The Sheriff (Men of the White Sandy Book 5)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Oh, God. He hadn’t even made it past eighth grade. She had been operating under the assumption he only needed a year or two at most—that he could finish up at school with her or get his GED.

  “Did any of them ever say the word dyslexia?” she asked gently. She was no expert on learning disabilities but she had enough students who had dyslexia on their IEPs.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. My fifth grade teacher was nice.”

  Summer dropped her head into her hands and tried to think. In her school district, there were special education teachers who were experts in dealing with learning disabilities and dyslexia. There were workarounds—audio recordings of lectures, verbal tests, exercises to help train their brains to make sense of the letters.

  “Did they ever put you in a special class?”

  “No,” he said, as if that idea were an affront to his personal pride.

  This was terrible—and suddenly, everything made sense. This was the final piece to the puzzle, one she hadn’t known was missing.

  Georgey was dyslexic. Because the schools around here were so crappy, no one had even known, except for maybe one teacher back in fifth grade. Instead the poor kid had been completely on his own.

  This was not what she had signed up for. It was, however, something she was at least somewhat qualified to deal with.

  There was only one problem. Even if she got Georgey correctly diagnosed, there was no way in hell the seventeen-year-old boy was going to go back to the eighth grade. And she couldn’t afford to quit her job and homeschool him.

  “Am I…” He sounded scared and she wasn’t sure why until he finished the sentence. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Good Lord, no. I think you’re dyslexic, though. Your brain flips some letters and numbers around and it makes it hard to process what you’re seeing. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid,” she hurried to add. “It just means you have to learn in a different way—and it sounds like you never had a teacher who knew how to help you do that.”

  He snorted again. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a teacher who knew anything about anything.” He sighed. “That fifth grade teacher… She wanted me to go to the Catholic school. She said she had friends there who could help me better than she could. But that cost money and Mom wouldn’t pay it and Grandma couldn’t.” He huffed. “And Dad was dead. I barely remember him.”

  Everyone had failed this kid. She didn’t necessarily want to lump her father in with that, but he had gone and died ten years ago. Georgey’s mom hadn’t even tried. His grandma had done her best, but there was only so much one old woman in poor health with no money could do, apparently. Every other teacher he’d ever had and every other adult in his life had let him down. Even her, because she hadn’t kept an eye on her brother for all those years.

  “We don’t have any money,” came Georgey’s quiet voice out of the darkness again. “And Grandma can’t see anymore and I thought that if I took her in to the clinic, they’d make me try to read something or sign something and I can’t do it. So I thought I’d just take what I needed because I didn’t want them to tell me I was stupid again. I didn’t want to—I didn’t see how I had a choice.”

  Until Tim came along. Tim, who could have easily given up on this kid and shunted him down the system into juvvie or foster care. Instead, he tracked Summer down and put Georgey to work righting his wrongs.

  “Anyone who calls you stupid is an idiot,” she told him. “This is going to take a little work for me to figure out, though.” Wasn’t that the understatement of the year. “In the meantime, I want you to start thinking about what you want to do for the rest of your life. You let me worry about food and a place to sleep and your education for now.”

  “Okay.” He sounded relieved and she wondered if he’d been waiting for her to blow up at the news that he could barely read. Had he spent the last several days waiting for her to abandon him?

  The poor kid. “Get some sleep,” she told him, lying back down on the couch of doom. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, right.” Then, “Are you sure you don’t want the recliner?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She lay there for a long time, listening as Georgey’s breath evened out. Obviously the local school system couldn’t handle him. But this wasn’t the sort of thing she could put off until the next school year. Georgey was already so far behind.

  She had only one other place to check. The local community college.

  ***

  Summer Collins was not a morning person. Tim got up, showered, got the coffee perking and shook Georgey awake—and she slept through the whole thing.

  Tim got some coffee into the kid then carried a cup over to her. As best he could, he crouched down beside her. “Summer.”

  “Mmph,” was the response he got.

  “We’re leaving,” he told her and he couldn’t help but brush a few loose strands of her light brown hair off her face. His fingers curled around her cheek on their own. “I saved you a cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee?” One of her eyelids managed to prop itself open at half-mast. “Oh,” she exhaled. “Hi.”

  He grinned down at her. “Good morning. Is there anything you need before we go?”

  His hand was still cupping her cheek, his thumb stroking over her freckles. Her hand snaked up to the back of his neck and pulled him down. Then she was kissing him and he wanted nothing more than to let her, but Georgey was behind him, apparently choking on his coffee.

  So Tim pulled away—not because he wanted to, but because he knew she would be embarrassed when she woke up enough to realize she’d kissed him in front of the kid. “If you need anything,” he told her, “call the police station.”

  She blinked at him a couple times, her eyelids almost moving in unison—but not quite. He saw the moment she actually woke up. “Oh! Tim! Are you okay?”

  “I’m better,” he reassured her. It wasn’t a lie. He’d gotten close to ten hours of solid sleep. He was still sore as hell and the bruise had turned a dull, angry purple on his ribs. But his mind felt clearer than it had for a couple days and, assuming no one declared war on the rez within the next twenty-four hours, he just might survive. “You going to be okay today?”

  She sat up and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee he held out for her. “Where's the nearest grocery store? And how do I get to that college you were telling me about?”

  “There's a convenience store not too far away if you need something—otherwise the nearest grocery store is in Wall, but it’s kind of small. The kind you’re used to, you’ve got to go to Rapid City. The college is in the other direction, about an hour away.”

  She took a long drink of the coffee. “Okay,” she said. “Is there a place on this reservation with an Internet connection?”

  “There’d be one at the college. I don’t think Dr. Mitchell has gotten the clinic wired yet, but you can always ask.” A lock of her hair had fallen back in her face and he brushed it away. “We’ll see you tonight, okay?”

  She yawned. “Okay.”

  Reluctantly Tim backed away from her. He looked at Georgey and nodded toward the door. The kid scowled, but he followed.

  Tim didn't exactly feel up to making small talk, so they drove in silence. He had the feeling the kid had things he wanted to say, so he was just going to let Georgey say them in his own time.

  Finally, the kid broke. “So are you two dating or what?”

  Tim rolled his eyes at the attitude loaded into every single syllable of that question. “And it’s your business…why?”

  Georgey scoffed. “Because she’s my sister?”

  Tim slid a hard look at the boy. “Seems to me it hasn’t been two weeks since you were in a cell telling me you didn’t have any family.”

  Georgey scowled back. “Well I do. You got a problem with that?”

  Obviously the kid was looking for a fight. The thing was, Tim wasn’t in the mood to be anyone’s punching bag. “No. Do you?”

  “As
shole.”

  “For a kid who owes me some physical labor, you sure got a mouth on you today.”

  “I don’t want to see her hurt. She’s not like other people around here. She’s different.”

  “You’re not telling me something I don’t already know.” It was good he was worried about her, Tim decided. If the kid was worried, that meant he cared. And if he cared, that meant he hadn’t given up yet. “What did you guys talk about last night, after I went to sleep?” Tim had awoken briefly a couple times and heard low voices coming from the living room. But he’d been too tired to wake up enough to understand what they were saying.

  Georgey didn’t answer right away and Tim let the silence stretch. Finally, the kid said, “Have you ever heard of… dis-lex-ee-a?”

  “Sure, dyslexia. It’s when you can’t read the letters and words right, right?”

  “That’s what she says. She thinks maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.”

  Tim turned to look at the boy. He knew Georgey had dropped out of school—but he thought it was the same reason everyone else on this rez always dropped out of school.

  What was the point? They weren’t going to go to college and they weren’t going to get good jobs and they didn’t have any hope for the future. Instead they gave up and joined gangs and got drunk and high and died way too early. So many of them died way too early.

  “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with you,” he said in a neutral voice because it seemed obvious, from the way that the kid was blushing, he was embarrassed by this admission.

  “Well, there is. I can’t read. And she’s this teacher and she said she was gonna take me back to the city and put me in high school and…” Georgey’s voice caught. “And I can’t read and everybody’s going to make fun of me and I’ll be stuck there.”

  What the hell was Tim supposed to do with that? No clue. He’d assumed the kid could at least read. “But she’s going to take care of you,” he said, trying to find the right words to reassure Georgey.

  “For a little while, anyway. That was the other thing she asked me last night. What do I want to be when I grow up? Because I can’t stay with her forever.” He still sounded mad at the world, but this time Tim saw the truth of it. He was mad, all right—but he was also scared shitless.

  Because what could a kid who couldn’t read grow up to be?

  Tim had a feeling that at this point, Summer would’ve done something comforting, like haul the kid into a hug and tell him it was going to be all right. She was like that.

  Tim wasn’t. “What did you tell her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tim exhaled dramatically. “Well, when you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, you let me know.”

  Georgey bristled, and Tim bit down on his inner cheek to keep from smiling. “I am not feeling sorry for myself.”

  “You’re not? That’s what it sounds like to me. So reading is hard. Yeah, dyslexia sucks but I got news for you, kid—life is hard. We all get handed a short stick every now and again. You can either sit around feeling sorry for yourself or you can do something about it. Summer can help solve the problem and she’s going to take care of you so you’re not on your own. But you’ve got to do your part, too. It’s up to you.”

  He waited for Georgey to respond, but before the boy could come up with anything that probably wasn’t a cuss word, Tim’s CB radio crackled to life. “Tell me you’re on your way,” Jack asked.

  Dammit. He hadn’t even made it to work this morning before it all went to hell in a handbasket. He picked up the CB mic and said, “What?”

  “Clarence called—he’s got a kid with a gunshot wound at the clinic. Can you get there or do I need to take this?”

  Tim mentally translated that. He’d bet dimes to dollars Jack was sitting in his police car in the driveway of his trailer, probably without a shirt on, hoping like hell he’d be able to get a couple more hours of sleep. “I got this. I’ll call you at home if I need you.”

  “Yep.”

  Tim pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road and gunned it toward the clinic. He glanced over at Georgey and saw he was pale. He knew what the kid was thinking, too—which one of his friends had been shot?

  ***

  It was Shorty. The moment Tim got the door to the clinic opened, he could hear the kid whimpering. Tim glanced back at Georgey, who was still pale. But he set his jaw into a grim line and wasn’t backing down.

  Tara, the receptionist, looked up at them and sighed in relief. “Oh, thank God. Shorty won’t tell us anything—he won’t stop moaning, either. He’s freaking the other patients out.”

  “I take it he’s not on the verge of death?” Tim said. Tara was not known for her warm and fuzzy attitude.

  She jerked her chin toward the back of the room, where Shorty was indeed moaning behind a curtain. “No, he’s not dying. He just thinks he is. Go on back.”

  “Let me handle this,” Tim said in a quiet voice. He didn’t know if Georgey was going to pass out or throw up—but Nobody Bodine had said Georgey needed to be scared and there was nothing like seeing a friend with a hole in his body to do the scaring. With any luck, this would ensure both Shorty and Georgey stayed on the straight and narrow from here on out.

  “Clarence?”

  The big man’s head popped through the curtain. He saw Tim and grinned. “Try not to laugh,” he whispered.

  Tim shot him a funny look. In his experience, gunshot wounds weren’t laughing matters. “I’ve got Georgey with me today,” he said, acting as if Georgey were here on purpose instead of accidentally along for the ride.

  “That’s fine. The kid is scared. Maybe Georgey will calm him down.” Clarence parted the curtain and Tim and Georgey stepped through.

  Tim immediately had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Because poor Shorty’s bare ass was up in the air. He had been shot in the butt.

  Tim glanced back at Georgey, whose eyes had gotten big. He wasn’t giggling and he hadn’t passed out, so this counted as a win. “Shorty, I thought when I let you go a couple days ago, you were going to stay out of trouble.”

  At the sound of his voice, Shorty jerked—then moaned again. “What are you doing here?” he got out through clenched teeth.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but it’s illegal to shoot a kid on my rez. Even if that kid is a dumbass sometimes.” Tim walked around to the head of the bed where he was able to not look Shorty in the butt. “You’re smarter than this, kid. You’re mixed up with the Killerz and I’m hauling your ass out of gunfights and when I’m not, you’re getting it shot. Who did this?”

  Shorty closed his eyes and turned his head to the side. He didn’t moan, so there was that.

  Georgey stood back by Clarence, looking at Shorty’s wound. “That’s not a very big hole,” Georgey observed.

  Shorty jumped again, which led to more moaning. But then he said, “Georgey? What are you doing here?”

  Tim didn't rush into the silence. At no point was “doing community service” a cool thing to say to your friends, and he was curious to see what Georgey would come up with.

  Georgey glanced that Tim, then looked back down at Shorty’s butt. “I’m doing a ride-along with the sheriff today. I’m thinking about becoming a cop when I get my GED.”

  That was the first Tim had heard about it, but he wasn’t about to contradict the kid. Especially because it was a decent idea.

  “Does it hurt?" Georgey asked, turning his attention back to the gunshot wound.

  “No,” Shorty lied.

  Both Clarence and Tim snorted. Clarence said, “Given the size of the hole, I’m thinking this was rat shot or a pellet gun. Doesn’t appear to have hit any major blood vessels.”

  Tim walked back around and looked at the hole. It was small—maybe a .13? That’d be rat shot for sure. “How deep?” Tim asked.

  “One sec.” Then he said to Shorty, “If it doesn’t hurt yet, it’s about to start.” Clarence jabbed in a needle—pain
killers, probably—and began to dig the bullet out. Shorty made a noise that sounded like a howl that he refused to let out.

  Tim was never one to let a good interrogation moment pass by unused. He went back to look Shorty in the face. It was a better deal anyway. “You didn’t shoot yourself in the butt,” he said, watching tears gather in the corner of Shorty’s eyes. He glanced over at Georgey, who was still pale but staring in fascination at what Clarence was doing. “So that leaves me with one of two conclusions. Either someone shot you to punish you and you’re afraid to roll on them, or this was a prank gone horribly wrong and you don’t want to roll on your friends. Which is it?”

  “Go to hell,” Shorty got out through gritted teeth.

  “Where’d you learn how to do that?” Georgey said, sounding fascinated.

  “The Navy, kid. Tim was in the Army and Jack—well, he’s not allowed to tell us where he was, but I wouldn’t piss him off if I were you.” Clarence held up a pair of long tweezers with a small metal lump in them. “Rat shot,” he said with great finality. “Only about two inches in.”

  “So, fifteen to twenty feet away?” Interesting. Rat shot wasn’t as common these days. He’d be willing to bet there were only a few people on this rez that had a decent supply of it. If it’d been a pellet, it might have been impossible to trace. But rat shot made his job that much easier.

  “That be my guess—but you’re the artillery expert. I just patch them up.” Clarence dropped the slug into a pan and began to disinfect the wound. Shorty stiffened in pain. “If you’re thinking about being a cop, you wouldn’t do bad to join the military,” he told Georgey in a casual voice. “Try not to scream,” he added.

  Shorty screamed anyway and then Clarence was bandaging him up and putting a sheet over his butt. Still Shorty hadn’t said anything about who’d shot him.

  Georgey came around to Shorty’s head. “Your ass looks terrible, man. You’re not going to be able to sit down for a month.”

  “Fuck off,” Shorty bit out.

  Georgey shifted from one foot to the other and Tim realized how young he still looked—how young they both did. Just kids.