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Chapter One
When the Bonville High School Badgers took the field for the last game of the 1968 football season, no one expected a victory. But in the last moments of the last quarter, Chase Kimball faked a hand-off, and then scooted through the hole opened up by the bulldozer shoulders of the big black left guard Leonard Evans, and plunged into the end zone. The fans went wild. And white quarterback Kimball threw his arms around Evans, hugging him, and pounding him on the back. “Way to go, Lenny, way to go!”
But in the stands, the people chanted, “Chase! Chase! Chase!”
“Chase.”
He jerked from his reverie, and spun around to face his wife.
“I’ve called you four times already!” Chase knew from the look on Janet’s face that he was in trouble. “Dinner’s ready.”
“Sorry, hon.” He reached for her shoulders and drew her slight frame close to him. “I was just thinking about how different things are now than when we were in high school.” Although her head only reached his chin, the red-haired woman who stood now in the circle of his arms was his Rock of Gibraltar.
“Oh, Chase. You’re worrying about the school board again. Aren’t you?” She looked up at him, her green eyes pleading. “Please let it go, just for a little while—long enough to have dinner with Matt and Tessie and me.”
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, grinning at her. “You always make me feel better, even when you’re peeved at me.” Then he wrinkled his face and took her hand, passing her fingers over the frown and erasing it back into his signature smile.
Janet patted his cheek and smiled back. Dinner tonight would be a fine family meal. It always was when Chase was there...really there. She loved him, and she knew how seriously he took his responsibilities, but sometimes, she and the children had to come first. And tonight was one of those times, or she would know the reason why!
The next day, in his office, Attorney Chase Kimball stared at the law brief on his desk, and a trace of a smile drifted over his face as he thought of the wonderful evening he had spent with his family. Matt was all boy, even though he took after his mother in stature, and was better at track than on the gridiron. And Tessie, with her mother’s red hair and her daddy’s quirky smile, was going to charm her way through life, no doubt about it. His mind wandered on past the dinner to the glass of wine he and Janet had shared at bedtime, and...
The intercom buzzed and Sally said, “Mr. Kimball, it’s Leonard Evans on line one.”
His bubble of remembrance burst into a fog of the mixed feelings that Chase had about his high school friend. At least that was what he had so naively called Lenny when they were Badger teammates. No, they didn’t hang around together after football practice was over, and he had never been to Lenny’s house, but that didn’t mean they weren’t friends, or at least what passed for friendship between whites and blacks back in the 60s. After high school, Case had headed for an Ivy League school, and Lenny had parlayed his athletic ability into a junior college slot as a lineman, but neither had made football their life. And now, years later, he wasn’t sure what they were, maybe acquaintances who shared a common past, but he did know that they seemed to be on opposite sides of the fence in Bonville, especially when it came to the Bonville schools.
Chase picked up the receiver and spoke, hating the small note of insincerity in his hearty greeting. Being on the school board was not political big-time, but he sometimes felt that he was turning into the worst kind of glad-handing vote-seeker. “Hey, Lenny, buddy. How are you?...How’s your family?...Did I see that you’re doing some new building over at your church? Congratulations.”
On the other end of the line, the Reverend Leonard Evans stifled a sigh. Chase was at it again. Acting like everything in Bonville was just picture-perfect. Chase was charging the line with all his might, but Lenny wasn’t clearing a path for him these days. In Chase’s eyes, Lenny was playing defense on the opposing team—just another obstacle in Chase’s way as he tried to rescue the Bonville school district from the racial and economic woes of the failing city. After his election to the School board, Chase had handled the bloody controversy that led to the firing of the former superintendent as well as could be expected. But the black majority population of the school district was not going to welcome a white replacement. Especially since the interim superintendent, a white man, was noted for his fiscal responsibility, but not his diplomacy with students, teachers, or the general public.
“Chase, listen to me. You’ve got to know that people are getting fed up with the delays in hiring a new superintendent. There’s been another incident at the high school. The principal expelled the boy, and Acting Superintendent Vern Steifert is refusing to meet with the young man and his mother. I’m glad she came to me first, but I’m afraid that her next stop will be NAACP lawyers.....
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