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  “Fair enough,” Jake said with a nod. “Thanks again, man. I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah. So long.”

  Jake walked on, unsure what to make of this encounter. He wasn’t going to overreact and decide that he had made an unexpected friend here on campus. There hadn’t been nearly that level of warmth coming from Pierce. More of a willingness not to judge too prematurely or harshly.

  Back in the army, Jake had run into a few guys who considered themselves to be what they called small-l liberals, or classical liberals. Guys who truly believed in free speech and individualism, rather than marching in lockstep and trusting the government to run everything from the top down. They didn’t want to silence anyone who might have different ideas than they did. Their feelings weren’t so fragile that they had to pitch a fit and retreat into a safe space every time anybody challenged one of their beliefs. They welcomed honest debate. Jake could respect guys like that, even when he believed that their policy ideas were all wrong.

  Jake had heard many times that conservatives considered liberals wrong, while liberals considered conservatives evil. While few things were absolutes, including that, Jake had seen enough examples in real life to know that, by and large, that contrast was absolutely true. Guys like Pierce might be the exception, somebody who could disagree with somebody or something without resorting to demonizing. “Everybody I disagree with is literally Hitler,” had been a popular saying on the right a few years earlier, and like all clichés, it contained more than a nugget of truth. That was the way the left truly thought.

  The Cntrl-Left, Jake thought with a smile, remembering a term someone on the Internet had come up with to mock the lockstep progressives and their obsession with the so-called Alt-Right. Because if there was any group in modern American society that truly wanted to control everyone and everything, it was the Left . . .

  It was all politics, and all bull, and he wished it would just go away and leave him alone.

  That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

  CHAPTER 17

  Evidently it was, because by the time he got back to Olmsted Hall and his room, he found an email waiting for him from President Pelletier’s secretary, telling him—not asking him—to be at Pelletier’s office at nine o’clock the next morning. The email didn’t specify why the college president wanted to see him, but Jake was willing to bet it had something to do with this latest incident.

  It wasn’t difficult to see how Pelletier might have heard about it already, because when he checked social media, he saw that the video had been posted already, numerous different versions shot from angles all around him, in fact. One was titled Neo-Nazi Rant, and another emblazoned the words Far-Right Extremist Goes on Rampage. One was simply called Bigot.

  Somewhat surprisingly, most of the videos didn’t appear to have been edited much, if at all. It was like the posters were so sure of their fundamental infallibility that they hadn’t even bothered. They knew that if they pointed at something and cried, “Bigot!” their followers would believe them unquestioningly.

  Who you gonna believe, me . . . or your lyin’ eyes?

  The answer to that was simple and near-universal. If a liberal said it, other liberals would believe it, regardless of what the facts showed.

  Actually, watching the various versions of the video, Jake saw that most of them had caught him when he turned around and saw the guy swinging at him, and he had to admit that he had a pretty intense look on his face. Not evil or deranged or anything like that, but he’d clearly been ready for trouble.

  Then they concentrated on the guy who had attacked him, and his face revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was in quite a bit of pain. Jake had spoken in a quiet, reasonable voice, but the close-up of the guy grimacing automatically cast doubt on what he was saying. After all, he was hurting somebody who didn’t really look the least bit threatening. He had to be some kind of monster to do that, right? Actions speak louder than words.

  Then Jake saw a video posted by Pierce Conners and knew that had to be the guy who had sent the fresh footage to him. Jake clicked on that, waited a second for it to load, and as it played, he saw that the shot was framed so he and the other guy were both completely visible. Not only that, but it started before the guy rushed up and took the swing at him, so it was clear that Jake was trying to walk away and avoid trouble. With both of them in the video, Jake came off as a lot more rational. There was even a faint twinkle of amusement in his eyes during the legalistic spiel he had improvised.

  “Good job, Pierce,” he muttered. He was glad the young man had posted this, even though most people wouldn’t see it . . . and it probably wouldn’t change their opinion of him even if they did.

  Someone knocked on the door. He closed the laptop and stood up.

  The way his luck had been running, he expected this visitor to be an unwelcome one. However, when he opened the door the sight that greeted his eyes was pleasant and most welcome. Dr. Natalie Burke stood there wearing a simple green dress that she managed to make look elegant.

  “I saw the latest video,” she said, “and thought you might want some sympathetic company.”

  Jake frowned. His reaction made her look puzzled and then a little bit offended.

  “If you don’t want me here—” she began.

  “It’s not that,” he broke in. “Your company is pretty much the only thing I like about this place anymore. But you have to realized that you’re risking your career by getting involved with me.”

  “Are we involved, Jake?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like we might be getting there.”

  She moved closer to him and rested the fingers of her right hand on his left forearm as she said, “I think so, too.”

  “You know how the administration feels about me. You don’t want that stain rubbing off on you. You don’t have tenure, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, not yet.”

  “So Pelletier can fire you any time he wants to, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Natalie shrugged and said, “You always run that risk when you haven’t been teaching all that long.”

  “Why make it worse by associating with me?”

  She smiled up at him.

  “Maybe I think you’re worth associating with.”

  “I don’t know why you think that. Everybody else around here hates me, except for maybe Chief McRainey. And I think he’s starting to get pretty fed up with having trouble swirling around me all the time.”

  “None of that trouble has been your fault,” Natalie pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but I still seem to be a magnet for it. Remove me from the equation, and the trouble goes away.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, the professionally outraged will just find something else to be offended and upset about. You know that, Jake. The way they move the goalposts, nobody can ever win with them.”

  “You’re probably right about that,” he admitted.

  “So why worry about it?” She linked her arm with his and smiled. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat. You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

  “No, it’s barely past the time when the old people go to eat.”

  “Well, I’m older than you, remember?”

  He laughed and said, “All right, you win. Where do you want to go?”

  “There’s a good steakhouse called Hickory Grove out on the edge of town.”

  “I think I’ve seen it,” Jake said with a nod. “Let me put on a nicer shirt, and we’ll check it out. I’ll meet you in front of the dorm in five minutes.”

  “I could stay here while you change,” she suggested.

  “Not unless we both sign releases,” he said, smiling to show her that he was joking . . . mostly.

  They took his pickup, with Natalie giving him directions to the steakhouse. Not that he really needed them. He knew he could have relied on his innate sense of direction to find the place. But he had
never been one of those guys who resented it when he had to rely on someone else’s directions. Some men got bent out of shape by that, especially when it was a woman telling them where to go . . . so to speak. Jake, however, seldom got lost, so it had never really been an issue.

  Actually, he wasn’t sure he had ever been lost, at least in the sense of having no idea where he was and not a glimmering of how to get where he wanted to go. That natural ability had come in handy many times during his military service. The units to which he was assigned had learned quickly to rely on him as a scout.

  Hickory Grove was an old-fashioned steakhouse, with subdued lighting, lots of dark-wood paneling, booths and tables made of thick beams, and several sets of longhorns mounted on the walls, along with paintings of range life, some originals and some prints of classic scenes by artists such as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. Jake liked the place as soon as he walked in.

  He liked it even better when he had the first bite of the steak he ordered, which was cooked to perfection. The baked potato was excellent as well, as was the beer he drank to wash down the food.

  “I figured you were a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy,” Natalie said, smiling from the other side of the table in the booth.

  “Well, I did get called a barbarian earlier today,” Jake pointed out with a smile of his own.

  “By an idiot.”

  Jake shrugged as if to indicate that that went without saying.

  “No, it’s just that people mistake having simple tastes for having no taste,” Natalie went on. “They don’t understand that there’s always a reason certain things are always popular, like a good steak and baked potato. When they’re prepared properly, they’re always good. In an uncertain world, dependability means a lot.”

  “Some people think dependable is just another word for boring.”

  “Well, they’re wrong. You strike me as being very dependable, Jake . . . and you’re far from boring.”

  He laughed and said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “That’s the way it was intended.”

  The meal was so enjoyable that Jake didn’t want it to end. He realized that was a cliché, but in this case, it was true. He could have sat there in Hickory Grove all evening, talking to Natalie Burke.

  The management would have frowned on that, though, so eventually Jake paid for the meal—over Natalie’s objections, since technically she was the one who had invited him out, but she couldn’t overcome his old-fashioned stubbornness. And to tell the truth, she didn’t seem to mind that much. Away from the college campus, with its toxic, persistent, victimhood-seeking feminism, Natalie was clearly okay with some gender-stereotypical impulses on Jake’s part.

  Like when he took her hand as they walked back out to his pickup in the early evening. She didn’t object. She even squeezed back.

  “The weather’s nice,” he said, acting on another of those impulses. “Why don’t we drive out to the state park?”

  “I’d like that,” Natalie said. “Maybe we could walk around a little. That meal was delicious, but it was a little on the heavy side.”

  Jake couldn’t argue with that. It would feel good to move around some.

  The state park was a few miles south of Greenleaf and included a small lake, along with hiking trails and several picnic areas. It wasn’t a big place, but it was popular with both the college kids and the townies. Its relative isolation made it a good spot for couples to go, but it was also a location where drug deals sometimes took place, as Natalie mentioned to Jake as he drove toward it.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that,” he said. “I’m not particularly worried about it.”

  “Because you can handle trouble.”

  “Well, yeah. But also, it’s pretty early. The sun hasn’t been down long. I think it’s going to be a while before any drug dealers are out and about.”

  “We can hope so.”

  Jake also wasn’t worried because he had that little Smith & Wesson revolver in his jacket pocket and a knife in his jeans pocket. Most people he knew who went armed fervently hoped that it would never be necessary to use the weapons . . . but they preferred to be able to do so if the need arose. There was a lot of truth to the old saying about how when life and death was a matter of seconds, the cops were only minutes away.

  There was still a small, reddish-gold arch in the western sky when he brought the pickup to a stop in the parking area by the lake, where the hiking trails that ran all the way around started and ended. He saw a couple of people on bikes, and a family was just packing up from a picnic supper at one of the concrete tables overlooking the lake. It was a tranquil, domestic scene the likes of which Jake had experienced much too seldom in the past half-dozen years.

  “Let’s walk up the trail a ways,” he suggested.

  “Okay. I know a spot where there’s a pretty good view of the whole lake.”

  This time she was the one who took hold of his hand, instead of the other way around. Jake didn’t mind at all. They went to the right along the hiking trail, following it around the lake to the west. There was still enough light that they didn’t have any trouble seeing where they were going.

  A smaller, unpaved path branched off from the main trail and led up a rise to an elevated point with several large slabs of rock on it. Those rocks could be used to sit on and doubtless had been more times than anyone could count. Jake and Natalie sat on one of them and gazed out over the mostly tree-bordered lake in the fading light. The array of colors lingering in the heavens was spectacularly beautiful.

  But not any more beautiful than Natalie was in that golden light, Jake thought. He leaned over and kissed her. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.

  She returned the kiss with obvious pleasure. One hand came up and rested softly on his chest as she turned toward him. Jake slipped his arms around her.

  When the kiss ended, as it finally had to, Jake said quietly, “I’m sorry I didn’t ask your permission to do that.”

  “Don’t be,” she replied without hesitation. “Look, let’s forget about all those ridiculous, politically correct guidelines. There comes a time between a man and a woman when none of that garbage matters.”

  He started to say something about how she was being awfully heterocentric there, with her comment about a man and a woman, but then he realized she was right. He shoved everything else out of his mind and let human instinct guide him as he kissed her again.

  There were some things bureaucracies just couldn’t make rules against, and what he was feeling now was one of them. Let the petty little tyrants try to regulate human emotions all they wanted to. In the end, they would fail. The human spirit wouldn’t be broken.

  If it ever was, that was a world Jake wouldn’t want to live in.

  Later, when they walked back to Jake’s pickup, Natalie asked, “What’s your schedule tomorrow morning?”

  “I don’t have a class until eleven. I usually spend the morning studying.” Then Jake remembered and grimaced. “But I’m supposed to be in President Pelletier’s office at nine. He probably wants to chew me out again for defending myself.”

  “Maybe that won’t take very long. Meet me in the library when you’re done. I have some work to do, but I can do it there just as well as I can in my office. You can study. But we can be together while we’re doing those things.”

  “Sure,” he said, nodding. “If they haven’t expelled me and gotten a restraining order against me to keep me off the campus. The library sounds good to me. A library date. I didn’t know people still did such things in this day and age.”

  “Why not? Some things don’t go out of style, do they?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned.” He grinned. “Hell, I’d take you to the malt shop if there was one anywhere around.”

  “I kind of wish there was,” Natalie said with a wistful note in her voice. “You don’t know how much I’d like that . . .”

  CHAPTER 18

  Charlie Hodges was t
he head groundskeeper at Kelton College, bossing a crew of five guys. The four of them, plus Hodges, took care of everything outside the buildings. A separate maintenance and custodial crew handled the upkeep inside the buildings. If pressed, Hodges would admit that there was a certain rivalry between the two groups, but he liked to think that they were all professionals and cared more about doing their jobs than anything else.

  It just so happened that Hodges liked to get to work first, before the maintenance guys, so the sun wasn’t up yet when he parked his pickup next to the old, barn-like building at the edge of campus where his office was and where all the groundskeeping equipment was stored. Some people called it The Shed, but it was a lot larger and sturdier than an actual shed.

  The building had a big roll-up door so the crew could get the mowers in and out, with a smaller door to the left leading to Hodges’ office. He was headed for that door when a jeep pulled up next to his pickup and stopped. Rick Overman got out. Overman was a wiry young guy who was new on the groundskeeping crew this year, but so far he had proven to be a friendly, efficient, hard worker. Hodges liked him. He lifted a hand in greeting and said, “Mornin’, Rick.”

  “Morning, Mr. Hodges,” Overman replied.

  “Ready for a big day?”

  The question caused a frown to appear on Overman’s face.

  “A big day? What’s special about today?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Hodges said with a casual wave. He unlocked the office door. “Every day’s a big day if you approach it right, isn’t it?”

  Overman nodded slowly and said, “That’s a very good way of looking at life, sir. I’m going to believe that this will be a very big day.”

  Hodges grinned and clapped a hand on the young guy’s shoulder.

  “That’s the spirit. Wait here. I’ll go in and unlock the big door.”

  However, instead of waiting outside as Hodges had told him to do, Overman followed him into the office. Hodges flicked on the light and asked, “Something you wanted to talk about?”