Дэвид Балдаччи - One Summer

“This sucks!” roared Cory.

“This sucks!” repeated Jackie, who was standing on his chair and pointing his finger too.

“Cor,” snapped Jack. “Jackie, get down and be quiet.”

But Jenna put a hand on his arm. “No. You know what? They’re right.” She stood and yelled, “This stinks.”

Jack shrugged, stood, and called out, “Are you telling me that Mikki and Liam didn’t even make the top three? You people are nuts.”

The head judge and Chelsea Murdoch scowled back at them.

Another chorus came from farther back in the theater.

Mikki craned her neck to see. It was Blake and some of the other people from Sweat Town, including Fran, the woman who’d worked as a caterer at Tiffany’s party.

“Recount,” demanded Blake. “Recount.”

Mikki grinned at him.

“Recount! Recount!” chanted the crowd.

Tiffany stood in the center of the stage trying to pretend she was oblivious to all of the criticism. She held her trophy and posed for pictures for a photographer from the local paper.

Then the crowd started chanting, “Encore! Encore!”

Mikki looked at Liam. He said, “What the heck, let’s give ’em the Purple.”

She nodded, picked up her guitar, cranked her amp, poised her foot on top of her wah-wah pedal, and struck a chord so powerfully amplified that Tiffany screamed and almost fell off the stage. Mikki looked over at Liam and nodded. A moment later the heart-pumping sound of “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple roared across the theater.

Minutes later, as the last note of the song died away, Liam and Mikki, their arms around each other, took a bow together. This was a trigger for the ecstatic, cheering crowd to rush the stage. Tiffany had to run to get out of the way of the stampede. The news photographer and reporter joined the crowd, leaving the baton twirler all alone. Tiffany stormed off the stage and threw her trophy in the trash, while her mother followed her out of the theater, trying to soothe her furious daughter.

Later, on the drive home, Mikki and Liam sat in the back of the VW bus. The two teens glowed both with the sweat of their musical exertions and also with sheer excitement.

Liam said, “This is like the greatest day of my life. I mean I’ve never felt this good about losing before.”

Jack looked in the rearview mirror at his daughter. “So what happened to alternative edgy beats with a nontraditional mix of instrumentals?”

She grinned. “Wow — you were listening. I’m impressed. Anyway, sometimes you just can’t beat good old rock and roll, Dad.”

“The best part,” said Cory, “was watching Tiffany storming off.”

Jenna looked in the back of the van and tapped Jack on the arm, motioning with her eyes. He gazed into the rearview mirror to see Liam and Mikki sneak a kiss.

She whispered, “I think, for them, that’s the best part.”

“Hey!” Jack yelled.

He and Sammy had just come out of the grocery store in downtown Channing when Jack saw a guy grab his tool belt out of the truck’s cargo bay and run off. Jack and Sammy raced after him, Jack a few paces in front. He saw the guy duck down a side street. He turned the corner and accelerated, Sammy right behind him. The side street turned into an alley. Then they left the alley and entered a wider space. But it was a dead end; a blank brick wall faced them. They pulled up, puffing.

Jack realized what was going on about the same time Sammy did.

“Trap,” Jack said.

“And we just ran into it like a couple of high school knuckleheads.”

They looked behind them as five large men holding baseball bats came out of hiding behind a Dumpster. Jack could see that the man in the lead was the same one he’d thrown headfirst into the side of the pickup truck shortly after they’d arrived in Channing.

The men moved forward as Jack and Sammy fell back until they were against the brick wall. Jack slipped off his belt, coiled it partially around his hand, and stood ready. Sammy rolled up the sleeves of his work shirt and assumed a defensive stance. He beckoned them on with a wave of his hand.

“Okay, who wants to go to the hospital first?” he said.

With a yell, the biggest man ran forward and raised his bat. Jack whipped his belt, and the metal tip caught the man right on the arm, cutting it open. He screamed and dropped the bat. Sammy drilled a foot into his gut, sending him to his knees. Next, Sammy clamped an iron grip around the big man’s neck.

“I don’t waste my A game on the JV.” Sammy crushed the man’s jaw with a sledgehammer right hand that sent him to the asphalt. Sammy looked back up. “One down, four to go. Who’s the next victim?”

Two more men, including the one whom Jack had beaten up before, yelled and ran forward. Jack grabbed the man’s bat, pivoted his hips, and pulled hard. The man sailed past him and hit the wall, bouncing off. Groggy, he rose in time to be put back down by Jack’s fist slamming into his face.

The other guy had his feet kicked out from under him by Sammy. He ripped the bat out of the guy’s hands and bopped him on the head with it, knocking him out. When Jack and Sammy looked up, the other men had disappeared.

“Okay, that was fun,” said Sammy.

His smile vanished a minute later when Sheriff Tammie hustled into the alley with a skinny deputy in tow. Tammie took one look at the men lying on the ground and Jack and Sammy holding bats, and he pulled his gun, his face dark and furious.

“Put those bats down now. You’re both under arrest.”

“They attacked us!” exclaimed Jack as he and Sammy dropped the bats.

“Then how come they’re knocked out and you two had the bats?”

“Because they were crappy fighters,” said Sammy. “Is that our fault?”

Jack pointed at one of the men on the pavement. “Look, he’s the same one I fought with before. He and a bunch of his guys came after us to settle the score. We were just defending ourselves.”

“That’s for a court to decide.”

“You’re really charging us?” said Jack. “What about the other guys?”

“Their butts are going to jail too.”

“Well, at least that’s some justice,” snapped Sammy.

“And we got to let the wheels of justice do their thing. Just the way it has to be,” said Tammie.

Jack and Sammy were cuffed, loaded into the sheriff’s cruiser, and transported to the jail. Jack slumped down on a bench at the back of the cell, but Sammy said, “Hey, we get a lawyer, right?”

“That’s what I said when I read you the Miranda card,” replied Tammie.

Tammie let Jack make a call.

He said, “Jenna, it’s Jack. Uh, I’m in a little bit of trouble.”

Ten minutes later, Jenna and Charles Pinckney hurried into the sheriff’s office and were escorted back to see the prisoners.

“My God, Jack, what happened?” she said.

He explained everything that had happened in the alleyway.

“I’ve talked the sheriff into releasing you on your own recognizance,” she said.

“So we can go?”

“For now, yes, but it looks like the men are pressing charges, at least according to Tammie.”

“But isn’t it our word against theirs?” said Sammy.

“Still have to go to court.”

“But we didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” said Jenna. “I’m doing the best I can.”

His anger faded. “I know. And I appreciate you getting down here so fast. Didn’t know anyone else to call.”

“Well, for now, you’re free to go. I’ll get the sheriff.”

Two days later, a man in a suit knocked on the door of the Palace.

Jack answered it.

“Jack Armstrong?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”