Chapter 10
Zander looked around the room at the fourteen teachers. Each of them had given a list as to what they wanted for their rooms, and the list had been outrageously expensive. One had wanted a high-tech microwave, and another insisted that they pick up the brand of water that they specified on the list. One hundred and twenty cases of the more expensive water, too. In the sixteen ounce bottle size, that would be two pallets of water with a whopping seventy-two cases per. Where were they going to store that sort of purchase? In their rooms? He was going to find out today.
Who had told the other teachers to pad their list? He had a feeling that he knew who had done it and why they’d called Alex last night and given a list that was more in line with what they’d been expecting. He wanted the others to get into trouble. Or he’d thought about what he’d done and decided that he’d be the odd teacher out when it came to how much money they were asking for. He’d bet his last check against the fact that he’d told them all that the Erikson Foundation men were too stupid to look over the list as anything but a nice list of things to put into their rooms. Well, he was going to enjoy this more than he probably should.
Now that he had a good list of who they were, David helping him out with the way they were seated, he was ready as he’d ever be with taking the teachers down a few notches. He thought that David, too, was going to have fun. Firing them all is what he’d do, but then he was hard like that. They tried their best to screw over a foundation that was helping them more with class funds than any other school in the country. David stood up, and the room quieted.
“Today we’re here to talk about the latest lists that you handed over to Mandy Erikson when she was here this week. Zander wants to go over some of the things on the list with you.” There was a slight discomfort in the room. They shifted in their seats and suddenly had to look at their shirts or blouses. None of them made eye contact with any of them. “He just wants to make sure that you understand what it is that you’ve requested is going to take up room in your classes. Mrs. Raider, I believe you’re first.”
“Why do I have to be first?” He pointed out that she was the first one in the seats. “Oh. Well, I don’t want to go first. Go on to someone else and let me gather my thoughts on the things.”
“You ordered to have one hundred and fifty cases of water for your room, is that right?” Zander asked her to stand up. “I just wanted to make sure that you understand that’s going to be two or more pallets of water stacked pretty high. Where do you plan to keep the extras until they’re needed? I mean, you only have twenty-four students, and if you count you and your aid, that’s less than a case a day if you only get one bottle. You’re going to be a while before you get to the other hundred-plus cases.”
“I’ll have a storage unit. I was planning on putting things in there that are too many for the classroom.” He asked her where it was, so that they could make sure that things were put there. “Oh, it’s near to my home. That way, I can pick up a couple of cases when I need them. That’s what I’m going to do. I never thought of them being so many and large.”
“I didn’t realize that you’d be paying for a unit. That must be expensive at what? Thirty-something a month? My brother had one, he said it nearly drained him in keeping up with the payments each month.” She said she thought that the foundation would pick up the tab. “No, I’m afraid not. And once it’s put into your storage locker, we won’t have anything to do with it. You’ll be on your own.”
“What do you mean, I’ll be on my own?” He told her. “I never thought of it freezing or getting too hot in the summer. I thought that…well, I don’t know what I thought.”
“Along with the other things that you got, the fifty cases of tissues. Do the kids in your room have a lot of colds? Or perhaps allergies? This would be another pallet of tissues for your room. In total, you would have to rent out three storage units to hold all the extra things that you have on your list. At that price, you’d be paying over a hundred dollars a month for just storage.” She looked confused, and he smiled. He knew that it was his prey-to-predator kind of smile, and he used it all the time in the courtroom. “Here we are trying to save you money and—”
“Mr. Carter told us that you were too stupid to notice how much we were getting and that you’d blindly give it to us. We were told that you’d never check and we could—”
“Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say anything about padding the list. I simply went along with the rest of you until last evening.” He looked at him. “You got my revised list, didn’t you? None of my things are going to have to be put into storage. I gave them a good list. Isn’t that right, Mr. Erikson?”
“You did. However, I think that things happened just the way that they said. While I have no proof of your wrongdoing, I do believe what they say is true. You were behind all this.” He said he’d better take that back. “I will when it’s proven to me that you had nothing to do with this. And just so you all know, using donated things from a charity for your own personal gain is against the law. Padding these lists sounds like something that you’re doing, like the refrigerator and the microwave. Paint for your room. Pallets of things like bottled water. It all sounds to me like you were doing this for your own personal use.”
It was a free-for-all, all in them blaming Carter and trying to say that they’d take a great deal less than they’d been told to pad their lists with. Even Carter was saying that he’d redo his list again just to prove that he’d had nothing to do with the way the other teachers had done their lists. Finally having enough, David let go of a whistle that rivaled Shipley’s when she was trying to get someone’s attention.
“Sit down and shut up.” They did it immediately, not even in the chairs they’d been in before. “I tell you what is going to happen right now. There will be no more help from the Eriksons for the next ten years or until you quit or I fire you. And yes, you have no idea how close I am to firing each and every one of you for this mess.”
“You can’t fire us for padding something that we were given to list for them.” He told Ms. Applet to watch him. “This is ridiculous. Who will you have teach these brats? The Eriksons? Sure, go right ahead, and I’ll tell the board what you’ve been up to. And even if I have to make it up, you’ll be on the next bus out of town by the time I’m finished with you.”
The board had been there all the time. In the hallway, listening to what transpired in the meeting. After they were introduced to the group, they sat down in the room right behind each teacher. Now things were going to get interesting. Ms. Applet stood up and turned to the board.
“I was upset. I didn’t mean that about David. I’ve been accused of taking things for my own personal use from a charity when all I wanted to do was get some nice things for the classroom for the kids.” One of the board members, he didn’t know their names, just then said that she’d called them brats before. Even from where he was sitting, he could tell that her face had turned a dark red in embarrassment. “I feel as if we’ve all been ambushed in this. How were we to know that they didn’t want us to order things for the kids for the rest of the year?”
“Ms. Applet, your list was the most padded. You had on there that you wanted three hundred cases of water, seventy-five cases of tissues, as well as a plethora of other things that we don’t supply to the school at all, like plastic silverware, napkins, paper towels, and paper plates. I also know that at the end of the summer, you and your family have a hog roast that supplies all those things to everyone who comes. You were taking things from us that would have supplied all the extras that you’d need for that, I believe.” She lifted her chin up but said nothing. “Also, there are things on here like tubs—you gave the sizes that you wanted as well.”
“I thought of the kids.” He pulled up her list, naming off all the things on it as well as how many she wanted. “Oh hell. So what? It’s not like you guys don’t have all the money. You can well afford all the things on our lists twice over. I don’t know what you’re bitching about. It’s not like I asked you for the hogs to go along with the other stuff. I’ll admit it, yes, it’s for my own personal use. What are you going to do to me? Fire me? I was looking for another job when I found this one. Go ahead. Do your worst on me. But try to find a teacher this late in the year.”
Mrs. Rider from the board handed her a thick envelope, and she was escorted out by a security team that he’d had no idea had been brought in. After that, all the teachers were escorted out one by one for their month off without pay. It would hurt a great many of them, being off work without any income, but that had nothing to do with him. He’d only been brought in to prove a point, and he doubted any of them got it.
As they were sitting there, talking amongst themselves, he had an idea that David hadn’t known of the layoffs nor that anyone was going to be fired. He looked as poleaxed as he felt, knowing that the town was going to find out about their part in the firing and laying off of all the teachers at the elementary school. There would be a lot of uproar about it. Some backlash as well. But he’d done what needed to be done to keep the charity afloat without being drained by a bunch of people who had decided to take advantage of them.
For the rest of the evening, he decided to go to the football game that was playing at home this week. He’d only been there ten minutes when he was approached by two different people about the rumor that the teachers had been given a month off without pay and that the charity foundation was no longer going to supply things for the teachers.
“I have to tell you, Zander, I depend on you guys to help my family out. I have five kids in the school right now, and without you guys supplying them with backpacks full of the things they need, I don’t know what we’d do. You can bet that they’d not have anything that’s for sure.” He assured the man that the backpacks would still be supplied. But nothing to the teachers who had gotten greedy. “I heard about them lists. Can’t say that I blame the board for getting rid of them. Shameful is what that was. Just shameful. People like them, well, you can bet that I’m not going to be feeling sorry for them. Durn shame that they had to bite the hand that fed them.”
“Thank you for that. I wasn’t sure how the town would react knowing what my part in this was going to be.” He told him that there would be complainers all over the place, but he wasn’t to pay them any mind. “I won’t. Thank you so much.”
He ended up not staying for the game. Zander had to defend himself a couple of times, but mostly everyone was worried about how it was going to affect the backpack donations that they did every year. He’d not realized how many people really depended on that donation to the school. Spending the rest of his evening at home, he was glad for the extra time that he could go over his notes for the upcoming trial for Carrie’s family. They’d hit her one too many times as far as he was concerned.
~*~
Demi was watching the kids while Mandy was working on her classes. She’d been doing them so long now that she was getting really good at them. And he knew that people appreciated her ability at making it easier on them when they learned a new skill. He knew that ordering groceries online had saved them a lot of time and energy.
“What time is Mandy supposed to be home? I have a question for her.” Demi asked if he could answer it. “No, it has to be her. But I have one for you, too. The kids at school make fun of me on account of me not having any parents. Can I call you, Dad? It sure would keep me from being beat up every day.”
“Are you really being beat up every day, Teddy?” He said he wasn’t, but they did make fun of him without a dad or mom. “I don’t care if you call me dad or not, but I want you to want that instead of being pressured into it.”
“Nobody is making me say that. I just want to have a dad that is real. Not like my other dad when he’d beat us—and he really did beat us all the time.” Demi told him he was sorry about that. “Why do grown-ups say that all the time? They’re sorry that my real dad beat me up all the time. If they was sorry, they should do something about it when it’s happening. Telling me you’re sorry is too late to help me.”
Teddy was angry, and he didn’t understand why. Before he could get to the bottom of it, Teddy burst into tears and flung himself into his arms. He kept saying that he was sorry that he didn’t have someone to love him when he was littler. That he was always looking for someone to smack him around, and how exhausting it was. There were other things, too. He missed his momma and that he didn’t think she did a good job in keeping them safe, not like he and Mandy did. The poor kid was so upset when he looked up at him that it did something painful to his heart.
“You mad at me?” Demi asked him why he thought he should be mad at him. “I’m a sobby babe that cries a lot. My dad would have hit me into next week if I’d done that around him.”
“Do you want me to hit you into next week?” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m glad. I don’t know how hard that would have to be, but I’m pretty sure that I’d feel worse than you about it. I don’t ever want to hit you for any reason.”
“Even when I’m bad?” Demi told him they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. “All right. I will try my best not to tempt you into hitting me then.”
“Good idea.” He held the little boy until his small tremors stopped. “Let’s talk about what you said, all right? Your father was a mean bastard who didn’t deserve you or Martin. You understand that, don’t you?” He said that he did. “Then why do you think your mother didn’t do a good job in keeping you safe from him?”
“She’d hide behind us when he was in the mood.” That was something that he didn’t know about Betsey. It made his opinion of her lower even more. “She used to tell on us, too. Like if we did something bad—sometimes I think she was making things up to get us in trouble with him. Like once she told him that I’d spilled some milk and didn’t clean it up. I never had no milk to spill. And I’d of cleaned it up right now instead of waiting until dad came home to beat me. But she did that all the time.”
“You do know that if you spill milk around here and I know you’ve had some, you’d better clean it up right away, too.” He said he’d do that too on account of him not being in trouble here with that. “No, I’d not beat you for spilling milk unless you did it on purpose. Which I don’t see you doing.”
“No, I’m not no dummy.” He’d correct his English later when the conversation wasn’t so serious. “She’d hit on us too sometimes for nothing or no reason. Once I got home from school, Martin and me were telling her something that happened in the lunch room. She smacked us both so hard for talking that my head hit the table and hurt for a week. There was no reason for that.”
Demi started to answer the boy when he looked up and saw Mandy standing in the doorway. She made a gesture for him not to tell Teddy she was there, and he nodded once. Teddy’s back was to the door, so he’d not see her at all unless he got up from the floor.
“There was this one time I brought her home a pretty flower that I picked in the yard. It wasn’t belonging to anyone, I wouldn’t take someone’s pretty flowers, but I gave it to her, and she just threw it in the trash can, telling me that she didn’t care for dead things in her house. That it was bad enough that she had little boys around that messed things up for her. I don’t think she liked us all that much. Not like you and Mandy do. I could pick her weeds and she’d bawl like a baby, putting them in the prettiest vase she has. She’d even tell everyone that I’d picked it for her like it was a fancy rose or something.” He cocked his head before speaking again. “When she does stuff like that, it makes my heart feel good. Like she’s touched it with her fingers and put a smiley face on it. Don’t tell her that. She’ll think I’m loopy or something.”
“I promise I won’t tell her.” There were other incidents like those. He’d gotten into the habit of tossing away his papers if they had a good grade on them. She’d then ask him if he was trying to show her how stupid she was. Another incident involved flowers, and they stopped bringing home flowers from a Mother’s Day project from school. Mostly, he thought that Teddy was confused by his mother’s treatment of them. He didn’t understand his father either, but he wasn’t loopy around them one minute, then mean the next.
Teddy talked himself out and fell asleep on his chest. It was all he could do not to go and find Betsey’s grave and give her hell for what she’d done. He wondered now if that was the reason they’d never asked to go to her grave. They never wanted to go and visit her and take flowers. Now he thought he knew why.
Mandy had been crying when she came into the room. Sitting in a chair across from him and Teddy, she asked him how much she’d missed. He told her about the flowers and the other things that Teddy had told him about. She said she’d heard it all then. And it broke her heart.
“I remember Betsey being so mean to me when I was a child. She’d tell mom lies, too, so that I’d get into trouble. Then she’d come into my room, read me a story and hug me and kiss me like she’d not just gotten my butt whipped for her lies.” She leaned back in the chair. “I think I was making her out to be the victim when all along I knew she was almost as bad as Sameul was, if not worse. He was at least consistently mean to them. She sounded like she was just as he said, loopy.”
“I wonder if Martin has some stories about her, too. He was home with her when Teddy was in preschool. I don’t imagine that he had any better time with her than poor Teddy did.” Mandy shook her head and cried a bit more. “I’m so sorry, honey, that you had to find out this way.”
“No, this was fine. I’m just glad that he was able to go to you with it. You said he wanted to call us mom and dad. I’m all right with that. It certainly will be easier on them if they do that. I mean, having to explain how I’m their aunt and that my sister was their mother, but she was killed by their father, who’s in prison, but you’re just married to me. It’s complicated.”
“When you put it like that, yes, it is.” Martin joined them in the living room and asked if Teddy was all right. He was only supposed to be gone for a minute and didn’t return. “He had some things to get off his chest. Do you know what that means?”
“Yeah, he’s been pondering stuff for a while now. It keeps him up at night wondering about silly stuff.” Martin climbed up into Mandy’s lap. “I’m going to take me a nap too. I’m pooped out.”
Martin must have been because in less time than he would have thought, the little boy was snoring softly and holding onto his aunt. It lured him to sleep, too, the way the warm body was against his. The soft sounds of breathing. Before he knew it, Demi was dozing off, and no matter how hard he tried to stay awake, the faster sleep seemed to pull at him.
When he woke, he was alone on the couch but had a light blanket over him. He didn’t move for a while, just realizing how much he must have needed the nap when Teddy came in to check on him, he said.
“I’m fine. I must have been exhausted myself.” He decided not to mention their talk unless Teddy did. “Would you like to get some supper out tonight? It’s the cook’s night off, and we could go into town to get something?”
“Not pizza.” He laughed, telling him he was all right with that, too. “I like it better when we make it at home. It’s hotter, and we have fun making them. But we eat it a lot.”
“We do at that.” Sitting up, he realized how late it was. “Tell Mandy and Martin what we’re doing, and I’ll warm up the car. It got chilly today after the sun went down.”
After Teddy left him, Demi stood up and stretched. He was going to have to hit the gym a bit more as he felt out of shape, and he’d not felt that way since he’d been a kid. Going to get some clean clothes on, he was halfway up the stairs when Mandy came out of the bedroom. Pulling her into his arms when she joined him on the stairs, he told her how much he loved her and loved everything about her.
“Everything? I mean, even my little boobs?” He told her they were perfect as far as he was concerned. “You’re just trying to get laid.”
“Of course I am. I’m a man, aren’t I? That’s all we think about is getting laid, and even when we do, we’re thinking about the next time and the next. We’re creatures of habit, and all we want and think about is sex. Sex. Sex.”
She was saved from answering him by the kids coming down the hallway. They were running down the stairs when he kissed her again, much to the amusement of the kids. As they were loading up in the car, he was teasing them about someday wanting to kiss girls, and Martin said that he’d not ever be ready, but Teddy told him that girls were all right so long as they weren’t mad at you.
“They sure can be powerful mad at you when they think you’ve done something wrong. You don’t even have to do it, they just get all skank eye at you and you can’t tell them anything.” He asked if that had happened to him. “Nah, but I’ve seen it happen. She hollered at him, but good too. I don’t think it’s right to hit on somebody that you’re mad at. I’d never hit anyone unless it’s the only way I can save myself. I’ve been hollered at enough for three kids my age.”
The rest of the trip was the boys telling them stories about school and how the teachers were all gone off for a month, and they had subs. Martin liked his substitute teacher, but Teddy said that all his did was play on her phone and ignore them.
“She said that she really didn’t want to be a teacher but liked having summers off. She’d not planned on getting a job until she was twenty-five. Her parents are paying for everything while she’s off.” Teddy sure knew enough about his teacher for it only being one day with her. “Oh, and get this. She said that if anyone of us got sick and puked on the floor, we was going to have to clean it up. I told Mr. David, our principal, about it, and he told me that he’d take care of it. I had to clean up puke once, it’s not anything that I’d want to do ever again.”
They never brought up their parents, but Teddy did call him dad once. It was a feeling that he thought he could live with forever. Martin called Mandy mom twice more since they’d left the house, and since they’d not made a big deal out of it, he wouldn’t either. However, it was a great deal to him, and he loved it.
Pulling into their favorite pasta restaurant, he decided that he’d enjoy this too. He could make anything on their menu without a thought, but he wasn’t cooking tonight, and he was fine with picking up the bill for this. Everyone was happy, and that’s all he really cared about.
By the time they were finished eating, the boys getting much better at ordering their own food, he was ready for another nap. Carbs did that to him, and he’d had plenty of them tonight. After getting dessert of fried ice cream, he was sure they were going to need to pull over so that he could sleep off the meal. Just as he was going to suggest a hotel for the night, he was that exhausted. Mandy asked if she could drive. He nearly put them in a ditch trying to get off the road so that she could take over.
“I’ve not been sleeping all that much at night.” He wiggled his brows at her, and she laughed. Teddy wanted to know why he wasn’t sleeping all that well, and he had to tell him that it was Mandy’s fault. She was forever kissing on him and making things hard for him. That got him a good smack on the chest, but it was all in fun. He felt better not driving and could stay awake, not having to concentrate on the road as much as he had before.
“I was thinking about a nice vacation. Where should we all go?” He turned and put the question to the kids. They’d never been anywhere on any sort of holiday, and he wanted to be there when they saw things for the first time. Like the ocean or a roller coaster. Their first hotel stay. He was more excited about that than he thought any vacation spot could give him.
“We’ve never been anywhere, but I’d like to go and see things around our state. There is lots of history our teacher told us.” Then getting a camper to do all those things hit him, and he mentioned it to the kids. “That would be epic. Do you think we could get one of those driving kinds? You know where we can sit on our seats while going down the road. I’d love that.”
For the rest of the ride home, that is all they could talk about. A camping trip around their own state. He’d been living in Tennessee for over thirteen years now, and he’d not been to see any of the sites. Demi decided he was going to price motorhomes and have a blast with his little family. Yes, he thought to himself. This was the way life was supposed to be. Family around you when you needed them most.