Jack James and the Tribe of the Teddy Bear (8 page)

“We’ve been robbed. Or ransacked. Or, oh, just GET OUT HERE!”

A short, thin fellow with a large bald patch emerged through two swinging doors near the meat and seafood department, briskly walking to catch up with his clerk.

“What the…” he stopped and did a stationary circle, his jaw dropping more and more at each new sighting of ripped-up wrappers, half-eaten ho-hos, and wasted weenies. “Oh no! Oh NO!”

Al dropped the coat and paper bag he’d been carrying and went straight for the front of the building, digging into his pocket.

“Come on, Pud,” Cheyton ground his sharp teeth.

“What’s taking so long?” Takota had to ask.

“He can’t just hit delete and run,” Cheyton explained. “He has to alter metadata, swap files, it’s complicated,” he paused to watch Al pass the checkouts, closing in on the stairway leading to the office. “And he’s running out of time.”

They each fidgeted with pent-up jitters. Tanakee, though small in stature, were never ones to stand idle in times of danger, especially when one of their own was at risk. A trait of their species. No matter how insurmountable the problem, no matter how large the foe, Tanakee were always ready for a fight, so it was difficult to watch Pud risk life and limb. However, they weren’t stupid.

Takota was glued to the semi-bald man hurrying up the steps.

“What happened here, Al?” a different woman called out. Al stopped at the top of the staircase, inches before he reached the office door. An upsurge of relief swept over Takota. Maybe Pud could sneak out now.

“Don’t know yet,” Al answered, reaching for the handle. “I’m gonna see if the cameras turn anything up.”

“Wow!” Takota heard a human voice he recognized. A boy. “This place is trashed!”

“Hey, Jack,” Al twisted the knob halfway. “Don’t touch anything, ‘kay? This is all evidence. We’re gonna get these creeps!”

Jack!
Takota thought. Something about that boy. Somehow he sensed the child wouldn’t do anything to harm him. The feeling was strong, unlike anything he’d experienced. It had to be Eteea. He didn’t know. He’d never paid much consideration to the old myths and superstitions. He simply had the undeniable feeling that Jack, contrary to most humans he’d encountered, was trustworthy.

He also got the idea maybe Jack might have been able to help Pud. But how? He had no time. All eyes were on Al. It seemed the man moved in slow-motion, opening the door, stepping inside. Still no sign of Pud. Takota held his breath.

“I have to get him,” Cheyton said.

“No!” the girls commanded in unison. Ayita took his hands.

“Don’t do it, please. You’re my only family. I can’t lose you,” she pleaded. “It’s too risky.”

“I can’t lose you, either,” Enola added. Encircled by a faint green glow, she locked her stare on Cheyton.

Chest heaving, he nodded in hesitant agreement.

“Look!” Takota alerted.

“It’s Pud!” Ayita made the unneeded announcement. They saw him for themselves. First he peeked from behind the office door. Then he stepped to the landing, waving at them and grinning madly while flashing the thumbs-up.

“Now what?” Takota whispered.

“Now he has to get his butt back up here,” Cheyton answered. “He can’t go the normal routes, though.”

“Yeah, this place is crawling with humans,” Takota called it as he saw it. More and more green apron-clad employees descended on the store, each of them examining the mess.

“Cheyton!” Enola sounded urgent. Ayita motioned anxiously.

Takota realized why they were so concerned. Jack stood at the top of the stairs, and it appeared he’d spotted Pud, who, thankfully, was playing the dead game. He made a pretty convincing toy, yet as the boy headed straight for him, Takota noticed a smile growing on Pud’s lips.

“That’s it!” Cheyton announced. “I’m going. Everybody, stay here!”

“No!” Ayita seized his arm.

“Cheyton, you can’t!” Enola protested.

He didn’t yield this time, pushing a leg out of the metal mesh, ready to make a swift exit. “I have to. Pud’s in trouble. He doesn’t take things so seriously sometimes. I’m afraid he might screw this one up even more.”

“Wait,” Takota attempted to change his mind. “That human. I know him. There’s something about him. He wouldn’t harm us, I can feel it.”

Cheyton disagreed. “Sorry. Can’t go off just a feeling. We’ve gotta get Pud back,” he scanned the faces. “Stay here,” he dropped out of sight.

Takota found it easy to follow Cheyton’s order. He wanted no part in going down there with all those people milling about. Let Cheyton risk his own hide. Besides, he was confident Jack wouldn’t do a thing to harm any of them.

The boy picked up Pud and held him at eye level, scrutinizing him top to bottom. Even from such a distance, Takota heard Jack speak to the supposedly inanimate object.

“Hey, I know you,” he spun Pud side-to-side, upside-down and around. “You look like that weird teddy bear I found yesterday…except you’re not the same one, are you?”

Cheyton darted behind several people, scaling a
Kool-Aid
display so fast it created nary a disturbance. From there, it took all of Takota’s concentration to track his path.

Then, stricken by an abrupt vision, Takota clutched his own head. All of the sudden he seemed to be watching events before they occurred. Somehow he knew Cheyton was going to plow into Jack’s knees and throw the boy off balance so he’d let go of Pud. If that happened, Jack would fall down the stairs and get hurt seriously. Pud might be saved, but at too great a cost. Takota wouldn’t accept that. He felt a duty to protect Pud, yet he had an even greater need to protect Jack.

He began his descent to the floor and in that instant had the strangest sensation. His mind seemed to expand beyond the limits of his physical body. Never before had Takota experienced the ability to step outside of himself, yet that’s how it appeared. He saw endless sets of situations, countless individual paths, all the different decisions he could make, a life-sized map going on and on.

How and why he possessed the ability to read the mystical blueprints expanding before him, he had no clue. All he did was focus on Jack. Then a blinding streak guided him along the innumerable possible choices, enabling him to navigate the store full of wandering employees in less than a blink of an eye. He slipped behind people just when they looked away, scurried past others an instant before they glanced his direction. He saw their moves several steps in advance and was able to dodge and weave by them all, never to be seen.

“Yo!” a tall, bone thin redheaded guy in his early twenties hollered after Takota brushed past his denim pant legs. The only one to even sense his presence. “Who the..? All right! Somebody’s jerkin’ my chain!”

Takota reached the bottom of the stairs in time to lock eyes with Cheyton at the top. It was for an instant, though long enough to see into his thoughts. Cheyton didn’t want to hurt Jack. Desperation led him to believe he had no other choice.

Takota made it up the first two steps when the collision took place. He was running so hard, he didn’t see it. He didn’t need to. Eteea had already shown it to him. It must have been Eteea. If he’d only listened to Orzabal. Maybe then he would have been able to control his sudden abilities.

Then, a flash of awareness. He couldn’t stop Cheyton from tripping Jack, but he was able to put himself in the position to do the next best thing—make a diving catch.

The boy cried out and let Pud fall from his hands in an unsuccessful effort at grasping the rail, the wall, anything to counteract what gravity had already deemed inevitable. He plummeted down the stairs just as Takota had envisioned, backward and headfirst.

The boy’s full weight hammered him with a blow that would have crushed a normal animal of his size. Tanakee weren’t normal.

Riding Takota down the steps like a bobsled, Jack vocalized his shock with a continuous stream of incoherent wailing. On the floor the two settled in a heap, Jack using Takota for a pillow.

“Takota!” Cheyton whispered from the top of the stairs.

Jack sat up and rubbed his neck. His eyes darted from Takota to the steps. Cheyton vanished before the boy peered up toward the office. Pud had long since gone.

“What was that? What happened? Who said that?” finally Jack produced real words. He examined Takota. “Hey, it’s you. Takota? Is that your name?”

Takota didn’t know what to do, so he smiled.

“Uh, hi,” he waved. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

Jack’s jaw fell open. He patted his own chest, cheeks, neck. “No, I-I guess not. But how…”

AT THAT MOMENT, it seemed every human in the store descended upon the two of them. They must have heard Jack screaming bloody murder on the way down the steps. Takota wished there didn’t have to be so many people. They made him nervous. He decided to play the dead game and fell onto his back.

“Jack! Are you okay?” shrieked a scrawny woman with short, spiky hair.

“Don’t touch him!” cried another, bigger one. Her scent was strong and sweet, like
M&M’s
. “He might have a spinal injury.”

“No, I’m okay!” Jack started to get up.

“Honey, don’t move,” the sweet-smelling woman cautioned. He hurried to his feet anyway, snatching up Takota and snuggling him against his soft jacket.

“What! What happened? Is my boy hurt?” Takota recognized Jack’s mom from her voice. She pushed through the cluster of mostly women and shoved the lanky, redheaded young man by mistake. He fell into a stand of paperback novels.

“Hey!” he protested, books bouncing off his shoulders. “What gives with people bumping into me today?”

They ignored him, focusing every ounce of anxious attention on the boy.

“Is he hurt?”

“Does someone need to call 911?”

Liz gave her son a frantic yet careful examination while the women peppered her with suggestions.

“Mom, I’m fine. Really,” Jack tried to comfort her. She still had questions.

“You want to tell me what all the screaming was about, then?” she glared at him, motioning at the people gathered around. “Scaring everyone half to death?”

“I slipped,” he explained. “It freaked me out, that’s all.”

An audible sigh of equal parts relief and disdain from the store employees.

“Freaked you out?” a woman with obvious fake hair and false eyelashes blinked contemptuously. “Young man, you darn near gave me a heart attack.”

“What’s going on out here?” Al stood at the top of the steps. “Did I hear yelling? Is the crook still here? Did you get him? Did he hurt somebody—what?”

“Just calm down, Al,” a large woman strode toward the stairway. Roberta. Takota remembered her from the stockroom. She and her son Dillon joined the impromptu meeting. “Jack had a little accident, but he’s all right. The thieves aren’t here. Whoever it was, they’re long gone by now.”

“Whoever it was they were smart enough to erase the surveillance footage,” Al’s words were laced with disgust.

“What!” Dillon piped up. “No video? That bites!”

“Nope, it’s gone,” Al ranted into his office. “What good are the cameras? Why spend thousands of dollars on that stuff when all someone has to do is delete the darned file?”

“Deleted the file, huh?” Dillon eyeballed Jack, then pointed at him. “It was YOU! You did it, didn’t you? Okay, everybody! Back away! This is a crime scene now.”

He pulled an object out of his pocket and held it up, clicking a button while pointing it at Jack, Takota, the stairs, the walls, a drinking fountain—everything in the immediate area.

“Dillon, stop it,” Roberta ordered. “It’s getting late. You have to get to school, let’s go.”

“C’mon, Mom,” Dillon kept clicking. “It’s CSI: Winmart.”

“Let’s go, Dillon.”

“Wait, one more,” he got close to Takota. “Hey! Isn’t that the teddy bear my mom told you to put in the Lost and Found? What are you doing with it? Hey, Mom!”

“It’s no big deal,” Roberta sighed. “You can have the teddy bear, Jack.”

“Oh, Jackie,” Dillon broke into his high-pitched, sarcastic voice. “He wuvs his widdle teddy beaw!”

“You mean the teddy bear you were afraid of?” he shoved Takota in the smart aleck's face. It was only for a second, then Jack pulled him away, but while the two were nose-to-nose, Takota took the opportunity to give Dillon a menacing growl. Predictably, Dillon became surprised, then terrified.

“
AHHH!
” he yelped, kicking backward, his shoes squeaking on the smooth floor. Most of the others had lost interest by then and dispersed. The few who remained giggled at the comic relief.

“No, no,” Jack’s mom lectured her son, saying it loud enough for her boss to hear. “Fair’s fair. Some poor child somewhere’s probably heartbroken. You can tell the teddy bear means a lot to somebody, it looks so…well-loved. Just imagine the goodwill we can generate for the store if this bear’s reunited with its rightful owner.”

Takota wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, and didn’t like the sounds of it.

“You know, you’ve got a good idea there. Good thinking.” Roberta smiled at Liz, then at Jack. “Jack, honey. Our original deal stands. You can have the teddy bear, but you have to wait one full week, ‘kay, sweetie? If nobody claims it, it’s yours.”

“Okay,” Jack agreed halfheartedly.

“Okay,” Roberta echoed. “So stick that thing in the Lost and Found, and let’s get on with our day,” she raised her voice. “Okay, people? We’ve got a mess to clean and a store to open. Let’s GO!”

She clapped her hands. What remained of the already depleted group began working hard at making it appear they were working hard.

“And you, kid. School,” she told her son.

“I meant what I said, Jack,” Dillon warned as his mother swept him off by the hand. He shot Jack and Takota each a leer. “I’ll be watching you.”

“That’s enough, Dillon,” Roberta tugged her son to her side and kept walking. Dillon pointed to his eyes, then at Jack, then to himself again while he and his mother made for the doors.

“Did you hear that?” Liz clapped her hands and did a tap dance. “She said I had a good idea! Oh, Jack! If I keep this up, do you know what this means? We’re talking assistant-assistant manager, here! Oh, my. Okay, okay. Don’t get your hopes up, Liz. Calm down.”

“Thanks a lot, Mom,” Jack made his disappointment clear.

“What? Why are you mad at me? You really want that ratty old thing?”

HEY!
Takota thought.

“There’s something about this thing, Mom. I can’t explain. Can’t I just have it now?”

“Listen, if it’s a stuffed animal you want, why don’t I buy you a nice, new one?” She pointed toward the far end of the store. “There are about a thousand stacked to the ceiling in the toy department, some pretty cool ones, too. How about we get you one of those?”

“Mom, you’re not listening. I want this one!”

“What’s so special about that one?” Liz began to sound exasperated.

“I told you. I can’t explain.”

“Well, try.”

He sighed and held Takota to his mother’s level. Takota remained still.

“Just look at him, Mom. Doesn’t he seem real? I know, I know. It sounds crazy, and he’s not moving or breathing or…” Jack put his ear against Takota’s chest. “There’s no heartbeat, so he doesn’t seem alive. But the first time I saw him, I swear he smiled at me. And just now, right after I fell down the stairs, he talked to me!”

“Talked to you! Oh, lord. This is your father’s fault! All his talk about other dimensions has warped your imagination! Oh, that man and his crazy ideas! Why can’t he just grow up and be normal?”

“His ideas are
not
crazy, he’s…”

“Nope,” she interrupted the way only a mother can. “I won’t hear another word of it. You’ll take that thing to the Lost and Found this instant, and that’s that. Got it?”

While he lumbered away from his mother in disgust, Jack maneuvered Takota so the two of them were the same height. Takota kept up his lifeless appearance. It was difficult. The way the boy appealed to him, it made him want to break his silence. Strange? Absolutely. Humans had always been a threat, something to avoid at all costs. And yet, here Takota felt some sort of connection with a human he hardly knew.

“You
are
real, aren’t you? I didn’t just imagine that, did I?” Takota knew Jack expected a response. He wanted to answer. Better judgment prevailed. Someone might have been watching, maybe even that nasty Dillon character.

“Never mind,” Jack sighed, letting Takota drop to his chest, cradling him with one hand.

It wasn’t long before they made it to the area where it read in big, playful letters, ‘
Lost and Found
.’ Jack ducked under the counter and placed Takota on the second shelf, taking care to make him comfortable.

“Let’s hide you in here a little, shall we?” he concealed Takota behind a pair of stinky shoes. Apparently not satisfied, the boy further shrouded him with an old umbrella. “There. I’ll come back for you, I promise.”

Jack winked and was about to leave when he stopped. Hidden in that crowded shelf, Takota had just enough room to glimpse what had made the boy freeze in his tracks. A haze formed near the Lost and Found. Long, thin shapes swirled in the foggy air, joining to become a tall, intimidating figure wearing tattered rags which flowed in some imaginary breeze.

It went by quick, even by Tanakee standards, and seemed transparent, yet it was there. Takota’s heart jumped into his throat. Jack took a step back. Then the apparition vanished, its long, frayed shreds merging with light and shadow. Takota’s intuition told him the thing had been watching them. For how long, he didn’t know. It gave him an uneasy feeling.

“Um, what was that?” Jack trembled. He took a moment to gather himself, then sprang into action.

“On second thought,” he wiped away the makeshift camouflage and snatched up Takota. “I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”

He zipped open his backpack and eased Takota inside. Normally such a situation would have thrown Takota into a panic. However, somehow he knew in his heart this child might have been able to help the Tanakee, and he felt for some reason he needed to help Jack.