The Cowboy Who Strolled Into Town (29 page)

My Uniformed Tiger

By Riley Moreno

Chapter 1

The school bell went off at three o’clock, to rapturous applause from all the school kids, and also a few staff, signifying the end of the school day. Yuri, calmly waited by her desk, smiling, and nodding to the farewells of the kids as they made their way to, and through the door and into the weekend rest. As usual, there was Tommy Grear, trying to maneuver his way to the side of Stacy Wilkins, no doubt he delighted in walking her home. A similar thing could be seen about to take place throughout the throng, as they unconsciously separated into pairs, and slightly larger groups. Yuri inwardly smiled at this; the observation brought back a lot of fond memories of boys jostling for her attention during, and after school, back in her school days.

“Can I walk you home Ms. Jansen?” a small, unsure voice squeaked around her, dragging her from her reverie. Yuri smiled despite herself. Among all her students, Patrick Dillon was the smallest, yet the bravest. He was petit, smaller than most, but his liquid brown-almost black eyes possessed a depth in them which suggested boldness, and a wisdom that belied his years. He also had a major school crush on his biology teacher Ms. Yuri Jansen. Ms. Yuri smiled when she saw him; she thought his courage made him look even more adorable than he already was.

“Aww Patrick how nice,” she began, squeezing his jaw, “but I have some work to do before I go home and I am sure your uncle will be waiting for you at home, won’t he?” She watched the light die in his eyes with some regret. “But maybe you can help me carry my books to the faculty room.” She added as a consolation.

The light was back in his eyes in an instant, and he scooped her books up in one surprising movement. Sometimes he proved himself far more agile than his small frame suggested. She grabbed his small hands in hers, and made a show of a majestic walk out of the classroom. She did this so as to encourage him against the inevitable calls of
teacher’s pet
and
cry baby
that were sure to follow. She thought Patrick cast a heroic figure, chin raised high in defiance, as he carried her books to the faculty room.

Thirty minute later, the halls were a lot more quiet, and the faculty room almost empty. It had been a gloomy day, and she could see through the window that lay ten meters in front of her desk, the overcast sky, stretching forever into the horizon. She hoped the weekend was going to improve, starting with tonight. She had finally agreed to go on a date with David the local bank manager; she was not in love with him no, she found him quite boring in fact-much like this town itself. However, two years after moving to her ancestral home town, she needed something to fill the ever-growing void of loneliness that was encroaching around her heart. She took her time updating her books, there was nothing to rush to except her grandfather whom she lived with, but he was fine. She fancied he could live another 88 years easily.

“Have you heard?” David Cornwall asked over his second wine glass, and across the table at Yuri. They were at the tail end of a delicious meal at a neighborhood restaurant which in Yuri’s opinion was rather classy given its location. It was certainly classier than the name it carried which was
The Fighting Claw.

“No, but I am sure you are going to tell me anyway,” Yuri replied sassily. She was on her second glass as well, and was feeling a bit flippant. She also thought that David’s unwitting role play as the village bulletin was a ploy to hide his insecurities. She suspected it was his own way of hiding the fact that he was overwhelmed by her presence in front of him. It was the fifth time that he had piped
have you heard?
, that evening and despite the fact that she thought him kind of cute, as far as men in the small town went, she had long decided earlier in the evening that this was as far  as their association was going to go.

David, having the time of his life, chose to ignore the sassy comment and unwittingly ploughed on in his happy role, “We are expecting an esteemed visitor in our midst sometime next week; a descendant of one of the founding fathers, in fact. It has been more than thirty years since anyone moved into the big mansion in the south end, but that is about to change it would seem.”

Finally some mildly interesting news she thought callously, “you mean the big mansion on the hill that overlooks the entire city?” The house, situated on the highest point for miles in the vicinity, had the uncanny ability to rise highest in the sun, while remaining bleak at the same time.
How was that possible?
Yuri had thought to herself severally, intrigued, “You mean the house has been bought? By whom?”

“Not bought, it was never on sale. It has always been in the family it appears going back generations.” David was pleased to have her interested at last, and gladly answered her questions. He thought now was a time to spice things up to his advantage, “My family and theirs are pretty closely related in fact, you know. That practically makes me royalty.”

Among what? The trees?
Yuri who had spent her entire life except for the last two in the big city was not impressed. This was one of her biggest challenges in this town: keeping up with this image of old man Jansen’s granddaughter. She began to fidget, hoping that David would get the hint and take her home.

Two minutes of cluelessness landed her in the bathroom instead. She wondered why she even bothered. David’s fidgeting was probably not his fault. ‘The goat is as good as the grass where it grazes’ she thought it oddly appropriate that this saying she had gleaned from long ago excavations in her, then, neighborhood library would resurface now. No it was not David’s fault, but he still had ruined a perfectly good outing. Not to mention a perfectly good meal. Yuri took her eating seriously, and took a second to appreciate the well-rounded curves that stared at her from the mirror.

She let David lean over, and put his hand on her knee on the drive home. He deserved that much. Despite what the experts say, a woman can always tell when a man feels attracted to her. Love is a totally different matter. At the moment, she was getting strong vibes now from the much respected bank manager but sadly she would have to disappoint him, and maybe the whole town, whom she suspected secretly wished she would ‘find a good man and settle down’. She thought that rather quaint and old-fashioned, and shook her head inwardly at the thought. Maybe she was the one who was let down, because deep down, beyond the hard, aloof poise, she knew she wanted the same thing. She felt a lady should always be clear on certain things. What she was not clear on was whether she was a lady or not.

She easily parried David’s advances towards kissing her. The lights in the living room of the small house were off but she could hear the healthy, heavy breathing of her grandfather as he reclined on the couch. She decided to let him lie there. A few minutes later, she had his blanket over him, then she tip-toed away to her bedroom

Chapter 2

The sun hung high in the sky, and its golden rays played across the school grounds, bouncing upon the pavements, refracting through the windows to end up on the eager morning faces of the students of the Peri Heights Community High School. The wind was warm to the touch, and created a nice backdrop as it played against the leaves of the tress scattered across the school compound. Yuri certainly thought it was a nice day as she tried to pass across to her students the mysteries of life or what she knew of it as best as she could. As a biology teacher, she did not have to deal with the amount of lethargy that her colleagues who dealt with the other natural sciences math, physics and chemistry had to deal with. Biology was pretty accessible to anybody who was willing to put the effort, and what was more, it always had very cool teachers whom everybody liked. Yuri herself had taken an interest in biology because of her high school teacher Mrs. Kline. For the students it was over too quickly when the bell went off.

Tuesdays were her busiest days, and she knew she would spend a single period in the faculty room before hopping from class to class till well into the day. She by passed the history teacher, Mr. Slater on her way out. Mr. Slater was new to the faculty and still kept pretty much to himself most times. Even in the faculty room, he would often be found in a corner, poring through a book, or other. He had the uncanny ability to seem perfectly aloof and attentive at the same time. The other teachers said he was from Eastern Europe, hence his strange ways. Yuri just though he was shy, and would come out of his shell at some point, after all, nobody could remain an island forever.

The school bell went off again before she could reach the faculty room. The speaker phone in the hallway which was one of many connected to each, and every class as well as the faculty room came to life, with the voice of the principal coming across smooth as silk. All staff and students were expected in the auditorium for an impromptu meeting immediately.

A few minutes later the hall was packed to overflowing, idle chatter rising to the high ceiling. Students love nothing better than a legitimate excuse to miss class.

The appearance of the principal on stage brought silence over the crowd like a blanket however, his shoes silent against the concrete of the stage. While not yet breaking into the category of the aged, at fifty-five, the principal, Walter Granger had a quiet air of authority about him. A man of few words, he relied more on action and body language to convey his meaning. The staff certainly respected, and liked him; the kids were not so sure about what to think. He adjusted his half-moon spectacles on his nose, scratched the minuscule white stubble on his chin, and adjusted the microphone like a preacher on a pulpit.

“An investigation is underway, orchestrated by the district police into a recent mauling in the woods,” he went straight to the point. An excited murmur erupted in the seated crowd, rippling through it from one end to another like a Mexican wave. “Without aiming to satisfy the popular demand for gore, I have been instructed by the police to inform you that it is likely to have been an animal attack, and special caution is called for when going into the woods.”

Peri Heights was bounded in the north by woods so ancient that the state government had been mulling over the idea of making it a state reserve. The process would have moved along faster, if the town itself had not been so far away. The woods also served as a home to a whole bunch of people, mostly living in trailer parks but also in small communities comprised of log houses spreading out from some common center. These people, while not hostile, kept mainly to themselves. Their kids attended school in the town, but were never social balls of fire. They would often be seen together, but were never overtly affectionate with one another. They were like the town gypsies only less so.

At the mention of the woods, several eyes turned towards these students, and Patrick Dillon-the teacher’s pet shrunk in his seat, blushing.

“This is not to frighten anyone but to keep us all on alert. Nothing ever happens in this town, and some of you might think of becoming heroes: forget about it!” A ripple of laughter, light as a feather, caressed the crowd at his last comment; a rare moment of levity from Principal Walter Granger. “And now on a lighter, yet equally serious not, we have here to visit us in our school a member of the founding family of our esteemed locality. Ladies and Gentlemen I introduce to you Mr. Lucius Sloan.”

A round of applause went up in the crowd. “Mr. Sloan’s father pretty much built this school thirty-five years ago, and now his son has come to see how his father’s legacy is being handled more or less.” Principal Granger echoed at the microphone, over the applause.

A tall, lithe stranger walked across the stage from behind the curtains. He more like bounced, without seeming to bounce, his feet barely gracing the floor. Yuri felt a ripple of excitement as she observed that he always seemed to be in state of constant poise, something which could only be the product of an unassailable confidence. He was handsome, devastatingly so, and the crowd swooned at his gaze. His eyes had depth, and seemed to go on forever in their greenish gold hue. Like jewels set within his perfectly sculpted face. The voice, in which he addressed the crowd, carried an air of dignity, which made even Principal Walter Granger to seem tame by any standards. It bordered on the aristocratic. He had blond almost orange tinted hair, with every strand immaculately kept in place. It looked almost statuesque. The town was known for its absolute ordinariness, nobody expected the founding family to look this good.
Sublime
was more the word for it.

Lucius spoke to the enthralled crowd, encouraging both students and teachers alike in their endeavor to make their community a better place to live in. He gave a brief history of the town as his parents had passed down to him, supposedly as had been passed down to them going back across the generations. More or less it was about a group of hunters, braving the cold of the great outdoors in the prairies. Their courage and resistance against the odds of nature, deep inside bear country was the invisible seam that held the town together. In his words,
this bond had to be protected at all costs for the benefit of all present and future generations.

Yuri thought there was a lot the speech left unanswered, and was just a clever bunch of fluff, even as the crowd went into applause. As the school body filed out of the auditorium however she had to admit that there was within her an uncomfortable desire to get to know this man, Lucius Sloan. It was a sentiment shared by several, unabashed, whispering groups across the hall, all the way to the esteemed faculty room. Nobody was talking about the victim who had been mauled in the woods, Mr. Lucius Sloan had seduced them all, and they had unashamedly gone with him into fantasy. It was an excitement that lasted all though the day, and unto supper tables all over the small city.