free hit counters
Chapter 72
Ever since Kirsten had Susan, she had been staying home days, with only an occasional stop by the office, to exchange copy and computer disks, but more often, Mike brought them out to the house on the lunch hour.
Tiffany was now old enough to really be a help with Susan, so after some discussion, Kirsten agreed to let her stay home for a few days and try it out, rather than going to the day-care center out at the club.
That still meant that Henry still had to be taken to day care each day, and the job fell on Mike most of the time. The chore had to be done before he went to work, and the driving time involved had all but cut out Mike's regular morning visits to the Spearfish Lake Cafe.
Since Henry was a dawdler about getting around in the morning, sometimes it took shouting and fast driving to be able to make it to work on time. Mike looked forward to school reopening, since that would mean his mornings would be a little less hectic, and he could resume his
regular coffee calls.
Once in a while, though, Henry got his act together in the morning, and Mike was able to salvage a few minutes for a quick cup of coffee at the Cafe. It felt good to be able to walk into the Cafe, sit down, and catch up on the talk around the table.
By August, the upcoming high school football season had become a regular part of the discussion, but even it was often buried in the talks of the sewer separation project. Since Mike followed what was happening with the project about as closely as anyone in town,
when he could make it in for coffee he was usually quizzed about what went on. It soon ceased to be his favorite topic, but since Ryan Clark was at the coffee table most mornings, it took some of the heat off of Mike.
This morning, though, when Mike took a seat at the table across from Mark fortunately the topic was football. He hadn't even gotten his coffee ordered yet when Clark was asking, "What do you think of this McGuinniss kid at quarterback? He's only a sophomore, for
Christ's sakes."
While Mike let Varner handle the other sports, he'd realized long before that football was a big enough deal in Spearfish Lake that he felt more comfortable handling it himself. "Looks pretty good," Mike said. "He's got an arm on him, he's quick and accurate. If he
gets an incomplete, it's because the receiver screwed up."
"Yeah, but why the hell did Hekkinan pass up that Johansen kid? "He's a senior, after all."
"In this town, a Johansen is supposed to be a quarterback," Mike said, "Whether he's got an arm, or not, and that kid doesn't. He doesn't make for a bad running back, but he hasn't got the brains to adapt when things fall apart."
"The Johansens did produce a few dumb ones," George Lindquist agreed. "But everybody in this town remembers this kid's granddaddy. Best quarterback we ever had, back when Gil Evachevski and him were playing. It's hard to believe that's going on forty years ago."
"People do remember," Clark agreed. "How's the team looking?"
"Well, if they can beat Coldwater, then we'll know," Mike said. "That's always a pretty good barometer for the season."
"It would be nice," Lindquist agreed. "It's been a long time since we beat Coldwater. Anyway, Mike," he went on, changing the subject, "I'm glad you came in today. I was going to call you later, anyway. The Donna Clark Foundation Board met last night, and they
decided to go ahead and fund that book of yours on the Warsaw fire."
"Hey, that's great," Mike said. "Full funding?"
"Every cent," Lindquist said. "What's the chances we can have it out by the first of November or so, so we can catch the Christmas shopping season."
"Pretty good," Mike said. "After Mark converted it to IBM for me back last May, I sat down whenever I got a slow afternoon at the office, and went back through it. I didn't have a spellchecker with the Apple, so the 286 at the office found a few misspellings, and I
cleaned up a few rough spots. I held off on getting it camera ready, until I knew it was going to go. I should have a slow day today, so I could get started on it, if you want us to take care of printing it."
"That's what we'd figured on. You're going to print it right here?" Lindquist asked.
"No," Mike said. "We'll get it camera ready, and ship it off to a specialty house. We can't handle the bindery work here, and it's cheaper to have the specialty shop do the whole job. If it's a work project, rather than a screw-around project, it gets a higher priority. We
ought to be able to ship it off in a couple of weeks, and we ought to have it back six weeks after that. Allowing a week or two for shipping and slipups and whatnot, you ought to have it by the first of November."
"Couldn't ask for better," George replied. "Use lots of photos, if you can."
"Sure will," Mike agreed. "Fortunately, I've got a file of photos I earmarked for the book long ago, so it won't be a problem. I'm going to be glad to see this baby in print."
"Makes you feel good, huh?" Mark commented.
"Yeah," Mike said. "When I was a kid, I had plans to write a whole shelf full of books. I think every newspaper writer does. But, it never happened for me. This'll be the first. It's not going to be a best seller, or anything, but it'll be nice, anyway."
"It'll help out the historical society a lot," Lindquist said. "We really appreciate your giving it to us, Mike."
"It wasn't doing anybody any good where it was," Mike said. Quietly, he was pretty happy about the book finally seeing print. It had been a labor of love that had taken a year's worth of solid work, and the rejection slips had been a kick in the gut. At least this way,
he'd have something to show for all the work.
"How you guys coming with those dogs?" Clark asked.
"Pretty good," Mark said. "The four we've got are trained about as well as they're going to be before we get snow. The only problem is that none of the dogs we've got now likes to run in a double lead very well. The only real command leader we've got is Cumulus,
and he runs best in single lead. When we try to put him in with a second leader, things get screwed up real quick."
"Yeah," Mike added. "I tried running the team up the trail last night, not just around the field, and it seemed like every tree we came to, Midnight tried to go on on one side of it, and Cumulus on the other. That got old, real quick. I finally moved Midnight back to swing,
and moved Red back to wheel, and it worked all right. At least, I made it back."
"You know, Mike," Mark said, "We really ought to get another dog. That way, at least we could run Cumulus in single lead without an unbalanced team."
"Maybe two," Mike said. "Get them pretty well trained, and the way that puppy of Tiffanys' is growing, he ought to be able to run a bit when we get snow."
"He's growing fast," Mark said, "But I don't expect him to be ready that soon. He's a little wild. Still got a lot of puppy in him."
"He's supposed to have," Mike said. "He's still only four or five months old. He's going to grow up to be a real sled dog, though. Tiffany's already been working with him." Mark knew that; Mike said it for the crowd.
"You ought to see those two," Mark said. "The puppy's dragging around a little tire, just enough to let him know he's pulling something, and he's learning pretty good. I'm not sure Tiffany has got him to learn `Sit' yet, but he's got `Gee' and `Haw' and `Hike' and
`Whoa'. Another year, he settles down a little, and he'll make a command leader, but he's not ready to run with the other dogs yet."
"She's out there every day, working with him," Mike reported. "She's going to make a musher, yet."
"Have you guys turned her loose with a team yet?"
"Not yet," Mike said. "Three dogs is still a little bit too much to start out with, for her, and one dog isn't enough. If one of the other dogs would run double lead with Cumulus, I might be willing to give it a try."
"We get another dog or two," Mark said, "One of them might be able to run with Cumulus."
"It'll take a while to get new dogs trained," Mike replied. "Maybe we get three dogs good and tired some time, and we could turn her loose with three."
"Don't you just love it?" Clark said to Lindquist. "These guys watch one TV show, and then they come in here, and all they do is talk about dogs, after they've run dogs all the evening before."
"I think we created a monster," Lindquist agreed.
"You guys ever give any thought about a race out to Warsaw and back, like we talked about last spring?" Clark asked. "We need something to spruce up with winter festival."
"Don't have enough dogs to make a race of it," Mark said. "But, if we get another couple or three between now and then, then we could probably make a demonstration trip. That'd be fun." He thought for a moment, then turned to Mike. "You want to go looking for
dogs on Saturday?"
