Team Manager 1: SWISH!
Chapter 33
BRISCO WALKED AWAY from the assembly room where the inquest had been held. The outcome was never really in doubt. Their body cams had recorded everything. His warning was clear until the Conway kid started shooting. That Brisco and Reg fired at nearly the same time simply reinforced the imminent danger the agents were in. The driver had already shot Unger when Thomas took him out. They’d at least managed one clean take-down but the Mexican kid who was on the passenger side scarcely spoke English—or was good at pretending he didn’t. When he opened his door, Reg had him at gunpoint and the kid dropped his weapon and raised his hands.
The clincher was the kids in the back of the van. The agents had saved innocent lives by acting as they did. That went a long way in the committee’s opinion. It was reaffirmed by the medical examiners. All the agents were listed as not at fault. The problem was with the Unger kid. By the time he was out of surgery, his parents had shown up with a lawyer. The agents were told in no uncertain terms that anything the kid had said before surgery was inadmissible. And he’d said nothing since. Even if he’d been coherent enough to answer questions, which he wasn’t, the agents couldn’t even speak to him. He was in a supposedly secure room at the hospital and was still unconscious most of the time. Brisco didn’t trust that the kid would be there when it was time to arraign him in court.
And that was the big problem. There was still a missing piece. There was a contact between the Gang of Three and the Mexican drug runners in Chicago. And right now, they had no leads on who it was. It was suspicious that the sheriff had the same lawyer as Unger. Technically, the cases were unrelated unless the agents could somehow connect them. Brisco wondered if the sheriff was the contact point, but he didn’t seem that intelligent.
On the other hand, Solomon Smith was a reclusive moonshiner in a shack in the woods. He had no lawyer and refused the one the court sent him. He was continually ranting about how he’d been betrayed and would kill the ones who killed his son. The case against him was strictly moonshining, unless they could somehow tie the drugs in Enders’ drink to him. A thorough search of the property netted all the distillery production and about fifty thousand in cash hidden under the floorboards. The amount of moonshine in his store room was enough to make his operation an aggravated misdemeanor instead of a simple misdemeanor. Brisco, as a federal agent, presided over the destruction of the still, alcohol, and shanty. He was accompanied and witnessed by two State Troopers who had been at the initial bust.
Brisco needed to find the missing link between Unger and the cartel. And when they found that link, he was pretty sure he’d find a network of small-time dealers who were currently not being resupplied. Brisco felt it was likely the middleman would try to find a new supplier to keep his network open and operating.
“Can I sit with you guys?” The girls at the team table with Dennis looked up to see Lana Brown, the shy cheerleader, standing with her lunch tray. There was a little shuffling to make room and she was welcomed.
“How are you doing, Lana?” Dennis asked. It had already been an exhausting day during which they missed most of their morning classes in the blow-up with the principal. “Please sit here and tell us what’s on your mind.” He held a chair for her. She set her tray down and sat next to him.
“I quit cheerleading,” she said as she pushed mashed potatoes and meatloaf around on her plate. It was actually one of the better meals the cafeteria served.
“I’m sorry,” Dennis said. “Were we too much for you?”
“No. Please don’t think that. You guys were fine. It was the other girls. They spent the whole trip home last night deciding how to punish me for not going along with them in the locker room. You didn’t pressure me and even defended me when I didn’t want to participate,” she said.
“Damn it! It’s my fault,” Brenda said. “I’m so sorry, Lana. If I’d stayed a cheerleader instead of running off to play basketball, maybe I could have controlled them this year. Maybe. Without me, Susan is turning them into call girls. I told Ms. Sanders what was going on when I left and she ignored it.”
“I would never have been on the squad at all if you hadn’t left,” Lana said. “Nothing that happened after was your fault. I could have refused their initiation and quit then. I just… wanted to fit in so badly.”
“You don’t have to tell us what they did if you don’t want to, Lana,” Natalie said. “Just be welcome here and talk to us if you need to. And let us know if you need to be protected. We got pretty good at that with Dennis, here.” The girls laughed as Dennis hung his head and shook it. Lana smiled shyly.
“I’m just afraid they’ll try to punish me anyway. I told Ms. Sanders what they tried to do. She called me a priss.”
“Wow! That’s pretty uncalled for,” Dennis said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. On our team, everyone makes her own decisions. Right, ladies?”
“Well, if we were really making our own decisions, we’d all be sleeping with you every night,” Amy giggled. “There’s only so much Dennis to go around.”
“Do you really, um… you know… with each other?”
“Maybe this discussion would be better without me present,” Dennis said.
“No,” Lana squeaked and grabbed his hand. “I mean, please don’t leave your team because of me.”
“It’s okay, Lana,” Nat said. “Like everyone else in school, you want to know if we’re all having sex with Dennis. Would all the virgins at the table please raise your hand?” It was only freshmen and sophomores at the table with Brenda. The twins were working over lunch on a lab experiment. Seven hands went up—all except Brenda. Lana looked at Dennis.
“You’re a virgin?”
“Look at me,” he said. “I’m a four-eyed dweeb. Who’d have sex with me?”
“That’s not fair, Dennis. Don’t lie to our new friend,” Natalie said. “The truth is we would all have sex with Dennis, and my two sisters, too. We make out a lot and play some sexy games. We tease Dennis unmercifully with our bodies in the locker room. And there are a lot of orgasms to go around. But we’ve never had intercourse.”
“We’re all waiting for Natalie,” Amy giggled. Nat rolled her eyes. Lana looked puzzled.
“Sex is a big step,” Brenda confided. “I wish I’d been able to wait, but the pressure on cheerleaders to date and have sex with the team was more than I could withstand. And maybe I led the others astray a little with my wild behavior. But not rushing into sex, even if we’re sleeping together, is a lot easier to do when we’re all together. It was really hard last night.” A couple of the girls snickered.
“Last night?”
“I got to sleep over with Dennis alone for the first time. Everybody else’s parents were after them to be home. We messed around, but we didn’t go all the way,” Brenda confessed.
“Not being alone with Dennis is all that’s saved my cherry,” Natalie said. “I want to make love to him so bad.”
“You guys wouldn’t make me do something, though,” Lana said. She stated it firmly but raised her eyebrows in question for confirmation.
“No,” Dennis said. “We have three firm rules. No means no. Never without protection. Never in front of my sister. The cheerleaders were violating rule number one last night.”
“They said they were going to get the guy with the biggest cock to take my virginity,” Lana whispered.
“That’s rape!” Dennis declared. “We need to tell someone.”
“Who? The principal? You know how far that will go,” Natalie said.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Lana. I’ve seen my share of those guys’ cocks. The answer is Dennis,” Brenda said. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t try something.”
“Surely, you could identify them,” Dennis said. “I knew who was choking me with his cock last year.” The girls let out a collective gasp. It was the first time Dennis had really spoken about his experience other than the brief confession the day they threw Carol off the team.
“They’d blindfold me like they did when they made me suck off five guys for initiation. They said they’d keep me cherry for now and figure out who got it later,” Lana said. Dennis looked at the other girls. They shrugged and nodded.
“We need to tell Coach about this,” he said. “I know the school board could over react like they did last year and cancel the whole sports program, but we can’t let this go on.”
“The problem is people will point at us and accuse us of the same things,” Amy said. “People are just like my parents. If you tell them something they don’t want to hear, they just say you’re lying.”
Ardith was not having a good time either. An irate Lori Sanders was in her office.
“Your team so traumatized one of my girls last night that she quit the squad!” Lori shouted at Ardith. “Then she made up all kinds of things to blame it on the other cheerleaders. Either you put a stop to their behavior or I will.”
“Lori, you don’t know what you are talking about. Where were you when the girls were all in the locker room? It’s interesting that you rode the bus all the way up to Fort Dodge with us and then disappeared. You didn’t even see the game; how could you know what went on in the locker room?” Ardith said.
“I had business to attend to,” Lori said. “I couldn’t spend all my time babysitting.”
“Oh? So, your affair with Mr. Conway is considered business?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I wondered, when he said he wasn’t at the game last night. I was sure I saw him in the parking lot. Was he your client? I thought he was just a boyfriend.”
“You don’t have any evidence he was even there last night. What I do on my own time is my own business, not yours.”
“Except that it wasn’t your own time. You were on a school trip with students you were responsible for. Now you’re trying to blame others for the behavior of your charges. What’s the going price for a piece of ass when you sell to the basketball players?” Ardith dug in. She knew she was tossing out as much unfounded gossip and speculation as people did about her team. But she also knew she was close enough to the truth that Sanders was on the spot and couldn’t defend herself. “Let me tell you, Lori. If you dare to raise a stink about my team, I’ll put so much pressure on the varsity that they all come forward to admit to buying sex from you even if they haven’t. Now get out of my office.”
There was no practice on Friday, so Ardith wasn’t expecting the whole team to show up in her office after school—including Dennis and a frightened-looking ex-cheerleader. She heaved a huge sigh and collected herself to face the newest in an entire day of crises.
“I suppose you want to join the team,” she said, looking at Lana.
“No ma’am,” the frightened girl answered. “I know it’s too late to do that.”
“Well? What brings you all into my office on a non-practice day?”
“Coach, Lana is in danger. The cheerleaders threatened to have her raped. When there was a credible threat against Amy and me, you helped us. You got rides together and made sure we were never alone where they could get at us. We need to do the same for Lana,” Dennis said.
“And you all agree with this?” she asked looking at the team.
“Yes, ma’am,” Natalie said. “We’ll be happy to make sure Lana has a friend nearby all the time and take her home at night, but our schedule doesn’t help her right after school when we have to practice. We need to keep her nearby.”
“Coach, with all the taping I need to do before games and even for practice, and the things I need to keep track of, I could use an assistant. I almost forgot to pick up the score sheets after the game last night,” Dennis said. He was doing his best to make a case for it, but she knew very well that he hadn’t forgotten anything since the first day Ardith contacted him. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them slowly, looking at Lana.
“Lana, you’ve been in the locker room with these idiots. You know what goes on in there. You know that Dennis is around for most of it. You left the cheer squad because of it. What makes you think you can handle it now?”
“No, ma’am. I did not leave the cheer squad over what the team was doing in the locker room. I left because of what the other cheerleaders were trying to force me to do. It was Dennis who came to my defense.”
“But there is often partial or complete nudity in the locker room when Dennis is present,” Ardith persisted.
“I’ve seen naked women before. That doesn’t bother me. I’ve never seen a naked man, but Dennis didn’t take any clothes off in the locker room. It was the cheerleaders trying to force me to strip that set me off. From their behavior last night, I know the team would never force me to do anything. No means no,” Lana said.
“Let me be perfectly clear on this,” Ardith said. “‘No’ means no. ‘Stop’ means no. ‘I’m tired’ means no. ‘Not now’ means no. ‘I’m not sure’ means no. ‘I don’t know’ means no. ‘I’m not ready’ means no. ‘I’m not protected’ means no. ‘No’ does not mean ‘convince me.’ If it’s not a yes, it’s not consent. Does every single one of you understand this?”
“Yes, Coach,” they all responded.
“Lana, I’ll need a permission slip signed by your parents allowing you to participate on the girls’ basketball team.” She dug in her drawer and pulled out a slip. “Dennis, I expect you to instruct Lana on every aspect of becoming a team manager. The rest of you, I expect Lana to be included in all team activities, including our ‘ride home’ practice. Starting now.” Ardith waved her hand and shooed the team out of her office. Thank God it was Friday!
“Daddy, I’ve quit the cheer squad and joined the girls’ basketball team as an assistant manager,” Lana reported to her father Friday evening. Randolph Brown laid his tablet aside. He didn’t trust the media, so scanned news feeds on his tablet each evening. He hadn’t really wanted his daughter to become a cheerleader in the first place. The cheerleaders at Bartley might be the most refined and chaste young women in the school, but there were just too many stories out there about cheerleaders and the players of the sports they cheered for. Girls’ basketball didn’t have quite the negative image cheerleading had.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “Why did you decide to quit cheerleading? You were so enthused about becoming a cheerleader when the opening came up last fall.”
“It was okay for a while. It was fun being at the games to cheer on the team. I liked being in front of people leading them. But… Daddy, the cheerleaders wanted me to do things. Sinful things. I couldn’t participate in that and still come home to sit at the table with my parents and little brother and sister. You’ve always said I needed to set an example for them and I realized I couldn’t do that if I entered the sinful life of the other cheerleaders.”
That was quite a speech. She’d pulled the sinful card, meaning she was very serious and didn’t want to be challenged. Whenever there was something she didn’t want to do, it became ‘sinful.’ She’d once tried to convince him that going to church on Sunday was sinful and backed her argument with carefully researched Bible passages. She’d lost on that one, but she was allowed to stay in the children’s room, helping babysit the little ones.
“And you believe the girls’ basketball team will be better? Are they not sinful?” he asked. She hesitated.
“They might be,” she admitted. “But the Bible says ‘Judge not and you will not be judged.’ The thing that’s different is that they won’t try to make me join in their sins. The team manager actually stood up to the cheerleaders to defend me. That’s why I decided to become the assistant team manager. Coach Graves agreed.”
“Well, it sounds like you have made a good and wise decision, precious daughter. The school news says there is only one more regular season game for the—what did they call them?—Angelines.”
“And then there is the state tournament. I don’t think there’s ever been a Bartley team that got past the first round of regionals, but I think the Angelines will go all the way to the State Championship!” Lana’s enthusiasm sounded like she was still a cheerleader.
“Will this take up more time than cheerleading?” he asked.
“No, Daddy. And I’ll keep my grades up. I know how important it is. Will you sign the permission slip?” She handed him the slip and he read through the standard form before signing it and handing it back. “Thank you, Daddy!” She skipped out of the room as he watched in amusement.
Randolph was a churchgoer—a man of faith. But he was not blind to the world around him. He knew his daughter wasn’t perfectly pure and innocent. He’d caught her once with David Simpson in the barn, both with their pants down. Of course, they were only eight years old, but it was a sign to Randolph that fatherhood would be a time of eternal vigilance. His wife, Elsa, had far more liberal views than he did. She’d been an exchange student from Sweden when they met in high school. As soon as he’d worked long enough to save the money, he’d flown to Sweden to meet her parents, married her, and brought her back home. He’d moved from the Baptist Church to the Lutheran church to satisfy her.
His daughter got her pale skin and almost white blonde hair from her mother. And also, most of her temperament. The first thing Elsa had done when Lana announced she wanted to be a cheerleader was to take their daughter to the doctor and get her a birth control implant. They’d both emphasized to her that it was not permission, that there were things besides pregnancy transmitted sexually, and that she should mind her heritage and not become a sinner. She happily agreed with them, but a change had come over her when she joined the cheerleaders. Her simple joy in life had seemed to dissipate after becoming a cheerleader. When asked about her day, the game, or cheerleading, her answers became terse. He worried that she was hiding something and feared his own Angeline was no longer a virgin. Randolph was happy that she decided to quit the squad.
There had been strange goings-on in town the past few weeks. Federal drug raids, murder, and strange rumors. He was in the habit of doing his chores in the morning and then leaving the farm around ten to pick up the mail and get a cup of coffee at the café. Once a week, some of the men from church met with him and they had a quiet Bible study and prayer session. The other days, it was just normal chitchat about how the crops were doing, what the weather was like, who might need a bit of help this year.
He’d been through struggles on the farm. A few years ago, there was a massive hail storm that flattened the crops. There’d been an 80% loss county-wide. He’d been fortunate in that his father demanded he insure his crops, and since Dad still owned the farm that Randolph and his family lived and worked on, he had no choice but to buy the expensive insurance. It kept him from the same fate Will Enders had suffered. They were near the same age, but Will lost his farm as a result of the damage. Randolph had heard he was in the hospital after someone tried to kill him. He wondered how the family was getting on with two handicapped children. He’d put a bug in Elsa’s ear about checking up on Dot Enders and seeing if she needed anything.
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