Chapter 13

One of the time consuming chores that a junior reporter at the Record-Herald had to deal with on Monday mornings was to take a trip around to the sheriff's department and jail, the police department and the courthouse to collect all the records from the previous week. The police and sheriff's reports were among the more carefully read items in the paper, mostly because people wanted to see if any of their neighbors or relatives had gotten into trouble with the law, had filed a marriage license application, or things like that. If what had happened was major enough, it might turn into a separate story, but things like a routine bar fight or domestic disturbance mostly just rated a brief paragraph in the paper, and sometimes not even that.

It was nothing Susan hadn't done before – in fact, she'd done it as early as the seventh grade, and it had worked out all right so long as she'd taken careful notes, which she always did. At least, no one had ever complained that she'd gotten anything wrong, which was more than could be said for some of the junior reporters who had gone through the paper, which she found included Lindeman.

Because she had to be at the high school for the opening of classes, Susan got started on the chore a little earlier than a junior reporter normally would have done. She found nothing terribly out of the ordinary, except for three drunken driving arrests on Friday night. The timing was such that they might have been from football fans celebrating the win, but not necessarily, and she'd learned a long time before to just report the arrest and not speculate on the reason. She was a little disappointed to see that Bobby Lufkin didn't appear in any of the arrest records, enough so that she commented about it to Corporal Charlie Wexler, the city patrolman on duty.

"Knowing something and proving it are two different things," he smiled. "You know that. In a town this small it's hard to set him up with someone he doesn't know. We'll get him sooner or later."

"Well, good luck," she said, pointedly not volunteering her services. Keeping as much of a distance as she could from Bobby Lufkin was one thing she was anxious to accomplish.

She had to break off her rounds before she made it to the courthouse, where there were a number of things like marriage licenses and the court docket that needed to be checked; it would have to be done later since she had to head over to the school. Where some junior reporters dressed about like they would have as high school students, which is to say slobs, she was nicely dressed, with the black pencil skirt she'd worn to Riverside the previous week and a nice blouse. It was a little out of place for the school but today it wouldn't matter.

Things were the predictable confusion at the school. She parked the Cavalier in the student parking lot, went inside, and headed for Mr. Delahayne's room, where her first class was scheduled. Along the way, she got a few comments about how nicely she was dressed, and stopped to exchange words with a few people she hadn't seen at the football game. She arrived at the classroom just in time to not be late for the Spanish I class.

It was good to see Mr. Delahayne again. He had been one of her favorite teachers as a freshman and sophomore when she'd taken French I and II from him – the basis for her knowledge of French, and one of the few things she could say that she'd actually learned at Spearfish Lake High School. She'd learned since that his pronunciation wasn't all that good – her teacher in Regensburg had complained that she had a horrible American accent, and had done what he could to flush it out of her, but even now no Frenchman would mistake her for being French.

It could have been worse. Her Spanish teacher at Regensburg, Herr Fretillo, who spoke beautiful Castilian, had complained that somehow she managed both an American and a Mexican accent at the same time. This was, not surprising since she'd learned most of her early Spanish from Arturo Martinez and his family, who had run a Mexican restaurant in Spearfish Lake for several years. She'd been friends with all of them until they finally decided that a Mexican restaurant really wasn't going to fly in the town and moved away. The empty building had been for sale when Susan had left for Germany, and she'd noticed since her return from Germany that at least it had been sold while she'd been gone. At least that much had worked for them; she missed Arturo and hoped to see him again sometime although she had no idea where he was, but hoped things were working out for him and his family.

The class was mostly freshmen and sophomores, with a small scattering of juniors and seniors; Susan recognized a few of the latter and none of the former. Mr. Delahayne made a brief introduction to the class, telling them that this was the first year that Spanish was being taught at Spearfish Lake since the state was going to eventually require that it be taught to all students in the state system. Once he was done with that he turned to Susan and said in Spanish, "I'm surprised to see you here, of all people."

"I have to take something," Susan replied in Spanish. "I'm just hoping you don't mess up the Castilian accent I've been working on for the last year."

"You seem to have picked up quite a bit of it," he said, still in Spanish, of course. They were talking over the heads of most of the students, the majority of which, she was sure, barely spoke ten words of it and possibly less. "Your Spanish was better than mine even before you went to Germany. There's not a chance you're going to learn anything useful here, and it might be best to not run the risk of picking up my accent. About all you're going to be able to accomplish here is helping me drill the rest of this group. As far as I'm concerned, you already have an A for the semester."

"Tell you what," she smiled. "Just write that in your grade book and I'll get out of your hair. That way I can't correct you when you pronounce something in Tex-Mex instead of Castilian."

"Sounds like a good idea," he shook his head. "I'd rather some people around this place didn't know how little Spanish I really speak, and that way you can't embarrass me. Drop in sometime if you haven't got anything better to do. I've missed you, Susan."

"Mr. Delahayne, you've got a deal," she laughed. "I've got other things I need to do anyway, like get back to work."

"Enjoy yourself," Mr. Delahayne said in Spanish, then turned to the class and said in English, "That was a demonstration that you can learn Spanish while living in Spearfish Lake. It takes some work to learn to speak it that well, but it can be done, so let's get started."

As he was saying that, Susan got up to leave. "Nice catch," she teased to Mr. Delahayne in Spanish from the doorway. "I'll see you around."

"See you around, too," he replied, in English this time. "Nice to see you again Susan, and don't be a stranger."

That went better than she had expected, she thought as she walked down the hallway. She had thought that Mr. Delahayne would be pretty flexible. With her college schedule she was going to have to miss his class two days a week. She really wouldn't have minded helping him with drilling some of the students, though it would have been a pain in the neck. As she had said, she had other things to do.

It was still pretty busy around the school office, and there was a line at the window in front of Mrs. Foxbender's desk. Susan got in line and patiently waited her turn; it was a several minutes before she got to talk to the secretary. "I need to see Mr. Hekkinan," Susan told her.

"He's pretty busy," Mrs. Foxbender said. "It may take a while. Aren't you supposed to be in class?"

"That's what I need to talk to him about," Susan told her. "It shouldn't take long."

"I'll try to squeeze you in," Mrs. Foxbender said. "It may take a few minutes."

It was a good twenty minutes before Susan got in to see Mr. Hekkinan. "Good to see you," he said as she walked in the door. "But after the last few days I've come to expect that seeing you means more trouble for me."

"It probably does this time too," she said. "But it might be a fun kind of trouble." She handed him a stack of papers that she had been carrying and said, "These are my drop slips for every class I've got scheduled, except for Spanish I."

"Spanish I?" he shook his head. "Like I said Friday, if there's any class you don't need to take, it's Spanish I."

"Mr. Delahayne agrees with you," she smiled. "He just passed me for the whole semester, so you won't be seeing me around here for a while. It's just as well, since I'm registered full time at Riverside."

"Full time?" he shook his head. "I thought you had to be a high school graduate to manage that."

"I am," she grinned. "I'm a graduate of the Johannes-Staudinger Gymnasium in Regensburg, and they accepted that at Riverside. I learned something finding that out. I'm probably not even going to mention Spearfish Lake High School on any other applications or resumés I have to fill out. There's no point in confusing people unnecessarily."

"I should have known you had something up your sleeve," he shook his head again. "Why didn't you drop the Spanish I class, too?"

"Leaving my options open," she said. "And it leaves options open for you, too. I can still technically be a student here if you need that fact in your hassles with Mr. Gingrich, and that includes the school picking up part of my tuition for the semester. Or, if it would work out better for you, I can be a dropout before the fourth Friday count comes around. Not only would it cost him the $13,400 he thought he was going to get by screwing me over just to prove something, but you can point out that his policies forced the likely valedictorian to drop out rather than put up with them."

"Does your father know this?"

"Most of it," she admitted. She hadn't planned the way things had turned out with Mr. Delahayne, but that just happened, not that she was complaining. "Maybe not a couple of the implications, but they signed off on my going down there full time."

"Well, that's one way," he sighed. "Maybe not the best way, but it's one way. I really wish you were staying here, Susan, because I think you have a lot to offer the rest of the student body, but after the deal that got pulled on you I can't blame you for leaving, either. I'm sorry about that, and I'm sorry I didn't think about your German diploma when this first came up. It might have saved a little heartache all around."

"Macht nichts," she shrugged. "It doesn't matter," she explained in English. "I have to say that I don't think I would have gotten much out of my last year here, anyway. I was really dreading to have to take some of those useless classes just to fill out a schedule. It would have been nice to be able to graduate with my friends and the kids I went to school with, but a lot of this year would have been wasted anyway."