Tyler

by Kathi S. Barton

  “I could care less if you forgive me or not, Glenda. You’ll come to understand that your opinion, or anyone else’s, doesn’t matter a bit to me when it comes to me being my own person. You should think about the things you missed out on by being a bitch and training your son to be a monster. You having a grandson in your life is one of them. That is what you gave up when you decided to show your son that beating me was the only way to keep me in line.” Glenda said that she wasn’t sorry. “Yes, I can see that. But it’s your loss, and your son’s. And my son, he’ll be a good boy, and a better man than you could have ever hoped for in your own.”

  “I hate you, Jazzie. And I will for as long as I can haunt this earth.” Jazzie asked if she was threatening her. “Yes, I do believe that I am. I know that I said that I’d leave you alone. But I can’t. I hate you that much, and all that you took from me. My son, my grandson. You did this to us. You and your uppity ways.”

  Jazzie went to the door and asked Gabe to bring Joey out. Tyler had no idea what she was going to do, but when she wrapped him up in a blanket so that Glenda couldn’t see him, Tyler looked at Gabe before Jazzie spoke again.

  “To you, he’s gone from you. You will never see him grow up. Never see him laugh or cry. You did this.” She looked at his brother. “Remove the trash for me, please. I’ve been threatened enough for one lifetime.”

  When Gabe nodded, Jazzie stood there. Gabe said two words, “Be gone,” and he knew the moment when Glenda was sent away. Her screams were loud enough to make him hold his hands over his ears, and to make Joey cry. Taking his little family into the house, he took the little boy in his arms and held him while his mom sobbed on the sofa. When Gabe said that he was leaving to go home, Tyler thanked him and told him that he’d see him later.

  Joey took a nap while Tyler rocked him. Before long, Jazzie fell asleep as well. While rocking, something that was becoming his favorite pastime, Tyler thought of the future. His life, as far as he was concerned, could not be any better. And as soon as she was ready to talk, he’d ask her about having another child. Because as far as he was concerned, Joey was his son no matter the blood that ran through his body.

  Chapter 11

  “So, you’re a cougar.” Jazzie nodded at Tyler while she worked on the list of new items for the auction in a few hours. “How does that work, exactly? I mean, how will we have children?” Jazzie glared at Tyler, and he laughed. “I don’t know if you know this or not, but cats and dogs do not mate. I hope you don’t mind, but I talked to my mom last night after you and Joey fell asleep. We might have to change one or both of us into the other one.”

  “I see. And this is important right now why?” He laughed again. “Listen, buddy. There are going to be a dozen or so people in here in an hour or so, looking these things over to bid on them. I have to get them sorted, put a number on them, and figure out a beginning price. Also, if that isn’t enough to keep me busy, then I have to find room for all the silent auction stuff.”

  “I’ve done that. I was handed the list that you gave to the students, and I helped them get it done. Now what?” She listed off the few other things that she needed done. “All right. The printing is done for the auction things. And there are fourteen students stapling it to the first sheet of auction items. Also, the food ladies—a nice group, by the way—are in and working in the kitchen area. I’ve set up four students to help by washing up the dishes as they need them, and another six that are being versed on how to use the cash register. That was an excellent idea, by the way, to have one for the lunch line.”

  “I love you.” He smiled at her and then hugged her to his body. It was just what she needed. “I have to go and tell your mom that I’m sorry. I might have snapped at her earlier. She was being really nice, but she kept asking me if I was all right. I’m not. I was a little overwhelmed. Not so much now because of you, but I have to tell her that I’d not meant to hurt her.”

  “She told me to come here and see what you needed. Mom said that she felt badly for making your already full plate more so.” She nodded and closed her eyes just for a moment. “Honey, when this is over, how about we take Joey to my mom’s house, then I change you. And then when you’re healed, you change me.”

  “That would be wonderful.” Jazzie looked up at the man of her dreams. “I need to talk to Rayne. She said that she had something to tell us too. Both of us. I think she knew that now wasn’t a good time.”

  “Yes, well, if nothing else, she knows better than most what stress is.” She pulled away and he let her. “What else do you need for me to pawn off on someone else? By the way, my brothers are organizing the line of people.”

  “What line of people?” When he didn’t answer her, she looked at him. Tyler looked like he had a great secret, and Jazzie wasn’t sure that she wanted to know what it might be. “Tyler, what line of people?”

  “There are about four hundred people in line. The line extends around the building, so I couldn’t be sure on the numbers. Also, they’re excited. I mean, like they’re ready for this to begin so that they can have fun. I think it’s been too long since we’ve had this much fun in a while as a community.” She was too focused on the line of people. “You’re not breathing, Jazzie. Come on, honey. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “They told me not to expect too many this first year. That people would be too busy, the notice too short.” He nodded, and she backed away from him when he reached for her. “Your mom said that she didn’t expect any more than about four or five dozen to show up, and most of that would be pack. I can’t do this.”

  She found herself on the floor and her head down to her knees. Jazzie was having a difficult time breathing again, and her head was spinning. Staying the way that she was for a little while longer, she heard Tyler talking to someone else and decided that he was joking with her. Then she heard his mom.

  “I didn’t want to tell her, Tyler. What is wrong with you?” He said that he loved her and wanted her to know what a great job she’d done. “Yes, well, she did an excellent job. I don’t think an army of people could have done the job that she’s done. And this crowd we’re going to have here today, it’s all due to her. I’ve never seen so many people this thrilled before.”

  She forced his hand away from her neck and looked at them both. “I’m sorry.” Sara asked her for what. “For snapping at you. I hated that I’d done it the moment it left my mouth. And then when you walked away, I wanted to run right after you, but I had to calm myself down and stop crying that I’d—”

  “I snapped as well at the only person in the world who didn’t deserve it. My husband. He was just standing there, talking about nothing—you know the way he can be—and I told him to shut up. He forgave me the moment I did it, just as I did you. But I did it, and I felt horrible.” Sara helped her to stand up. “Now, we have some money to make, and you are going to do just fine. Besides, your job, other than bidding when you want something, is up. Honey, we could not have been able to help as many people had you not done this. And if you get a little stressed, then that’s fine too. I swear to you, I never thought another thing about it.”

  Nodding, they hugged, and Sara asked her what she needed. “I think that we’re about as done as we can be. We might run out of food and places for people to sit, but we’ll have a nice showing for everything here.” Sara agreed and went to see about getting pizza delivered if they ran out of things at the counter. “Your mom is the greatest, I think. When I asked mine to come back and help me out with Joey for a couple of days, she acted like I was being rude to want her to come back and do this thing. She wasn’t mean nor nasty, but just straight up said that I was rude for asking her to do such a thing. Especially now that she was having such a good time.”

  “I know that your sister is getting a little pissed off at her as well. Your mom and Jannie are there because of your sister, and she won’t even walk down to the market to get lunch or anything. I told Ash that if she wanted, I could say that it was just her
I was paying for, and she said give it a couple more days. I have a feeling that she’s going to be calling me soon and having their expenses cut off.” Jazzie made her way to the little area that they’d marked off as a sort of break room for the staff today. There was coffee, as well as other drinks, and donuts there now, and she sat down with a bottle of water. Tyler joined her. “I need to talk to you about a couple of things. It’s not really earthshattering, but I need to make you aware.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “Is this going to piss me off or something? I’m really not in the mood, if you want the truth.”

  “The police have decided that you didn’t bomb the school or your home. The people that they’re looking at now are a group of parents of your students that went to the police right after this happened and told them that you got what you deserved. The police didn’t think anything of it because, since you signed onto the school, someone was coming in weekly to bash you in some way. The police said that they’d never in a million years thought that they’d go that far.”

  “Me either. I did get a lot of notes from them. The parents. I wasn’t to fail their kid for this or that reason. If I failed the quarterback, none of the kids would be able to get into college, and that would be resting only on my shoulders.” She asked him about the device and who it had been from.

  “Alex Port’s father. He said that you gave his son a failing grade on a report that made his grade point average drop below a four. When asked about the report, he said that yes, he’d written it—the boy was just too busy with life to be sucked into writing a report on an old dead injun. His words, not mine.”

  “Yes, it was a report that he picked to do. It wasn’t on some old dead injun either. It was about a very great man who tried to keep his nation together in times of bad winters and starvation.” She thought about the paper. “It was written word for word from the encyclopedia that we have in the room. I allowed Alex to make a copy of the information, and he was to attach it to the back of the report to show where he’d gotten the information. He didn’t even bother with changing the words around. And he wondered why I failed him.”

  “Yes, well, he’s not the only one that was in on it. There was a family by the name of Jacobson, as well as the Findleys. They had their son look up the instructions on how to do it. I guess all the parents have lost their parental rights as of now, and the Findleys and the Posts are in jail. The Jacobsons are in on it, but they need more evidence to bring them in. I guess they’ve been keeping a very tight hold on them for fear that they’d skip town.”

  They would too. That was the thing that she’d been dealing with all along. When one of her students—or any student, for that matter—was to have an after-school detention or a Saturday school, they’d conveniently be called out of town for some relative that had passed away. She’d been keeping track of her students on how many relatives they’d had pass away in her school year.

  “I had one student that was forever in trouble. I would set up his Saturday school and then call his parents. The day before, he’d have his aunt die, or a grandmother. This kid had so many relatives pass away that it was astounding. And his detentions kept adding up and adding up so that I refused to give him a grade based on that.” Tyler said he’d had one of those, just the one time, and that was enough for him. “Yes, I can imagine that your parents made you walk the line.”

  “It was more that I had disappointed them. My mom especially. She could make you feel like you were on top of the world, and then just one look, the look that said to me, I know that you can do much better, would get me going in the right direction.” He laughed a little. “Mr. Cartwright was less the look and more the stern talking to. He would never raise his voice, much like my mom, but he could really make you see the right way. I miss him a great deal.”

  “I’ve heard that he was a great man. That’s all that Kelley can talk about. How he made you guys into what you are by providing for you to make it to college. He told me that with six of you, feeding you was hard enough, but to send you to college, that would have been...let me see. How did he put it?” Jazzie pretended to think and smiled. “Pert near impossible. I love your father.”

  “I do as well. And he loves you. It was hard for us growing up. We never had a great deal of meat, but we had food. The house might have been a little colder than most, but we had warm blankets and sweaters to slip on. If we wanted something, we worked for it. Our parents taught us that, while we didn’t have a great deal, we had each other. And that was more than most people had.” She said that her dad had left Mom after he’d gotten a promotion at work. Some woman took his fancy. “Are they still married?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve never spoken to the man. I was about six weeks old when we were suddenly on our own. Ash claims that he left us well before that, but I haven’t any idea.” She laid her head on his hand when he put it on the table. “When this is over, I might sleep for a month. Or when you change me. That’d be a good time for me to rest.”

  Jazzie knew that she’d be less sleeping and more unconscious. She’d been told that it was painful too, so much so that she might beg Tyler to stop. But he’d not be able to. Once the process began, it was too late to change your mind.

  “I’ve spoken to Brian about me being a cougar and not reporting to him sooner. He said that he’d talked to us once a few weeks ago, and he’d not noticed that I was one either. But I’m welcome to join his pack too. He has no problems with me bringing you to the meetings either.” She thought about being a cougar. “Tyler, when you change me, will I be any different, you think? I mean, will my cat no longer be a part of me?”

  “Not the way that Addie told me. She said that once you and I are changed, our children will be one or the other. She said that we might have a human child, but she didn’t foresee that happening. Not our children. Now down the line, we might have a grandchild that is human or partly so, but I told her that we wouldn’t care at all about that.”

  “No. We’d love it no matter what.” The doors were opened and Jazzie could hear the people coming in. They were excited. Just to hear them talking, they were going to make their goal and then some today. “Well, I suppose it’s time to get started.”

  ~*~

  Kelley watched the people. He so loved people and what they did when they won a bid. Just the last round of bidding, he’d seen a woman jumping up and down so much that she durn near knocked over the table and everything on it. And the food that was being sold had been gone in the first two hours, so somebody had better be keeping an eye on that stuff. Not that they didn’t have enough, but the ladies had done such a good job of cooking that nobody could turn it down. The pizzas, though—those came in just in time.

  There had been fifty pies that he knew of, and he’d gotten nary a piece of any of them. You’d think a man would be saved at least a couple of slices or so. He watched his Sara as she held up the item that was being bid on next. That car that the boys had gotten, it was drawing a lot of attention too.

  Figuring in his head had always been Kelley’s strong suit. He’d be out in a field, thinking about how much more bushes of this or that he wanted to pick and how much he’d be making when he sold off the extras. Sometimes he’d only be off a dollar or two, but it was fun for him too. So far, he had a figure that they’d made close to seventy thousand dollars just on the items alone.

  There had been well over a hundred things donated and bought. Jazzie had packaged them up so pretty that people wanted them right away. He thought about the dinner for two that had been put in, with a little bistro table and chairs and a little bottle of some cheap champagne. The couple that had bought it had paid nearly three times the amount that the certificate was for. But that was good too. It was all going for the kiddies.

  With the kind of money that was being brought in, he thought they’d be able to build that new wing on the school library, as well as get all the kids a backpack full of school supplies for the next year. This sure was gonna be a
boost to the families around here. And with the meals that would also be provided, he was sure plum proud of his family.

  “You think that box is going to need to be replaced soon?” He looked at Caleb, his face a mask in good humor. “I just passed Jazzie in the kitchen. She was heading to the toilet to throw up again. I guess that last minute idea about having a box put out for canned goods didn’t slow the patrons down a bit. Ben Carter of Carter Grocery said that he’s out of beans and corn, and just about anything else that he had on the shelves. Even boxes of cereal are making a way into the boxes.”

  “Jazzie thought that with us putting out the box, people would think that they’d have to bring one and just go on home. She said she was not being mean, but there ain’t no food left, and she was worried about what they’d think.” Kelley laughed. “Heck fire, son, they’re still putting money in the jars over there as donations, even though they’re not paying for a durn thing.”

  “Well, that’s the seventh box that I’ve put out. We’re storing it in the back room for now, and since one of the pack from Brian’s area is gonna watch over it, we don’t have to worry any about mice getting into things.” Kelley thought that was a good idea. “Yes, well, as much as I’d like to take credit for it, it was Mom’s idea.”

  Caleb was a good boy, all his boys were, but his oldest was having a hard time remembering that when he’d been a kid, all the ideas had come right from his mouth. Sometimes he’d leave a note on the table about something that he thought of in the middle of the night and would put it out there so his momma or him could find it. Durn boy must think all the ideas come from his noddle.