Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (60 page)

CHAPTER 13

Sam slammed the door to the truck, rushed into the school, and was immediately directed into the principal's office and told that the principal would be there shortly. On entering the room, he was even more annoyed to see Ricky with an ice pack on his eye, and holding a cloth to his bloodied nose. "You'd better have a damn good explanation for this!" he said, in a voice that made Ricky flinch.

"I didn't hit them below the belt like you said not to do," Ricky said, looking up at Sam while holding the icepack against his eye so it wouldn't fall off.

"I never told you to hit anyone at all," Sam snapped. "You'll be suspended now. What in hell is going on with you? I've about reached my limit, and don't give me any crap about some guy starting it first. You know school rules about fighting." He wasn't even interested in hearing Ricky's side. The kid was going to hell in a hand basket.

"But the other guys did start it," Ricky said, dabbing at his nose, "and I'm glad I knocked Ira's tooth out."

"You what?!"

"I knocked Ira Magoon's tooth out. Well, I didn't knock it clear out, but it was real loose, so maybe it'll fall out, but he was punching me hard where you told me not to hit guys, and it made me mad so I gave him an uppercut and punched him in the mouth and smashed his tooth, and I hope it falls out."

"Shi—" Sam cut it off, along with the other words that would have followed, when the principal walked into the room.

"Mr. Hansen," the principal said, "I'm afraid we'll have to suspend Ricky for three days for fighting, since we can't allow it at school."

"Yeah, I understand," Sam said, glaring at Ricky, "and I guarantee, after three days on the ranch he'll be ready to go back to school and won't be fighting again. Come on," he said to Rick, "you might as well get started mucking out stalls."

Sam went to grab Ricky's arm, when the principal said, "There's a little more to it, Mr. Hansen. You might want to sit down."

Sam clenched his jaws. More to it? How much more trouble could one nine-year-old kid cause? He lowered himself to a chair facing the principal's desk and waited.

The principal braced his arms on his desk, leaned forward, and said, "A couple of boys who tend to be troublemakers were harassing the new girl, Becca Hamilton—her mother works for you at the ranch—and Ricky confronted them. I don't know who threw the first punch, but they all ended up with bloodied noses and black eyes. The other boys have also been suspended."

"Wait a minute," Sam said, when the realization of what happened finally dawned. "You said Ricky was standing up for Becca Hamilton?"

"Yes," the principal replied. "Becca told me her side of the story and it seems that the boys had been saying derogatory things about her mother. Ricky took exception to it and told the boys to shut up or he'd punch their lights out, and the bigger of the boys told him to go right ahead. According to Becca, the boy raised his fists to strike, and that's when Ricky hit him. The smaller boy joined in against Ricky, and Ricky seems to have taken them both on. When the recess monitor got there, they all had bloody noses."

Sam looked at Ricky, who was staring at the floor, and said, "I'm sorry Rick. I thought you'd been fighting for other reasons. You did the right thing."

The principal sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "Actually, Ricky didn't," he said. "Fighting is strictly forbidden on school grounds."

"That might be," Sam said, "but my son still did the right thing. Go ahead and suspend him, since it's school policy, but just for the record, I'm real proud of him."

The principal looked at Ricky, and said to him, "Well, sometimes things are best settled off school grounds, and it's always better to do it without fighting, but you may also have something to tell your father about how it all started."

Ricky hung his head, while staring at the floor, and said nothing.

"Mr. Nelson asked you to do something, Rick," Sam said, feeling a blend of anger and pride for his son. Anger because Ricky started the whole mess. Pride because he took action to stop it, even if the action broke school rules. "So, tell me. How did it start?"

Ricky shrugged. "I mighta said something about Becca's mother to Ira and Kyle."

Sam eyed Ricky and waited to see if he'd tell him more, and when he didn't, he said, "Well, you see how it ended up hurting a lot of people, including yourself, but mostly it hurt Becca. And Jayne's not real happy about this either."

Ricky looked at Sam, alarmed. "She knows?"

"Yeah, she knows," Sam said. "On Friday, Becca came home from school crying and wouldn't tell Jayne why because she didn't want to get you in trouble, so Jayne drove over here to talk to your teacher, and as soon as your teacher told her that some boys were teasing Becca about her mother being a jailbird, Jayne knew exactly where it started, and so do you." Seeing the look of remorse on Ricky's face, Sam felt the first flicker of hope that, after weeks of Ricky being a total pain in the butt, he was finally turning around. "So then, tell me how it all started."

Ricky looked at him, and said, "Ira and Kyle told Becca they were gonna tell the other kids about her mother if Becca didn't give them her lunch, so I told them if they didn't leave Becca alone I'd beat their faces in and make them eat dirt for lunch. Then Ira said I was a wimp and couldn't make a girl eat dirt, and he'd do whatever he wanted and I could try and stop him. That's when he raised his fists to punch me, and I got him first. Then Kyle started punching me too. But when I was through, Ira said he wouldn't bother Becca anymore, and Kyle does whatever Ira does. Can we go now?"

Sam looked at the principal, who said to Ricky, "Yes, you may go."

As they were leaving, the principal said to Sam, "Today we sent notes home with the students about bring-a-parent-to-school day, which will be this Friday. Each parent can talk five minutes about what they do. Ricky will be off suspension by then so maybe he could bring you and you could tell the students about the legend of the spring. Becca can bring her mother too if she'd like, although under the circumstances maybe it would be best if she didn't."

Sam looked at Ricky, who wore a troubled frown, and he knew Ricky was thinking about how it would be for Becca with the other kids bringing parents to school and Becca's mother now known as the jailbird because of him. Sam hoped Ricky would feel remorse and learn a valuable lesson that he'd carry with him throughout his life. He also hoped Becca would find some forgiveness in her, even if Ricky had done her a terrible wrong because, for the first time in weeks, Sam felt there was some hope that he and Jayne could make a family, if this was handled right. So in the car on the way back to the ranch, he said to Ricky, who was staring out his side window, obviously in deep thought, "I'm not going to make you apologize to Becca."

Ricky turned to him, and said, "For real?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "Instead, you're going to search your conscience and think about what you did and what it's done to Becca and Jayne, and we'll see what kind of man you are. When a real man makes a mistake he owns up to the person he's wronged. A coward hides behind excuses."

Ricky said nothing, just turned and stared out the window again. Sam didn't know if he'd done the right thing, but in the past, Ricky seemed to need time to mull things over before they settled in. He'd done that by standing up for Becca, even if he'd been trying to undo the damage he'd caused. But now, Sam hoped Ricky would take the initiative to do right by Becca. He'd have three days at home to prove the kind of man he would one day become.

***

When Jayne looked up from her desk at the open doorway to her office, she was surprised to see Ricky standing there with a little black kitten in his arms. He gave her an uncertain smile, and said, "Mei Ling had kittens, and we thought Becca might want one."

Jayne eyed the kitten, a beautiful little mongrel. Mei Ling had been Grace's cat when she married Jack, and Jack always joked that the spoiled, highly-bred, pedigreed Blue Burmese got better treatment than he. But after six years of being confined to the house, Mei Ling managed to slip out when no one was watching her, and she came home from the barn with a smile on her face, as Jack told the story. Solomon, a sleek, solid black tom cat, named because he had so many wives, was obviously the sire of the little kitten in Ricky's arms.

Jayne realized the kitten was a peace offering, but accepting it meant worrying about finding a place to rent that took animals, when they moved. And they would be moving. Over the weekend she'd picked up a Sunday Oregonian and circled several ads in the classified for jobs for herself. She'd already placed ads in the paper for her replacement, and as soon as school would be out, she'd find an apartment in Becca's old neighborhood so Becca could settle in over the summer and renew her friendships before returning to her old school in the fall.

Seeing the expectant look on Ricky's face, she said, "That's very sweet of you, honey, but Becca and I will be moving into an apartment in Portland and we won't be able to have a pet." She saw the eager anticipation on Ricky's face change to remorse. He started to say something, but then his eyes brightened with tears, and he turned and left.

A few minutes later, Sam walked in and closed the door. "I can understand you not wanting to take on a kitten," he said, "but Ricky told me the reason is because you and Becca are leaving."

"That shouldn't be a surprise," Jayne said. "I told you that last week."

"But that was before the fight at school," Sam said. "Ricky's trying to make amends with Becca. It was his idea to give her the kitten. At least wait until we see how things go with them."

"It's not just about Ricky and Becca at this point," Jayne said. "How many parents do you think will want their kids playing with the daughter of a woman who's been in prison? Becca has friends at the school where she was, and what happened in my past won't matter there. I'm glad Ricky's turned himself around, and maybe this is what it took to do it, but as soon as you find a replacement for me we
will
be leaving. Hopefully you'll start getting some calls next week since that's when the local ads will start."

Sam looked at her long and hard, and said, "This isn't over. We
will
talk about it later. Meanwhile..." He reached into his pocket and drew out a one-hundred-dollar bill and handed it to her. "This is for Friday. Take Becca to town on a spending spree. All the kids will have their parents at school for the bring-a-parent-to-school thing, and it will give you and Becca something fun to do since there's no reason for her to be there."

"You don't have to do this," Jayne said, ignoring the money. "We'll be fine."

Sam's hand remain outstretched, the bill pinched between in his fingers. "You're not getting paid enough here as it is," he replied. "Consider it a bonus."

Jayne eyed the bill. She'd need a deposit for an apartment, and that was only the beginning of the moving expenses. "I guess you're right," she said, taking the bill.

Sam glanced down at the desk and his expression became intense again. She looked in the direction of his gaze and saw the newspaper with the classified ads she'd circled in red, ads that were not bad jobs, two of them looking for someone in motel management, and one in restaurant management. Several others were varied, including a hostess for a restaurant.

Sam picked up the paper, and after looking over the circled ads, said to her, "You don't need to do this. We can work this out."

"You will give me a good reference, won't you?" Jayne asked, ignoring Sam's comment. Sam was having pipe dreams if he thought they could work things out.

"Yeah, I'll give you a good reference," he said, his fingers tightening on the paper, as if about to scrunch it up. Then he set it aside and said. "There's a Catholic school in McMinnville where we could send Becca. The kids wouldn't know about you."

"Maybe not for a while," Jayne said, "but they would eventually. It's a small community. News travels fast, kids interact between schools, and I can't be constantly worried that Becca would come home from school one day, crying because the kids found out, and she was an outcast again. If I thought things would change and we could work it out I'd stay, but you know, as well as I, that we've reached an impasse. At Becca's old school it wouldn't matter if the kids knew. She's loved there, and if her mother was a jailbird they'd accept that too."

"So you've made up your mind, and there's nothing I can do," Sam said.

"Yes, I suppose so."

Saying nothing more, Sam turned and left. But Jayne had one last thing to do for Becca before they'd move away, and she needed to prepare for that.

***

As Sam concluded his spiel to the kids about the legend of Whispering Springs, he scanned the young faces, ready for questions as several hands shot up and were waving to get his attention. He also saw Ricky, sitting off to himself, arms folded, shoulders slumped, face glum. Sam had no idea what was going on with him, but he was relieved that the two boys who'd been in the fight were on the opposite side of the room. All three boys had purplish bruises fading to yellow around their eyes. He'd almost skipped coming to the parent thing, but at the last minute decided to go. He was glad Jayne and Becca hadn't come though.

"Yes, Andy?" he said, pointing to one of Ricky's friends who was waving his hand furiously.