The Writers' Circle

CHAPTER ONE

TeeJay Wainright clomped down the steps of the school bus, her heavily loaded rucksack bouncing behind her.
"Bye, Mrs. Bartle!"
"See you Monday, kiddo," the bus driver answered, just before shutting the door and driving off.
Western boots scuffing dust onto her blue jeans, she crossed the road and continued along the verge until reaching #34, reciting what she mostly called her 'philosophies' but other times, her 'mottos'.
She'd proudly written them all down in her maroon scribbler, the one with the holes so she could keep it in a binder when she got one. Already, two whole pages were filled with her list and she kept adding more.
When you got an itch, you should scratch it, she'd heard her neighbour, Old Albert, say one evening to his lady friend, Lucy.
Dawg eat dawg.  Not sure exactly what this meant, she liked it because it sounded slightly 'ominous', a word she'd just discovered, which reminded her of the huge black clouds threatening tornados. She also had a list of new words that she liked. She looked them up in the dictionary and wrote the meanings next to the words. I'm building my vocabulary, she always thought when she was performing this chore.
Her current favourite she'd just overheard on the bus, and would write down as soon as she got home.  When you come to a fork in the road, take it. That means, don't procrastinate, she decided, adding it to her list. 
An older boy, Cory, who rode on the bus every day, said he'd heard it on the radio. A famous baseball player named Yogi Berra had said it. TeeJay liked the name Yogi Berra, too. It reminded her of a cartoon bear. 
When she reached her house, she thought, mixing her metaphors. I'm a lone wolf and I live in a silver bullet. Unlocking the door with a key hanging from a piece of string around her neck, she pulled open the door of the 28-foot aluminum Airstream, then sang out, to no one in particular - she knew there was nobody there - "I'm home!" 
After stowing her books and washing her face and hands, she picked up her air rifle and headed across the dusty yard into the fenced-in property of Mrs. Harvey, their next-door neighbour. When she opened the gate she was, almost immediately, surrounded by several small children and a couple of scruffy dogs, all clamouring for her attention.
Not quite, but almost, ignoring them all, she leaned over a playpen where three toddlers were playing and picked up the blonde curly-headed one. "Warble." she nuzzled into his silky, blonde curls.
"I'm taking Warble, Mrs. Harvey," she called up into the trailer.
Mrs. Harvey appeared in the doorway of the little dwelling, wiping her plump hands on her faded, floral apron. "Stay for cookies and milk, TeeJay," she invited.
"No time. Too much homework. Thanks anyway, Mrs. Harvey. Besides, I'm on a diet."
"Scrawny kid like you has no business being on a diet. Here," she said, shoving two cookies and a teething biscuit into her hand, "eat these on your way home."
TeeJay had to juggle the baby, whom she had hoisted onto her left, almost non-existent hip and hold her rifle under her free arm, in order to grab the cookies. 
"And be careful with that gun!" Mrs. Harvey warned.
"Ain't loaded," TeeJay answered, truthfully.
"Then why carry it around?"
"'N case of snakes," she explained, walking off in her oversized Western boots, sending small billows of dust up in her wake.
When Mrs. Harvey talked to her sisters about TeeJay, she always told them, "I admire her, She's odd, but she's got gumption. A bit of a tomboy, no namby-pamby." 
 

CHAPTER TWO

TeeJay sat at the kitchen table, tip of tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth, concentrating on her belt project. Having painstakingly pencilled her design, a combination of Indian and floral motifs, onto a strip of thin paper, she was now working her way, inch by inch, along the length of the cowhide band that Old Albert had given her, pressing the embossing tool hard through her paper design into the leather. An electric wood-burning tool, ready to be plugged in, lay by her side. She envisioned exactly what the belt would look like when it was finished, complete with its silver buckle, also a gift from Albert. 
She'd refused to let her mother discourage her friendship with the black man. Old Albert, she thought, was one of her very best friends. He never judged her, was always helpful, even encouraged her in her new hobby. Most importantly, he didn't expect her to behave like a girl!
Warble had been plopped into his high chair, where he sat playing with TeeJay's silver belt buckle, avidly studying his sister with his big, blue eyes, his thumb in his mouth, his face plastered with the caramel-coloured gummy remains of a teething biscuit.
"Mama, my Daddy was a cowboy, right?"
Puss, standing by the sink peeling potatoes, humming along with a song on the radio, daydreaming about the night she'd sung with Randy Tyler, the western singer, wasn't exactly pleased to be interrupted by her eleven-year old daughter. 
"Your Daddy was a soldier, Treesa-Jane. Like I told you before," she answered, trying hard to be patient.
TeeJay thought her mother, in her long, blue patterned skirt and tied-up hikers, her thick curly orange-red hair a halo around her pale face, the most beautiful lady in the world. She noticed, not for the first time, the light shining around her mother's head, and wondered if she had a light around her own. Most people didn't, but she'd seen it once around Lovely Lucy's. And Warble definitely had one, all the time.
 "But before that, he was a cowboy, right?" she insisted. 
"Well, his Daddy, Mr Wainright, did have a ranch in Alberta. At least that's what your Daddy told me."
"How come we never get to see him? He's my grandpa, right?"
"No money. Besides, he's never come to see us." Puss had explained these facts to her daughter many times and wondered how more often she would need to, before the child finally got tired of asking.
TeeJay felt her little brother's eyes on her and looked up. When he realized she was looking at him, he grinned a toothy smile.
"Why don't he talk yet?" TeeJay asked her mother.
"Why doesn't he talk yet?" Puss corrected. "He'll talk when he's good and ready, when he gets around to it."
"Roun' to it," Warble said, clear as a bell.
TeeJay and Puss froze. Wide-eyed, TeeJay exclaimed, "WOW!"  
Warble repeated, "Wow."
Puss, who'd been worried for several months that something was wrong with her beautiful little son, anxious lest he never speak, rushed over, snatched him up from his chair and whirled him around. "You spoke, Warble! You can talk!" She nuzzled into his thick blond curls, feeling a fearsome love.
"Me talk," said Warble.
"Guess there'll be no stopping you now, will there, little guy?" Puss sat the toddler back into his highchair, where he immediately plunked his thumb into his mouth.
Going back to her work at the sink, back to her singing, Puss tried to recapture her daydream; the night she'd been sitting at the western bar in town, enjoying a rare night out with her friend, Nel, listening to Randy Tyler and his band. Randy had come over to their table, removed his big, black ten-gallon hat and actually sat down. He asked if he could join them. Nel, realizing that it was Puss he was interested in, excused herself to go and dance.
"I'm Randy," the tall, blue eyed, blonde, curly-headed young man told her, as if she didn't know. 
"Puss. I'm Puss," she replied, flustered big time, her face flaming. 
A strange look came over his face. Puss? Do you purr?
"Catherine," she hurriedly explained. "Cat.  Puss. You know?"
"Oh, right. I get it," he drawled. "Want to dance, Puss?" 
So they danced. She told him how she loved how he sang. She told him she sang too - of course, not professionally, but she'd been told she was pretty good. She was fairly drowning in his vivid blue gaze, was drunk on the scent of him. 
In a trance as he led her up onto the stage when the band resumed playing, she was hardly aware when he introduced her to the audience. "This is Catherine, and she's going to join us tonight. Give her a big welcome!"
He wants me to sing along with him?  She didn't know how she managed to do it, but she did. She sang, somehow remembering the words she'd sung along with him so often on the radio. 
Puss looked over at her baby boy, remembering the night he was conceived, wondering if Randy would ever come back to their small town to sing, would maybe want her to sing along with him again, perhaps would even want to see his beautiful little son. Wouldn't that be a trip?!