the most incompetent group he had ever come across including some recruits he had watched train in the army. Soon the cars had scattered to main road blocks leaving one miserable deputy to stand watch with strict orders not to do it from the confines of his radio car but out in the open. The rain had started to abate but it was going to be a miserable watch and chances were good that his watch commander would forget to bring him coffee.

They were convinced Hawk was running for it, and while they had searched right and left, before and even behind them, no one had thought to look up.

Halliday had scouted the area and immediately went back to Kate’s house and taken a wig from her now repaired mannequin. He decided he looked like hell as a brunette and found himself grinning as Kate watched dumbfounded

“What are you doing? You look ridiculous, “ then she stopped. “You’re nuts, you can’t get away with that.” Halliday turned and held her. “Probably not but they have found Hawk’s truck and I’m betting he was going to use it to get to the cabin and that chopper. I’m going to give him half a chance for I’m betting he will have that truck staked out just waiting for a chance to get to it. I’m gonna’ take out that poor lonesome deputy I saw shivering his ass off. Stay with me on this one lover, I’ve chosen my friend. Try and get to Wild Rose and tell her to stay put, not go charging off into the woods with a rifle and the same goes for his sons. You’ve all got to get your stories straight but don’t, repeat don’t, rehearse them too much. Don’t sound like you’re all reading from the same script . They’ve got to trust me.”

With that he kissed her, checked his wallet, found it full of cash and credit cars and was off. He immediately drove to the trading post and smashed a back window to gain access and lifted the other deerskin jacket which was an almost perfect match for the one Hawk habitually wore. He donned it and put on the wig and put his insane plan into motion.

In the meantime Browder’s notoriously short temper had lost whatever control he normally exerted over it and he was raging at Wilson who became more obdurate by the minute. The F.B.I. had units on the way and they would take control of everything because the feds frowned upon the use of explosives since it had become the tool of extreme groups who used them to make their case against the war. He had to make the I.D. positive.

“God damn it you old coot, you told me it was Hawk and nobody else. I’m gonna throw your ass in jail for the rest of your life if you start changing your story. That was a positive I.D. and I’ve got four deputies who will swear to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were in on it with him, what did he pay you? I’ll hang your ass, I’m the law and the only law around here” and his deputies began to fidget.

Wilson started laughing, “They would swear that sex change operation which made you a man had worked you loud mouth son of a bitch, don’t you threaten me. I told you, he wore some kind of mask, so I‘m not sure and you’ve got every maniac with a gun going after him.”

His words were cut off when Browder made the mistake of his life, he hit him full in the mouth and the old man was knocked clear of his chair and it was a full minute before they knew whether they were going to be able to revive him.. The three deputies looked at Browder as if he had gone crazy and began to think of ways they could distance themselves from the ranting chief of Police. One of them pressed a clean hanky to Wilson’s lips and he pushed it away in a rage.

“You finally did it, you damned Nazi son of a bitch. I fought in world War II and got a couple of medals to prove it but I didn’t beat up old men,” he said as he spat out a gob of blood. “And these assholes are going to protect themselves when I file charges against you.” Browder turned to his deputies who looked away and he knew the truth of what the old man was saying. He had visions of hell where they first removed his precious uniform and his gun and his rage knew no bounds. Wilson’s next words were, “ I want a lawyer.”

Browder launched one final attack, “You said it was Hawk and that stands and we’re going to get that Indian son of a bitch if it’s the last thing I ever do and I hope to hell he puts up a fight. He destroyed that plant and you saw him do it and you can hire a dozen lawyers but Hawk is dog meat. I told everyone looking for him to consider him armed and dangerous. Let‘s see how long he lasts” and he charged from the building.

At the pickup truck site Halliday had watched the deputy for fifteen minutes and the young man had flapped his arms and stamped his feet and now stood immobile, gun in hand, as he looked in the direction Halliday had thrown a pine cone. Halliday came on fast and quietly and the deputy was only half way around when the karate chop across his carotid artery felled him in a loose bundle.

Halliday immediately turned him over, removed his cuffs from his belt and cuffed him with his hands behind his back. He threw the gun into the woods after wiping off his prints and knew the young man hadn’t a clue as to who had put him down. Still fifty feet above the ground and thoroughly drenched, Hawk had watched in amazement as Halliday had pulled the truck onto the macadam road and immediately headed for the cabin. Hawk watched and nodded. He came down fast and headed in the same direction although it would take him hours to get there. He started to run and felt he could run forever.

The manhunt got bigger as federal agents started pouring into the grass meadow that passed as a landing strip. Two helicopters landed more and soon there was forty men, many in camo gear, fanning out into the woods. The choppers were kept on the ground for future use.

The A.P.B. was still in effect and some of the deputies carried M 16’s automatic rifles, combat weapons dangerous at the best of times but really dangerous in dense woods where a round could glance off a bough and go in any direction. Dynamite had been used and the agents were determined men who had been stymied by college kids and radicals for too long.

Kate had arrived at the Hawk home and after telling them what Halliday what was attempting and swearing them to secrecy, the door was broken off its hinges and a dozen armed law enforcment officers, many with no training at all, were pointing guns everywhere, a moment the seasoned officers in the room dreaded.

Refusing to raise her hands Wild Rose said quietly, “Put down those guns, I said put down those guns. She recognized half of them and spoke to a unformed deputy. “You were here several weeks ago when Browder made his big play. Don’t screw up again or so help me God I will own your home and farm and that goes for everyone of you. We’re the only people in this house, now stop acting like a bunch of cowboys and lower those weapons and put the safetys on.”

In the face of this extraordinary woman’s control many did just that and some were even abashed. “We’re just doing what we were ordered to do Kate, John’s gone and blown up half the damned town” and some of the others nodded but they lowered their weapons.

“Who the hell told you John Hawk did it? Tell me, damn you. Who told you?”

The Deputy put his pistol back into his holster, “”Everybody knows it was him, you folks have been fighting that lumber deal from the git go, beside there was witness.”

Kate jumped in, “A witness, was there a witness, seems to me that blast happened before first light? Are you telling me someone saw Hawk, who has been a friend to all of you for years, blew up that dumb ass plant. Did anyone see him do it?. Or are you all nuts?”

The doubt increased and one of the group sat down. “We’re doing what we were told to do, and believe me Wild Rose, the F.B.I. And an army of agents are gonn’a be here in half an hour and if John Hawk didn’t have anything to do with it, where the hell is he?”

Others nodded and Kyle calmly said, ‘He’s fishing, that’s where he is, he‘s always fishing” and Wild rose asked, “Anyone want some coffee?’ and being neighbors many said yes and that’s the way the feebies found them forty five minutes later when they were informed of their rights and the separated and spent the next two hours being asked the same questions over and over again. They rejoiced in their deed and stuck to their stories with just enough differences so that the federal agents began to believe them.

Halliday left the keys in the ignition of the truck and left a note and headed for the tiny chopper. He wore the wig and the deerskin jacket and started the machine up after fumbling for a bit but he had watched Hawk carefully and it was far simplier than the “Huey’s” in Vietnam. He let it gather pressure and lifted off and started back to Winsome rather than heading north for Canada.

Two miles away John Hawk heard the familiar sound of the chopper and watched as the tiny but recognizable speck headed south. He frowned but never paused.

Jason and Faye arrived at the scene of the interrogation of the watchmen with cameras at the ready and Faye was momentarily repelled as she saw the watchman’s face but Jason used his Pentax which he had won in a card game overseas and the old man would use the pix in court and his future was assured. He actually tried to grin and it made the last shot macabre but Jason swore he would use it.

Browder was on the radio calling in still more units and insisting they were looking for Hawk and that he was considered armed and dangerous. The husband and wife team took it all down, Jason, in an abbreviated squiggle and Faye in shorthand. They would compare notes later and the picture would run front page.

Oscar at the hotel called in three cleaning women for he knew what was to come. He had amassed a small fortune since meeting Halliday and the fireworks had begun and he also knew that the story was going to be the biggest in the country by this evening. He also had an inkling as to what was going on and he had no doubt that John Hawk had played his hand and he applauded him for it.

He looked around the lobby and picked up the phone and covered it with a bar towel and called the Sheriff’s department and claimed he had seen John Hawk and his truck about twenty miles out of town to the south and when questioned as to his identity he said simply, “I aint gonna get involved, “ and hung up.

The next time he called he had several ice cubes in his nouth and was even more taciturn saying he’d seen Hawk come out of the woods two miles North and hung up real quick. He raised a glass of soda water in salute to the Chippewa friend and said, “Go for it John boy, go for it.”

A pick up truck equipped with a two way spotted Hawk’s helicopter and radioed the information and the feds immediately took over as Browder heard the call in his car. There was pandemonium and Halliday wanted it precisely that way, he wanted a Chinese fire drill.

He had emptied the chopper of all the survival gear before taking off to make it lighter and was getting the hang of the aerodynamics of the aircraft and beginning to enjoy himself too much. He knew he would have company very soon and some would be weapon equipped and he wondered how much more time he could give Hawk who was at that moment three miles from the cabin.

Halliday tried to think what Hawk would do and put the chopper into a fast turn back to the small lake and spotted him running. He scribbled a note and flew over Hawk who had stopped and watched noting that Halliday was wearing his jacket and wore a wig and knew what he was doing.

The note was blown for fifty yards but Hawk retrieved it from a low lying limb and read, “Head west, take your time.”

Hawk waved and tried to signal Halliday to land but Halliday waved him off and headed back to where he was sure he would be spotted. He flew over the burned out plant midst a swarm of TV station helicopter and wasn’t immediately noticed until he broke out of the circle and someone pointed at him.The hunt was on.

In the midst of the insanity federal bank examiners burst into McCall’s bank midst all the confusion and immediately shut it down. Jesse Jones had fulfilled his promise and he then made a suprising call to McCall’s home which had a listed number. The banker, nearly insane with the implications of what had happened, was gathering papers and a stash of money he had accrued over the years. His wife was at a neighbors and he listened to the caller telling him that he was destroyed. He hung up without recognizing the voice and headed for his big car.

He drove north using back roads and never went over the limit. He would be at the Canadian border and he would tell them he was doing some business and , as usual, they would wave him through. They charges against him would be nearly endless and he had taken some precautions with an offshore bank account but he was worried sick.

Among the state police who arrived in town were several who had nothing to do with the explosion and its aftermath. They caried a warrant for the arrest of Sheriff Browder based on the tapes of conversations between him and McCall.

There is a particular aversion law enforcement officers have for one of their own who transgresses, he brings them all down and they will pursue him without mercy and so it was with the Michigan State Police Sergeant who immediately went to the Sheriff’s office with a warrant.

Hawk arrived at the cabin and took some of the survival gear and headed into the woods where he would remain overnight, would even catch a couple of fish which he would bring back home with him and the games would begin. He knew better than to get to a phone and his non-appearance could be accounted for with the fishing story he had rehearsed before leaving.

As he headed into the woods he thought of what he had done and took no pleasure in the act. He never sought nor needed counsel and felt that it had been that which had to be done. He fought a very secluded site, checked for bear spoor and opned up a Long Range Patrol Ration which were beginning to make their appearance in the states. He poured water into the mess, stirred it and in fifteen minutes had a passable Chicken a la King. He realized his was famished and exhausted but he climbed the tallest tree he could find and looked in every direction.

Tiny specks came from the direction of the town and he recognized them for what they were, heavy helicopters, the kind used by the government and he urged the great spirit to watch over his friend.

Briowder, not knowing of his guests from the State Police who weren’t advertising their presence, using his radio, took command of the by now hundreds of men who were hunting Hawk.

Jerry his deputy was a worried man but he would follow the orders of his boss although he wasn’t sure how much longer Browder would be in that job.

Responding to the last call Jerry put it plainly, “Sheriff, some of these guys are out of control, they think they’re participating in the villagers’ scene in the Frankenstein movie. Every gun in the region is concentrated in a few square miles of woods and they are trigger happy. Someone spread the word that Hawk is carrying a carbine. We are asking for a disaster and now the freebies are all over the place with their M 16’s.”

Browder was near the breaking point and instead of answering his assistant he closed his unit two way.

Indeed the woods were full of wild west fever. Someone saw a deer and instinctively fired a round and everybody started shooting and one man went down with a bullet wound in his thigh and pandemonium followed with some yelling “cease fire, cease fire.”

There were all the ingredients of a real disaster and Browder couldn’t have cared less. He had finally snapped and realized that Hawk had a hidey hole up north, a cabin near a small lake and Browder knew that area like the palm of his hand. He turned his car and headed in that direction and was at the beginning of the trail within forty five minutes.

He reached for the shot gun which was bolted to his dashboard. He was going to stalk his prey and kill him and leave his body in the woods. He was good, having been a hunter all his life and was a crack shot. The shot gun was a close in weapon so he strapped a semi automatic rifle across his back and he carried a 357 Magnum in a holster.

Browder opened his truck and changed into hunter’s garb and filled a canteen with water and jammed a pound of beef jerky into the several pockets of his jacket and started off. He checked his pocket compass and noted the direction he was to follow and began the hunt.

His quarry realized that the old she bear had been staring at him and he hadn’t even realized it .She seemed to accept that he posed no threat and accepted him as part of her world. She looked at him without any seeming malice nor gave any other sign. He admired her magnificent pelt and soon saw her cubs not twenty feet away. She would be very dangerous if aroused but he made no threatening moves and she and her cubs continued looking for food and perhaps wild honey for he had seen bees in the area.

Despite himself his eyes closed and he slept fitfully, the night and the hunt had drained him more than he realied, “I’m getting old,” he thought as he closed his eyes.

Browder was acting on full charge, his adrelin supply semed inexhaustible and he was convinced that he was approaching Hawk. He had never wanted anything so much in his life and all the scar tissue was re-examined and the rage consumed him.He looked for sign but saw nothing but didn’t expect Hawk to leave a trail.

Hawk shifted his body weight and a limb broke free and he was instantly awake. Browder crouched without sound and looked toward the direction from which the sound had come.

His eyes roamned the forest and he controlled his breathing and released the safety on the shotgun. Both men sensed the presence of the other and Hawk realized his vunerability and scanned the immediate vicinity.

For fifteen minutes neither moved until Browder parted some branches and the she bear picked up his scent. It was different from the other’s smell and she herded her cubs away from their searching and they too became quiet as the woods became a hunting ground.

She rose slowly and quietly on her rear legs and looked in the direction of the hunter but he didn’t see her for he was focused on a tall fir tree from whence he had heard the break.

Hawk studied the bear and knew that she had sensed that there was another presence in the forest and was intense in her search. She continued to stand and Hawk looked in the direction of her focus and thought he saw a very slight movement. There was no wind and nothing stirred and the quiet was significant and he knew it.

Browder barely breathed and locked on the tree but could see no motion for Hawk was as frozen in time and place as he was. Never the less Browder had the shotgun at the ready but wasn’t sure the splay wouldn’t be too wide to bring his quarry down. He made the ultimate decision and laid the shotgun down and tried to unsling the rifle and the motion was caught by the bear who slowly lowered herself and began tracking him.

Browder cursed himself for not putting a round in the chamber and carefully pulled back the bolt and inserted the .30 caliber hollow point into place and heard the sound of the bears pads as they hit the ground. He turned and fired almost simultaneously but his aim was off a fraction of an inch and he was jacking another round into the chamber and shouldering the rifle when she hit him.

The first swipe of her powerful paw knocked the weapon from his grasp and he screamed and the second tore a great hole in his shoulder and still he tried to reach the pistol when the third lunge caught him across the trachea and she threw him to the ground and slashed open his chest but the only sound he could make sounded like the mewing of a kitten.

She rose and ripped at his legs but he was beyond feeling and he thought briefly of Hawk and felt the rage again as Hawk scored the winning points in the basketball game..

Hawk slowly came down from his perch as the bear slowly backed away from her kill and he watched her. She turned once and looked at him but went and joined her cubs who were cowed by all the motion and the scent which their mother exuded. They smelled the fresh blood on her and were both repelled and attracted to it until she growled and led them away, John Hawk stood and watched them go then walked toward the shredded body of a tormented man and he shook his head.

He was back on the trail toward the cabin and saw the truck with no one in sight, circled it and glimpsed the keys dangling from the ignition switch. He picked up the envelope, opened it and found five hundred dollars in twenties and a note which said simply, ‘”Call K in the a.m.” then quietly put them into his pocket.

He prepared to spend the night in the woods and imagined rather than heard coyotes near where the body of Browder lay a feast for the night hunters and scavengers. He ate sparingly and moved away from the cabin and waited for darkness.

Halliday wasn’t waiting for anything and wondered for the fourth time how much fuel he had and prayed it was enough and headed west. A deputized civilian spotted him and used his two way radio to alert other CB units and soon the airwaves were full of people who had seen the little bird in several different locations within minutes of the last call.

The confusion grew as Halliday intended and soon there were TV helicopters looking as well and it turned into a circus. At one point Halliday actually trailed an aerial news crew then pulled away and that further confused watchers.

Just retired Brigadier General Frank “Nails” Halliday was on a toot and found himself laughing into the wind. The thought that other choppers were looking for him with men prepared to shoot him down didn’t seem to impinge on his thoughts.

Finally he turned the bird North toward the Canadian border and prayed the JP 3 would hold out. The heavy but faster Hue’s were roaring in his direction and they were fully prepared to shot him down.

Halliday flew the nap of the earth, ten feet above the trees and the TV crews cameras recorded every move and closed in on him in and spotted his jacket and wig but he constantly evaded their closer inspection and zigged and zagged despite his concern about the fuel. Two of the choppers, also low on fuel, pulled away from him but a third hung on as the heavy military machines came up from the south.

Halliday spotted them and thought of the irony of being shot down by army hunters with M 16’s and shook his head as he watched the fuel guage near empty and looked for the Canadian flag which would tell him he was on the border.

They gained on him and were within firing distance, indeed one pilot was signally him to land when he thought he saw the Red and white maple Leaf flag. he flew over it as the first rounds missed his canopy by half a dozen feet. They broke off the engagement as he crossed the border and he felt like singing the beautiful Canadian national anthem and looked for a set down site before the small chopper spiraled down of its own accord.

Four miles northwrest of the border crossing he put the bird down but not before scouting the immediate area. He spotted a small crossroads community about six miles off and knew he would head in that direction always sticking to the woods or dirt roads.

The Canadian authorities were listening to the exchanges of the American pilots and police and wondered what the hell was going on with their excitable southern neighbors who had always had a slightly superior attitude.

They didn’t get flustered but informed the right authorities ho also didn’t get flustered and who were determined to get the story straight before the alerted their own civil and military units. Soon the RCMP offices got a couple of garbled messages about an explosion and an Indian and a helicopter and a hot pursit and they sternly warned their American cousins that any armed intrusion would be severly frowned up and perhaps even fired upon, that they were quiet capable of hunting a quarry and thank you very much.

With Browder laying dead in the woods and the F.B.I running roughshod over the operation, pandemonium reigned in Winsome. Wilson the watchman had ben interviewed a dozen times and was flying high.

He was very aware that his battered face was the ticket to his financial security and he made damned sure he identified Browder as the culprit. He also made sure he repeated at least twice to every eager reporter that he wasn’t at all sure about the culprit who had blown the plant to hell, it could have been half a dozen people, it was dark and they had hadn’t said more than a dozen words. Yes, there had been more than one because they had carried him chair and all out of harm’s way and the more he thought about that the more benign he became.

In typical TV fashion he was asked how he felt about the destruction of the lumber operation and he essentially said there had to be a better way of getting jobs into his beautiful town with its willing workforce and without knowing it he became not only a celebrity but a powerful public relations spokesperson and several potential employers caught his message and started to think of the small town in Michigian with the most beautiful lake in the whole damned world.

The sundry law enforecment officers of every stripe started coming in from the woods and gathered at the hotel bar. They drank up a storm and Oscar Pederman thought it was the best damned town in the entire world and started to think of a brand new four wheeled drive wechile with the name of the hotel on its sides and a gun rack in the back window.

The booze flowed and the stories became more exaggerated and they learned that the man shot in the woods was in good shape and sure enough he came limping in two hours and was treated as a hero. That called for another round of drinks and Oscar bought a few more and the juke box was roaring and sure enough dozens of other people came in and it turned into the first party the town had had in two years.

One prophet said through his third boilermaker, “Ya know, could be that that was the best thing that could have happened to this town. We sure as hell got enough publicity,” and many agreed.

The news spread like wildfire, they had grabbed McCall at the Canadian border with a ton of cash and a cheer went up. Before it was over McCall would be sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary.

Everything went to hell when John Hawk and his family walked in and quietly asked, ‘What’s the party about?’ and the place went wild. Oscar kept grinning and roared and poured him a coke and a couple of beers for his sons and a 7&7 for Wild Rose who kept close to her tall husband.

Everyone wanted to hear his story and he said he had been fishing before first light, good a few good ones, and almost got blown out of boat when the blast came and he asked what they knew about it and several men bent over laughing because they knew in their guts it was the doing of Tall Tree Hawk and they felt manly in his presence as if they too had participated in the great enterprise. He also announced that a major retail chain had expressed in a genuine interest in his crafts and that brought another cheer and still another round of drinks. The plant’s destruction would even supply some work for the clean up bill alone would employ many of them and whatever rusty equipment they could could put into motion. The insurance companies would raise hell and send in their own investigators to no avail.

Later a couple of lawmen came in as locals not as law enforcement officers and crowded around Hawk as well but he greeted them the same as anyone else and Wild Rose at first glowered at a couple of them who had broken into her home but soon relented for they were neighbors after all. She hadn’t made up her mind as to whether or not to sue the town for damages, or maybe not depending on whether a new industry would settle there.

The strangest thing was both sides in the original battle over the plant’s being established in Winsome were part of the party and forgot their animosity and started to think about their new found notoriety and figured they had better cash in on it as soon as possible. They recognized Link who had just walked in the door and a couple of the town’s more influential citizens approached him without preface and he suddenly found himself back in the p.r. business and the visions of booze and floosies were instantly forgotten because for the first ime in years he felt he had a cause, not a client.

He bought the next round and two of the celebrants quietly slipped to the floor from their seats against the wall and that created another howl and someone took the moose head off the wall and they attempted to pout beer down its throat and Oscar was doubled up laughing and it was the best party they ever had and they loved Winsome, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damned world.

Someone raised a cheer for Tall Tree Hawk and his beautiful family and he flet that he was not only part of the community but perhaps could lead it in some way. He was easily the most popular man in town and without fully realizing what he was saying, and remembering what had happened in the woods, he announced, “Maybe I will let Wild Rose run the whole shebang and I will run for Sheriff,’ and the place essentially elected him on the spot and the deputies joined in the celebration. An american Indian as Sheriff of Winsome, would wonders never cease?

Jason and Faye walked in after putting the paper to bed and answering fifty calls from all across the country and joined in the festivities. Later they went go home and forgot about all the usual precautions and Faye would become pregnant and somehow she knew it and smiled and cried quietly at the same time as her fully realized husband fell into the best sleep he had had in years. There would not be a plane to catch in the morning but rather coffee in the local restaruant and conversations with his neighbors.

The one person missing from the festivities was Kate Kirkpatrick who sat by the phone and willed it to ring and at 11:30 that night, it did. A familiar voice asked her, “What’s doing,’ and she nearly tore the phone from the wall.

She controlled herself and she too cried and she said, “Well, seems things are quieting down although there’s a helluva party at the hotel which I’m going to after this call and the F.B.I. s going out of its mind and everybody now thinks the plant was the worst idea in the world and my lover is out of town. What’s doing with you?”

Halliday looked out the window of the motel and told her where he was and that he was a little tired and had been thinking about the town and their future and yes he definitely felt that it was time he made and honest woman out of her and she agreed again that that was a helluva idea, probably the best he had ever had and she had a little news of her own, she was pregnant and although she was going down to the party she wasn’t going to drink anything because she had recently read that alcohol and babies didn’t mix very well and when did he expect to be home.

Halliday laid back and looked at the ceiling before answering, “Well that clinches it, I will be a shoo in. How would you like to be the wife of the next Mayor of Winsome, home of the most beautiful lake in the whole damned world?”

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