Tristan: The Manning Dragons ― Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  “I do, and I think I might have him a job.” Carson said that was great. “There are all those pictures and stuff that were left over in the house that Eric left behind. Reports and books, even a bunch of newspapers. There are even a great many things that I don’t have the slightest idea what they might pertain to. They have dates and numbers on them, but no words. I guess he can’t read, but I’m betting that he could match things up into piles for us to go over.”

  “I bet he could. He’s been doing a lot of that kind of work at Xavier’s house. And I think that he’s learning to read too. That’ll be wonderful. I know that we said that the house had been destroyed, but Slayer would never find out. Not now, anyway. You talk to him about it, and if he gives you any trouble, which I’m sure he will, knowing him, then I’ll talk to him. He needs to know how important it is, too.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  After Carson left, Wynter started on her list of things that she needed to get done for Christmas. It was coming up fast, and she hadn’t a single clue what the Mannings had done in the past. Cards? What sort of rules about family giving? Not that she thought that she’d want to follow those rules, but she would ask. Smiling, she sat down on the couch with her notepad and pen and promptly fell back to sleep.

  Chapter 12

  Tristan thought about the woman that had been killed several times as he taught class. There were the usual questions about the test coming up the week after they were coming back. And the project that was due in April. It, they all had been told, was half their grade. He could not express enough how important that was for them.

  None of the kids had been doing all that well in the class before he took it over. The highest grade in the room was a C-, and there were only two of them out of the twenty-one kids he had. Steve was bringing his grades up now that he had a stable home life, but the rest of them, he’d found out, had been bored with the other teacher.

  Browsing the Internet, he found ways to make the classroom more interesting. There were projects that they could do, as well as a great many ways to get the kids involved in the room. From what he’d been able to learn from checking a few heads in his classroom, his predecessor, Mr. Werner, had only had them read the chapter, then he’d give them a test. No discussion, not any kind of relating the different times to this period in history. Nothing but reading and testing them on what they’d been assigned. Tristan had found, too, that a great many of the tests hadn’t been graded.

  Tristan had tossed them all, then told the kids that they were clean slated as of the day he took over the classroom. That from that moment on, it was like they were new students, and from here they could make or break their grades. So far only a couple had taken him seriously, one of them being his own son.

  He told the kids what he would expect out of them in the coming few months that were left, and that they could choose to do it or not. But the big project was going to be most of their grade. It was for them to take a person in their family, from another generation that wasn’t their parents, and write about something that had been told to them about the person and what they’d thought of the story. They didn’t have to like it, just what their opinion was on the story. After that, they were to gather pictures, as many as they could find of this person, and put a sort of timeline of their life in a book. He’d even provided the books and sticky stuff to put it together, and had put up an example as to what he was looking for with the pictures. They had all perked up after that. But so far, he didn’t think that anyone was working very hard on the project. Time would tell, he supposed.

  When the bell rang for the class to have lunch, he made his way to the principal’s office to see what she had wanted. The note had been left on his desk—Tristan had found it when he arrived. It simply said that he was to meet Mrs. Shapes in her office at lunch time. There wasn’t any reason given, so he didn’t ask. If they wanted to fire him, go for it. He was having fun, but not enough to take any shit from them.

  Mrs. Shapes was not very old—he thought her to be in her mid-forties or less. She dressed as if she were one of the high schoolers, which he didn’t care for. Tristan also thought that she was drinking on the job. He didn’t care so long as it didn’t affect her work, but he did have one of the faeries keeping an eye on her. Just in case, he told himself.

  “You wanted to see me, Mrs. Shapes?”

  After she waved him to a seat, three more teachers entered the room. Tristan stood up when one of the women entered. The other man came in and sat in the chair, as if he was oblivious to the fact that he was being rude.

  “What is going on, Wendy? I have only an hour for lunch, and you’re taking up some of it. Get to the point.” Tristan didn’t say a word to the other male teacher, but the two women, neither of which he could remember their names, looked as shocked as he felt toward the man, who he didn’t know either.

  “Just hold your horses, Peter. I’ll let you know when I know something.”

  Tristan remembered his name now. Peter Chalk. Chalk, like what was used on the blackboards long ago. Now they had what were called smart boards. Tristan had seen the board on the wall when he’d been interviewed for the job last month, so as soon as he got home that night, he read up on them extensively. He could not only make them work the way they were meant to, but also repair them and program them when that was necessary. He’d been enjoying them.

  When the assistant principle, Marc Shaffer, entered the room with two officers, Tristan shook hands with the cops, knowing them better than he did his fellow teachers. Peter asked again what was going on.

  “I’m leaving the school district as of today.” No one said a word to Mrs. Shapes. Tristan did wonder why they were only telling the four of them. Marc seemed to know, as well as the police. But nothing in his imagination could tell him why they were there. “The officers are here to make sure that I don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to me. Mr. Shaffer here is going to stay on until a replacement is found for me. Then he too will be leaving. There will be an officer here with him every day until we are both out of here. I will not answer any questions as to why I’m being escorted out—that’s another reason that they’re here, so don’t even ask.”

  “What did you do?” Tristan didn’t even bother looking at Peter. He was a moron as far as Tristan was concerned. “Damn, this must be good if you both have to leave. Oh. Are we here to be one of the replacements? Hot damn, my timing is great. I want the job. I’ve been here the longest.”

  “There will be a committee put together to do the interviews for the job. You four, as you might well have guessed, are up for the position.” One of the female teachers said that she did not want it. “I’m sorry to hear that, Margaret. If you’re sure, then you can go have your lunch. But I’d be happy if you didn’t say anything to anyone until things are announced.”

  When she got up from the chair, Tristan offered it to the other woman. Peter, of course, said that he was sucking up. Then it looked like something just occurred to him, and he eyed Mrs. Shapes hard.

  “What’s he in here for then? I mean, he’s barely been here a month. Not even a whole school year. I have fourteen years in, and he has nothing. He shouldn’t even be in the running.”

  Mrs. Shapes told Peter it wasn’t her decision. “However, I’d like to say that if I were to be the one to pick my replacement, it would be Mr. Manning. He’s done a great deal for the classes that he has in a short amount of time.” Tristan thanked her. “There is no need to thank me. Just continue doing a good job, and we might be able to have a few winners come out of this school.”

  Tristan couldn’t help himself. He had to know. If there was going to be a shitstorm coming up, he wanted to be well away from it when it did. However, what he found out was better than he could have thought of. The joke, because that was what it had been about her stealing anything, was a ruse. Mrs. Shapes was going to go to bigger and better things.

  The governor of Ohio had put her name in for the educational directo
r for the United States government. Mrs. Shapes was going to be running the United States Department of Education. It would be quite an honor to be following in the footsteps of someone who had been so good at their job. Mr. Shaffer here was going to go with her as her press secretary. It was wonderful news. But he had to keep it to himself.

  By the time lunch period was over, he was heading back to his class. Taken aside, he was asked if he would like to take the position. He said that he would. In order to be considered, he needed to come up with a plan for the school. Not just where the school was going, but any kinds of improvements that were needed, as well as where the money might come from. Tristan was excited to have that exercise given to him as well.

  Getting the class settled, it was already all over the school grounds that there was a huge scandal that was taking place. Tristan told his class what was going on, that he’d been asked to be considered for the position, and that as far as he knew, Mrs. Shapes had been doing a wonderful job since he’d been there. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, but they did start working again.

  As the last bell of the day was ringing, he was telling his kids to have a nice holiday. It was their last day until after Thanksgiving. Peter came into his room just as the last student was leaving. When he shut the door behind him, Tristan asked him what it was he could do for him.

  “I want you to drop out of the race.” He said that he wasn’t going to do that. “So you’re going to take a job that you don’t need and put the rest of us out to pasture.”

  “I haven’t any idea what you’re taking about. Who would I put out to pasture? And why would I do that?” Tristan glanced up at the camera that was in all the rooms now that Cooper had paid for them to be used. He was glad that they were equipped with sound, and that the police were monitoring and listening in on everything going on. “I have just as much right and as many credentials to do that job as you do.”

  “If you say so. What about old Shapes? Do you think that she was having sex with one of the kids and that got her tossed out?” Tristan didn’t even bother with an answer to that. “I heard that she was skimming the books. But you’d not have to be caught at that, would you? Mr. Money bags.”

  “Are you trying to make a point?” Peter said he thought that he had. “I don’t get it if you are. I’m going home to my wife and family. You should do the same before you say too much.”

  “I’ve already said too much.” Peter laughed, and Tristan asked him what he meant. “Well, I made a few comments here and there to get the ball rolling. I’m betting that before we all get back from break, it’ll be all over town that Wendy was getting it on with one of her students, and that she was taking money from the classrooms. That should get me into the position pretty quickly.”

  “Why would you do something like that?” Peter shrugged and said that it was to find out the truth. “By lying? That’s not the way to do anything like that. You’re going to hurt a lot of people by what you’re saying. Who did you tell that to?”

  “A couple of students that I know can’t keep their mouth closed.” He laughed again as he went to the door. “I don’t know what’s going on, Trist, old man, but I’m betting that I’ve made a good deal of fun for myself.”

  Tristan called out to his family to tell them what the little prick had done. Carson said that she’d take care of him. Tristan didn’t even care if she burnt him to a crisp. The man was an idiot. Tristan hoped that Peter would be fired before school started again, and he’d have someone in Peter’s class that would actually do their job instead of whatever it was that Peter supposedly did in his.

  By the time he got home, Tristan was laughing. Not only had Peter lost his job at the school, but he had been arrested for telling lies about his boss. It was over way before Tristan thought it would have been, and he was nearly skipping as he walked into his home. The smells of baking had his mouth watering.

  ~*~

  Foster stacked up all the newspapers in neat piles. If he was honest with himself, he thought this was just busy work. But he was doing something other than sitting around waiting for the school bus to drop the kids off again. He sure did enjoy being a granddaddy to all these kids now.

  The next newspaper that he picked up had a picture on the front page. He stared at it for a while, trying his best to figure out what it was showing a person. There was a tractor with a man sitting on top of it, as well as a big field of something behind him. He was learning to read a bit, but the words sometimes would confuse him more than they helped. Like in the newspapers that were there.

  John, his best buddy, came into the room with another stack of books in his little arms. He’d been bringing them in here too, to see if there was anything important in them. So far the kid had found eighty dollars stuffed in the books. He told him that he’d share it with him.

  “What does this here say?” John took the newspaper. “What’s so high fired important to have a picture of that man sitting there like that? Is he the president or something like that?”

  “No, he’s one hundred and six years old and still working his fields. I should take a picture of you and send it to the paper. ‘Here sits a man catching up on his news, and he’s— How old are you, anyway?” Foster told him that he didn’t rightly know. “Well, I’m thinking that you’re really old. What’s the last thing you remember before you kicked the bucket?”

  He loved this kid. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And John could hug like he had special powers to make you feel that much better. Foster tried to think what was the last thing that he remembered going on before he’d died.

  “Well, let me see here now. I remember something about a big war. Not the kind that they have now, but something on horses. Injuns were about—Custer too. I remember him dying about the time I became poorly. That’s it. Little Bighorn. I remember thinking what a name for a place. Little and big at the same time.” John sat down next to him, his mouth and eyes wide open. “Did I get something messed up? I’m prone to do that at times. Like I get my living and dead times mixed up.”

  “You’re almost one hundred and fifty years old.” John said it in such a low voice; Foster looked around to see if they were being watched. “I was just learning about that in my history class. About Custer being killed with about two hundred of his men at Little Bighorn. He didn’t understand strategy, I don’t think.”

  “I don’t know. By the time we got the news, the thing was done over with. I didn’t read, but there were a couple of teachers that would stand outside the newspaper office and read off what was going on. They even told the names of the dead if they had them too.” John asked why he’d not fought. “Couldn’t. I was bringing up my family by then, and I was needed more in supplying the cattle that the wars needed. Was a terrible time, I tell you. No matter where you lived in these big states, you knew somebody that had been killed in going to war.”

  He and John talked about things leading up to the war too. Little things about how the stores around didn’t have anything like they did now. If your family wanted meat, he told the young boy, a person went out and hunted for it.

  “You had a garden for the things that you could eat in the summer and winter. My missus, she put up all kinds of things in jars and hoped that it would seal well. We were some of the lucky ones. We didn’t die from something that went bad.” John asked him about pickles. “You mean them old nasty sour things? Sure, they had them in the stores. You could sometimes get them two for a penny. ‘Course, back then, a penny was hard to come by. But people would pull them outta a jar or barrel and eat them. Nasty things to me, but people loved them.”

  It was enjoyable to talk to someone that was excited to hear what he had to say. Foster had always been a talker—all his life he’d gotten in trouble for letting his mouth do the walking. He never rightly knew what that meant, but he’d heard it time and time again.

  By the time lunch was called for the two of them, he was amazed at how much work they’d been able to get done. The
time had just about flown by.

  Wynter asked them how things were going. “Grandpa Foster and I are learning things. He’s been telling me about how it was before he died, and I’m teaching him how to sound out words to read them. It’s been a lot of fun for us, I think.” Foster agreed with the young man. “And you know what, Aunt Wynter? We’re getting a lot more done too, because we aren’t thinking about how we could be watching television and stuff.”

  Wynter laughed. It was sort of funny how honest kids could be. He might have lived a bit longer had he not been such a sad man and let himself go after his wife passed away. Of course, he’d been told that his wife forgave him for him doing things to keep his family fed and such. But it hurt him, all the time, that he felt like he’d disappointed her even just a tiny bit.

  The rest of the day went by just as quickly. At four, Wynter came to get them, telling them that it was time to quit for the day. For the first time in a long while, Foster was excited about waking up the next morning. They were going to have treats all over the place for Thanksgiving.

  He felt like he had a lot to be thankful for this year. He’d helped out the dragons by finding their book. Also, it was nice having someone around the house now that would talk to him and let him bend their ear a bit. Then there was the learning he was getting. Playing chess with a good man. But the most important thing was, he was a granddaddy to a whole lot of kids, something that he never dreamed of being. They loved him too—that was the most important thing. He loved them right back.