Storiesonline.net ------- The Find by Openbook Copyright© 2010 by Openbook ------- Description: A young teen finds himself a bag of money. This is a life changing event. An opportunity, and a responsibility that he has to try to manage as he comes to adulthood. Codes: Mult het harem poly 1st slow ------- ------- Chapter 1 I was taking a shortcut through the woods, one afternoon, in the winter, after school. Walking the long way would have taken me thirty minutes. Cutting through the woods, I could get home in half the time it usually took me. I was climbing up the side of a shallow embankment when I saw a man wrapped in a large, brown, Camel's hair, overcoat. He was dead, I could tell that much just by seeing the way he was laying there, and all the dried blood on his coat, and along the side of his neck. I moved cautiously toward the dead man, anxious to see his face, wondering if I might have known him or not. I didn't recognize the man, which was something of a relief. What I did notice was this large dark brown satchel, which was partially covered, by one of his legs, and part of his overcoat. Without thinking, my curiosity got the better of me, and I reached down to pull the handle, dragging the heavy bag free of his leg. I pulled up the leather clasp, freeing the metal pin from the steel grommet that held it fastened. As soon as I pulled on both handles, the bag opened, showing me more money than I'd ever seen. More than I'd even known existed. It was 1953, and, with very few exceptions, every one I knew was poor. My father had just gotten released from the Army, having been recalled from the reserves after Korea had gotten started, back in 1951. We had barely been getting by on the money the Army sent home from his pay. Now that my father was back home, and looking for work, my mother was hoping that things would soon get better for all of us. After two months of him out looking for work, my father was definitely becoming discouraged. A lot of his mustering out pay was spent already, and there didn't appear to be any jobs in the offing. The night before, I'd heard him telling my Uncle Gary that he wanted to get his hands on enough money to head out to California, because everyone knew they needed workers out there. I knew he was planning on going out to California, by himself, then sending for the rest of us after he'd found some work, and had saved enough to get us a new place to live. I knew my mother was dead set against him leaving her alone to take care of the four of us again. I shut the valise back down again and took off my pea coat jacket to wrap it in. I was very cold, but I wanted to hide what I'd found from any curious eyes. I backed down that embankment again and followed it for another seventy yards before I found some rocks where I could climb out again, without leaving any tracks behind. In the bedroom I shared with my two brothers, I counted all the money inside that valise. It came to a little more than thirty thousand dollars, all in used bills too. Most of it was in fives, tens, and twenties, but there were around fifteen fifties and more than that in hundreds. That was about what a man could expect to make in ten years of working. Two fifty a month was better than a living wage at this time. I packed all the money up in old newspapers, tying it tightly with string I'd saved from back when I'd had a paper route the year before. It turned into a bundle about the size we used to save for school paper drives, a few years before. I took the bundle down to the cellar and pushed it way in the back, out of sight from where anyone was likely to look, way in the back, over where my parents had some of my late great grandmother's old furniture stored. I wrapped that empty satchel in a small blanket and made my way back to where the dead body was, carefully placing it back under the leg where I'd first found it. Once again, I'd carefully retraced my steps, making sure that I'd left as little trace of my having been there as I could manage. It took about another week before some other kids happened across that body in the woods. In the meantime, it had rained at least twice, and one of those times it had also snowed about three inches. I knew that the weather conditions had covered up any tracks I might have inadvertently left. The local newspaper was claiming that the dead man was believed to be one of a group of men who'd been involved in a shoot out that had taken place three towns away, a couple of weeks before. His brother and one of his cousins had been shot and killed in this same shoot out, as well as three other men from a rival faction. The paper was hinting that all the men involved were hoodlums, that they were all somehow involved with organized crime. I did nothing unusual, said nothing about the money to anyone, and just went about doing all the things I normally would. My father had been continuing his quest for work, or for someone to lend him the money to go out to California. I knew money was starting to get very tight for our family. It finally got to the point where I felt I needed to step in and do something to help. "Hey, Ma, remember that money you told me to save from my paper route? If you need to borrow it, I still have most of it left." "What money, Jimmy? I'm pretty sure you and your cousins spent every cent you had on fire crackers and Roman candles last summer, for the 4th of July. If you have any money left, how come I'm just now hearing about it?" "I know how much I spent, and how much I had saved up too. If you don't want my help, that's all right. I just thought I should offer." "Okay, Mister Smarty Pants, I'll bite. How much money do you have that you can loan us?" "I've got forty two dollars left, but I wanted to keep ten bucks of it to buy myself a good used bike, if I ever find the right one. You can borrow the rest if you want. Heck, you can just have it, if that will help you more." "Go get this money, show it to me." For some reason, my mother sounded angry with me. I'd been very careful not to claim more savings than I might have legitimately had. I'd earned about ten dollars a month on my paper route, including my tips, and I really had tried to save more than half of it each month. I'd let the money slip through my fingers though, spending it on things I didn't really need. The last of it had been spent on school supplies, right before school started, that past Fall. My mother hadn't kept too close a track of whatever money I might have, mostly being grateful whenever I used some of my money to take my younger brothers to the movies, or to buy them candy or popcorn when we went to the cartoon shows some Saturdays. I went to my room and returned with the forty two dollars I'd told her I had. I had one ten, four fives, and the rest in one dollar bills and change. This is all I had left from the fifty I'd kept out for myself when I'd wrapped the rest of the money up and hidden it. My mother took the whole forty two dollars, telling me she knew we, meaning our family, needed that extra ten dollars more than I needed a bike. I had been aware that this might happen, her taking the entire forty two dollars instead of the thirty two I'd offered. That evening, when my father got home, he and my mother had a quiet, private, huddle in the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her waving the bills I'd given her at him. I saw him start to reach for the money, and my mother quickly pulling the bills back and shoving them down in her bra. My mother was a large lady, and given to putting things in her bra, in order to keep both hands free, for everything she needed to get done. After supper my father told me to come with him, over to my Uncle Gary's house. This wasn't unusual, since I was the oldest boy in our family. My father tried to teach me things, fully expecting that I'd learn them and pass the information on to my two younger brothers. My mother was responsible for training and teaching my sister. Because my father had been missing so much, because of World War II and Korea, he felt like I'd grown up without getting all the education a father normally gives a son. He might have been right, thinking that, but, I had to admit that I hadn't missed that particular aspect of his being around. Some of his lessons were about dishing out punishments, whenever I had been bad. "Your mother told me about the money, Jimbo. Told me you were spinning out this big load of crap about having saved that much dough. I'm supposed to get the truth out of you, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. We gonna do this the easy way, or would you rather make it be the hard way, like usual?" We were out in the open, walking to Uncle Gary's, but he lived only a block and a half down our street. My father had slowed way down while he'd told me this. "I knew she was going to think I'd done something bad, that's why I didn't say anything to her before today. She was sitting in the kitchen, crying, so that's why I gave her all the rest of my money. I worked a year and a half saving up that money, but I couldn't just stand around and let her keep crying." "Your mother says there isn't any way you had this money left over from any damn paper route. Who do you suppose I'm going to believe here?" "Her I guess. Won't matter what you believe, that money is what I told her it was. You can take your belt to me if you take a mind to do it, but all that's going to do is give me a sore heinie, and make you feel bad when you've finally decided I wasn't lying about anything." "I'm not going to feel one bit bad. Fifteen year old boys don't have that much money laying around, not without their parents knowing about it. Something isn't right here, and I'm damn sure going to get to the bottom of it." We walked the rest of the way over to my uncle's house, with both of us keeping any further thoughts to ourselves. I was pretty certain that my father wouldn't whip me any worse than I could take. It might hurt for a few days, but that pain would eventually go away. There was just no way I could tell him, or anyone else, the real truth about the money I had. For that much money, I knew I could put up with a lot of whacks from his belt. When we got over to my uncle's house, my father and my uncle talked about the money I'd suddenly come up with. Uncle Gary called in my two cousins, his sons, Donald and Patrick, and started asking them both if either of them had even the slightest idea that I ever had a bunch of money saved up. I got lucky when Patrick told his father that he'd once seen inside the cigar box he thought I'd kept my savings in, and that he'd been surprised by how much I'd saved. In fact, that box had held all my route collection money for the paper route, and almost none of that money had been my personal money. I didn't try to correct him when he said this though. The little sneak shouldn't have taken that peek into my cigar box anyway. "How much do you think he had saved up in that box, Pat?" My uncle looked at my cousins face, trying to see if he was in on doing something crooked with me, afraid Patrick might be lying to either help me, or because he was in on something shady with me. "A lot, at least eighty to a hundred dollars. I saw at least two twenties, and a couple of other big bills too. Jim doesn't like to spend his money much, so it was easier for him to save than it was for us. He might spend a dollar at the movies for him, Kevin, and Willy, but that's about all he'd usually spend his money on." "Do you think he might still have over forty dollars left from back when he had that paper route of his?" My father asked Patrick this question. "I don't know. I guess he could have, but he never said about things like that. If it was either me or Don. we'd have spent it all, but maybe Jim might just hold on to it. He's like that about money. Mama says he's a natural born Jew." I could see my aunt saying something like that. To her, all jews were smart, and notorious penny pincher's, all blacks were lazy, and anyone not born a Catholic was going to Hell, for certain. Sometimes, listening to her, you'd wonder who it was she did like? After a few more minutes of the discussion not adding anything new to my father's investigation, we took our leave and started walking back home. "If I were to let this go, Jimbo, pretend your mother was wrong, which I don't believe for a single minute, do you think you might be able to find another hundred and fifty dollars from these mysterious savings of yours?" "I gave mom every cent I had left. She took it all, even the pennies. I don't have anything left." "What you gave us helped, a lot, and I'm not going to lie to you, or try to tell you it didn't. The problem is, all it does is buy us a few more weeks before we're flat broke again. If I could get out to California, well, they're hiring out there, and I could maybe land myself a halfway decent paying job. I need to find some way to get on out there before all those jobs are gone, gone to someone smarter, someone who was willing to pick up and move out there quicker than I can." "I wish I did, daddy, but that was all the money I had." "Let's just say I believed you, which I can't honestly say I do. People sometimes get lucky, they find something valuable. If that was to happen with you, and it turned out to be enough for me to head out to California, then I'd be a blamed fool to look a lucky gift horse like that in the mouth, wouldn't I?" I wasn't going to fall into the trap he was setting. If I told him I had more money, after all this, he wouldn't stop until I'd shown him the whole bundle. It wasn't just the money, I was more afraid of someone coming after me, someone who was missing their money, and wanted all of it back. People like that could go through a lot, hoping to get that much money back. It wasn't just me either, by taking that money, I'd exposed my whole family to possible danger. "I don't have anything else I can give you. If I did, you'd already have it. I've heard you saying all that, about going to California to find work, and just needing some money to get you out there, enough to tide you over until you can get a paycheck. I know how bad it is here now too, and how much better it might be out there, with you having steady work. I just don't have any way left to help you, and that's the truth." After we got back home, my father and mother had another long discussion. I knew my mother wasn't going to change her mind, but I hoped my father would change his. My parents were practical people, and forty two dollars was enough to get caught up on a few bills, and still leave enough to fill up the fridge and the cupboards with enough food to get us by for a few more weeks. A few days after giving my mother that money, I had an idea that I thought might work. I had this one friend, Larry Church, who was from a fairly well off family. Larry and I had been friends for a long time, since at least the fourth grade. I'd helped him with keeping people from picking on him, and he'd helped me by helping me with studying some subjects that I'd been having problems with. Larry really did have quite a bit of money saved up. More importantly, both my parents knew this for a fact. Larry carried around his savings account passbook, and had shown it to both my parents, recently, right after his account balance had exceeded the one thousand dollar mark. Most of Larry's family gave him money for his birthday, his good report cards, and other things, like Easter presents and Christmas presents. I went over to his house, to try to sound him out about my idea. "You expect me to go down to my bank with your father and withdraw two hundred dollars from my account and loan it to him? Why would I do something as crazy as that?" "Because we're friends, and because I'm asking you to do me this favor. Besides, I'd give you the two hundred in cash before you ever went to the bank. You just can't deposit it until after my father goes to California. He'd know something funny was up, if you had a recent two hundred dollar deposit into your account." "I still don't understand why you can't do this yourself, since you obviously have the money in the first place?" "I told you how they already think I did something wrong by saving up my money, while they needed it so badly. If they had any idea I'd been holding out this last two hundred, I'd be in for a very hard time from both of them. I told them I was broke, and they'd be mad at me for lying to them." "You father is going to move out to California, to try to find work?" "Yes. He knows people out there, from the Army, and they all told him that the companies they work for are hiring like crazy. He needs to get out there before the new jobs go to other people. No one else we know has two hundred to loan him. We're his only hope, and I'm not even sure he'd let you loan him the money. If he doesn't, you can give me back the two hundred and I'll have to keep looking for another way. I wouldn't even ask you to do this, not if I knew of any other way to do what he needs." It took me a lot of persuading, but I finally managed to convince Larry that this was too important to my whole family for him to not at least attempt to loan my father the money. Larry was a nice guy anyway, and might have come through for me, even without my having the two hundred to give him. He came from a nice family, and they all did more than their fair share to try to help people less fortunate than themselves. Convincing Larry to make my father the offer turned out to be the easy part. My parents were both proud and stubborn, and the idea of borrowing that much money from a fifteen year old boy, even knowing he could afford to make such a loan, was more than they could easily accept. If my father hadn't been so worried about having the family split up, and all us kids being taken in by our other relatives, I'm certain he wouldn't have accepted Larry's loan offer. As it was, my mother never did agree to doing it. My father went to the bank with Larry and borrowed the money before she even knew he'd finally agreed. She only found out about it when my father handed her eighty dollars and told her he'd write her from California, just as soon as he'd found some work. My mother blamed me, after my father had left, saying she'd never placed any faith in my father's crazy idea of moving all of us out to California. We had a lot of family nearby where we now lived, and, if we did end up all the way out in California, she didn't know what she'd do if she ran out of food and had no one to turn to for a small loan of some food to tide her over until her next money came in. Two and a half weeks after my father left, my mother got a letter, telling her that he was working at a very decent job, at a big oil refinery in Los Angeles. He was making almost a hundred dollars a week, including overtime, and would soon have enough saved up to get us our own place out there. He also promised to come back soon, but only for long enough to get our stuff packed up for the move out West. In the letter he'd sent a money order for fifty dollars, telling my mother that he'd send more to her in two weeks time. It ended up taking my father nine months to get everything done so we could move out to California. He had found us a three bedroom apartment in San Pedro, and we drove straight out to California in our borrowed moving van. My Uncle Gary drove out with us, driving the moving van that he'd be taking back to his friend who had loaned it to him. My father had driven back East in a '37 Ford sedan he was buying from an old Army buddy of his. The six of us rode in the Ford, while Uncle Gary drove the moving van. I had managed to repack the bundle of money in a box I'd gotten from the grocery store. It was labeled "Jim's toys and books", and I'd convinced my father to let me keep it in the car with us, just in case I ever got bored and wanted to do some reading to my brothers, to keep them from getting too antsy during the long journey. Nancy, my sister, sat up front between my parents. I did have six books actually packed on top of the money box, and ended up reading out loud for all six of us to pass the time during some of the most boring parts of the trip out West. When we settled into California, I started really believing that I had gotten away with taking that money. My father had been sending Larry forty dollars a month, to repay the money he'd borrowed. Larry would come over to the house, after cashing the money order, and would then hand the money back to me. Before we moved to California, for good, Larry had received all his loan money back from my father. I was sixteen in September of '54, a junior in high school, with thirty thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket. My parents were looking around for a house they could afford to buy. My father was getting all the overtime he could handle, and my parents were saving at least fifty dollars every two weeks. A nice tract house in our area was selling for between seven and ten thousand dollars. My parents were hoping to get a four bedroom house with at least two bathrooms. Even at ten thousand dollars, with his GI Bill, my father said he could easily afford the payments. ------- Chapter 2 I didn't much care for San Pedro. For that matter, except for the weather, I didn't much like anything about our new home. Californians seemed strange to me. I got in a fight my very first day in school there. It was silly, but they did things differently in California than we had done in Ohio. They called it "checking". This was when a bunch of guys would lean against the side of buildings, just watching as the girls strolled by. The guys would be free to make comments to their other male friends, and no one seemed to think anything of it, or to take any offense at what had been said. There were also designated smoking areas for students. This was something I'd never been exposed to before. In Ohio, we had to get off school property if we wanted to light up. I was in my sixth period English class, and this cute girl kept looking over and smiling at me. Since she was cute, I naturally smiled back at her. This went on for about half the class, and I didn't really think that much about it. After class, out in the hallway, some kid I didn't even know came up behind me and told me he wanted to see me in the boys room. "Go in the boy's restroom. We need to talk about something." Since I didn't know him at all, I had no reason to think he might be mad at me about anything. I hadn't done anything, not as far as I was aware of. He moved ahead of me and went into the restroom before I did. I noticed there were three or four boys following right behind me, but I just assumed they needed to go to the bathroom. Once I went through the door, the kid who'd told me to meet him in the boy's restroom moved back towards me and said: "Your mother is a whore." I couldn't believe I'd heard him right. I knew, looking at his face, that I'd never seen this kid before in my life. Here he was though, standing in front of me, telling me something like that. I punched him in the face, just as hard as I could, and when he went flying backwards, I moved after him, hitting him with four or five unanswered blows to his head. Two or three boys grabbed me from behind, pinning both my arms in the process. Just then, a male teacher walked in the boys room and everyone tried to scramble away from being blamed for doing anything wrong. The boy I'd hit turned to the sink behind him and started washing his hands. I went and stood next to him, turning on the water taps and started washing my hands too. I found out a few minutes after this, that what I'd done, hitting him so quickly, was considered dirty fighting. There was this complicated ritual that this boy and I were expected to observe. The boy had been in the process of "choosing me off". After he said that about my mother, I was supposed to say something similar back to him. When I did that, he'd have shoved me with his open palms, then it would have been okay for me to punch him. I hadn't known of this bizarre ritual, so I'd handled it the same way I would have done back in my old high school. The boy who explained all this to me was friends with the other boy, the one I'd been fighting. I explained to him that I was from Ohio, and hadn't known how things worked in San Pedro, since this was my first day at the high school. I told him we did things a lot differently back in Ohio. He told me the boy was angry at me because the girl I'd been smiling at in English class, the period before, was one he was interested in going out with. After I'd been told what was expected of me, the friend told me that I was supposed to meet the guy I'd had the fight with, after school, at a place he, the friend, would take me to, just as soon as school let out that day. I have to admit that I found this whole situation somewhat laughable. At the same time, I had a fairly clear idea that my future reputation at the school would be, in large part, determined by how I handled this matter. Normally, I wouldn't have blindly walked into any situation where I couldn't know what was going to be waiting for me. It just didn't make sense to do that. For all I knew, there might be a whole gang of them waiting to jump me as soon as I arrived where they were now telling me to go. "About how long is all this supposed to take? I'm asking because I need to meet my two younger brothers at their school and walk them home. They go to the junior high. Can we go pick them up first, then go back to where I'm supposed to meet this friend of yours?" "They're in junior high and they can't walk home by themselves?" "We just moved here a couple of days ago. My mother is the one who doesn't want them walking home alone yet." We agreed that he would accompany me over to the other school to pick up my two brothers. It turned out that it was really on the way to the open field where this next fight was going to be. I thought my brothers would enjoy being there to see me in yet another fight. Kevin and Willy, my brothers, both enjoyed a good scrap themselves. Kevin was fourteen years old, and Willy had just turned thirteen. If I ended up getting jumped by a bunch of this guy's friends, I wanted my brothers there to help me identify anyone who ganged up on me, for when I could go back later and extract some revenge on them. It turned out that I didn't get jumped. When we got to the field where this guy I'd fought and his friends were waiting, I could tell the guy wasn't happy to see me show up. He looked very worried. He didn't really know it yet, but he was right to be worried. He and I were about evenly matched, as far as height, age, and weight went. I seriously doubted that he'd had anything comparable to the training and experience I'd had from three years of participating in the Golden Gloves program. "Rod, Jim here is new in school. He didn't know how we do things here. That's the reason why he hit you, instead of doing what he should have." This was Daniel, the guy who'd explained things to me about what I should have done. "He sucker punched me, and that isn't right. Let's see how he does when I'm ready for him." "What's going to happen is the same thing that happened in that bathroom. You're going to end up getting your ass kicked. This whole thing is stupid anyway. You don't own that girl, not just because you like her. I wasn't the only one who was smiling, you know? Anyway, I need to get my brothers home, so if you really want to continue this, then let's go ahead and do it." With that, I went up on the balls of my feet and started moving casually to my left, both my hands up in a southpaw stance. I could see that Rod wasn't too sure he really did want to continue. I was ready to let him get himself out of it, even after what he'd said about my mother. It wasn't going to be me that asked him to forget it though. He was the one who went to all the trouble to get me to come out to this field to face him. I looked over at Kevin and noticed he was on the alert too, willing to try to jump in and help me, in case all of them tried to pile on. This fight didn't last any longer than the first one had. I hit him five or six quick pops to the head and then really let him have a stiff left hand, right to the soft bread basket. The body shot was what sent that final necessary bit of discouragement to him. He went down on one knee, raising both hands in an attempt to cover his face. I backed away from him, perfectly willing to let this be the end of it. I think the suddenness of what had just happened kind of froze all Rod's supporters in place. Before they could get all worked up, their buddy was staying down, taking a knee, and covering up to avoid further punishment. My brothers and I walked home, after no one else started any further trouble with me. I hoped that what had just happened would be enough to ensure that other kids wouldn't feel the need to try me out themselves. I asked both my brothers to keep quiet about the fight at home, but didn't really hold out much hope that they would. My father heard everything from Willy, not five minutes after he stepped in the door, after his shift at the refinery ended. "You want to tell me what you thought you were accomplishing by getting into a fist fight your first day in school, Jimbo?" I could see my father was upset, and knew it wouldn't take too much to push him over into a state of real anger. "Some guy I didn't even know, said something really bad about ma. I couldn't just walk away from him and let him get away with that." "What did he say?" "He called her a bad name, said she was a ... Said she did things with men for money." "He called your mother a whore?" "Yes sir." "Okay, let's eat. Tell me why he'd go and say something as stupid as that to you." At supper, I explained about this "choosing you off" thing, and explained that Rod was starting things off so I'd want to escalate things to a boiling point. After which, we'd eventually go ahead and fight each other. My father listened, and then laughed at people having such silly ideas. He had already told all of us that people from California had it too soft. His opinion was that they'd had everything handed to them in life, and didn't have any idea of what to do when things suddenly got hard for them. Most of them had no idea why anyone would travel two or even three thousand miles to get a decent paying job for themselves. My father understood hard times, both from the Great Depression, World War II, Korea, and coming home to an area just starting to come out of a severe economic turndown, one where people were losing their jobs all around the state. Later that evening, my father took the belt to Willy, telling him it was for trying to start trouble for me, for running to him and telling stories, without first telling what the real story was. My father had a strict code that he followed, and it was a code where people didn't go around trying to cause problems for others. He decided that Willy had been trying to cause trouble between my father and me. I'd have given Willy the benefit of the doubt, if it had been left up to me, but I wasn't that upset to see Willy getting a lesson directly from my father either. The next day in English class, while the teacher was taking the roll, I paid attention to the name that girl who'd smiled at me the day before had answered to. Her name was Cheryl Fleischer. After class, I waited for her, just outside the classroom door, and introduced myself to her. "Hi, Cheryl, my name is Jim Flanagan. I was wondering if it would be okay if I walked you over to your next class?" Instead of answering me, she just smiled at me and started walking down the hallway. I fell into step with her and started walking abreast with her. She hadn't said whether I could or not, so I took that as a positive signal from her. "Where are you moving here from, Jim?" "Ohio, south of Cleveland." "How far is that from Cincinnati?" "Clear across the state. Probably two hundred miles and more. Are you from Cincinnati?" "No, but an uncle of mine lived there once. We visited him and my aunt a few summers ago, before they moved down to Florida. I heard you and Rod got into an argument yesterday?" "He wasn't happy that I was looking at you in class yesterday. I think he'll be okay with it now though." Cheryl laughed. "Daniel mentioned that to me at dinner yesterday." "You had dinner with Daniel?" I wondered why Daniel hadn't mentioned his interest in Cheryl to me the afternoon before. It might have changed a lot of things if he had. I figured if he was dating her already, I was barking up the wrong tree by going after her myself. "We live together, so eating with him is an everyday occurrence." "You live with him? Your parents aren't upset by that?" "He's my twin brother. He didn't tell you that, yesterday?" "No, he never said anything like that. You guys sure don't look much alike. I'd have never guessed." "Thank you, I think?" She stopped then, pointing to a door on her right, telling me that this was her next class. "Where are you for last period, Jim?" "Tuesdays and Thursdays I have study period in the library. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have machine shop." "You aren't taking an academic prep schedule then?" "No. I'll probably try to apprentice somewhere after high school. I'm pretty good working with my hands, but I can't really see college being in my future. My grades are decent, but I don't have much interest in college level subjects. I want to learn a decent trade, something with a steady future." "Do your parents go along with this?" "Why not? Not everyone is cut out to be an executive or some big shot. Nothing wrong with doing honest work with your hands. I can't see myself sitting in a stuffy office, day after day." "All well and good for you to say that now, but what happens when you're stuck in a rut, doing that same job with your hands, while someone with a degree is at a job paying five times as much as you're making?" "If working in an office makes him happy, then I say good for him. I'm probably going to be a plumber or an electrician, and that's plenty good enough for me. Where I come from, honest work is encouraged. You can usually trust someone who has to go out and do some real work to earn his money. In my family, we pretty much look down on, and don't really trust people who make their money by just using their brains or their mouths. People always need plumbers and electricians." "I better go in now, before the last bell rings. Thank you for walking me to class, Jim." I hurried over to the library, but I was still a few minutes late getting there. The study hall monitor gave me a break, because I was a new student at the school. I went over to the study hall part of the library and took the first empty chair I could find. I was there for a few minutes before I looked over to my immediate left and noticed Rod sitting there. I nodded at him, acknowledging that I recognized him. I could see, from the swelling around his eyes, that he didn't know anything about taking care of fighting injuries. After my last class, I hurried over to the junior high, to meet my brothers. Both of them could walk home by themselves now, but my mother wanted me to walk with them for the first week at least, just to make sure they could find their way back home okay. My father had a compulsory day off work at the refinery, something about them needing to shut down to do some work on a new changeover they were putting in. He ended up taking my mother over to a town called Garden Grove, to look at some new housing tracts being built. The land out that way was quite a bit cheaper than the land closer in to Los Angeles, and both my parents were getting anxious about buying a house for us. Because of my father's GI Bill eligibility, my father claimed we could get into a new house for no money down, and have payments even less than the current rent on the apartment we were now living in. My mother wanted to talk to some home salesmen, and to see and hear all this for herself. It wasn't that she didn't believe my father, because she did. It was just that she wanted to see some of these houses he was describing, so she could have a better picture in her own mind about the size of everything he'd been describing to her. My father kept talking about these fifteen hundred square feet houses being put up in a matter of weeks by all these different builders. She wanted to see how that much area was being divided up. To my mother, different rooms in a house had more or less importance than others. She wanted a very large kitchen and living room, but wasn't as concerned about the size of each bedroom. Four small bedrooms would be preferable to three nice sized ones. Five bedrooms would be even better, even if it meant having a smaller living room, and only one bathroom, instead of the two or more my father said we needed. I kept hearing the figure ten thousand dollars being bandied around, by both my parents. Apparently, that was the upper range of what they felt they might be able to afford paying. When my parents got home that night, I saw how excited my mother now was. Apparently, my father had shown her a few houses that had fully satisfied all the criteria she might have had. Where before, she had always talked about them owning their own home as more of a wish, or even an unobtainable dream, now she was starting to believe they might actually be able to manage buying one. My parents had settled on a four bedroom, two bath, home, with a two car attached garage. The house was going to be built on a corner lot. Nancy and I would get our own private bedrooms, and Kevin and Willy would share another. The biggest obstacle was saving up enough money to pay all the buying costs, and to handle other expenses, like landscaping and fencing. The house itself was selling for eleven thousand dollars too, a thousand more than the absolute limit they'd had in their heads when they'd left home that morning. A secondary obstacle was my mother's having seen a much bigger model home from that same builder. This one had five bedrooms, three of them good sized ones, two and a half baths, with a larger living room and kitchen, and an attached two car garage. The problem with that home was the price tag, fourteen thousand five hundred dollars. This was a figure that both parents realized was beyond their reach. The extra thirty five hundred dollars over the other home they'd agreed they both wanted, was a wide chasm neither would dare to attempt to try to bridge. It seemed sad to me, listening to my mother extolling all the extra space and amenities that this much too expensive house would have afforded the six of us. Thirty five hundred dollars, but it may as well have been a million dollars, for all the chance they'd have to ever afford a house in that price range. This big house was half again as large as the one they were now close to committing to buying. I sat there, listening, thinking about ways I might make my mother's dream house become a reality. Even though I felt confident no one could ever trace that found money back to me, I knew I couldn't ever reveal that I had it to either of my parents. I knew my mother though, and I knew it would always bother her having to settle for less than the house she truly wanted. She'd love any house they bought, because owning her own home had always been a dream to her. Only my father's great new job here in California was turning her dream into a potential reality. Neither parent was what anyone would call risk tolerant, although my father was certainly more willing to take risks than my mother. It had been an uphill battle for him to be able to convince my mother that they were close to being able to afford to buy a house. As I listened to my parents discussing all the houses they'd looked at, I discovered that they were planning to actually buy a house as soon as they had another three hundred dollars saved up. My father wanted to buy right away, knowing it would be several more months before the builder, who had a waiting list, would actually build their home on the lot they'd picked out. As usual, my mother's fears held my father's enthusiasm in check. He settled for her promise to be ready to buy when they had that additional three hundred saved. I had about two to three months, depending on how much overtime my father could get at work, to come up with an idea to help them buy the house my mother had really fallen in love with. My mother was very used to doing without, having grown up in a poor family, gone through the entire Great Depression as first a youngster, and later, as a young adult. She claimed that her family had survived the depression better than most, because it wasn't anything new or unusual for them to all be broke, scrambling around just to get enough food to survive on. My father's family had been better off, but not by that much. They had both learned self discipline, and each possessed an iron will and the inner capacity to keep fighting in the face of adversity. My mother had gone through three miscarriage's, before I'd finally been born. Many women would have given up, but not her. After I was born okay, they went ahead and had three more children before the War started, and might have had more if my father hadn't joined the Army. With four young kids, my father could have stayed home and improved his job status. Instead, he and my Uncle Gary drove into Cleveland, right after the attack on Pearl Harbor and enlisted. Both my parents were typical for the times and conditions in the area where I'd grown up. Hard working people who understood that there were times when they had to put the greater good of the country ahead of their own, personal, interests. My father and my uncle didn't get out of the Army until later, in 1946, and by then, the earlier returnee's from the War had already filled all the best jobs available. My father had worked his way up to a decent job before getting called up from the Army reserves to go off to Korea. A year after he went off to fight in Korea, his company went under, and there went the job he'd been guaranteed would be there, after he returned from serving his country once again. I was only a kid, but I believed both my parents deserved to get something they really wanted, just for once in their lives. This house my mother was so impressed with, even while admitting it was beyond their reach, would qualify in that regard. I had the money to go out and buy it, but knew they'd never take it, not without first knowing everything about where it had come from. I would have to come up with some type of subterfuge, something similar to what I'd done with Larry, getting him to pretend to loan my father the money to go to California. I didn't have that much time, and it had to be something they wouldn't be able to be suspicious of. ------- Chapter 3 By the end of that first week, I already had an idea percolating in my brain. There had been a story in the newspaper about a young boy, from somewhere back East, who had found an old nickel in some change he had. The nickel turned out to be very rare, and he had ended up selling it to a coin shop dealer, for five hundred dollars. What I needed to do was find another rare coin, but one that was worth at least three or four thousand dollars. San Pedro was a fishing port more than a shipping one. On average, the residents were working class people, with a lot of immigrants from Eastern Europe. There were some families who were financially well off, but, for most of the kids attending my school, the concept of needing to work hard just to live half way decently was well known. Those new to the U.S. seemed more appreciative than those native born. I was surprised at how few of the people I was meeting were originally from California. Even Cheryl and her family had originally been from New Jersey, although they'd moved to California when Cheryl and Daniel had only been five years old. Once I no longer had to see that my brothers got home safely from school, I started walking Cheryl home each school day afternoon. Both her parents worked, and Daniel had a girl friend of his own, who he walked home to her house every day. Cheryl liked kissing, and the two of us usually spent at least a half hour alone in her back yard, sheltered by a wooden fence and tall bushes from any curious eyes. Kissing was all that Cheryl would allow, although she didn't mind sitting on my lap, facing away from me, while I kissed her neck. She had to be feeling my hard on when she sat on me, but having my boner pressing against her ass didn't appear to be any problem for her. I'd made numerous attempts to get my hands inside her winter coat, but had been thwarted every time. If I pressed her too hard, she'd end our kissing sessions early, so I mostly limited myself to a few attempts each afternoon, backing off whenever she grabbed my wrist and stopped me. She was really a great kisser, easily the best kisser I'd ever been with, and she taught me a lot about how to kiss a girl. Cheryl was very sensitive to kisses on her neck, and anywhere on or near her ears. One day I sat her down on my lap and just started in kissing her neck and ears, staying mostly away from her mouth for the first fifteen minutes. When we did get around to some tongue and mouth kissing, I noticed that Cheryl seemed more responsive than usual, and that her breath and lips felt quite a bit warmer than they usually did. I hadn't made any attempt to cop a feel of her boobs. Cheryl was cute, but definitely on the slender side, with small breasts and narrow hips. She had curly light brown hair, which she wore short, and these enormous brown eyes. She was darker skinned than her twin brother. Daniel had lighter hair color too, and was my height, around five ten or so. Cheryl claimed to be five foot five, but I knew she was exaggerating, by at least an inch or two. In my experience, girls and women are a perverse lot. In the past, when I'd tried so many times to get my hands on her breasts, Cheryl had always prevented me from doing so. This one time when I was content not trying to feel her up, she took my hand in both of hers, and carefully placed it inside her coat, right over her left breast. I'd gotten this far with several girls, back in Ohio, but this was as far as I'd ever gotten before. I went back to concentrating on her neck and ears, gently moving my hand, exploring her small breast as I did so. I'm not sure when I first became aware of Cheryl squirming around in my lap. At first, I thought my dick must be poking her ass uncomfortably, assuming she was trying to find a different position where she could escape it doing that to her. I got embarrassed, hoping she wasn't going to tell me I needed to let her go inside and that I needed to leave. When she raised up a little from my lap, that was what I expected her to do. Instead, she gathered up her dress and sat right back down on my lap again, straddling exactly the place where my dick had been poking her. I went right back to kissing and licking on her ears and neck, and she kept making these tiny movements back and forth against the lump in my pants. This went on for a good thirty minutes after she'd first raised herself up and adjusted her dress. It was the longest make out session I'd ever been involved with. When she did finally stand up to tell me it was time to go, her eyes dropped down to my lap and she gave a big groan. I looked down there too, after she groaned, and saw that there was a big wet spot, about a five inch circle, around the head of my dick. I knew I hadn't cum, and that there was no way all of that wet stain had come from me. If it wasn't from me, then it had to be from her. I knew that girl's pussies got wet when they got hot, because I'd heard other guys mentioning that. From the stricken look on Cheryl's face, I was positive that she knew where that wetness had come from. "I'm so sorry, Jim. I didn't know. That's so embarrassing. I know what you must be thinking." I could see she was really becoming upset. I didn't want that. This time together had been very exciting for me, and I certainly didn't want anything spoiling the chances of our repeating it soon. "Cheryl, don't worry about that. Sweating is something that happens when your body heats up. I'm sweating under my arms quite a lot too. It will dry out before I'm halfway home." I could see I wasn't fooling her by what I said, but I'd given her a way out of what she was mostly worried about. It was easier for her to pretend I was stupid, and that I didn't know that it was her pussy that had leaked juices all over my leg. She knew what had really happened while she'd been rubbing her panties against the head of my dick as she'd kept it trapped between her clenching and unclenching thighs. As long as her thinking me stupid meant she might continue making out with me, I was totally in favor of that. "Still, it is late, and I need to get inside and start on all my homework. I'll see you in school tomorrow." She turned away from me and went over to her back door and opened it up. She didn't even look back or give me her usual goodbye wave. As soon as I got home, I changed out of my school clothes and took my pants into the bathroom and washed that wet spot with hot water and soap. Of course, before I began to wash it, I'd put the wet area close to my nose and sniffed at it. It definitely wasn't sweat, but I'd needed to make sure anyway. I usually waited to take my shower until after the younger kids were in bed, because it was more private that way, and people weren't as likely to come into the bathroom needing to use the toilet then. This time I decided I couldn't wait that long. No one came in to disturb me, and it didn't take me long to finish what I needed to do in any case. ------- My plan for coming up with a single rare coin, and a plausible story for how I might have acquired it, wasn't proceeding as smoothly as I'd first hoped. For one thing, I'd learned that whatever I could buy in a coin shop, for four thousand dollars, couldn't be turned around and sold back to them for anything close to what I'd originally paid. I had a dealer I'd gone to tell me that he would only buy things back for half of what he sold them to me for. That was extremely discouraging. I was close to giving up on the whole idea, right before I noticed a small advertisement in the want ads, under coins and collectibles for sale. Someone wanted to sell some Carson City minted silver dollars. What first caught my eye was a phrase the person selling these coins had highlighted in bold typeface: WELL BELOW DEALER PRICES. I called the number listed with the ad and found out the seller lived about ten miles away from my house. From his voice, I could tell he was an old man. He could apparently tell, from my own voice, that I was a younger person. He agreed to meet me at his bank to show me his coins though, after I first told him that I had several thousand dollars I wanted to invest in collector coins. His bank was even further away from my house than the city where he lived. It was in downtown Los Angeles, thirty miles from where I was living. I'd need to take a bus to and from there. What would be worse, was my having to ditch a day of school in order to go see what the man was interested in selling. If the whole thing hadn't been so important to my family, at least in my mind, I'd have just given up on my idea right then. The Sunday before, my mother had talked my father into taking all of us to look at the models already built by the builder in Garden Grove. We spent only half an hour looking at the model with the floor plan my parents were set on buying, then another forty five minutes in the five bedroom house. I could see how excited my mother was as she showed all us kids how much bigger and roomier this house was. It made the first house we looked at seem small and cramped. I could see my father was getting angry with my mother for getting everybody worked up and excited over something we'd never be able to afford. In some ways, my father was much more practical than my mother. He didn't allow himself to set his sights on goals he knew he'd never achieve. "You know, "Kitten", all you're accomplishing with this, is to make all the rest of us dissatisfied with getting a house we might actually be able to afford. If I thought for one second that we could swing the payments for this one here, don't you think I'd want to get it for you? I've had enough of some people thinking I don't amount to much, I don't need any more of that from my own family. Let's go, it's getting late, and we still have to get home and see about getting some supper." "Kitten" was my father's pet name for my mother. Her real name was Christina, but most people called her Chrissy. After my father said what he had, I could see my mother starting to regret what she'd done by bringing all of us to see the "Super house" too. That's what she had started calling it too, the "Super house". She called the other one, the one they were actually expecting to buy, the house. My father was already working all the overtime he could get, even volunteering to work double shifts, if there were any openings. This extra money is what was making it possible for us to even consider owning rather than renting. We had gotten all my parent's debts paid off, from before, and they had managed to save over seven hundred dollars extra, since he'd gotten his new job. My father was quiet during the whole ride back to San Pedro. My mother tried, several times, to lighten his mood, telling him she was thrilled to have the home we could afford. She tried getting my father to believe she had just wanted us kids to see that other home so we'd know how important it was to do well in school, get a good job afterwards, and then save up your money, to eventually buy the nicest home we could afford. My father wasn't buying it. Anyone who knew my mother at all would know what she'd really been hoping to accomplish. My father knew he could probably afford the payments on the "Super home", for as long as his current overtime hours held up. He also knew that the company was still hiring, wanting to get to a place where they had enough workers to eliminate the more expensive overtime payments. He had said several times that we could make our house payment on the house they were buying, because he wouldn't need any overtime to do it. He had done too good of a selling job on my mother, convincing her that our house payment would be less than our current rent. With taxes, utilities and insurance added in though, that hadn't actually been true before, even back when they had a maximum ceiling of ten thousand dollars as a purchase price figure. My mother wasn't used to thinking in terms of large numbers. She probably figured, if an extra thousand dollars hadn't made too much of a difference, why not an extra forty five hundred? I sat in the back seat with my two brothers, knowing I had plenty of money to solve this whole problem. I also knew, instinctively, that it was very important that my father be the one who provided our family with a home, no matter what size that home eventually turned out being. Anything else would rob him of the sense of accomplishment he deserved for the sacrifice he was already making, to work all those extra hours, hoping to be able to provide this new home for all of us. On the next Wednesday, I cut my classes for the day and took the bus to Los Angeles. I left the house earlier than usual, telling my mother that I wanted to get to school early and work on a project for my science class. I had five thousand dollars in my black lunch pail, all the fifties and hundreds, with the rest in twenties. I had written the address and direction for Mr. Carpenter's bank on a separate sheet of paper. I walked from the bus terminal to the bank in about fifteen minutes, leaving me over an hour and a half to wait for my appointment with him. "Mr. Flanagan? I'm Martin Carpenter. I hope you haven't had to wait for too long?" The man who had just approached me was pretty old. I'd have guessed his age as being anywhere from seventy five to ninety. He was tall, taller than me at least, and very thin. His hair, what there was left of it, was pure white. His face was very red, with lots of broken blood vessels on his nose and on his cheeks. Inside the bank Mr. Carpenter had to produce his identification, sign his name in two books before they led us back to where the safety deposit boxes were. We went into this tiny room with only two chairs and a table and waited until the bank guard returned with a metal box about two feet long, six inches wide, and about four inches tall. He placed the box on the table and told Mr. Carpenter to ring the buzzer by the door when he was finished with his security box. In all, there were thirty five coins loose coins in that box. Each one was kept in these little hand sewn felt pouches. Mr. Carpenter would open the top of these pouches and slide the coin up for us to take a look at it. At no point did he let his fingers make contact with the coins. Some of the coins were from the same year. Usually, there were no more than two of the same year. All had been minted in Carson City, from 1870 to 1890. Some were different designs. Mr. Carpenter said one design was for Trade Dollars, and the other was for Morgan Dollars. "My late wife's father was a guard at the mint in Carson City. He retired in 1890, and moved out here to California. These coins were presents he gave to his children. My wife made up all these little pouches to put the coins in. At one time, we owned sixty coins like these, but, when Bessie took sick, I needed to raise some money to help pay her medical bills. This is what I have left. After she passed, I promised myself I wouldn't ever do another dollar's worth of business with those coin dealers. What I have left, it books out for more than twelve thousand dollars. The fewer of each that were minted in those years, the more each coin of that year is worth. If I took all these coins to a dealer, I'd be fortunate to get somewhere between four and five thousand for the whole thing. They stick together too, those coin people. They have books they all keep where they've talked back and forth and set the prices they'll all offer people for their coins. Over the telephone, you told me you have some money to spend on coins. Now that I've shown you what I have, you need to show me proof that you have what you said too." I opened the lunch pail and started taking out all the money inside. Before I got too much of it out on the table, Mr. Carpenter told me he'd already seen enough to satisfy him. "How much were you planning on selling these coins for? Also, can you tell me why you've decided to sell them now?" "How much? As much as I can get, naturally. As to why, let's just say I'm getting too old to be traipsing all the way over here just to take a look at them. We had no children, I guess the good Lord wasn't willing to bestow that added happiness on us, not after giving us to each other like he did. I'm probably going to be needing help taking care of myself one of these days, although I like to think it won't be for some time yet. When you get past eighty though, you can't ever be certain when your time will come. I'll tell you this much though, I do like the idea of having this small collection go to someone younger, someone with so much time to keep this collection together. Bessie was a young girl, lots younger than you are, when her father helped her get started collecting by gifting her and her brothers and sisters with these coins. Whenever she got the chance, Bessie would buy their coins, but only when they were determined to sell them to someone anyways. With her, it was never about how much they might be worth. It was the sentiment of them having come from her old man." "I might sell them myself. I want to start collecting, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't sell them at a profit if I get a chance to." "Of course it doesn't. I'm here right now, trying to interest you in buying them. What I meant, was I feel better selling them to a young person, like yourself, than to some coin dealer out to get my coins just as cheaply as he can. I've got nothing against any man making a fair profit, but paying me four hundred for something, then turning around the next day and advertising it for sale at thirteen hundred, that's a lot more than a fair profit. I don't want to do business with people who think that is what's fair. How much are you carrying in that lunch bucket of yours?" "Five thousand dollars." "A lot of money for someone so young. I won't ask you how you might have come by so much, because that's not any of my concern. What I will ask you is how much of that five thousand you'd be willing to part with for these coins of mine?" "From what you told me, all of it." "Young man, an answer like that one troubles me. How do you know I haven't been lying to you? Maybe all these coins together aren't worth five hundred dollars. How much do you even know about coin prices?" "I went to some coin dealers too. What they had to show me didn't look as nice as what you've shown me here." "It isn't just about nice, its about how rare something is, as well as how nice it looks. These thirty five coins are all completely uncirculated. My wife's father had people who worked at the mint keeping an eye out for particularly well struck examples of the coins being minted. That coin I sold to that dealer for four hundred? The book on it, in the highest state they rate, was only eight hundred dollars. In his advertisement, he called it the best example of any dollar minted that year that he'd ever come across, or even heard about. He didn't talk like that when he was offering to buy the coin for four hundred though." "How much do you want for them then?" He laughed when I asked him that. "All of it, just like you said. I won't feel a bit guilty taking all your money like this either. You hold on to these coins, son, and if you do, by the time you get to be my age, they'll probably be worth a million dollars. If you do sell them, you better make it a point to not look up what these coins are worth later on. You'll hate yourself for selling them, and that much I promise you. Do you still want to buy them?" "Yes sir." I started pulling out my money and counting it out on the table in front of him. Four stacks of twenties to make a thousand, another four stacks of them to make the next thousand. Fourteen fifties and three hundreds to make the third thousand. Ten hundreds for the fourth thousand, then seven more hundreds and fifteen more twenties to make up the last thousand. I motioned for him to take the money and count it himself. He picked the money up and put it back in my lunch pail. "I'll keep the lunch bucket too, if that's all right with you?" I nodded that it was, and he smiled. He reached into the box and took out a beautiful carved wooden box, opening it, so I could see inside. There were five rows of five coins to a row. "Each of these is an 1870 Carson City minted dollar. My late father in law was presented with this box and these coins after foiling an attempted robbery of a mint wagon being taken over to the rail station. It was his favorite possession while he lived, and my wife's own favorite when he willed it to her, after his passing some forty years ago. Each of these coins is a perfect proof coin, made at the mint to commemorate the first coins struck at the mint. Supposedly, only one hundred proofs were struck that day. Underneath this holder is a personally written and signed letter from President Grant, thanking my father in law for risking his life to protect American property. My father in law served in the Army, under Grant, during the Civil War. To his way of thinking, there were no men greater than Grant, and that letter meant far more to him than this box and all its contents that he'd been given that day." "Wow! I couldn't even begin to guess how much all this must be worth." "I guess you could say its worth one black tin lunch bucket, because that's exactly what I'm trading you for your bucket." He reached inside the metal strong box and pulled out what looked like a plain white pillow case, first putting the wooden box inside it, then carefully placing each of the felt pouches inside there as well. The whole time he was busy doing this, I was trying to tell him about my not being able to accept such generosity from him. "Mr. Flanagan, our transaction has been concluded. I have what I came here for, and you have what you came for. I'm going to buzz for the bank guard now, and the two of us are going to walk on out of this bank and go our own separate ways. I came here hoping to find someone I could give that box to, and I found you. I'm leaving here feeling just fine about what we've done. I've found a new home for just about the last thing on this earth I really gave a damn about. I can go now, without having anything important left to be concerned about. It is a large relief to me to be able to finally say that." A few seconds later and the same guard appeared at the door and collected Mr. Carpenter's box and key. We both got up and left the room, only waiting until the guard returned, handed Mr. Carpenter his box key and escorted us up the stairs and out of the security box vault. We shook hands outside the bank, and I thanked him for his generosity and kindness. I watched him leave, walking to the end of the bank and disappearing from my view. A minute or less later, I saw him driving a black late model sedan away. I made my way back to the bus station and waited for the next bus heading to San Pedro. I was much more nervous carrying that pillowcase than I'd been carrying the lunch pail with all that cash in it. It had been my plan to let my father find the coin or coins somewhere in our apartment. After I bought those coins, my plans suddenly got changed. The truth of the matter was, I didn't want to part with any of them. I knew something could easily go wrong with my earlier plan anyway, and my father might be silly enough to report finding the coins to the police. He did strange things like that, and I knew he might decide reporting the found coins was the correct thing for him to do. I got an envelope from a stationary store and put five thousand dollars inside. This was two hundred and fifty twenty dollar bills, wrapped in five rolls of fifty, with thick rubber bands that I'd also purchased. I took the envelope into my parent's bedroom and put it underneath the pillow on the side my father always slept on. I expected that they wouldn't find the money until they went to bed, later that night. I had hoped they would find the money, talk it over between themselves, then do the smart thing and use it to buy the "Super house" my mom really wanted. I'd hoped for that, but, to be honest, I never really expected them to do that. "Jimbo, come back here to our bedroom, now!" ------- Chapter 4 It was only six thirty, way too early for either of them to be going to bed yet. I hadn't expected to have to deal with any of this so soon. I went into their bedroom, noticing right away the opened envelope, and the five rolls of money sitting in the center of their bed. It looked like they hadn't even bothered to count the money. "Would you care to explain any of this?" My father looked menacing as he pointed his finger accusingly at his bed. For some reason, one I'm sure I'd never understand, he had gotten angry about being given so much money. "Explain what?" The words were barely out of my mouth before he came at me and threw me down on the bed. My mother screamed something about him promising her that we'd only be talking. "I know what I said, Kitten, but that was before I found out he was just going to lie, right to my face like this." For some reason, what he was saying now made me angry. In the past, I'd always tried to bend to my father's will. He was my father, and I loved and respected him. Many times I'd have done things differently than he did, but, he was my father, and the head of our family. The money was meant to help my family, to help him to provide for all of us. I might have been able to understand part of this, but not how angry he was about this money. "What did you think, Jimbo, that you were going to become the house fairy? I looked the other way about that forty two dollars, and I even pretended to believe that two hundred your friend Larry suddenly decided to lend me, so I could travel out here and snag this job, was actually from him, and not from you. I can't pretend any longer though, so what the hell is this?" "I'm hearing a lot of complaining, dad, but I'm not sure what it is you're so mad about? What makes you think I know any more about this money than you do?" I barely had a chance to cover up at all before his suddenly launched body landed on top of me, breaking at least one of the bed boards holding up the mattress and frame beneath us. I felt his fist landing a punch on the side of my head, just above my right ear. The punch hurt my head some, but I knew it had to have hurt his fist even more. I moved myself quickly out from under him and pushed him away from me as I tried to get up off the bed. At that point, all I wanted to do was get away from him. I guess I thought he'd cool off and become calmer in time, then the two of us could figure out what to do from there. This was one reaction I hadn't fully anticipated from him. He got up from the bed quicker than I thought he could manage to do, and hit me a hard blow to the back of my head. I knew he could have either killed me or paralyzed me if his fist had struck me even two inches lower, somewhere down on my neck. I was already upset, hurt, scared, and angry, even before that second punch. As soon as it landed, I turned and set my feet, balancing myself in order to strike back at him. I didn't even think about what I was doing, I just acted automatically. I'm not sure how many times I hit him, only that my mother's screaming and crying, as well as her yelling for us to stop, finally started getting through to me. My father was still on his feet, but that was about all he could manage doing. I'm not sure he even knew where he was after the barrage I'd just finished landing. Looking at his face, I was certain I'd hurt him badly. His eyes couldn't seem to focus. His reaction to finding the money had surprised me. My own reaction to his hitting me had surprised all of us. I noticed both my brothers and Nancy standing near the open doorway. Their expressions were ones of complete disbelief. For anyone to raise a hand to our father, that was something that had been absolutely unthinkable, before it had actually happened. I pushed my way past the three of them, went into my bedroom, grabbed my coat, then left the apartment. As I walked, I tried to think about whether there was any way to undo what I'd done. I sure couldn't see any, but then, I couldn't have imagined the situation turning out like it had in the first place. I had the money and the coins safely stored in a place I knew my parents would never be able to find. I had only found it myself by a complete series of accidental occurrences. Outside our apartment, under the eaves of the roof, there was a one foot high, two feet wide, by three feet deep, depression. I had no idea why someone would have wanted to put it there, or what purpose it could have served being there. I only found it when trying to find out where a squirrel was hiding. I'd noticed him climbing over on a limb that came out to within a foot or so of our apartment. Someone had cut off that branch some years before, and now the tree had grown to where it was right at roof level. My mother sent me out to try to find out what the noise was up on the roof. The first time I went out and saw two squirrels playing on the roof. I came in to report what I'd seen, and my mother seemed okay with just knowing what was causing those sounds. After a week of this, she'd had enough, and sent me out again, telling me to find a way to get rid of those damned squirrels. My mother didn't cuss much, so her telling me that let me know she was serious. I had my dad's ladder and was getting ready to cut off the branch the squirrels had been using, but then I slipped, and fell off of the rung I'd had my foot balanced on. As I fell, I just happened to look up and notice that one of the nails in the grey siding tiles had come out, and the tile was now hanging loose on one side, up just under the eaves. Unhurt from my fall, I went back up the ladder and cut off the offending branch. Done with that chore, I moved the ladder over to see what needed to be done to repair the slipping tile. That was when I discovered my little hiding spot. I bought two old Army blankets from a military surplus store by our apartment. The first thing I did was to carefully re wrap, then tape all the money I had left into three bundles, using some butcher's paper I'd gotten at that same store. After that was done, I used one of the blankets to wrap the pillow case with the box and other coins, to protect it from the temperature, or from any outside moisture, and put it in the back of the hole. I put the money bundles in the other blanket and wedged it into the opening as far back as I could manage. After doing this, I got a new nail and reset the loose tile. When I was finished, you couldn't see any difference between it and the other side wall tiles. I wasn't worried about anyone finding my hiding place, not unless they tore the apartment completely down. I had almost twelve hundred dollars, money I'd grabbed on my way out of the apartment, the rest of the money from the bundle I'd opened when I first went to get the five thousand dollars for my parents earlier that day. I walked over to an all night diner and ordered myself a banana split. This was my favorite dessert, but one I'd seldom been able to indulge in. With my mind in so much turmoil, it was difficult to get much enjoyment from the purchase. I was still sitting in the diner, three hours later, when my father walked in the door. I didn't notice him until he slid in next to me in the booth I was sitting in. His weight made me scoot over as my butt slid on the slick seat cushion. "Maybe we can finish our earlier conversation now, Jimbo. Tell me again where that money came from?" I noticed that he was much calmer, and that his right eye was partially closed up from one of my punches. I felt bad about that, the eye, not him being calmer than before. "I found it in the woods, in a satchel under a dead guy. I took the money, more than thirty thousand dollars, and replaced the satchel back to where I'd originally found it. A week later, some other kids found the body too, and they must have called the police. It was in the papers. The guy had been in a big shoot out, and five other people besides him had ended up dead. He must have lived long enough to make it over to the woods before he died. He had the money, but he was dead, so I decided to take it from him." "You stole the money then?" "Call it that if you want to. He was dead when I found him. The paper said the dead men were all criminals." "You didn't know this when you took the money though, did you? Where's the rest of that money? You said it was thirty thousand dollars?" "I have most of it left. I haven't spent too much of it on myself, except for some old coins I bought a little while back. There is almost twenty thousand left." "Five you put in that envelope, so that leaves another five thousand missing. You said you bought some old coins, did you mean five thousand dollars worth?" "There was this old man who wanted to sell his collection, but didn't want to let any coin dealers take advantage of him on the prices they'd pay. He put an ad in the paper, and I called him. I liked what he was selling, so we made a deal and I paid him the five thousand. Don't worry, those coins are worth a lot more than I paid him for them." "I'm not worried about how much the coins are worth. I am worried about how a son of mine could just go around taking other people's property, and doing it without having a care in the world about whether or not doing so was plain wrong. You're a thief, Jimbo. No other way of even looking at it, either. You took something that didn't belong to you. Something you had absolutely no right to have." "I can live with that. If you can't, then give me my money back, and I'll just leave. After tonight, that might be the best thing for all of us. I'm sorry I hit you, but you hit me first. I'm too old to still be getting whacked for stuff." "If it was left up only to me, that's exactly what I'd do. I'd give you your stolen money back and tell you good riddance. I've no use for a thief, and that's what you've turned into. The problem with doing it that way is with me trying to talk your mother into letting me get that money back from her. I told her you'd probably gone ahead and stolen that money from somewhere, but she said it didn't matter that much to her where the money came from. She said she was going to use it to buy that "Super house" she's been carrying on about. That puts me in a damned uncomfortable position, Jimbo. Now you've gone ahead and made our whole family into a bunch of thieves." "I say I found that money, and that's what any sane person would say." "Now I'm crazy, Jimbo?" "Not crazy, but you seem bent on putting the worst possible interpretation on what my finding that money actually was. You always do that, and that was why I had to do all these other things the way I did them. You think, because a dead man was lying on top of that money, that it makes it his. I think he lost clear ownership when he died without hiding it. I found that money, and I have just as much right to have it as some dead crook who probably did steal it from somewhere. I'm going to use and enjoy that money, and you're going to keep on insisting that I shouldn't. You can have your own opinion about if what I did is right or wrong, but I'm not going to allow you to decide what I have to do with it. If that means me going someplace else to live, then I can live with that." "That might be for the best. I can't force your mother to give that money back to you, but maybe it would be a good thing if she always knew that her keeping it had cost her a son. There has to be a price paid for using stolen money." "You might want to consider another possibility too, Dad. She might keep the money, then still decide that it was only your stubbornness that kept me from coming home. In the end, that might end up costing you both your marriage. I'll bet she was the one who sent you out here looking for me, am I right?" I knew I'd been right about her sending him out. That was how my mother did things. She decided what she wanted, and then she kept after people until they finally gave it to her. "If I ever took my fists to my own father, do you have any idea what would have happened to me, afterwards?" "I guess that would have depended on how old each of you were. If you were eleven or twelve, he'd have knocked you down a few times and that would have been the end of it. If you were twenty years old, it probably would have been a pretty good fight, and you two might have gotten along a lot better afterwards. Five years ago, right before he died, one punch from you would have probably killed him, and you'd have gone to jail after." "You think its all right to go around beating up your father?" "As long as you don't do it before he punches you in the head, yes. I let that first one go, but you could have really hurt me with that second one. A little lower, and you could have killed me. The neck isn't built to take the same kind of punishment the head is." "You shouldn't have lied to me, or refused to tell me what I was asking you." "You should have been smart enough not to ask me. I remember you once telling me about how it would be foolish for you to look a lucky gift horse in the mouth. I thought you'd still feel that way. I guess its only okay when the money is for something you want or need. When it is something for mom, then I guess all the horses have to be looked at more closely. The two hundred was no different than the five thousand is. You needed that money to come out here and find some steady work. Ma needed her money to get the house she'll always feel great about." "You stole that money." "If I did, and I still maintain that I found it, then you owe your good job to that stolen money. You wouldn't even be thinking about having your own house if it hadn't been for you getting that money from me. Ma has had it rough for most of your marriage. She lost her early babies, then was left by herself for almost six years, trying to raise four kids on your Army allotment. I'm not telling you what you did was wrong, only that its her turn now to get something good back for all those times when all she got was the bad. She deserves it, and you'd be pretty damned selfish to try to take it away from her now." "I won't have any stolen money in my house, or anything bought with it either." "Suit yourself, you usually do. The attitude you're taking is going to end up hurting everyone. Why don't you at least try to look at it from a reasonable perspective? I found that money, and I'm not hurting anyone with how I'm spending it. That money is my chance, and I might never get another one as good as this one again. You found a good job because I found that money. Ma is going to get the best house she's ever dreamed about, because I found that money. I might end up rich, because I had the money to buy some old coins from a very old man. That dead man, the one I found that money under, how is he hurt by my having that money? You need to slide your head back so you can see things differently Dad." "You can come back home, until after I've had a chance to think everything through. If I end up deciding that I still feel the same way, after I've thought it all through, you and your money are going to have to leave, Jimbo. I don't care what your mother says, that's how I've decided it has to be." "Good luck with that, Dad. If you really think you might decide I need to leave, you'd be a lot better just going home without me now. Tell ma you never found me. If you bring me home with you, it will be the same as you admitting that you've decided to live with how things are." "You are never to lay another hand on me. I won't stand for you raising a hand against me in anger, like you did earlier." "I won't hit you first, but if you don't want me hitting you, you'll have to extend that same courtesy to me. I might let you get away with slapping me, but no more punching like you did tonight." "I could still take you if I was of a mind to." "Probably, but it might be a whole lot better if we never had to find that out." "I'm glad neither of your brothers ever wanted to take up boxing. I'm still not sure how many times you hit me. The last time something like that happened to me was that time I wrecked Gary's car after he'd loaned it to me. I think I was seventeen at the time. You might be even faster than he was. I know you hit harder than he did." "I'm taller and heavier than he is. I weigh over one eighty now." I was glad to see him trying to turn our conversation to an area not quite as emotion laden. Now that he'd started turning away from his earlier, impossible, stance, I had good reason to believe he'd manage to turn his thinking around the way he'd need to. To be honest, I didn't really care if he thought that money was stolen. I'd had a lot of time to think about it, and I'd decided it was found money, not stolen at all. Perhaps my interpretation was every bit as flawed as his had been, but it allowed me to continue doing what I was planning to do anyway. That was all I really needed it to do. I had to put up with a thousand questions from my brothers after we got back to the house. Once, right after Kevin threatened to jump me, if I ever hit our father again, I had to stand up and walk over to their bunk bed. I was happy to see his eyes get as big as saucers, as he quickly backed as far against the wall as he possibly could. I didn't want him ever getting it into his head that he could talk to me that way. The next morning, after my father had already gone to work, my mother sent my brothers ahead to school, while asking me to stay with her for a moment. As soon as they were a few hundred feet from the apartment, she shut the door, turned to me, and slapped me in the face, as hard as she could, and with her open hand. Let me tell you, that really stung too. "You are never to lift your hand against your father again, James. Do you understand me?" "He hit me first, ma." Whack, another slap. This one not as sharp, mostly, I think, because the last one had stung her hand too, and she didn't want it to hurt her more. "I don't care what he did. He's your father, and you will never do anything like that again. I won't have it. Don't make me regret sending him after you, Jim. If it ever comes to my having to make a choice, I'd always choose him. You go on to school now, and remember what I just told you. Thank you for the money too, but if we could take all the things that happened last night back, I'd be willing to do without it." I smiled, knowing my mother was just talking, and didn't mean a word she said about giving anything back. She was trying to impress upon me the importance of never repeating what had happened the night before. I was with her there, because I sure didn't want to do that again either. I had a little mental bet with myself about how long it would be before one of my parents came to me with a request for more of my "tainted" money. ------- Chapter 5 My parents drove back to Garden Grove that next Sunday and signed all the necessary papers to buy their new "Super house". My father and I were both pretty much staying out of each other's way. That Sunday they took Nancy with them, but left Kevin, Willy, and me to fend for ourselves. I walked over to Cheryl's house, after calling her first and finding out that she was all alone at her house too. Her brother was off doing something with his girl friend's family, and her parents were off visiting friends of theirs in Arcadia. By now, it was a regular routine that Cheryl would sit on my lap, straddling my dick while I kissed her neck and ears. She never seemed to tire of me doing that with her. I had permission to play with her breasts, under her bra too, while I was making out with her. I had made several, nearly successful, attempts to touch her pussy. Always before, I'd attempted it too soon. The last time we were together, I'd placed one hand under her dress, but just past my own knee. I think it confused her when I didn't try to move it any closer to her pussy. My new plan called for me to do the same thing as last time, but this time I'd rest my hand on her lower thigh, not on my own. I waited until I knew she was already very hot before I tried doing anything with my hand. I had begun noticing that some days she was more responsive than on others. My theory was that her most responsive times were on days when she already knew Daniel wouldn't be coming home early and catching us doing anything together. That Sunday was one of those days. She knew that Daniel and her parents wouldn't be home before dark. We had several hours of guaranteed privacy. This was another reason why I had planned on moving things along slowly. My new plan worked like a charm, and Cheryl discovered that her rubbing her pussy on the end of my dick felt even better when two of my fingers were lightly pressing against her panty clad clitoris. Once she discovered this fact, her movements in my lap became much more obvious and purposeful. She had her first unmistakable orgasm while my fingers were pressing against her. Less than half an hour later, she had her second one, but this time, one of my fingers was in her, sawing away inside her extremely excited pussy. I hadn't noticed anything in her pussy resisting my finger, but I didn't think it would be such a good idea mentioning this to her. By the time I left, just past four in the late afternoon, she had invited me inside her house and had played with my dick, outside my pants, while I fingered her to two more orgasms. I'd had my own sweet release twice too, and, the second time, it had been with her hot breath less than an inch from my boner. We had even had a short discussion about whether or not either of us believed oral sex was unhealthy, or, in any way, wrong for people to do. We both said it wasn't wrong or unhealthy, but neither offered to be the first to do it to the other. Cheryl had come awfully close though, and I was determined to show her my own willingness, the next time I had a good opportunity to do so. They started building my parent's new house in January of '55. We were scheduled to move in and take possession at the end of March. This meant we'd be moving away from San Pedro. All of us would be switching schools then, and I'd start my senior year in a school where I barely knew anyone. I'd already told Cheryl that my parents had bought a new house, and that we'd soon be moving. I thought she'd break up with me, since we'd have to break up soon anyway. Instead of breaking up with me, Cheryl started finding ways we could get together and have real sex. For some reason, her knowing I'd soon be leaving, freed her up to do even more with me. I had just found out that she hadn't been a virgin when I'd first met her. She had given herself to a boy, the Summer before I moved to San Pedro. It had only been a Summer fling she had informed me, with a boy who didn't even live in California. He was just visiting some relatives for part of the Summer. She never really explained why she'd made me wait so long to do anything more than kiss her, but I decided it had something to do with her not wanting to ruin her reputation at the high school. Me leaving soon might have made things easier for her, but it wasn't like that for me. I dreaded the day we'd be leaving. I'd become very close with Cheryl, and in a relatively short time too. All those hours of kissing and having her moving around in my lap had gotten to me. Once we started actually fucking, I began to understand that Cheryl was mostly interested in having a physical relationship with me. When I finally began realizing this, things began getting better for me too. We were going at it once, about two weeks before we were scheduled to move into our new house, on the rug of her living room floor. We were also on a blanket, one that Cheryl had brought out from her bedroom. We were going at it pretty good, when her brother came in through the unlocked front door, very unexpectedly. This really shook me up, but Cheryl didn't seem all that excited about it. All she did was tell Daniel to get out of the living room, and to not try to get any further peeks at us. I know I'd have reacted a lot more strongly than she did, if it had been any of my siblings who'd walked in on a scene like her brother just had. It was very weird for me, and that turned out to be one of the last times we ever had full on intercourse. Right before I left though, she invited me in again, taking me to her bedroom, where we both gave the other oral sex, then had one last time for fucking. That was our farewell to each other. I'd mentioned the possibility of buying a car, and of me driving back to San Pedro to visit with her. She hadn't seemed very receptive to the idea of me coming over to visit with her. ------- I must confess that I loved having my own bedroom, and all the added privacy that afforded me. My parent's bedroom was the largest, then Nancy's and mine were both about the same size. She got the one with a mirror on the sliding closet door, but I got the one furthest from my parent's bedroom, and the only bedroom in the house with it's own separate door out to the side yard. My parents had a sliding glass door in their bedroom, and my father planned on having a patio put in out there, just as soon as he got enough money ahead to be able to afford it. Kevin and Willy had the two smallest bedrooms, but both of these were larger than our old bedroom, the one the three of us were sharing back at the apartment in San Pedro. Everything seemed nicer, newer, and bigger than anything we'd ever had before this. The most amazing thing was that the house was really ours, except for the eleven thousand dollar mortgage still left on it. We had only lived in the new house for a couple weeks when our two new neighbors, one to the North, and the other to the East, directly behind our house, approached my parents with the idea of all of us going in together on getting a new six foot tall block wall built. Because we had a large corner lot, we'd have to pay extra to get our wall facing our side street built. Having several families all going in together would lower the price each would have to pay. The masonry contractor, who was supposedly giving us all this really great deal, gave my father a written estimate for his share of the wall. It came to over twelve hundred dollars. After their meeting with the contractor, my parents called me into the kitchen to ask me what I thought about us going in with the other neighbors and getting the wall built. "I think it will be good, as long as you put in wooden gates on both sides of the house, in front. Did you ask about that?" "Yes, an extra gate would cost us another hundred dollars." My mother seemed uncertain about the benefit of having two gates. I knew I wanted one on my side, in case I wanted to leave or return via my private door, without having to pass by my parent's bedroom when I did. "Is everyone else agreeing to get this done?" "Everyone except for the family that lives across from the Williams family. The Williams family are the ones who have the house behind us. They claim they can't afford to do it. Your father thinks they're just hoping to get all their sides built for free. Some people are like that, they take advantage of people." "You have to admit, these walls are pretty expensive. Are you planning on financing your share?" I saw my parents exchanging looks with each other. It was my father who spoke next. "Jimbo, we were hoping we could borrow the money to get this done from you. Right now, we really don't want to go into hock for more than we already are." "I'm fine with doing that, Dad, but I'd really rather we got the two separate gates. I'll be happy to pay the extra for the one on my side." "That's it? You don't want to say anything else to me? Rub it in, or tell me you told me this day would be coming?" "Look, Dad, I understand how you could think the way you do, but I happen to look at it differently. I'm happy to be in a position to help. I have the money, and its something that will improve the value of the house, make it look nicer, right?" "We need to give him a three hundred dollar deposit with the signed contract. Do you have that much handy?" I went to my room and returned a minute later with thirteen hundred in twenties, handing the money to my father. "Dad, I was just wondering, would it be all right with you if I used some of my money to buy myself a used car? I've been thinking of something for around eight hundred to a thousand dollars. Nothing new or fancy, just some good, reliable, transportation." "It's your money, Jimbo. You don't need to be asking our permission for how you spend it." "I was more interested in finding out if either of you had any objection to me owning and driving my own car." "Not as long as you handle all the responsibility for it, including insurance, gas, and any repair costs." The money I'd found had changed some of the dynamics a normal family might have. I was the only one in the family who had any uncommitted funds available to spend. I had broached the idea with my parents of my starting paying them some rent to help out with what me living with them was costing. My father hadn't reacted well to this suggestion. I knew my mother would have been willing to let me pitch in, but she didn't want to appear like she wasn't siding with him. After that block wall went up, my father and I decided we'd plant some grass and take care of our own landscaping. He and I even built this little block wall planter in the front, putting in several rose bushes. It was Summer time again, and my dad had started working the late shift, going in at four o'clock, and working until midnight. It had been something of a promotion, so he was paid more per hour, but he lost out on almost any chance for getting overtime. He still managed to get an extra five or six hours a week, but nothing like he'd been able to get before, when he only worked days. I started leaving a twenty dollar bill on top of my pillow every Monday morning. I didn't discuss this with my mother, but I was fairly certain she'd figure out what this money was for. She must have, because I started noticing, right away, that most of our meals included meat again. Food was one of the areas my mother controlled, and she did all the grocery shopping for the family. When things started getting a bit tight for my parents again, the food budget was the first thing to suffer. That extra twenty a week went a long way in 1955. I'm sure my father never noticed, and after some time had passed, without all the overtime he'd been used to getting, some monthly bills got paid off, and our family made the adjustment to my father's somewhat reduced earnings. When that happened, that twenty dollar bill was left on my bed, under my pillow, every Monday. When school started up again that September, I was determined to get myself a new girlfriend. It was difficult going without after getting used to having someone to be with. Cheryl was now just a memory to me. I'd called her a few times, right after we'd moved, but it wasn't the same speaking over the phone. She hadn't seemed all that excited by me calling her either. After about five phone calls, I just stopped calling her. She had our new phone number, if she ever decided she wanted to talk to me again. My senior year classes were all easy. I had two study halls everyday, because I had enough extra credits already to graduate, once I satisfied the compulsory courses. I'd get all my homework done in study hall, then be free after school to do anything I wanted. I ended up buying a 1951 Ford coupe, a black one, with hot rod wheels and white wall tires. I spent nine hundred on it, but the guy who'd had it before me had spent quite a bit on a new paint job and a tuck and roll interior. I thought it was a very nice looking car, and definitely one of the nicest looking cars in the parking lot at the high school. It was an easy car to work on too, and my father and I did almost all our own maintenance on both cars. I first became aware of Dorothy Ross on the second or third day of the new school year. I was just getting in my car to go to school when I saw her, on the sidewalk, hurrying towards Lampson Avenue with all her books in her arms, and her purse on a shoulder strap, waving behind her as she half ran, half jogged, past me. Dorothy had very dark hair, almost black, and was built just a touch on the heavy side. She had large boobs, and wide hips. She was almost the exact opposite of Cheryl, as far as body types went. She had a ski jump kind of nose, one that turned up on the end, and very small ears. She always kept her hair in a pony tail, so her ears were always on display. She had just made it out to Lampson when I pulled along side her and rolled down the passenger side window. "You go to the high school, right? Hop in, and I'll give you a ride to school." "That's okay, thanks anyway, but I'm not supposed to ride in cars with strangers." "My name is Jim Flanagan, and I live right there on the corner house, so I'd say we were more like neighbors than strangers. You look like you're running late, and I'm going straight to school anyway." "Don't you have a brother that goes to the high school too? How come he isn't riding with you?" "Kevin has a girlfriend, and they prefer to walk to school together. They leave an hour before I do." "Are you sure it won't be a bother, giving me a ride?" "Not at all, come on, get in, and we'll be there in plenty of time for the first bell." She got in and sat very stiffly way over next to the passenger door. I had no idea of why she'd be afraid of me. She wasn't saying anything to me, and she already looked uncomfortable enough without me trying to force conversation on her. We drove over to the school in silence. As soon as I had parked, she jumped out of the car, mumbled something that sounded like it might be a thank you, and hurried off toward the school. I was left puzzled by her seemingly fearful attitude. I was getting out of my car, just leaning in the back seat to get my school books, when two boys wearing varsity letter jackets walked by. One of them spoke to me. "Getting an early blow job from "The Pumper" new guy?" Both he and his friend laughed at what he'd said. "I was giving one of my neighbors a ride to school. What's this pumper thing?" "Dotty the Pumper, the school pump. Don't tell me you didn't even know who you had in your car, new guy?" "My name is Jim, not new guy, and don't you have better things to do than go around speaking ill of other people?" "You better watch yourself, new guy. If you don't, you could end up in the hospital." "That couldn't happen, not from both of you together, and not on your best day. If I wound up in the hospital from you two, it would be because I needed to get my foot removed from your ass." I closed and locked my car door and started walking away from them. I'd been half expecting either or both of them to come after me, but they just stood there, beside my car, doing and saying nothing. "If anything happens to my new paint job, both you clowns better never let me set eyes on you again, you hear me?" I guess neither of them were used to non athletic students talking like this to them. They moved away from the car and changed directions so they weren't coming close to me as I walked directly towards the school. At lunch, later, in the school cafeteria, I saw those same two guys, along with three of their varsity jacketed friends, standing around near where Dorothy was sitting, talking loudly, and laughing at everything being said. I saw Dorothy get out of her seat and leave the cafeteria. Her uneaten food and drink still on the tray she'd left behind her. There were another three girls sitting at the table Dorothy had just left, and now they too were being taunted and made fun of. I was close enough now to hear most of what these boys were saying. The loudmouth who's spoken to me earlier, by my car, seemed to be the ringleader of this group. "You seem to make a habit of irritating people, don't you jerk? Why don't you and your friends take it somewhere else so these ladies and I can eat our lunches in peace?" "You keep messing with your betters, new guy, and you're going to have the entire Varsity Club down on your dumb ass. Is that what you want to happen?" "What I want to happen is for you to leave, now. Don't you have something better to do than hang around here keeping people from enjoying their food? It must be pretty sad being you, if this is the only way you can get any attention from people." "Do you want to go with us, if you do, then let's get it going." With four big guys surrounding him, the loudmouth seemed willing to talk back to me again. "With us? That's so pathetic. How many guys do you need to fight your battles for you? Are you a man, or a little boy? Are you going to run home next and get your mommy to help protect you from the big bully? My little sister has more guts than you seem to." "I'd kick your ass right here, new guy, but I can't take a chance on getting suspended. I'm in line for a full athletic scholarship to USC next year, so I have to keep myself above the fray when it comes to dealing with people like you." "I guess I'm lucky then, because I don't have to keep myself above anything. If I can still see your cowardly ass in ten seconds, you're going to find out exactly what my not having to worry about getting into fights means." He and his friends decided to swagger off, rather than find out how serious I was about doing what I'd threatened. I had a pretty good idea that it wasn't yet over between us. I sat down in the chair next to the one Dorothy had vacated, and started eating my sack lunch. "You're in for it now. Danny Cox isn't going to let you get away with backing him down like you just did. He probably won't be there, but some of his friends will find a way to pay you back for doing that to him." "That's his name, Danny Cox?" "High school All American football team Danny Cox. He's the most famous athlete our school has ever seen. He plays basketball and tennis too. He's a really good tennis player, undefeated all last year." This from a different girl at the table. I noticed Danny Cox sitting in my sixth period study hall class. When he saw me coming into the room he leaned over and said something to the guy sitting to his immediate left. That guy was really huge, wide, and seemed barely able to fit behind his desk chair. After Danny spoke to him, the other guy looked at me and made some kind of animal snarl in my direction. It was precious. Danny was looking at me too, a big smile on his face as he did so. Instead of sitting down where I usually did, by the door, I walked over to the empty desk chair on Danny's right and sat down. "Those girls at the table filled me in on what a big hero you are in this school. Said your name is Danny Cox. I didn't know." "That isn't going to help you, so don't even try that with me. Too late for that now, right Ted?" Danny again looked over at his still scowling, triple chinned, buddy. "You didn't let me finish what I wanted to say, Danny Cox sucker. The first time I have any trouble with anyone who I even suspect might be a friend of yours, I'm coming right after you. It will be kind of hard for you to do well on the football field, if you're laid up in some hospital bed, with your arms and legs in traction. If you want to keep this up with me, feel free to. I've taken a very big personal dislike to you, and it wouldn't take much for me to fuck you up so badly that you'd never get another chance to step on a field to play hero again. I could definitely do it before old Ted here could manage to get his big fat ass out of that chair to try and stop me." ------- Chapter 6 Ted got out of his chair very quickly, but most of the effect was ruined when he knocked into Danny Cox's desk, and ended up tipping it, and them, over onto the hard tile floor. I took the opportunity, with all the noise and confusion, to kick each of them in the head before they could start to untangle and get back up. I didn't kick them very hard, just enough to let them know they should take my words more seriously than they apparently believed they should. The study hall teacher ended up sending for the vice principal, and he, in turn, sent for the football team's coach. I hadn't said anything, either to confirm or deny what Danny and Ted were claiming I'd done. The vice principal turned out to be a nice guy. I could tell he didn't like a lot of what some of the school's athletes were allowed to get away with, but he had to deal with it carefully, because the principal and school board members were big booster's of the league championship team they were all expecting this year. The football team coach was a big man too, probably an ex football player himself, would be my guess. He listened to what Danny told him, and then told the vice principal that I should be expelled for what I'd done to his two players. "If I get expelled, both of them need to be expelled too. They both threatened me, and it was Ted jumping to get at me that caused them both to end up on the floor. I didn't kick them like they're saying I did. Ask the teacher what he saw. He was right there when it all happened." The teacher said he saw Ted get up and dive at me, while Danny and I just seemed to be talking together. He said he didn't see me kicking anyone, and then added that he had been in a good position to see it if it had really happened. "Just from that eye witness account from a teacher, you have more than enough to expel Ted. I think the coach doesn't want to see one of his starting players expelled. I was telling Danny, before Ted tried to attack me, that I was nearly certain he wouldn't be able to compete in any sports this year if he continued on with his bad attitude towards me, and towards nearly every other non Varsity Club member in this school. He seems to believe he's someone special, but even special people can get hurt if they keep insisting on provoking people." "Are you threatening my quarterback?" "What I'm telling him, and you, is that I think he's a very bad influence at this school. If you don't do something to rein him in, then I will. If I'm forced to do it, I guarantee you he won't be in a position to play football, or any other game, not for the rest of the year." "You heard him, Mr. Gordon, he's threatening Danny, the team, and me. That is surely sufficient grounds for expulsion?" "I have sufficient grounds for expelling all three of them. Mr. Cox, I've had several talks with you in the past, have I not? I warned you that there would come a day when all your misdeeds would place you in a position where no one's influence would help you. Before I was called here to handle this problem, I had four young female students sitting in my office, relating some of the things you've said and done to them in the recent past. I cannot ignore their complaints, or continue to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to what you've been doing. I'm suspending you for two weeks, effective today, and requesting a school board hearing for next week, to vote on my petition to have you permanently expelled from this school. Mr. Flanagan, I'm suspending you for two weeks too, for whatever part you played in this mess here in this classroom. Ted Meyers, you have a two week suspension also, and I'm going to request that the school board have you declared ineligible to participate in any interscholastic activities for the remainder of the school year. If you choose to act like a goon, I'll see to it that you are treated like one. Coach Cuchella, I'm certain you'll be wanting to get on the phone to try to drum up support for getting these decisions overturned. You too have now been warned that our tolerance for some of the athlete's behavior is wearing thin. I'll be recommending that your contract with this school should not be renewed." "We'll just see what Mr. Gardner thinks when he hears about what you've just done." "You should hurry to his office then. He's probably finished packing his personal effects right about now. Mr. Gardner has accepted a position with another school district, effective immediately, and I've been appointed the new interim principal of this school." The coach and both his players left right after this, probably to see if the vice principal was telling the truth about the principal leaving. Mr. Gordon turned his attention back to me. "You would be wise to take some time to reflect on how you wish the remainder of your high school experience to play itself out, Mr. Flanagan. From all that I've been able to gather from witnesses I've interviewed, it was you that kept on escalating that confrontation in the cafeteria today. It matters little to me what your provocation for doing this was, although I suspect you were angry with Mr. Cox on another's behalf. I will not tolerate the kind of baiting you were responsible for in this school today. It matters not that the end result was one I have long hoped to see. In the future, I would appreciate it if you would confine your activities, on this campus, to acquiring whatever further academic education you are seeking." Less than one week into my senior year, and already I'd been suspended for two weeks. I knew both parents were going to just love this. I was surprised when Kevin started sticking up for me at the supper table that night. He told my parents what a lot of other students at the school were saying after the football players and I were suspended. There had been trouble brewing for a few years at the school, with too much emphasis being placed on winning, and too little on maintaining some sense of proportion over what place academics and sports held within the school. To many students, athletes had been shown far too much favoritism at the school, and most students resented that fact. "Other than those two cheap shots with your foot, Jimbo, I can't really see where anything you did deserves a two week suspension. Do you want me to go see that principal of yours, and try to get him to let you come back earlier?" "No, Dad. He had to suspend me to avoid anyone saying he was playing favorites. What I'm most worried about is how people will react if our teams start losing games they were supposed to be winning with two of the best players suspended or expelled. A lot of high school kids take their sports teams very seriously." "That new principal will probably be the one who gets most of the blame for things like that. How are you supposed to be keeping up with your studies while you can't go to school?" "Mr. Gordon told me that he'd see that Kevin got all my class assignments and brought them home to me. I can't turn anything in, not until after I finish serving the suspension, but I should be able to get some credit for actually doing all the work assigned. The main thing is, having all the class assignments means I can keep up with what everyone else is learning, and won't be too far behind after I can come back." Dorothy Ross came over to our house the first Saturday after I got suspended. My father and mother had taken Nancy and Willy shopping with them. My mother wanted new bedroom furniture for Nancy's room. Kevin was over at his girlfriend's house. "I came over to tell you thank you for what you tried to do. I don't know why Danny likes to pick on me like he does. I've never done anything bad to him or to any of his friends. If anyone should be mad, it should be me, not them." "He's just a jerk. He makes himself look bigger and more important by dragging other people down. I just heard the school board has decided not to hold a hearing to see about expelling him." "Someone said he was transferring to another school. Some Catholic high school with a really good football team. Danny's father is supposed to have said he'd sue the school board if they tried to expel him. This is one of the big models, right? Only three were sold I heard. Does it really have five bedrooms?" "I think it was supposed to be four bedrooms and a den, but we use it as a fifth bedroom instead." "What's a half bathroom, just a sink and a toilet?" "Yes, its supposed to be a guest bathroom, for when you're entertaining. My bedroom has its own outside door, so I can come and go without having to go through the living room." "I heard that you kicked Danny in the head. I wish I could have seen it. I hated some of those names he used to call me, and some of the things he used to tell people about me." "You shouldn't let stuff like that bother you. Nobody believes any of the crap he used to say." "Maybe what he said about some of the others, but they believed what he said about me. It was mostly true anyway." "Well it doesn't matter if it was true, or if it wasn't. It was still a creepy thing to do, going around telling people things like that." "If you hadn't given me that ride, probably none of this would have happened." "You're wrong about that. I've never been able to stand people like him. As soon as I met him, I knew we weren't going to get along. He really believes he's something great, just because he's a good athlete." "He's a lot better than good. He was miles better than anyone else at football, basketball, and tennis. He was good at everything having to do with sports. He's very good looking too." "I never noticed that part. He's still a miserable human being." "I can't argue with you about that. Do you think you'll be able to catch up in all your classes and still be able to graduate?" "I only have four real classes, and one of them is PE. I have two study halls, during sixth and seventh period. All I have left are the compulsory classes. I finished all my electives already. In Ohio, we had eight periods, not just seven. I went to Summer school for two years too. I've got enough credits to graduate now, but the state has classes I still need to take in order to graduate." "Would it be too much trouble if I asked you to show me around your house? We saw the model, but it isn't the same as a house people are really living in." I showed her the house. It took about ten minutes. I remember thinking that my parents really needed all new furniture. The stuff we'd brought with us wasn't enough for this big of a house, and most of it was old and shabby looking anyway. We ended up in the kitchen. "Which one was your bedroom?" "We didn't go there. It's over here, that door right there." I pointed at the door to my room. "Aren't you going to show me that one too?" "Its pretty messy right now, and I don't really have it fixed up the way I want it yet." "You should still show it to me." I walked over and opened my bedroom door. There wasn't much for her to see. I had a single bed, one narrow chest of drawers, and a closet with the rest of my clothes and things. I wasn't someone who collected lots of things, or liked to put things up on my walls like my brothers and sister seemed to. "Not much to look at yet, but I'm going to be fixing it up soon. I'll probably get a bigger bed, and maybe a mirror for the wall. I want my own table and chair in here too, so I can study in peace. With three brothers and sisters, there is never anyplace quiet to study or read." "You have your own bedroom, that's something I'll never have. I have three brothers and three sisters. We barely fit in our three bedroom house. My parents have one bedroom, my two oldest brothers sleep on the couches in the living room. My youngest sister and I sleep in a bedroom with my youngest brother. My two oldest sisters have the other bedroom together. I shouldn't complain though, because the place we lived at before was even smaller. My uncle owns the house we live in now. He bought it as an investment. My father and mother, two of my brothers, and my two oldest sisters work for him, at several of his dry cleaning businesses. My uncle says we can buy our own house someday, just as soon as we finish paying him back all the money we owe him. My father lost a lot of money with the business he used to own. My uncle has been helping us ever since." "That's my door. My favorite thing about this room." "If you want to do me, its all right." I turned around so that I could look at her. I felt a bit of a tingle as my excitement grew, because of what she'd just said. I tried to think of some other possible way to construe the words she'd just uttered. "If I want to do you?" "You know, on the bed, screw me. Its all right if you want to. I wouldn't mind if you did." "Would you like a Pepsi Cola? That's all we have right now. My father doesn't like the taste of Coca Cola. Why don't we go out in the kitchen and we can talk about what you said?" "If you don't want to, that's okay too. We don't have to. I just thought, since no one else was here to find out about it, you might want to." "It certainly isn't that I don't want to. It just seems a little too sudden. We haven't dated, kissed, or done any of the other stuff that people usually do before something like what you said happens. I wasn't expecting such an offer, but that definitely doesn't mean I don't want to." "I want to, because I haven't, not for a long time. Last year was when I last did anything with a boy. Nobody would ever have to know we did anything, or that I was even here. In case you were worried about that?" "We can either go in the kitchen and talk about this, or else do what you said, then go in the kitchen and talk about it. Either way, I need to have a conversation about it, because what's happening is very confusing." "Talk later is how I would want to do it. I've been ready for doing it for an hour at least, since before I got up the courage to come here to see you." We both undressed, and then I remembered to lock both doors. I certainly didn't want anyone coming in on us like Daniel had that time over at Cheryl's house. We didn't really pause for too many preliminaries. It was mostly a case of both of us already being primed. I hadn't been with anyone since Cheryl, and that had been back in March. Dorothy said it had been even longer for her. All I really had to compare things to was what I'd experienced with Cheryl. This was very different. Dorothy grunted. The noises she made were different from anything I'd known with Cheryl. When Dorothy had an orgasm, was in the throes of having one, it was kind of like wrestling with a small bear. Dorothy also had hundreds of fine black hairs on her chest. Not like a guy's hairy chest, but still these short half inch black hairs. She was always moving, whether on top, on the bottom, or even when I took her from the back, doggy style. She kept pressing and pushing against me, acting like it was very important to her that she got all that I had to give her. We must have been at it for about an hour, before I just gave up and told her I couldn't possibly do anything more. She didn't try to argue, or prod me to do more, she just got up off the bed and started putting her clothes back on. I got up and got mine back on too, then we both went out in the kitchen and had two bottles of Pepsi Cola each. We'd worked up some kind of thirst in the past hour. I went to get a towel, and both of us wiped the sweat from our faces and our arms. We both looked like we'd been out running, and were just coming in after finishing our run. I thought I should be the first to say something, to start the old conversational ball rolling. "That was a very unexpected pleasure. Thank you." "I thought I was going to explode before we even did anything. I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't wanted to do it." "I've never used three condoms so quickly before." "I have. I'm glad you had some, but I would have let you do it without any, if that was what you liked better. I've done it without one time before, and I didn't get pregnant from it. You saw just now how I always get. That's why most of what Danny says about me is true. Once I get going, almost nothing else matters to me. He took advantage of that, and abused the trust I had in him. Before I even knew what he had planned, I was too far gone to do anything to try to stop it. There were six or seven of them that day, most of Danny's friends and him, and after it was over, I decided I'd never let myself get put in that position again. The worst part of it was me knowing that I'd loved having them all doing those things with me, to me. I get crazy when I'm being screwed by anyone. I must be a nympho, that's all I can figure that it could be." "I don't know much about those kind of things. You can't be that much of a nympho though, not if you haven't done anything since last year. What I think it was is like you said, Danny's just an ass hole, and he took advantage of you being hot and excited. If something feels good, why wouldn't you love it? We're built so we'll like it, that doesn't mean anything has to be wrong with you. You're okay now, right? You don't feel any strong desire to go out and find a few more guys to be with you?" "No, I'm okay now. Back right before we quit though, I might not have minded one or two more times. Once my head gets clear again, I'm pretty much all right with stopping." "All you need to do is make sure you're in a safe place, with someone you trust, before allowing yourself to get so excited. You won't have to worry about stopping yourself. The guy will stop sooner or later. I lasted an hour this time, with very little rest in between times. I don't think I ever did so much so fast before. In fact, I'm sure I haven't." "I saw you staring at my hairs before. Many Persian women have black chest hair. You notice it because our hair is so dark. Everyone has some hair there, but usually not as much, and not as easy to see, because it is lighter." "Ross is a Persian name?" She laughed. "Ross is the name my father changed ours to. Dorothy isn't my real name either. My real name was Zinat Raad. When we moved to America, everyone's name got changed. My father wanted new names for our new life." "So, now you need to tell me why you picked me, and why you were in such a hurry to do it with me?" "You, because you stood up for me with Danny and his friends. As far as the hurry part, well, I did tell you I haven't done that since last year? I was going crazy from missing it. That time with all those other guys, that was my last time. It was like going from a really big banquet, to starving, with nothing in between. I've been starving for a long time. Today was a nice meal, but not a banquet. I'm hoping that a few nice meals is all I'll really need. This is one of the things I'm most worried about. Suppose it turns out that I can't just be satisfied being with one boy?" "I don't know. I guess you have to weigh how you'd feel, before, during, and after, if you decided you wanted to be with a few different guys at the same time again. I've heard some people like that, but, it seems to me that people who would like it, they probably don't really like themselves all that much. How could you, and still let yourself be used that way? Hard for me to relate to something like that. I think it might be different for guys, but I can't see myself wanting to take turns with other guys, being with some girl." "Right now, I can't see myself doing it either, but it might be different if the right situation for it ever came up again. Before it happened, I'd never even considered the possibility. Now, I know how it felt that other time, and how it would probably feel if I allowed it to happen again." "It sounds to me like you've already decided what you'd do if the right opportunity comes along. All I can say is, for your sake, I hope it never does come along." "It might be better if I knew I had another chance to do it, and then made my decision. I think I might be able to say no. In fact, I think I would." "How about with my two brothers and me? Is that enough to make it the right situation?" "Your brothers are too young for me, and I don't think about doing things with them. It would need to be the same kind of guys, guys like Danny's friends were." "Athletes you mean?" "Big and powerful. I've always liked powerful people, not powerless people, like my father, or my brothers. Danny and his friends were powerful at school. You are powerful too. It turns out you were more powerful than Danny and his friends." "How about that uncle of yours, he seems pretty powerful, do you think of doing things with him too?" "Sometimes, but he's a lot older than my father. He's over fifty, and he's fat, and bald. Still, when I see him ordering people around, I think of him that way." "I really didn't mean it when I asked you about me and my brothers together. I just was curious about what you'd answer. I don't think Willy has ever done anything with girls. Kevin probably has, with at least two of his girl friends." "If you really liked what we did before, maybe you'll want us to do it some more?" "Are you talking about next year, or sooner than that?" "I was thinking right after I finish the rest of my drink, if we still have some time before anyone else comes back here?" We did have enough time for once more. That took all the rest of my energy though, and I had to admit that I wasn't sorry when Dorothy finally left. It had been good, and I knew I'd needed it too, but Dorothy was a bit further out there than someone I would feel comfortable being with. I wasn't ruling out the two of us getting together again, but I didn't really see her as future girl friend material. I had no idea of how she saw me. My mother approached me about making my father and her another loan, this time for one thousand dollars, to buy new furniture for the house. They had found good deals going on at one of the local furniture stores that was clearing out some of their inventory. That night, I handed my father another two rolls of money. The first one was twenty five twenty dollar bills, and the second was a tight roll containing fifty ten dollar bills. "What's this for?" "Ma told me you found some furniture on sale that you wanted to buy. She asked me if you could have a thousand, here it is." "We were only discussing that being one possibility. Take your money back until after we finish deciding." I saw the disappointment written on my mother's face, but she didn't say a word about it. A few days later, my parents bought one new living room sofa, and a new bed, chest of drawers, and dressing table with chair for Nancy's room. My father came to me that night and asked me for three hundred dollars, which I promptly gave him. I went down to that same furniture store and bought a new double bed, matching chest of drawers and cedar chest, along with a nice desk and chair set, with two table lamps and a bookcase. The whole thing cost me less than two hundred dollars, delivered. When my brothers saw my new furniture, they began whining about them wanting new furniture too. My father told them both to get themselves a job and buy their own like I had. "Jim doesn't have a job, and he gets new furniture." Willy whined. "Go find your own dead man to rob then. If you want better furniture than you have, you'll need to find your own way to pay for it." My father gave me one of those 'see what you've started now' looks, but he didn't look angry about it. I guessed it was because he'd won his battle with my mother over holding the line on their borrowing from me. My mother wasn't looking too happy with how all the furniture things were turning out. The new sofa in the living room looked great, but it made all the rest of our furniture look worse than it had before. I found a pretty good deal on a nice used television set, complete with the guy's outdoor roof antenna. I got the whole thing for one hundred fifty dollars. It had been a five hundred dollar system when he'd bought it eight months before. He gave me his receipts, and helped me take down the mounted roof antenna. It took putting the antenna on one of my Army surplus blankets, then tying it down on the Ford's roof, with the big TV set wrapped in another blanket and put in the trunk of the car. When I got home later that afternoon, my father said he had no use for a television set. He said his radio was all he needed. When I told him the tv was for my room, he looked even less happy. He did go up on the roof with me to help me attach the antenna to our chimney, and gave me a hand putting the tv set in my room. We adjusted the antenna until we had all the channels coming in nice and sharp. The TV signal must have been stronger out in California than back in Ohio. I remember looking at Uncle Gary's TV a few years before, and the picture was so snowy, you couldn't really enjoy watching. Having the new tv in my room lasted less than a week. Eventually, my father gave in when I told him no one could come in to watch his favorite program, because I needed quiet in my room to do some studying for a test I'd need to take. I helped him cart the TV back out to the living room, and went up on the roof to turn the antenna the tiny bit it needed to regain its former sharpness. The living room looked a lot nicer with that big television receiver in there. The whole family watched it together most nights. I bought my parents a set of four aluminum TV trays, then had to go back the next day to buy another set of those trays. After that, most meals were eaten sitting in front of that television. It was funny how it seemed to take over the whole family's focus. Even my mother wondered out loud how we'd ever gotten along without it. ------- Chapter 7 I was passing by a yard sale in one of the nicer parts of Huntington Beach, on my way to the beach, It was already October, but the temperature was supposed to get up to the eighties later in the day. I liked to run at the beach, along the wet sand. It was the one part of boxing training that I still kept up with. Having good wind and stamina is important to a fighter. I stopped at the yard sale because the whole driveway to the house was filled up with furniture. There was a very big black couch and three large matching black chairs, all in leather. There was also a nice dark wood coffee table, and four matching end tables, along with two black and orange fancy table lamps. It all looked like it was in new condition. I stopped my car. "How much are you asking for that living room set?" I asked the middle aged woman standing near the open garage door. "For all of it, or for part?" "I was thinking the couch, chairs, all the end tables, and the coffee table." "Not the lamps?" "We have dark green carpet in our living room. I'm not sure that orange glass would go well with it." "I paid twelve hundred for all of it. I'd be willing to let you have it for two fifty, but you'd need to come pick it up. I don't deliver." "Are you moving?" "No, I'm just redecorating the house. My ex-husband liked leather furniture, and I'm getting rid of anything he and I had together. Except for my house. I've got a real nice bedroom set, with a Hollywood Queen mattress and bed frame. The wood matches the mahogany pieces in the living room set. It comes with three chests and nice vanity with mirror. Take it all, and I'll let you have it for five hundred. "I can only afford four hundred, and I'd need to go back home to get it." "Let me take down my signs then. I wasn't looking forward to sitting out here all day anyway. How soon could you be back with the money and something to move it all?" I drove home, got some money, and called one of the short haul moving people in the phone book. I had to call three different companies before I found one that had a truck and helpers ready to go. We agreed on a price of twenty five dollars an hour, with a three hour minimum charge, and I gave the man on the phone the address where I'd meet them. When I got to the lady's house again, the truck and two movers were already parked in front of the driveway. I gave the lady the four hundred dollars, and the movers started taking the bedroom set apart first and then decided to load the couch and living room chairs first, to clear the driveway so they could bring out the bedroom set pieces. The bedroom set was gorgeous. The wood was very dark, and looked freshly polished. The bed itself looked very big, and had a head board and a footboard. I was tempted to keep the bedroom furniture for myself, but then I realized I'd never be able to fit it all inside my room. I was starting to worry that it wouldn't fit inside my parent's bedroom either. The movers were almost finished when the woman asked me if I wanted to take her ex-husband's tool boxes and tools too? "How much for them?" "For nothing. What would I do with a bunch of tools? I just want them out of my garage. Take that jack thing too. Anything in there you might want or need. They were all his things, and he just left them here. I don't want any of it. Just close the garage door when you're finished." The tools in the garage alone, were worth three times what I had paid for the furniture. There were nine big metal boxes of hand tools, including a whole box filled just with different wood chisels. There was a tap and die set, another one filled with plumbing wrenches and other tools. A professional snake set for clearing drains. An automobile jack like they have in garages. Hundreds of sockets and small wrenches for working on cars. There was almost too much to name. All of it went into the truck, and the movers grumbled because they needed to shift what was already packed, to put this new, heavier load, in the back of the van. When we finished loading from the garage, there was very little remaining. I closed the garage door and told the movers to follow me back to our house. My parents were back home again by the time I got there with the moving truck, and so were my brothers and sister. Kevin wound up with my parents old bed, and one of their old chests. Willy got their other large chest of drawers, and the new sofa that my parents had just bought less than a month before. Our two old living room chairs and the coffee table went out in the garage. My father nearly had a stroke when the movers started unloading all the tool boxes and started putting them in our driveway. My mother supervised where she wanted all the new bedroom stuff put in her bedroom, and I thought she was going to cry when it turned out there wasn't room for all the furniture after the new bed was set up. I got the biggest mahogany dresser, the one with the big mirror attached to the back. The mirror was about five feet tall, and seven feet wide. I had to move my own bed around in order to make room for it. After I paid off the movers, my father and I spent at least another hour out front, going over all the tools and things I'd been given. He seemed to know what everything was for, including three or four fine measuring tools that I had never seen in any of my shop classes. I told him I'd gotten everything for four hundred dollars. "That was a real steal, Jimbo. These tools are worth several times that, by themselves. You must have a lucky horseshoe up you butt." "More like being at the right place at the right time, then having the money to be able to take advantage. The lady was selling her Cadillac too, I should have asked her how much she wanted for it." "Cadillac? What the hell would people like us be doing with a Cadillac? We aren't doctors or lawyers, Jimbo." "The car doesn't know or care who's driving it, or what they do for a living, Dad. I should go back there and at least find out how much she wants for it. Maybe she's selling it as cheaply as her other things." I drove back to Huntington Beach and rang the doorbell to that ladies house. She wasn't home, at least she didn't answer the door bell. The Cadillac was still parked out front, on the street, with a for sale sign on the front windshield. I looked inside the windows, and everything looked perfect inside. The odometer showed 19,562 miles, and it had an automatic transmission too, so there was no clutch pedal. I wondered if my mother could learn to drive a car like this one. My father had tried to teach her to drive, but she kept having problems learning to use the clutch to shift gears. They had both given up in frustration. I knew my mother hated always having to wait for my father to come home so she could go to the grocery stores and get her shopping done. I was getting ready to get back in my car to leave when the lady pulled her car into the driveway. "Did you forget something, young man?" "No. I just thought I should stop by and look at that car you're selling. How much are you asking for it?" "It was his, but it was registered in my name, because he was originally going to get it for me. I told him I didn't want to drive anything so big or ostentatious. He decided to keep it for himself. He only left it with me because I refused to sign it back over to him when we got divorced. How about a thousand dollars for it? It has to be worth that much to you?" "What year is it?" "I'm not sure. I think he's had it for two years, and it was new when he bought it. It has about twenty thousand miles though. He drove it everyday. I'd like to get rid of it, so make me an offer. How about seven hundred?" "It's worth more than that. I wouldn't feel right, getting it so cheap from you." "You're still in school, aren't you? Give me the seven hundred and take it. I'll just be glad to see it driving away from here. Every time I see it parked there, it just reminds me of the terrible mistake I made marrying him. Let me get the keys to see if it still starts. I haven't started it in over a month. There are some more of his things in the trunk, some of his camera equipment, and his golf clubs. You can take those as well." "I feel like I'm taking advantage of you." "Not of me. Him maybe, but that just makes it better for me. You have no idea what I had to go through to get him to finally leave. You aren't going to get a better car for the money. Let me get those keys and the ownership papers. You do have the seven hundred to pay me, don't you?" "Yes, I do. All I have is tens and twenties though, is that okay?" "You have seven hundred in cash on you?" "Yes, Ma'am. I brought my money with me, just in case." It took a few more minutes, for her to find the keys and for me to start the car up and get it charging the battery up again. It was a 1954 model, a Series 62, 2 door coupe. It was a beige color, with a lot of polished chrome and little fins in the rear. It was a very large car too. I paid the lady and drove it to a gas station to see about maybe getting some of the dust and grime washed off before driving it to our house. I left my ford parked in front of her house, right behind where the Caddy had been parked before. She had signed the ownership papers and dated the sale on the pink slip. After I'd gotten the car cleaned off, it looked a lot better. I'd found a few small ding's and scratches around the driver's side door, but nothing more than you'd normally expect to find with a well cared for and faithfully maintained car. When I got home with the car, my father laughed at it. He drove a '37 model Ford, and he was laughing at the new car? I didn't say anything to him, but walked in the house and asked my mother to get her purse and come for a ride in my new car. Nancy wanted to come too, so the three of us went back outside and got in the car, with Nancy getting in the back. I drove about a mile away and then turned off on a side street and parked the car. "You try driving it, Ma." I opened the door and walked around the front of the car to the passenger side. My mother sat rooted where she was. "Come on, Ma, we don't have all day. You can drive this car. There isn't a clutch to worry about. It's all automatic. Put it in gear and just go." "I can't drive. Remember when you father tried to teach me? I made a mess of it, and he started yelling at me. Driving makes me too nervous, Jim. You get back in and drive us back home." "You have to listen to me, Ma. This is dead simple to do without the clutch. Put it in gear and then all you need to do is steer. If you want to stop or slow down, you hit the brake pedal. When you want to go again, hit the gas. You never had problems with the steering, it was only all that shifting and remembering to press the clutch in." "Do it, Mama. Jimmy's right. Think of how Daddy would look if you came driving this big car up our driveway. Think about how much better it would be if we didn't have to wait for Daddy to take us places we needed to go. If I was older, I'd drive it. It doesn't look that hard to me." Nancy was almost jumping off her seat with excitement. She had realized, right away, how my mother being able to drive, and with her own transportation, would improve her own life, as well as my mother's. Nancy's words motivated my mother to at least try it, to see if it really was easier than driving a car with a standard clutch and gears. For the first few minutes, she drove very slow and carefully. She was afraid of doing anything wrong, afraid of hurting the car, or of being yelled at. When I turned on the radio and music started playing, she jammed on the brakes, My Ford had a radio, and so did the Caddy. My Dad's car didn't. My mother seldom had ridden in my car, and when she did, I'd had the radio off. My mother wasn't a fan of the music I liked to listen to. After she found out how easy driving this kind of car was, she got more confident and started going faster. She was doing about twenty in a twenty five mile an hour zone, after half an hour of us driving around. My father had taught her almost all she'd needed to know to pass a driving test, but by the time she'd been out driving with him ten or twelve times, she'd been too nervous and lacking in confidence to want to take driving any further. I don't think my father really wanted her to be able to drive a car. That was just my own opinion though. He'd never come out and said anything like that to any of us. After about an hour of driving around, I had my mother pull into a gas station so I could fill up the gas tank. filling it up cost me four dollars. The gas tank was bigger than what I had on my Ford. There had been a quarter tank left before we got more gas, and it still took another sixteen gallons to fill up. I could already hear my father complaining about how the cost of the gas alone for this big car would send him straight to the poor house. I had to almost force my mother to drive the car the rest of the way home. She must have already figured out that my father wasn't going to be that pleased to see her behind the wheel of a car. My father fooled us all though, insisting on going for his own ride with my mother driving. He told Nancy and me to get out of the car so he could see for himself how she managed driving without the clutch. They were gone for a long time, but when they got back my mother had a wide smile on her face. My father had told her he thought she'd have no trouble at all passing her driving test. When they passed by me, my father stopped and told me I should take my mother with me when I went to register my new car, and let her go ahead and take her driver's test in it. "After she gets her license, I'll try to teach her again how to drive a stick shift." "I bought the Cadillac for her, Dad. I knew she could drive it, and I was sure she'd like it too. I'm with you about Ford's and Chevy's being the kind of cars I want to be seen in. The Cadillac is a nice car though, and the price was less than what I paid for my car." "Do tell?" "Seven hundred dollars. It was her ex-husband's car, and she didn't want any reminders of him around. I told her it was worth more, but she said that's what she wanted. There's more of his stuff in the trunk too, some golf clubs and camera equipment, is what she told me. She didn't want any of it." "Don't you think you're blowing through your money too quickly, Jimbo? The way you're spending it, you'll be broke before Christmas." "We should have most of the furniture we need by now, and you saw how happy Ma was driving that car by herself. By the way, I haven't told her yet that its her car. I'd rather it be a present from you. You can owe me the money, maybe pay me back twenty a month, when you have the extra to pay it? It would mean so much more for her if she knew you wanted her to have it, so you bought it from me. You could take her to the Motor Vehicle department yourself, on Monday, and register the car in both your names. Ma would really be tickled if you did that." "I'd have to come up with the money to register it, and to pay the sales taxes too. Where am I supposed to get that from?" "The bank of Jimbo is now open. I'll give you three hundred to take care of everything, and you can give me back the change if there is some. I'll add it to the balance you already owe me." "If I let you talk me into doing this, it will be a few more steps towards me being your accomplice in taking that money. That makes me uncomfortable. Of course, with all we've already let you give us, I don't guess another thousand will make much difference, will it? Even if it tips the scales, and ends up being that last sin that sends me off to Hell when the time comes, I don't see how I can resist this temptation. She will go crazy when she learns I bought that car for her. Are you sure you don't mind me stealing all your thunder, Jimbo?" "Not a bit. This way is the best for all of us. You'll never get a chance to make her happier as cheaply. The last time it cost you a lot more, for this house." "You forget, we got it for no money down, because of my GI Bill benefits. All the money she put up for this, was from you, to pay the difference between this model and the one we were going to buy." "It cost you eight years of your life to earn those GI Bill benefits. Don't forget that. This money isn't anything compared to that." My father went inside, after he and I had taken everything out of the Caddy's trunk and put it in the Ford's trunk. There was a nice golf club set, and three big black boxes with cameras, lenses, and flash bulbs inside. They looked like the kind of camera's newspapermen took pictures with at the boxing matches. Real professional cameras. He found my mother in the kitchen and handed her the keys, telling her that he was buying the car from me to give to her. He told her that he'd take her to the Motor Vehicle Department to take her driver's test, and to get the new car registered on Monday. "Suppose I can't pass their driving test? What then?" "You passed my test, so you won't have any trouble at all with theirs. You can parallel park, and that's the hardest thing they test for. Even that big boat of yours, and you didn't have a bit of trouble parking it those three times you tried. You'll pass, Kitten, mark my words." My father was right about that too. She did pass, and with a high score too. After my mother had her own transportation, she started driving all over the place, taking advantage of the advertised sales from the grocery stores. They had these "loss leaders", like hamburger for twenty cents a pound, or a pound of margarine for a penny. My mother kept complaining that our refrigerator wasn't big enough to store all the bargains she could be buying. She wanted a much larger one, and started telling my father how much money he'd save, if only he went out and bought her one of those big chest freezers for the garage. My father tried to resist her, but soon realized it was futile. Every night, at the supper table, my mother would tell him what good deals she could have made at the store, if only she had a bigger refrigerator, or one of those big storage freezers. She started keeping a list of sale prices as opposed to regular prices for different kinds and cuts of meat. She also started bringing home cases of canned vegetables when they were on sale, for half or less of their normal price. With coupons from her magazines, she was already getting some things free with the coupon discounts. My father borrowed more money from me, and he and my mother bought a new refrigerator, and a huge deep chest top opening freezer that went out into the garage. It had a lock on the door, and my mother kept the keys with her. My father took to parking his car on the street, so my mother could have the driveway clear, for when she needed to get her car out of the garage. ------- Chapter 8 Back in school again, I had my eye on three or four different girls as possible future girl friends. I started giving Dorothy rides to school every morning, and sometimes after school let out, depending on whether she had one of her clubs meeting after school or not. Dorothy was a joiner, and belonged to several school clubs and student body committee's. She was in the chess club, the glee club, and the young something or other club. I could never remember their name, but they went out and did civic improvement projects, like going downtown and picking up trash that had accumulated at various parks and things. I wasn't a joiner, and didn't want to wait around for an hour or so just so I could give her a ride home, after she finally finished with her meetings. Dorothy had come over to my house, a few times, to "study" in my room, when no one was at home besides me. We usually spent half an hour or so, "studying" anatomy, before we took a break and actually did some real studying. Dorothy knew I was looking for a girlfriend, and didn't seem at all put off by the fact that I wasn't considering her to fill that role in my life. She told me herself that having her as my public girlfriend would cause both of us problems, and that her family would be horrified if they ever found out she had ever had a non Persian boyfriend. I had found out, early on, that Dorothy wasn't big on making out. She told me herself she didn't like French kissing or too much foreplay. She loved fucking though, and didn't seem to mind sucking me, but only to speed up the time it took me to get ready again. I licked her a few times, but she said she liked regular fucking a lot better. I think she thought men fucking her was them displaying their dominance and power, but that eating her was a definite sign of weakness and inferiority. I learned that it bothered her having to defer to people who were themselves powerless, like her parents, and her older brothers and sisters. She said she knew that her uncle was taking advantage of her family, under the guise of helping them, but then she also said it was right for him to be doing that, because they needed someone stronger, to keep them out of trouble. Dorothy had this strange idea that I was someone very powerful, because of how I'd handled Danny and his friends, and because she believed I pretty much lived an independent life from the rest of my family. In her house, there was a definite pecking order, and she was ninth on a list of ten people. The uncle was first, since it was his house, although he didn't live with them. Next was her father, then her three brothers, ranked according to their age. After that came the five women, again ranked by age, with Dorothy, second from the youngest, in ninth place. Since I had my own car, and could seemingly come and go as I pleased, as well as always seeming to have money, Dorothy assumed I was only second to my father in my family. As the oldest son, I was favorably placed for when my father died. On days when I did take her home after school, we usually stopped off at one of the drive in burger places to get something. I'd get a burger and fries, and we'd both order root beer floats. Dorothy always ate most of the fries, with gobs of catsup, and would sometimes let me order her a burger too, but only after mine had already come, and she'd smelled how good it was. We were at the drive in, eating, one day in early January of '56, when Dorothy said something that shocked me. "My uncle is sending both my older sisters back to Iran. He wants to send me too, but I already said I'm not going." "Why Iran? I thought you told me you were from Persia? Do you still know how to speak Persian?" "Iran is the country. The language is called Farsi, not Persian. Many people from Iran still refer to themselves as Persians, especially so, if they happen to be Hebrews." "Why is your uncle wanting to send you back there?" "He is selling us to men who will marry us over there, and then send us back here to live. Later, they will use the fact that they are married to an American woman to help them get visas to come live here in America. My uncle has convinced my father and brothers that they need to allow this, to help my uncle get back some of the money we owe him. He said he is receiving one thousand dollars for the three of us. I believe it is more than that, because of the way he usually cheats everyone in his business dealings. It will cost him that much just for the airplane fare, back and forth." "They can't force you to go. This is America, and we're free from being forced to do things like that. I'm surprised your own father would agree to it." "What choice does he have? My uncle is the eldest. We all have to obey him in all he decrees, that is the way of things." "Maybe in Persia, or Iran, whatever you call it, but not here in America. Here, we do what we want, not what somebody who claims he's our boss tells us to do. Tell your uncle you'll go to the police if he tries to make you do this. I'm sure what he's doing must be against the law." "I could never tell him such a thing. You don't understand how thing work inside our families. There is only one boss, and that is my uncle. He decides, and we do whatever he says." "You told me you already told him you won't go." "I didn't actually tell him. I never speak to him directly. I decided I won't go. I'll run away before I let them send me back there. Being a woman back there is not a good thing. If I think I'm powerless here, back there it is many times worse. Women just don't count, except for cooking, cleaning, and making babies. We are treated like slaves. Only males count, and most of the males don't even count for that much, unless they were lucky enough to be the firstborn son of a rich or powerful man." After I dropped her off, just outside our housing tract, (Dorothy didn't want anyone in her family to know that she got rides from me) I went home and was going to speak to my mother about Dorothy's situation. She might have some ideas about what could be done to help Dorothy and her sisters. My mother was out somewhere, so I forgot about it and watched some television instead. I didn't remember it again until we were all in the living room eating our supper in front of the tv. "Hey Ma, relatives can't force people to leave the country, not if they don't want to go, can they?" "I think it depends on how old the people are, and the reason why they're leaving. Minor children would have to go, I think. That's what you're talking about, right, not adults?" "My friend, Dorothy, she has three sisters. One is twenty one, and another one is nineteen, I think. They both work and aren't in school. Her uncle is sending Dorothy and her sisters back to their old country, to marry some men who want to come live here in America. They're paying the uncle to send the women over there, just so they can marry them and get a preferential slot to come live here. Dorothy says she and her sisters are all US citizens, her brothers too, but not her parents, or her uncle. Dorothy told me that no one in her family has ever met any of these men, and she says she isn't going to go. She said she'd have to run away, because her uncle is the big boss in her family, and everyone has to do whatever he says." "You don't want to get involved in people's family business, Jim. It sounds wrong to us, what they're planning, but maybe that's how they do things back where they come from. It might be something religious. Does your friend live around here, or is it just a girl you know from school?" "She lives near here, in this tract. She's a nice girl, and, from what she told me, that seems like it should be illegal. Her uncle is selling his nieces, for money. The women don't have any say so in her family. Isn't that wrong?" "Listen to your mother, Jimbo. Nothing good will come from you involving yourself in someone else's family business. It wasn't that long ago, in this country, when women couldn't vote, and couldn't own certain kinds of property. Things ran well enough back then too. Its only since the War that women have been making waves and telling us they need to be more nearly equal to how men are. The bible tells us that a women's place is in the home, taking care of her family. That's how it should be too." My father liked to talk like that every so often. My mother allowed him to, but all us children knew who really ruled the roost. My mother had never wanted to work outside the home, but if she had wanted to, she would have. Instead, she sewed new clothes on her sewing machine, put up her own preserves, when fruit was in season and very inexpensive to buy, and found ways to stretch every dollar my father managed to bring home. She was our family doctor too. Only operations, like tonsils or appendix, or setting broken bones, could make her take one of us to a real doctor. My mother pulled her own weight, and more. If we were poor, it certainly wasn't because she hadn't tried her hardest to get by with what she had available to her to work with. Her weakness was with spending whatever wasn't really needed to get by on. If we'd needed money for something, she'd have been the first to suggest selling off all the luxuries we'd so recently acquired, including the house, if that was what it took to solve a problem we were having. My father didn't realize it, but the last thing he should have been trying to do that night was to make jokes about women's importance in the scheme of things. I think she saw my father's attempt at humor as an opportunity to teach us all an object lesson. "Jim, you tell this little friend of yours that she's very welcome to come stay with us, if her uncle continues to insist on sending her back to wherever it was you said she comes from." "Kitten, how would that look? Where would we put her? Nancy's room is already full, with all that new furniture and the new clothes we've been buying for her. Is she going to sleep out here in our living room?" "If this is the friend of Jim's I think it is, she can sleep in his room if she has to. From doing his laundry, I can already tell you it wouldn't be the first time he's had her in his bed." Of course my father wasn't going to let that go by without comment or discussion. "Kitten, what in the Sam Hill are you talking about?" "What, you didn't know our eighteen year old son was entertaining female company in his bedroom? I'm surprised to have to point this out to you. He was running around with that other girl, the one in San Pedro too, although he never brought her home to his bed, not that I could tell. If this new girl of his is having so much trouble with her family, then, of course Jim will step forward and do the right thing by her." "What right thing is that, Ma? Not that I'm anything more than curious about how you've jumped to all these preposterous conclusions from so little evidence." "I can name at least six times you've brought this girl to your bed, Jim. You don't think, after all these years of being married to, and living with your father, that I can recognize when a couple have been together on a bed? I can see the evidence with my own eyes. Another thing too, this girl has very dark hair, and what you've been doing has caused some of it to fall out. No one in our family has hair as long or as dark as hers." "I give up, Ma, okay? I still don't see where the one thing necessarily begat's the other?" "You've been bringing girls home, and then getting with them in this house, Jimbo? Under my roof, and without so much as a by your leave?" "You better just come right down off that high horse you think you're sitting on, Mister. That is unless you want a certain someone to start reciting chapter and verse on shenanigans that you got up to in your own misbegotten youth? Jim's as near a man now as the difference from it doesn't really amount to anything. With his having the opportunity he had, why wouldn't he, if he could manage it? Remember what you told me when we talked about letting him have his own room with that outside door? What did you expect to happen, if not that?" "Not that, Kitten, I swear I never did! You should have told me, and I'd have put a quick stop to it." "Like you did when I told you about that girl in San Pedro, or how about the different girls Kevin has been with. What did you do when I talked to you about them?" "None of that was them bringing girls into our home. This is different." "To you it is, maybe, but not to me. Our condoning it when it was outside the home is the same as when it isn't." "So Kevin can bring his girl friend home and take her in his bedroom? How about Willy? Do we say Nancy can bring her fellow home for that too, when she finds one?" "Might be one way to get those boys to start cleaning up after themselves. Jim takes care of his room, and I never have to get on him about it. You can't say he's too young for doing that either, because, if you do, then you're being a hypocrite on top of all the rest of it." That was about the time my father got up and decided he needed to go outside and walk off the indigestion he was starting to have. I went with him. I knew my mother would be getting on me good, just as soon as my father was out of earshot. "See that big hole you went and opened up for all of us, Jimbo? Things were going just swell until you tried to get something past your mother. She's no woman to try to get things by either, let me just tell you she isn't." My father and I were taking large steps away from the house, in a hurry to put it in the distance behind us. "I just wanted to ask her opinion about whether or not people can force other people to do what they don't want to do. I sure wasn't planning on having the discussion we just did. Besides, you're the one who made her mad, saying what you did about women getting the vote." "You're wrong there. This was an ambush, plain and simple. She was waiting, for us, with both barrel's cocked, and loaded with shot. By the time I opened my mouth, you'd already stepped us both into it. What we need to do now is figure out how best to control the damage that gets done. This girl you've been keeping company with, she isn't likely to get in the family way from it, is she?" I had to think for a minute before I could give him an answer. I wasn't that sure that I was Dorothy's only male friend. I thought I probably was, but we'd never actually talked about anyone else but me being with her. "I'm taking precautions, so I don't think it's likely." "We talking German overcoat's?" "What?" "Rubbers. Are you using rubbers, every time?" "Yes. Why German overcoats?" "Because those damn Germans were all a bunch of pricks, that's why. Just something we used to say, back in the War. Don't hear people saying it that much nowadays." "Do you think Ma really meant what she said, about inviting Dorothy to come stay with us?" "That's your girl's name, Dorothy?" "Her American name. Her Persian name is Zinat. They all changed their names when they moved to America." "Probably a good idea. More of them should do that, especially the Polish and other Eastern Europeans. Some of those names are hard to pronounce. I'm not sure if your mother meant what she said or not. As a general rule, your mother usually says what she means. Are you really thinking of inviting this girl? Is it something serious between you two?" "I'm not really thinking about it, and especially not for her to live in my room. As far as our being serious, I'd have to say no to that too. What we are to each other is kind of complicated to explain. If I had to put a name to it, I'd say we were convenient to each other, and just let it go at that." "You aren't in love with her, don't have any strong feelings for her and you're both still willing to sleep with each other? Things were sure different in my day. I can't imagine having this conversation with my own father. She doesn't love you either?" "I'm not even sure she likes me. More like respects me I'd call it. She has this thing for powerful people. If she thinks you have power, she gets a little excited." "Power, or is it money? She could be hoping to get her hands on that too, you know? She might just be spinning this yarn to see if you'd offer to give her some moolah so she could go off somewhere and make a new start of it. I hope you haven't told her about all that money you have?" "No. Why would I?" "In my time, you'd never get a girl to let you hold her hand, not unless she really liked you. From what your mother's been saying, you and Kevin are both getting more nooky then most married men do. I don't know whether to envy you, or to pity you. You're both too darn young to be getting so involved with these girls like you have." "What was that Ma was hinting about when she said that about telling us what you were up to at my age? She never did finish up with what she started saying about it." "You know, I came out for this walk to settle my stomach. I don't need you here with me, riling it all up again." "If I did invite her to come stay with us, I wouldn't want anyone trying to make her feel bad about what might be happening, or have happened before, in my bedroom. I'd prefer it if there was someplace for her, besides my bedroom." "We could put her in with Kevin, he has a big bed now." "I already asked her about Kevin and Willy, but she says they're too young for her. You and Ma have that big Hollywood queen size bed now. Maybe she could sleep down at the foot of it for a few nights, since you said married men don't get much action anyway?" By the time we got back from our walk, I had some real indigestion. I knew my mother, and I knew how she thought. If Dorothy ever came to stay with us, no matter where she slept, my mother was going to be pushing me to "do the right thing" by Dorothy. My father had this saying about not buying a cow, if the milk was already free. My mother had her own saying, about how all the other cows had a duty to make sure that milk was never free. If she took it into her head that I thought I was getting free milk, I'd end up buying the whole cow. In the age old battle between men and women, my mother never forgot which side she was on. I didn't worry about Dorothy putting anything over on me, but my mother was a whole different story. ------- Chapter 9 A week had already passed since Dorothy had confided her problem to me. Since that time, Dorothy hadn't mentioned it again, and I hadn't brought the subject up either. The problem became urgent and critical on the Friday of that week, when her father and uncle came by the school to withdraw Dorothy from enrollment there. Called to the office, Dorothy refused to cooperate with her family's attempt to have her dropped from the student rolls. Instead, she started getting visibly upset and hysterical, repeatedly telling her father: "You can't do this, you can't do this to me!" Dorothy's uncle, apparently unused to having any decision of his questioned, made the mistake of taking his wooden cane and hitting her several times on the back, all the while speaking to Dorothy's father, in Farsi, taking him to task for failing to raise an obedient and more pliable daughter. The uncle was quickly stopped, and restrained from further expression of his displeasure, by two of the male teachers who happened to be checking their mail slots between classes. Someone in the office had summoned the police while all this was taking place. While the police were interviewing the uncle about his assaultive behavior, Dorothy and her father were engaged in a tense conversation, also in Farsi. He was telling her that her actions had shamed and humiliated him, and that they'd be fortunate if his brother didn't cast all of them out into the street, withdrawing all his financial support in the process. Dorothy wasn't responding to what he was saying, only shaking her head from side to side, and continuing to cry. When the police tried to interview her, Dorothy refused to speak with them. The uncle was cited, and was then free to leave. He did leave, refusing to take his brother with him. After half an hour of being unsuccessful in getting Dorothy to speak to them, the police asked her if she wanted to remain in her father's care? She nodded that she did, so the two police officers put away their reports and left the school. Dorothy and her father walked home from the school, even though it was just getting to be fourth period when they left. At the time all this was happening, I was sitting in one of my classes, totally oblivious to what was going on. The first I heard that anything had happened to Dorothy was when a friend of hers approached me in the school cafeteria, wanting to know if I'd heard anything more than she had. When I expressed my total ignorance, she proceeded to tell me all she knew, which was only that there had been a problem in the school office, the police were called in, and that Dorothy had left the school campus, accompanied by her father. The girl claimed to be able to recognize Dorothy's father, because she said she'd given Dorothy rides home from Chess club, on several occasions, and had met both of Dorothy's parents as well as most of her brothers and sisters while doing that. She claimed to have seen Dorothy walking with her father a short while before coming to the cafeteria for lunch. I briefly considered the idea of leaving school to go find her, to make sure she was all right, but decided not to, since Dorothy was with her father, and I knew she didn't want him knowing she had any American male friends. I didn't see or hear from Dorothy over the weekend, but that was neither unexpected or unusual. When she failed to show up at school on either Monday or Tuesday, I grew concerned enough that I went over to her house and knocked on the door on that Tuesday afternoon. Roger, Dorothy's youngest brother, answered the door. "Hi, can I please speak with Dorothy?" "She isn't here. She doesn't live with us anymore. They all left to go live in Iran for a few months. Only my two older brothers and I live here now." "I don't believe you." Something in his tone of voice, and the way he kept looking all around nervously, made me think he was lying to me. He was sure worried about something. When I told him I didn't believe him, he started to step back, and I saw his hand reaching behind him, trying to find the door. I stepped forward until I had my foot in the doorway, hoping to prevent him from slamming the door to escape me. "Get back, or I'll call the police." "You'd be saving me a phone call if you did. I know Dorothy hasn't left the country yet. She told me it would be a few weeks for all of them to get their new American passports. Why don't you go get Dorothy, so I can talk to her and make sure she's okay?" "I already told you, they aren't here anymore. They left already, on Saturday." "I'm calling the police as soon as I get home, to report what your uncle is doing to Dorothy and your sisters. He'll end up in jail for this, and probably the rest of you too. Right now, you're an accessory to kidnapping, and so are your brothers, and your father. You can't sell people in this country. They'll lock you all up and throw away the keys." Poor Roger was starting to look like he was getting ready to vomit. He was fourteen or fifteen years old, about Willy's age, maybe half a year younger. He definitely wasn't liking me telling him he'd be going to jail. From the wild look in his eyes, he was beginning to panic. "You better go call your uncle and tell him I'm about to bring in the police and the FBI. I'm going to, in about five minutes, if you don't let me talk to Dorothy." "She isn't here, I swear it! Let me see if one of my brothers will talk to you. Maybe they can convince you." He turned around and went further back inside the house. The door stayed open, so I stood there waiting. I waited five minutes, and no one came back to the door. "Somebody better come out here and talk to me pretty soon. If not, I'm going home to make my phone calls." In less than a minute, Dorothy's two oldest brothers came to the door. "Go away! Why are you coming here causing all this trouble? We are not afraid of your threats. Go away." It was the oldest brother that was talking. The second oldest was right behind him though, although Roger was nowhere to be seen. The older brother looked angry and determined, not at all intimidated by my being there. "By the time the police and the FBI get through with the bunch of you, you'll all end up losing your citizenship, going to jail, and then you'll be deported back to Iran when you finish serving your prison sentences. Kidnapping is a crime. You can't force people to do what you're forcing Dorothy and her sisters to do. They'll take away all your uncle's businesses too. He'll be as poor as you all are. They do that here to naturalized citizens and aliens who turn into criminals." The older brother stepped forward and tried to push me off his doorstep. I reached out and took his extended arm and swung him around, throwing him onto the grass, using his own momentum and body weight against him as I did it. The other brother stepped back, going even further inside. I waited, keeping my eyes on both brothers, my foot still inside the open doorway. We stayed where we were for about ten minutes before the Uncle and Dorothy's father showed up in the uncle's dry cleaner delivery van. The uncle was old, fat, and bald, just like Dorothy had described him. He looked to be at least fifty five years old. Her father looked about ten years younger than the uncle. Both of them had gotten out of the van and signaled for the eldest brother to come over to where they were. The three of them held a parley, with the son and the uncle doing all the talking. After they had finished talking to each other, the uncle walked up to me. "Why are you here trying to cause problems for my family? You cannot go around making wild accusations. Where is your proof?" "Dorothy told me what you were planning on doing. I checked, and selling people is against the law. You aren't even an American, and you're the ringleader. The FBI is going to have a lot of fun prosecuting you. J. Edgar Hoover will have your face plastered all over the TV, and in the newspapers too. Doing that to your own nieces, and doing it against their will, which is worse. You'll be lucky if they only give you twenty years, before they deport you. They'll seize all your assets too, because they always do that, first thing. Those girls are Americans now, and you can't treat them like you used to be able to, back in the old country." "She exaggerated things, whatever she said to you. This visit has been long planned. It is strictly family business." "We'll see what the FBI says, after they interview all of you. You have to follow our laws now, Mister. Either bring me Dorothy, and I mean right away, or else we'll let the police and the FBI get to the bottom of who's right and who winds up in jail." "It isn't possible for you to see her or talk to her. What you are doing now will only end up causing her big problems later. If she is truly your friend, you wouldn't want to bring her further trouble, would you?" "I'm calling the police. Maybe they'll be the same officers who came to the school on Friday. When I'm done calling people, including the newspapers, you won't be able to show your face anywhere. See if I'm wrong about that, why don't you?" I moved away from the door, started walking towards my house. I really did plan to call the police and report what Dorothy had said to me. Behind me, I could hear three or four voices, all yelling at each other. "Wait! Don't go yet. My uncle is deciding what he wants to do." It was the eldest brother. His voice had been the most excited and strident while I'd been walking off. I kept walking, but not fast, more like a leisurely, confident, pace. "I will bring her here to talk with you. My youngest nephew is placing the call right now. When she tells you that she is leaving by her own choice, will you finally leave us in peace?" The uncle seemed calm, almost like he was just indulging me with this decision to allow Dorothy to come speak with me. "What you are doing is still illegal, even if she was completely in favor of it, which I happen to know she isn't. You can't make her marry somebody, not if the only reason for doing it is to get him to the head of the line, or to help him get an entry visa to come live here. The whole idea of doing that is illegal. Bring her here and I'll talk to her, but I'm not making you any promises about what I'll do after we talk. I think you should get twenty years in jail, just for having the idea of ever doing something as evil as this to someone in your own family." "You know nothing about what we are planning, or why we have arranged for these unions to take place. It is you who have committed crimes, not me." "Why don't we call the police here so we can all find out together then? My only crime is trying to help a friend who asked me for that help, but yours is selling your three nieces to foreign businessmen, so they can get visas to come here. We'll see what the police think, after I get done explaining it to them, okay?" "I may need to go to my home to get her, to bring her here if that phone call doesn't reach my associate. It will take me half an hour. After, you will see how badly you are mistaken." "I'm going to my house, and I'll be phoning my father's attorney, to ask his advice on what we should do. I think he will tell me that I still need to make a report of everything I heard from Dorothy. I can't see any way I could keep from going to the authorities unless I already knew that Dorothy and her sisters weren't going to be sent back to Iran." "This is really not your concern. Why are you meddling in our business?" "I'm making it my concern, and if you want to stay out of bad trouble, you better do exactly as I'm telling you. Now, I want to see all four sisters here at their house, and I want a chance to talk to Dorothy, alone, to make sure she's all right." It is amazing the way certain people think they are above any need to justify what they do. Dorothy's uncle was that way. Both the older sons were obviously pleading with him to give me what I was after. Dorothy's father said nothing, but he sure looked miserable, standing there, waiting for his older brother to decide his future fate. "If I do as you request, it will still change nothing. I will suffer a minor inconvenience, that is all. In the end, nothing important will have changed." "Those girls won't leave this country, and if they ever do, and I learn of it, we'll be right back where we are now. Don't try to pretend this is only a request, either. Either you do what I said, or you'll end up talking to the FBI. Any tricks, and I can always call them in and tell them what I know. This isn't a secret. My parents found out about this too, and they didn't like it any more than I did." We stood out there for another fifteen minutes. Mostly, that time was spent with the uncle trying to make it seem like he was merely humoring me. The rest of us understood what was really taking place. He was backing off, cutting his losses, but still trying to save face with all his male family members. We might have been out there a lot longer, if another dry cleaning truck hadn't pulled up and let out Dorothy, her mother, and her three sisters. I didn't recognize the man driving that truck. After the women got out of the truck, the man drove away. With the exception of Dorothy, all the other women hurried into the house. Dorothy walked straight over to her uncle and said something to him. She sounded angry. He slapped her face. She looked right at him, and said something else to him. This time he backhanded her in the face, and she staggered backwards. She stood there, a tiny trickle of blood running down one nostril, and then she started laughing at him and yelled something at him which I heard but couldn't understand. She later told me she had called him a coward, and was taunting him that he'd let five helpless women get the best of him. Since the previous Friday, Dorothy had gotten some kind of revolution started inside her family. All the females were now taking her side, and all the males either didn't understand, or couldn't believe, what was taking place. The women were all on some kind of strike. Dorothy told me that all five of them were slapped around and beaten, but none of them had backed down from their position because of it. I hadn't yet interfered in what the uncle was doing to Dorothy. I was waiting for her own father to get some balls and put a stop to his brother hurting his daughter. The father never did, but her middle brother did finally go over and place himself between his sister and his uncle. The uncle started venting his anger on all of them after that, but finally realized he wasn't helping anything by screaming out his invectives, so he got back in his delivery van and drove away. As soon as the uncle left, I turned back to look at Dorothy and now noticed that her brother had her by the wrist, and was forcibly keeping her from coming over to speak with me. I started moving quickly over to her, and, when he saw me coming, he let go of her wrist and moved over to where his father and brother now stood. "Are you okay, Dorothy?" I came up close to her and stopped. I had one eye on her family, in the background, and the other on her face, which I could now see was showing much evidence that she had been hit quite a lot, even before she came back to her house. "I'm better than those three spineless dogs behind me. I stood up to him, finally. We all did, the women at least. He knew, near the end, that he'd have to kill all us women, before we'd let him take even one of us back to Iran. How weak he must really be, if he lets a few women control what he does. I spit on him, and I spit on the other men of my family, any who lick his ass, and then go to do his bidding. No more will we be held as hostages, or bend to more of his evil commands. It is over! We are Americans now, and we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let these so called men go back to Iran, and sell themselves for my uncle's profit." It took Dorothy going to see a woman lawyer to make the uncle stop his own eviction plans for his sister in law and four nieces. All the men had left the house a day after the women were returned. A written agreement was finally reached that allowed the five women to remain in the home for three years, without any rent being owed. At the end of that time, it was agreed, by all, that the home would be voluntarily vacated by the women. The women would be responsible for paying their own utility bills, and for all other living expenses. Dorothy's mother, and her two older sisters were able to find other work, right away, in dry cleaning plants that competed with Dorothy's uncle's businesses. Dorothy was apparently the only one who was happier living with just the female members of her family. She was constantly having to deal with issues that none of the other women felt competent to address on their own. She told me once that she was afraid she was becoming too much like her uncle, her father, or one of her brothers, when it came to how she was now dealing with the women in her family. She appreciated more how difficult it must sometimes have been for the men in her family to put up with their constant complaining, usually about no one doing for them what they were easily capable of accomplishing on their own. Independent thinking is, apparently, an acquired habit. It bothered me that Dorothy was getting more and more discouraged with how things were going at home. She admitted to me, several times, that she was the only one who wasn't constantly complaining about being unhappy with the way things now stood. By April, I was tired of watching her banging her head against a brick wall. Her mother and two oldest sisters were too conditioned to being subservient to men. Only Dorothy and her youngest sister wanted to live the American lifestyle. The others were a lost cause, in my opinion. Her youngest sister had just turned seventeen, and seemed spoiled and lazy in her attitude. She rejected Iranian values, but was either unwilling or unable to step up and start controlling her own life. The only one I had any interest in, or sympathy for, was Dorothy. We were sitting in a burger place, eating and talking after school, when I finally decided that Dorothy needed to see that she had other options besides remaining with her female relatives, and continuing to fight what was beginning to look like a losing battle. My mother used to tell me that you couldn't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Dorothy only had a bunch of sow's ears to work with, and it was really starting to get to her. "Dorothy, you should just leave the lot of them to fend for themselves. It isn't healthy trying to change them, not if they really don't want the change you're offering them. From what you've been saying, you're the only one who wouldn't be willing to go back and have things return to the way they were before. Maybe if you left, they'd realize they have to stand up for themselves. If not, then they deserve whatever they end up with." "If it wasn't for Sonia, I'd agree with you, but I can't let her slide back to how things were before. She at least wants something better, even if she isn't yet ready to go after it on her own. Besides, where would I go, if I did decide to leave?" There it was, the real question. The one I didn't want to have to deal with. I liked Dorothy, and I enjoyed the time we spent in each other's company. That didn't mean I wanted to invite her even further into my life. My mother still scared me, and I knew she would immediately take Dorothy under her protective wing, if I ever did bring her home to live. "If you left, then Sonia would have to really decide what she wanted, and how much she was willing to work to get it. You can't hand freedom to people. They need to want it enough to work to get it. You need to give her the chance to do that." "I have no job and no money. I don't want to quit school when I'm so close to graduating. Maybe this summer, if I find a job that pays enough to be able to afford my own apartment." "My mother said you could come stay with us, if you needed a place to live for a few months." Even as the words came out of my mouth, I was cringing with fear that she'd accept. Dorothy had turned her face up from her basket of French Fries when I'd told her that about my mother saying she could stay at our house. "How did she say it? Why would that subject even come up with her?" "It was a few months ago, and I was checking with her to make sure that what your uncle wanted to do was illegal. I told her what you said about running away, rather than going to Iran for what he wanted you to do. That's when she said you could come stay with us, if you needed to." "She would invite a stranger, someone she has never met, to come live in her home? Why would she do that?" "She knows we are friends. She wanted to give you a better option than just running away. Probably, so you could stay in school and graduate, just like you're planning on doing." "Would I stay in your sister's room with her? I don't know her either. You're the only member of your family I'm even acquainted with." "My mother knew you had visited me in my room, from the long black hairs she found on my mattress, and from other signs we left on the sheets." "She knows? I couldn't face her if she knows what we sometimes do, Jim. It would be too embarrassing, for her, and for me." "It was just a thought, another possible solution to this problem you've been having. I can see where it might be a big problem for you, but my mother already knows anyway. I don't see where it would be that much of a problem, not if it already isn't one for her. There must be other ways to make it easier on you too. What would happen if you were to just ignore them, and only concentrate on doing what you need to do for yourself?" "No, let's not drop this other thing right away. Are you saying your mother doesn't have a problem that we screw in your room sometimes?" "She hasn't said anything to me since that one time we talked about it. My father was the one who had some questions, but he hasn't brought it up since that time either." "Oh God, your father knows about us doing that too? Anyone else?" "My brothers and sister were in the room at the time too, but none of them ever said anything. I don't think they had any idea, at least not until after my mother started talking about it. I guess they do know now, but we haven't talked about it since. You've been in my room a few times since then, and my mother never said anything else to me about it." "If you were asking me if I'd want to come stay in your room, with you, I'd have to consider it. I'm not sure I could face your family now that I know they already knew what we've done together. Is that what you meant, that I'd stay in your bedroom, with you, at night?" "Why don't I check with both my parents before I answer your question? I can see where the situation could get pretty complicated if everyone didn't understand the fact that we are just friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. I wouldn't want my mother to think we were one thing when we're really something else. If she was confused about what we are to each other, it might make things real uncomfortable for both of us." "What are we? I mean what would we be, if I came to stay with you, in your room? I know what we are now, but if we did that, we'd have to be something else, something a lot different than we are now, right?" "I'll talk about it more with you, after I've had a talk with them. Are you finished with your fries yet?" That night, as soon as my bedroom light went out, I heard a very soft knocking on my outside door. I knew who it had to be. I was undecided about whether I should answer her knock. She'd never come over at night like this before, and had never been in my room when any of my other family members were in the house. I hadn't spoken with my parents yet. I didn't want to get up in the morning and come out of my bedroom with Dorothy in tow. That definitely wasn't a good way to announce anything to my family. ------- Chapter 10 I turned one of my table lamps back on, threw on some pants and a shirt, and went over to answer my outside door. Of course, as I'd expected, it was Dorothy standing there, waiting for me to let her in. "What are you doing here, Dorothy? Did something happen?" "I came by to see if you'd had a chance to talk to your parents yet. About what we talked about this afternoon. Me living here with you, and sleeping in your room?" "I haven't talked to them about it. I might not get a chance for some time. I wanted to do it when my brothers and sister weren't around to listen in. It might not be for another week or more. Was that all you came here for, to ask me about that?" I was nervous about her being there, and was keeping my voice down to a whisper. The last thing I wanted was to have my parents find the two of us standing in the open doorway, having such a late conversation. "I've been thinking about what we talked about, ever since you drove me home today. Thinking about what it would be like for me to live here, to not have to worry about anything, except for going to school, and normal problems like that again. I was thinking about what we'd be able to do in bed too, every night. Thinking about that has made me a bit excited and anxious. Has it had the same effect on you?" "We can't do anything like that now. If someone heard us, there would be Hell to pay." "I thought you said they know about us already?" "They do, but this would be a whole new thing. They wouldn't like us sneaking around at night like this. It would be different if you were already living here, but doing it this way would just get them upset, and would end up getting me in trouble with them." I could tell Dorothy was starting to feel bad about coming over to see me. It must have seemed like I was rejecting her, not just telling her the timing for it was very bad. I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but couldn't come up with anything. I was still dressed in the shirt and pants I'd put on before answering the door, so I offered to walk her back to her house. She shrugged her shoulders when I asked her if I could, but she didn't tell me no. Even though I was barefoot, the two of us started walking towards the front gate on my side. It was only a block or so walking to Dorothy's house, so we took things slow. I tried explaining that I'd have loved being with her in my bed, but didn't want to do anything to upset the situation, in case she decided she was going to accept my mother's offer to come live with us until after graduation. "I want to do that, Jim. I've already decided on it. I was hoping you had already talked to them, so we could discuss some of the other things we talked about earlier." "What other things?" "You know, about what my living in your room with you would mean for what we would be to each other, It would be more than us just being friends then. Wouldn't it?" "How do you think it would change things? We'd be doing the same things we did before, just more of it. I don't see where there has to be any changes. When I talked about that before, I was mostly telling you about what my mother might think, about how we had to make sure she didn't get any wrong ideas about us, if you did end up staying in my room for a few months." "I wouldn't be your girlfriend if I moved in with you?" "Are you my girlfriend now? No. I don't see where anything has to change from how it already is. Remember, the reason why I brought it up to you, was so you knew you had some alternative besides living at your house with all of them driving you crazy. All that worrying and feeling bad isn't good for you. I think you need to take a break from it." "That wasn't what I thought you meant. I mean it was, when you first asked me, because I assumed you meant I'd sleep in your sister's room. That was before you told me both your parents knew about us screwing sometimes. When I found out you meant I might come stay in your room, and everyone would know what we were doing in there, I just thought that meant you wanted us to be more." I didn't answer her, partly because I didn't know what to say, and partly because I wasn't sure how I really felt about that aspect of it. I liked Dorothy, and liked the non sexual aspects of our relationship. I also really did enjoy everything we did together in bed. Because she and I were sleeping together, I hadn't spent any time or effort into pursuing any new girls, to try to get them to be my girlfriend. I'd thought about doing it, and had even narrowed the possible choices down to three or four girls that I thought I might like to go out with. That's as far as it had gone though. I hadn't really talked about us dating with any of the girls I'd ended up considering as my possible future girl friends. Dorothy and I had talked about each girl, during our many conversations. She had two that she favored over the other two. Both were friends of hers. The other two were girls I knew from being in the same classes with them. I hadn't made any secret of the fact that I was looking for someone. This had mostly been before Dorothy had that problem with her uncle and father though. Since then, we'd mostly talked about the problems Dorothy was having with her mother and sisters. Dorothy and I had spent almost no time in the past trying to define what our relationship was. I spent more time with her than I did with anyone else from school, unless you count Kevin, and I didn't count him. My brother and I weren't close, not in the sense that we did things together, or hung out with each other. Kevin always seemed to have a girlfriend, and that took up almost every minute of his spare time. "We are friends, right, Dorothy?" "I have quite a few people I'm friends with. I don't screw them though. You're the only one I do that with, Jim." "I don't do that with anyone else either, but we never really talked about our doing that. It just kind of happens, usually only those times when you get in the mood, come over to my room and let me know you are. It is one aspect of our friendship, but not one we've ever really discussed, or something we tried to define more accurately. We do it because we both need it, and because we enjoy doing it together. We're friends though, with or without it. Before, when we talked about my getting a regular girlfriend, we even talked about how you'd need to find someone else then, remember?" "You said I would, not me. I was waiting for you to decide I should be your girlfriend. I knew you might pick one of the others, but I thought you might decide to just stay with me too, instead. I've always liked you, from that first day, back when you gave me that ride to school. I wouldn't have done it with you, if I didn't already really like you. In spite of what happened that one time, with Danny and his friends, I've always just been with boys that I liked and who liked me. I knew Danny didn't really like me, but I liked him enough for both of us, so that's why I let him." We had made it to her house a few minutes before, and were standing near her front door, talking quietly. "You never acted as if you even liked me that much. We almost never kiss, or hug, or even hold hands. When we're together, we either talk to each other, or else we get in bed and fuck. There never has been any in between with us. That isn't what I'm used to with a girlfriend. If you like someone, you want to do all those other things with them too. This is the first time you've ever come out and actually admitted that you like me." Apparently, that was the wrong thing for me to tell her. She went over to her front door and opened it up, before slipping quietly inside. She didn't even bother telling me good night. For the next week, she avoided me entirely. For my part, I felt a little relieved that some of the pressure I'd been feeling was absent, even if it only turned out to only be a temporary condition. "Jim, how are things with your little friend? Is she still getting along okay over at her house?" "She's fine as far as I know, Ma. We've both been pretty busy with school, and haven't seen too much of each other." "I've noticed. You and she are still friends though?" "As far as I know, we are." I got up from the table, took my cereal bowl and spoon over to the sink and washed them out. This was unlike my mother, asking me about any friends of mine, especially girl friends. I wondered what had made her suspicious, or curious. I was running a bit late for leaving for school, but I'd been up late the night before, typing a big term paper for my Government class. It counted for more than half our grade, and I needed to have that class in order to graduate. This was really the last project I needed to have completed, in order to graduate. All the rest was downhill from there. Now that I was close to graduation, I still had some big decisions I needed to make. One of these was whether I wanted to go into the Armed Services after graduation. My father thought I should, in order to get it out of the way, while the country was at peace, and to take advantage of all the free vocational training that would be available in either the Army or the Navy. They had technical training schools that taught just about any trade I might be interested in pursuing, after I got my discharge, after serving for three or four years. I was leaning towards joining a union, and getting into a trade apprenticeship program. that would be the quickest path to becoming a Journeyman plumber, electrician or machinist. I still hadn't decided which of those trades I wanted to learn. In my dreams, I thought about doing apprenticeship's in all three, but I knew that wasn't practical. I was also thinking that I might want to build houses, with just one or two helpers. I still had enough money left to get a good start on building my first house, but only after I had first acquired all the necessary skills to build it. When I went outside to get into my car to drive to school, I was surprised, and pleased, to see Dorothy already sitting in the front passenger's seat. "We need to hurry, Jim, or else I'll be late again. I can't afford anymore tardy slips, if I don't want to get detention." "We'll make it. I'll drop you off in front, before I park. How have you been? I haven't seen you for over a week." "I've been all right. Busy. Plus, I was mad at you, until I had a chance to really think about what you told me that night. I think I understand what you were saying better now. When we were in bed, the first few times, I didn't mean that you couldn't do any of those things to me, only that it wasn't necessary for you to do them. Like when you licked me. I liked it, but, I didn't think it was right for someone like you to be willing to do that with someone like me. You didn't need to treat me like I was special to you, because I knew I wasn't, and couldn't ever be. Because of what happened with Danny and his friends that time, and also because of how my family felt about American men, or about any of us Persian women being with men like you. Since then though, things have changed, and I've changed too. Now, I'm really an American, and I've changed how I think about things like that." I drove quickly and quietly to the school, letting her out in front with five minutes to spare, before going into the student parking lot and finding a place to park. I ended up getting to my homeroom barely in time. I was relieved that Dorothy and I were talking again, but getting anxious all over again about what that meant, as far as all the rest of it went. After school let out, I decided to go visit the Navy recruiter. I figured I should go find out what training programs they had to offer. The Petty Officer at the recruiting office listened to what my interests were and then started telling me that the Sea Bees, or Navy Construction Battalion. It sounded to him like they might be the ideal answer to my fit my ambitions. I was interested too, until he started telling me about where most of the Navy's current Sea Bee projects were located. I had never liked cold weather, and the Antarctica wasn't a place I had even the slightest interest in ever visiting. I'd only been home for about fifteen minutes when Dorothy came over to our house and knocked on the front door. The next thing I heard was my mother yelling my name, telling me I had a visitor. By the time I'd opened my bedroom door, my mother, sister, and Dorothy were all sitting in the living room, having themselves a nice chat. To make things worse, my Dad was off work that day, for some reason, and he and Willy came walking in the front door, just as I was reaching the living room. "Jim, why don't you introduce Dorothy to your father and Willy?" My mother had this gleam of mischief in her eye. I wasn't that thrilled to see it there either. "Dad, Willy, this is Dorothy, a friend from school. Dorothy, this is my Dad, and my brother, Willy." After all the introductions were over, Dorothy held up some school books and asked me if I had some time to help her with a studying problem she was having? I nodded that I did have the time, and the next thing I knew, everyone else was standing, and she and I were walking into my bedroom. I purposely left my bedroom door open, but my mother came over and told me we had at least an hour before supper was ready. "I'll just go ahead and close this door, so that all our noise out here doesn't keep you two from your studies." My mother wasn't being very subtle. There was no doubt she was enjoying herself. It felt like she was going to try to feed me enough rope to hang myself, if I chose to. I felt like she was challenging me, daring me to go ahead and do something with Dorothy. I went back to the door and turned the button that locks it from the inside. I went over and checked to make sure my outside door was still locked as well. My window was covered by the venetian blinds, and both my table lamps were already on. We had light, and privacy, so it was time for me to find out which kind of studying Dorothy was interested in doing. "Did you want to study at the table, or over on the bed?" She went over and sat on my bed. "With our clothes on, or off?" She had the first four buttons on her blouse undone before I'd finished saying off. It didn't take long for me to have my shirt and shoes off. She was reaching behind her back to unfasten the three metal clasps that held her bra closed, after already removing her blouse. I sat down on the bed next to her, and the two of us spent the next half hour just kissing and making out. This was something we'd never done before. We'd kissed and made out before, but it had always before been only a short, preliminary pause, before getting right to the good stuff, never protracted making out like this was turning out to be. Dorothy stopped me any time I let my hands stray below her waist. Is there anything more frustrating than being held in check by a girl that you've fucked thirty or so times before? If there is, I'd never been exposed to it. One of the worst parts was knowing that she was every bit as excited as I was. More excited, if anything. She was already moaning and starting to thrash around, but she still wasn't letting me do any more than kiss her, and lick and play with her boobs. After having my hand stopped for about the fifteenth time, I was getting too frustrated to want to continue playing her game. I let go of her and stood up from the bed, walking over to my bedroom door and turning the lock mechanism so the door was unlocked. I heard Dorothy's gasp behind me when I did it. Next, I went and got my shirt, putting it back on, just as Dorothy was re fastening her bra and spinning it around so that the cups were in front. In a minute, both of us were once again fully clothed. "Why did we quit? Didn't you enjoy it?" Dorothy was still panting a bit when she asked me that. "No, it was great, but after half an hour, you either need to quit, or else move on to something more exciting. It didn't seem like you wanted to move on." I might have sounded a bit petulent, but I was pretty frustrated at the time. "I wasn't comfortable with so many other people being around. I didn't want us to get more undressed, and then have someone come knocking on your door, saying it was time to eat." Dorothy seemed to be getting upset that I had wanted to stop what we were doing. "Still at least another half an hour before that will happen. We could have been done by now, if we'd wanted to do anything. I need to go to the bathroom. Do you want me to bring you a soda or anything, when I come back?" "No, I better be going anyway. Do you want to walk me back to my house?" I knew I better say yes to that question, unless I wanted another week or so to pass by without seeing her again. "Sure. You'll need to wait while I do what I need to, though. Won't take more than a minute or two. You wait here, and I'll be right back. We should probably use the front door, seeing as how that's where you came in at." I didn't want her getting upset with me again. No matter what happened, I still wanted to keep her as a friend. We spoke about her riding to school with me the next morning, and she reminded me that she had no club or committee meetings the next afternoon, and wanted to make sure I knew that she'd like to ride home with me too. At supper, my mother and father tried to give me the third degree about Dorothy. My mother kept saying nice things about her beautiful black hair, and complimenting her politeness, and her good manners in general. "Jimbo, she's the one your mother was talking about, a few months back? The one who used to come by to visit with you?" "Yes, Dad. We're friends, and she still comes over to visit now and then." "I wish we'd had more of a chance to get acquainted, before you took her off to your room to "STUDY". He really put a lot of emphasis on the last word, openly suggesting that he didn't believe, not for one minute, that any studying had taken place in my bedroom. My mother took him to task over him doing that. "She seems like a very nice girl, and I hope we see a lot more of her around here. Jim has too few friends, in my opinion, and he needs to learn how to play and relax more. You're too serious, Jim." It looked like my mother had decided that she liked Dorothy for me. Maybe it was just the idea that she wanted me to have a steady girlfriend. I knew she wasn't happy with the way Kevin seemed to be flitting from one flower to the next. That's how she described the way he seemed to run through his revolving string of girl friends. He usually only averaged about a month with each girl, although, it did appear that he and his various girls got very intimate in a short period of time. Willy was now going with his own first serious girl friend, and my mother didn't want him being as flighty around girls as Kevin seemed to be. "Jimbo, you need to be careful around girls like that. If you aren't, the next thing you know, they'll have you watching them walking down the aisle with their daddy, and have you saying your I do's right after." "There could be a lot of things worse than that, Jim. Marriage helps to keep a man grounded. Gives him a purpose in life. Your father won't admit it, but marrying me was just about the only thing that could have gotten him to settle down and apply himself. Before I married him, your father was only interested in carrying on, and playing children's games. It takes a good woman to turn a boy into a good man." "Your mother is talking in code words, Jimbo. Carrying on is her code for going out with the whole gang and having fun. Children's games is me going hunting, fishing, or else taking time to go out playing any kind of sports with any of my male friends. A good man, to her, is one who gets up and goes to work every day, brings home a paycheck, and then signs it over to his wife, so she can spend it all for him." "Listen to your father, Jim. I think he finally understands. Took him long enough." My mother laughed, clearly in a good mood about something. My father just shook his head, and went back to eating his supper. He knew when to accept his defeat. My father was happy in his defeat though, and, in spite of what he might say, more than pleased to turn over his pay check every Friday to my mother. There had been too many Friday's in their twenty plus year past when there were no pay checks to sign and hand over. These years, right then, were far and away the best they'd known in their entire married life. My father knew this, and he appreciated having this time. "I went and talked with the Navy recruiter today. He said I should think about joining up and applying for the Sea Bee's, but it seemed like too much of their construction was off in cold areas, places where no one would want to be. I think I'll go check with the Army next week." "A few years away to learn a trade and get a chance to see the world might be just what the doctor ordered for you, Jimbo. I'm sorry now I didn't join up back in the 30's, when I first had the chance to. Might have missed out on spending all those years fighting overseas, if I had done it that way." "You would have missed out on more than that. I'd have been married long before you finished putting your enlistment time in. Don't pretend that wasn't something you considered before you decided not to join up either. Jim can go in the Army, if they draft him, and be out in two years, ready to start a career and raise a family. Eight years was too much. No family should be without the husband and father for so long." "No one is talking about any eight years, Kitten. All I'm saying is it might be good to go in, get some training, and get it out of the way before he settles down with some girl and starts his own family. The time to get it done, is when no one is liable to be shooting at you. The time I spent getting shot at should be enough for me, and my three sons. Same goes for Gary and his boys. We put in our time. Let someone else's sons get their asses shot at the next time." "I know you don't really mean that. The next time will be with all those atomic bombs anyway, and it won't even last a week from what I've been reading in my Life and Look magazines. They write about that in my Reader's Digest too." "Kitten, don't go believing everything you read in those magazines of yours. Those two bombs we dropped on the Japs, those will keep anyone from ever wanting to go through something like that again. Those were baby bombs too, compared to the ones we're making now. As long as we have the biggest bombs, and the planes to deliver them, no one is going to get too far out of line with us." I tuned the two of them out as I thought about that half hour with Dorothy in my bedroom earlier. Perhaps, now that I thought about things, I'd given up prematurely. I remembered how frustrated I had gotten with Cheryl before she finally let me past her barriers. Maybe I'd just gotten spoiled, because Dorothy hadn't played any games with me before. She had been more than willing to do anything I'd wanted with me. She might still have been willing to do that, if only I hadn't opened my mouth and complained. "Ma, if Dorothy wants to come over to visit me some night, do you see any reason why I shouldn't let her, as long as she goes back home before anyone gets up in the morning?" "Are we talking her coming over visiting like she did today, or her coming through the gate like she did that other time?" I marvelled at how my mother could be so on top of everything. My father seemed lost, listening to our conversation. I was sure this was the first he'd heard of any night time visits Dorothy might have made. "Through the gate, quietly, later at night, after the other kids are in bed." "Jim, I think we've already made it pretty clear to you that we aren't going to interfere with you making those kinds of decisions. As far as I'm concerned, that is your room, and your separate entrance, and you are free to invite in whoever you might choose to. The only thing I don't want to have happen, is to have some poor girl believing she needs to sneak around to be with you. Something like that would cheapen her, in her own eyes. If you've decided you might want to do something like that, you should be careful to make sure she understands that your father and I have given you our permission to have her over as a guest, and that she is a welcome guest, not just in your room, but anywhere else in our home, at any time of the day or night." ------- Chapter 11 The next morning, on our way to school, I asked Dorothy if she had any plans for later that night. "What kind of plans? Like for a date or something?" She seemed pleased, thinking I was asking her out on a regular date. I didn't want to disappoint her by correcting her interpretation of what I'd meant. "There's a new John Wayne picture playing, I think it's called The Searchers. It's a western. Ward Bond is in it too." "Gregory Peck has a new one too, The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit. Do you think we can go see that one, instead? I don't understand westerns. Besides, Gregory Peck is such a good actor. John Wayne always plays the same part. I'm not even sure he's really acting." "You've got to be kidding me? John Wayne is only the best actor in Hollywood." I let that slip out before I remembered my real reason for asking her about later that night. "My mother said it would be fine with her if someone came over and spent the night in my room with me. I was thinking we could go out and get something to eat, maybe drive around for an hour or two, then go back to my room and do whatever we wanted to?" "She said that? Tell me what she said, as close to exact as you can remember." "I asked her if she would have a problem with you coming over some night, like you did that one time, through the gate, and spending time with me. She said it was my room, and I could invite anyone over at any time. She told me to tell you that you were welcome to visit any part of the house, and that you would be a welcome guest at any time, day or night. She wanted to make sure that you knew she and my dad had given permission to me for our doing this." "She said any time? Day or night?" "That's what she said." "So we could just go to your room, after school, and no one would be upset or say anything about it?" "And, you could stay, all night if you wanted to. They both know what we'd be doing, and they said it was all right with them." "The movie starts at seven thirty. We could get something to eat, something quick, at six thirty, go to the movie, then come back to your room after the movie was over. Would ten o'clock be too late for us to come in through the front door? Would anyone get upset if we did that?" I had never spent a whole night in bed with her before. In my excitement, I failed to pick up on her saying the movie started at seven thirty. The John Wayne movie started at seven o'clock. When I realized what had happened, I didn't make any complaint. I sat through the Gregory Peck movie, mostly thinking about what we'd soon be doing in my room. When it was finally over with, and we were back in the car, headed towards my house, Dorothy decided she needed to stop by her house to pick up a change of clothes, and some other things she thought she would need. I dropped her off in front of her house, and drove the last block home. My mother was the only one still up in the living room. My Dad was at work, and my two brothers were out on their own dates. Nancy hadn't been feeling well, and had headed off to bed early, hoping a good night's sleep would have her feeling better in the morning. "How was the movie, Jim?" "I guess it was all right. It wasn't a movie I'd have picked to go watch. Dorothy seemed to like it though. She'll probably be coming over here in a few minutes." "I'll go to bed then. I don't want her embarrassed, and she very easily could be, if she sees me sitting here in the living room." My mother got up and went into her bedroom. I waited up for over an hour, and Dorothy never came over. It was after eleven thirty before I finally gave up and went off to bed. I was surprised and disappointed, but, I suspected that Dorothy might be sending me a message by being a no show. She woke me up at two thirty in the morning, knocking on my outside door. When I got up and opened it for her, all I was wearing were my underpants. "What kept you so long?" I was yawning, still half asleep as I let her in. "I had to wait for everyone at home to fall asleep. My father and oldest brother came over late this afternoon, right after we left to go to the movies. I think my mother must have called them, and told my father that I was dating an American boy. They were gone by the time I got back tonight, but my father had left a message for me, saying that I was forbidden from ever seeing you again. My mother and my sisters don't want me to disobey him. They are afraid of what he might do to all of us." "What can he do? He isn't sending your mother any money anyway, so why should she have to listen to what he says?" "They are still married. She does have to listen. I don't though, and I don't plan to allow any of them to control anything I do from now on." We got into bed shortly after that, and spent the next hour making up for some of the time we had missed out on being together. Dorothy gave in fully to her highly aroused condition, and seemed unable to get as much of me as she appeared to be wanting. Worn out, and shaking from exhaustion, I had to finally surrender myself to sleep. I knew Dorothy would have been very happy to continue on, but, there was no way I could accommodate her in that regard. I was already falling asleep when I felt her lifting my left arm and backing her body close in to me. She let my arm go and it wrapped itself around her waist. I vaguely remember using that arm to pull her in even tighter to me. It was nine o'clock before either of us stirred from that position. I awoke to Dorothy's insistent shaking on my shoulder. "Jim, wake up. I need to go the bathroom. Can you go check to make sure the bathroom off the living room is free?" "It will be, Dorothy. We almost never use that bathroom. My mother wants to keep it clean and neat, in case we ever have guests come over." Dorothy wasn't reassured, so I had to get up, throw on a shirt and pants and go check, then give her the all clear signal. While this was going on, my whole family was sitting down to breakfast in the kitchen. Ma sent Willy in to tell me that they were holding off on eating until Dorothy and I came to the table. When she came out of the bathroom, I let her know that we were both expected to make an appearance at the breakfast table. Dorothy's eyes got really big after I told her this. We went back into my room again, so we could both finish dressing, and Dorothy could brush her hair and try to make herself more presentable. I know my mother thought she was helping things, by including Dorothy for breakfast, trying to make it seem like her spending the night was a normal thing, and nothing that anyone need take any special notice of. Too bad she didn't spend more time explaining her plan to Nancy, Willy, and Kevin. The three of them were treating Dorothy and me like a new exhibit at the zoo. They stared at the two of us all through breakfast. They made me uncomfortable, and that isn't so easy to do. Finally, I tried to put an end to it. "C'mon guys, please. You staring at us like we're bugs under your microscope, is making both of us feel self conscious. Can't you please give it a rest?" Both my parents jumped in after I spoke up, but by then, Dorothy was very self conscious and embarrassed. "I'm bringing Donna home next weekend. If Jim can have girls in his room, so can I." Donna was Kevin's current girlfriend. "You'll do no such thing, Kevin. When you start showing some of Jim's sense of responsibility and maturity, we might be willing to discuss something of that nature happening, but it certainly won't be before you learn that you can't be switching girlfriend's as often as other people change their socks. Jim has been keeping company with Dorothy for quite some time now. Come see us when you have shown you can keep a girlfriend for longer than a few months at the most. You'll also need to have shown us you can keep up your room better too. I'll not have a guest in our house visiting that pigsty you call a room." "Why don't you just admit it? Jim's your favorite, and anything he wants to do is just great with you?" Kevin was angry, angry enough to put his surly side on display in front of company. That was a definite "NO NO" in our family. "Get up and excuse yourself from the table, Kevin. You'll go to your room, and stay there, until I can come in and have a chance to correct your sorry behavior. Dorothy, I apologize for Kevin's childish tantrum. He'll be apologizing to you himself in short order, just as soon as he's gotten a good reason to see the error of his ways. Get up now and leave us Kevin. You don't want to be adding to the trouble you've already made for yourself." Kevin got up and left, realizing that he'd made a serious error in causing my father to become so upset. Once angry, my father was going to extract his pound of flesh from someone's hide. I glanced over to see my mother's reaction to all this. Usually, she could be relied upon to keep my father's anger somewhat in check. Not this time though, and seeing that, I knew Kevin was really in for it. "If you plan on taking the belt to him, and I, for one, believe he needs it, make sure you keep that big buckle of yours in your hand. Count to ten before you lay in to him. That way you will have regained control of that temper of yours." From my mother, that was the equivalent of passing an extremely harsh sentence on Kevin. She had encouraged my father to take the belt to him. Kevin was turning seventeen soon, and I couldn't remember him getting swatted with my father's belt in several years. I had the sudden worry that Kevin might take it into his head to try to resist my father's attempt to punish him. I got up from the table, excusing myself, and went to Kevin's room. He looked up angrily as I opened his bedroom door. He'd been expecting our father, so I knew this wasn't a good sign of what could be expected, once my Dad did come to see him. "You really stepped in it this time, Kev. Ma just gave Dad the green light to go ahead and whack you with his belt. From the way you looked at me as I opened your door, something tells me you're all ready to do something pretty stupid. Remember when we first moved to California, and I had that dust up with Dad? Remember what you told me then? What you'd do if I ever hit him again? I'm going to be right outside your door when he comes in to give it to you. You better suck it up and let him tear into you, that's all I have to say. You make even one move to resist him, and you'll be sipping your meals through a straw for the next six months. You fucked up with that big mouth of yours, Kevin, and now you're just going to have to take what you have coming to you from him. Let him whack you with his belt, and the whole thing will be over with, and all you'll end up with is a very sore ass. Do anything else, and you'll have to answer to me. You won't enjoy it if that happens." I stopped talking and left him alone with his thoughts. I hoped he was smart enough to see he had no better option than submitting to my father's punishment. I went back to the breakfast table and walked an upset Dorothy back to her house. For some reason, she believed she was responsible for Kevin's outburst. I assured her it hadn't been her doing at all. Kevin had been pushing both my parents with some of his recent behavior, including coming home past his curfew, and coming home drunk, at least twice that I knew about. Some of the kids he ran around with were part of a wilder bunch of students and high school dropouts who liked to impress each other by pressing the limits of acceptable behavior. By the time I got back from walking Dorothy back home, my father had already been in to deal with Kevin. I don't know how much of an impression my father made on Kevin, but Willy was in his own room, cleaning it up. Unusual for him at any time, but absolutely unheard of on a weekend day. Kevin was grounded for a month, and had to stay in his bedroom, except for family meals, for the remainder of the weekend. Nancy came into my bedroom just before noon, and stood in my doorway, watching me run the vacuum over my carpet. She had a pensive look on her face, At fourteen, Nancy was the youngest, and had been kept too sheltered by both my parents. She waited until I was done vacuuming, and had turned the machine off, before finally speaking. "Jim, when you slept with Dorothy, the two of you did it, right?" She was whispering her question to me in such a soft voice I had to strain my ears to hear her. My first reaction was to lie to her, to claim that we hadn't done anything like what she was asking about. "You shouldn't be asking me personal questions like that, Nancy. What do you think Ma would say if I told her what you just asked me?" "She's the one who sent me in here after I asked her the same question. I'm old enough to ask questions, Jeez." "Fair enough. What was it you asked me before? If we did it? Okay, yes we did, satisfied?" "Are you going to marry her now?" "Is that your question, or Ma's?" "Mine." "Dorothy and I are just friends. We like each other, but she isn't my girlfriend. She's only my friend, but we both like to do it, so we do it with each other. It might change later, and if it does, I'll let you know. You'll be the second one to know it, right after I tell Dorothy first." "Did it hurt her a lot? Everyone says it does." "It hurts girls the first time, but not usually after that. It didn't hurt either of us last night." "What about making babies? Aren't you going to get her pregnant?" "I shouldn't. I'm using something to make sure it doesn't happen." "Rubbers? I heard they don't always work. Suppose she does get pregnant, what then? Will you marry her then?" "Nancy, you came in here to ask me one question, not fifty of them. You should talk to Ma about stuff like this, not me. She's been doing it for a lot longer than I have. She can answer any reasonable questions you have." "Did it hurt Dorothy a lot the first time you did it?" ""You'll have to ask Dorothy that question, Nancy, not me. You seem awfully curious about this stuff, especially for an innocent fourteen year old. Why don't you tell me more about this boy you've started dating?" That did it. Her face got a little pink, and she turned around and made a hasty exit from my doorway. I decided I'd have a little talk with our mother, letting her know that Nancy needed an explanation about the birds and the bees, and a lecture about how far a young, innocent, girl like her should be willing to go. Until this conversation, such a notion wouldn't have entered my head. We were all growing up, and even Nancy, the baby, wanted to find out about "doing it". I laughed, thinking that my mother would be a lot more worried about her only daughter, than she seemed to be about her three sons. ------- My meeting with the Army recruiter wasn't any better than the one I'd had with the Navy recruiter. The Army had some good schools, but they weren't willing to guarantee anything. Once you were in, they'd assign you wherever they chose to. He said I'd probably get exactly the technical school I wanted, but he couldn't guarantee that in writing. My father just laughed when I recounted my conversation with the recruiter. He told me I'd been lucky to run into an honest man. For the past week, I'd been thinking more and more about finding an entry level job in new housing construction. I thought I could start learning a lot of what I'd need to know, maybe not everything, but enough to show me what I still needed to learn. Building houses wasn't as technical as learning to be a plumber, electrician or machinist. You needed to know specific parts of each of the building trades, but it wasn't necessary to have an in depth knowledge of any of them. We had a neighbor who worked for a small home builder. He claimed it was all repetitive work. Each house might have a different set of plans, but they all had many common elements, like floors, walls, doorways, windows, ceilings, and roofs. The neighbor specialized in framing walls, and in prefabricating roof rafters and trusses, and he told me it was only interesting to see how quickly he could do all his work with each new house. The builder he worked for paid bonuses when houses were finished with fewer hours of work than scheduled, as long as no one tried to do shoddy work, or cut any corners trying to save time. The idea of being able to build a house, starting from scratch, had great appeal for me. I could see myself taking some college level courses in drafting and architectural design, learning as I earned money and picked up the experience I'd need to have. My father wasn't thrilled with this change of plans. To him, being a journeyman in any trade, was like owning a pass through life. Skilled tradesmen could always find good paying work. That was a mantra I'd been hearing from him, ever since he'd come home from Korea. Home builders were a whole different story. They were rich one day, and in bankruptcy court the next. According to my father, it wasn't a reliable way for a man to earn a living. I went to five or six building sites before finally finding a foreman willing to put me to work. My first job would be as a construction helper. I would start the first Monday after graduating. Mostly, I would be running to get the materials all the more experienced construction people needed. I ended up spending six months being a general helper, doing all the small jobs no one else wanted to waste their more valuable time doing. At the end of every day, I'd be left at the site, cleaning up debris, while waiting for the security guard to come to work at six o'clock. I usually was on site by six thirty every workday morning, ready to start work promptly at seven. Gregory Milton, the site foreman, was about forty five years old. He was a gruff, no nonsense boss, little given to tolerate any excuses for being late for work, or for workers calling in complaining of sickness. He didn't tolerate much in the way of horseplay or bantering among his crews. There were five construction crews working on the development, and each worked on different floor plans, but always for the same model. I was assigned as the helper for two different work crews. It kept me hopping from one place to another, but I did manage to do most of what they wanted me to do, and I learned something new every day. I sometimes got a chance to learn how to do things, like roughing in a door way or window, or running conduit inside a frame. I learned how to tamp freshly poured concrete, and check horizontal and vertical level. After six months, I was promoted to assisting the framer's on two separate crews. These crews were different ones from the two I'd been the helper for, back when I'd first started working for this builder. The work was easier, and I started getting off earlier, since work was always stopped when it got too dark to see. With winter came occasional bad weather. On houses already framed and roofed, I would work inside, helping put in interior frames and wallboard, while it rained outside. Next, I started helping install sinks, bathtubs, and toilets, after all the framing work was completed. Later, I helped install water heaters in the garages, and putting in air ducts up in the crawl space of the attics. There was always something new to do, and with each new thing learned, I felt myself getting closer to the day I'd attempt to build something on my own. ------- Dorothy and I kept up our relationship, whatever it was. After graduating, Dorothy took a job clerking in a grocery store. The owners of the store were Persian's, and they hired Dorothy on the cheap, paying her less than half of what they had to pay experienced grocery clerks. Dorothy was very fast on a register, and also quick at stamping cans with the blue price marks. She could change prices quicker than most of the other clerks could put new prices on a case of cans. She showed me how she used a cotton ball sprinkled with fingernail polish remover to wipe the old price off, while working the price marker with her other hand, stamping on the new price. She was coming over to my room about every other night, except during her monthlies, when she would stay away for four or five days at a time. We usually went out, to a movie or just out to eat, every Friday night. On Saturday's, after work, we usually stayed in and watched TV in the living room, with whichever members of my family who happened to be staying home that night. That almost never included Kevin or Willy, and even Nancy seemed to have something social going on most Saturday nights. If my father was working Saturday nights, and he always tried to, it was usually just my mother, Dorothy, and me. We usually curled up together on the big leather sofa, and my mother stayed in her favorite chair. When my father was home, they either sat together on the sofa, or my Dad sat in his favorite chair, and my mother found a new chair to be her favorite. I had sat in all three of those black leather chairs, and each felt the same to me as the other. At some point, we had crossed a line in our relationship and it was now pretty well accepted that Dorothy was my girlfriend, no longer just a friend. My mother seemed to just take it for granted that Dorothy and I would some day be married. We were comfortable together, and seldom argued or fought. The sex was excellent too. If I had a complaint to make, it was that I didn't feel any strong romantic spark for her. I began to think this was my fault, but I knew there had to be more than what I felt for Dorothy. I'd had stronger feelings for Cheryl, and she hadn't been half as easy to get along with as Dorothy was. Dorothy and I has skirted around the edges, talking about this lack of romantic excitement on my part. She never claimed anything more than a strong liking for me. Neither of us had used the word love, and I didn't see it happening, on my part at least, any time soon. Sometimes, I found myself wishing that I felt more strongly about her than I did. I'm not exactly sure what would have happened, if Dorothy hadn't gotten pregnant. We were both fairly certain about when and why it had happened. I had been lazy and careless one night, and instead of getting up and getting a new condom, I had relied on coitis interruptus. My interruptus wasn't as quick as it should have been, and at least one spurt had gotten away from me before I managed to disengage completely. Dorothy was not a woman who appreciated interruptus either. My mother was already planning our wedding before I'd even finished telling her that Dorothy was expecting. I accepted the need for our getting married. It wasn't what I'd have preferred to happen, but there was no question at all, in my mind, that it was the right thing for us to do. We were all somewhat shocked when Dorothy refused my proposal of marriage. "We'll need to get married soon, to give the baby my name." "I don't want to marry you. Not like this." "It isn't a case of want to or don't want to. We've got a baby coming." "I've got a baby coming." ------- Chapter 12 There was quite a bit of consternation in my family over the fact that Dorothy had rebuffed my offer of marriage. At first, I wasn't that bothered by her refusal, but, after discussing some of the possible ramifications with my mother, I began being bothered by it. If the baby was born, and Dorothy didn't list me as the one who was the father, I wouldn't have any say in how the child was raised. She'd be the one making all the decisions affecting my child's future. I knew that Dorothy's turn down of my proposal was mostly because of me claiming to not have more feeling for her. A lot less feeling than what she believed I should have. In most respects, I would have to agree with her. If I'd had these deeper feelings for her, I'd probably have put them on open display. Dorothy had commented to me, several times, that I usually seemed aloof and undemonstrative towards her, except when the two of us were alone in my bedroom. I did get her to admit that I often cuddled with her on the sofa, when we were watching television together. Often, when we cuddled on the sofa, my parents and my sister were in the living room with us. My mother seemed to encourage us on those occasions. After a week of us going around and around in circles, without accomplishing anything, I gave up trying to change her mind. I wasn't going to lie to her, or express feelings I really didn't have, in order to try to convince her that I wanted to marry her for more than just to give our baby my name. I know my mother talked to her about it as well, but Dorothy wouldn't budge from her earlier refusal to marry me. The longer the whole sorry mess got dragged out, without any solution in sight, the unhappier with me both my parents became. My father kept saying I was behaving selfishly, and that I should go ahead and do what I already knew would be the best thing for my unborn baby. My mother told me that Dorothy deserved much better treatment from me than what she'd been given. To complicate things even further, Dorothy was still coming over to see me on the same schedule she had before she'd announced her pregnancy. We were still going at it like mink's, with the sole difference being that I no longer used condoms. We both liked how not using rubbers felt. If anything, our sex life was even better while all this was going on. My mother was very frustrated, knowing that I was still getting lots of free milk. It was a constant irritant to her that Dorothy hadn't accepted her advice to cut me off, so that I'd begin to realize what I was missing out on and finally admit that I did love Dorothy. My mother never had the slightest doubt that I did love Dorothy, although she was at a loss when I asked her why I wouldn't admit to it, if, in fact, I did, since that would get me what I now obviously wanted? While all this was going on, things were changing at my work. Mr. Milton, the site foreman, was having difficulty getting paid what he said he was owed. There was a disagreement with the head of the company we worked for, over what he had been promised to him, back when he agreed to supervise the build out of the subdivision we were working on. The first two phases had already been completed, without any problems in that regard, but the third, and final phase, triggered a series of performance incentives that the company now said it was no longer willing to honor. They were telling our foreman that they'd just replace him, then hire someone else to finish up the project. They had threatened to do this, unless he immediately agreed to waive the lion's share of the incentives he'd otherwise be earning. None of this directly affected any of the men working on the crews for the build out. We wouldn't be receiving any of this bonus money anyway, just like we hadn't received any for the first two phases already completed. The home building market was exceptionally strong right then, and most foremen hired on to do the actual building, controlled their own crews. All the men working on our project had been personally hired by Mr. Milton. Most of us couldn't have named the building company, if their name hadn't appeared in the top left hand corner of our weekly pay checks. Mr. Milton was the only member of the company that we had any contact with. A week after we'd started working on the third phase build out, Mr. Milton called all five of the crews off the job, and filled us in on his side of what was happening between himself and the company. He ordered all of us off the site, telling us he'd contact us again once he got the problem settled. Once the company saw the build out had stopped, he said they'd be willing to give him what they had promised, and, after that, it would be okay for us to come back to work. "Are you going to pay us out of your own pocket if we do it like this, Greg? I don't know about anyone else, but I need all the money I'm making, just to live on. That's why I show up here everyday for work. Somebody has to pay me, otherwise I can't afford to sit around the house doing nothing." Jack Velmer was an older guy, somewhere in his forties, and he had worked for Mr. Milton for ten years at least. They'd been together on many other projects, both for themselves, and for other builders too. He was the only one who dared to ask the question that a lot of us were wondering about, but had been afraid to ask ourselves. "What can I tell you, Jack? I'm the one who has the most to either lose or gain here, so I can understand how them trying to screw me doesn't mean that much to any of the rest of you. You men need to consider that you wouldn't be out on sites like this working all the time, if it wasn't for people like me running around and hustling up new jobs for all of us to do. I've got to hold their feet to the fire, and make them honor the contract they signed and agreed to. If not, the next trick they try might be to cut your hourly rates, or else try to fiddle with your insurance and other benefits. I'm doing this as much for you guys as for myself." "I'll take that as a no then, that you aren't going to pay us out of your own pocket? I can't see how you being upset over a bonus you aren't getting should make it okay for the rest of us to lose out on some good paying work?" "If you're that hard up for money, Jack, you could have come to me, privately, for a loan to tide you over. You acting like this isn't what I'd have expected, not after all this time we've been together." "Do you think I really give a good Fuck about what it was you expected, Greg? I can't put food on the table at home, not without getting paid, and my kids sure as hell can't eat your expectations. If you can't do anything to help us out while you go get this settled, then I'd just as soon go over to see the company people, to find out what they might be able to do to help me out. In all the years I've worked with you, I've never even gotten a sniff at any bonus money you ended up getting. Far as I know, no one else ever has either." No one had ever talked to Mr. Milton like that, and none of us were surprised when he tied a can to Jack, right then and there. What was a surprise, was the ten or twelve men who left the site with Jack. Most of them were the older men, the ones who had the most construction experience. Of the fifteen or so of us who were left there, most were young guys, all of us were under twenty five years old. Most of us had only a year or so of construction experience under our belts. I had worked with Jack Velmer for the past few months, and he had taught me quite a bit about framing, and about roughing out windows and doorways. It seemed to me that he'd taken an interest in seeing that I was actually learning something to help with my future. I made a quick decision, then ran over to catch up with him and all the other workers who were leaving with him. "Kid, you might be making a big mistake siding with me on this. Greg might be a hard ass, but he does have a good nose for finding new work. Reason all of us put up with him as long as we have, is that he kept us working steadier than we could have done on our own. Are you really sure about where you want to be on this one?" All I could do was smile and nod my head that I was. I wasn't sure, but I'd already made a move that committed me. I was pretty sure that Mr. Milton would remember me leaving with these guys, and so I felt like that bridge was already burned behind me. When Jack asked me for my phone number, I took my carpenter's pencil and wrote it down on one of the tool salesman's business cards I carried in my tool bag. "I'll call you when I know anything definite. There is a lot of construction going on around here right now, so, if I can't work anything out with these guys, I can probably find something else pretty quickly. I'll be happy to put in a good word for you, wherever I do end up." One of the things I'd learned is that builders seldom put up too much of their own money when putting a project together. Usually, they'd buy the land, then pay to get the engineering work done. Once they had that, they'd get a parcel map approved for the land where they wanted to build homes. With that done, and some approved blueprints for different models and elevations of each model, they'd go to a bank and get a loan to pay for the actual building costs. A good rule of thumb was that the builder not have more invested in a new project than a thousand dollars for every approved finished lot he wanted to build homes on. This included all costs, even the land itself. I'd been surprised to find out it took so little in the way of out of pocket expenses to get things started. Of course, the builder needed a general contractor's license, insurance, and had to satisfy some other requirements, as well as meeting all state minimum standards. The contractor's license wasn't hard to come by, if you already had the years of experience you needed in order to take the test for it. I'd only need two more years of experience before I would be eligible to take the exam and try to get my own general contractor's license. Jack called me at home that night and told me to be back on the job the next morning. He had put together three full crews, and we were going to finish the build out for the company. He told me how much I'd be getting an hour, and it represented quite a generous increase from what I'd been making up to that time. It was already Summer by then, and Jack was saying we'd work as long as we could each day, hoping to do the work of five crews with the men we already had with us. I was back on site at six thirty the next morning, and we worked from seven until after eight thirty that night. I was dragging ass by the time I drove back home that night, and worried that six days a week of this was going to put me in an early grave. It took me a month to get my body accustomed to the pace of work, and all the long hours I was putting in. Of the seventeen men working the three crews, two were new hires, young guys who ran around bringing us anything we needed, but didn't already have handy. Jack worked right along with us, something Mr. Milton had never done. Except for the two new helpers, I was the only member of the crew under thirty five years old. All the men knew what they needed to do, and they went ahead and did it. Like I said, the pace of the work went up by twenty five percent at least. "If we get this baby built out by October fifth, we'll each make an extra two thousand dollars. That's the deal I made. If we can do it, while running such a lean number of crews, we'll have so much work for the next little while that we won't have time to spend all the money we'll be making. We can only do it though, if everyone holds up his end. I took a chance with you, kid, because I saw you weren't afraid to extend yourself. Do your best to keep up with the rest of us, because I'm counting on that much from you." After Jack told me that, I knew I wasn't going to be the one to let him down, not even if I had to sneak back on the work site after everyone else went home, and make up any work I'd fallen behind on. We finished everything by September thirtieth, although we had to wait for two more days before the final inspections were all signed off on the last six houses. We all got our bonuses, and Jack told me that we were going to be starting a new job on the following Monday, working for these same builders. He told me I could expect an extra dollar an hour once the new job got started. ------- By the time October came around, Dorothy was four months pregnant. Her family was starting to really give her a hard time. Her mother was yelling at her constantly, and her father and brothers were threatening to disown her. I wasn't sure what more they could do to separate themselves from her, but the threat of it had her worried and upset. To make things worse for her, Dorothy had been let go at the grocery store where she'd been working. They didn't say it was because she was unmarried and pregnant, but that was the only reason she could think of for them doing it. She had been paid quite a bit less than the other clerks working at the store, and had never once received a raise in pay, although she was one of their quickest, and most accurate, checkers. I finally managed to convince her she'd be better off moving into my room with me. My mother helped me in that regard, as she had been after Dorothy to move in with us for a long time. She had even offered her Kevin's old room. She would put all of Kevin's things in Willy's bedroom, she told her, giving Dorothy her own bedroom, in case she didn't want to live with me in my bedroom. I went out and bought another big clothes chest of drawers for Dorothy. There was plenty of room left over in my closet for all the clothes she kept on hangers. Dorothy had reached the stage in her pregnancy where she was really starting to put on some weight. In her third month she'd gone through a serious bout of morning sickness, spending half an hour in the bathroom being sick every morning. Once that stopped, she seemed to go on a real eating binge, eating from early in the morning until late every night. She started making herself pancakes at night, with fresh strawberries, and gobs and gobs of whipped cream topping. She had been a little larger than she should have been, before she got pregnant, and had then lost twelve pounds early on in the first three months of her pregnancy. When she started eating for two, it didn't take her long before she had gained all her old weight back and had added another ten or fifteen pounds on top of that. I didn't say anything to her, but I was beginning to worry about whether it was healthy for her and my unborn baby. Another thing that changed was her sexual appetite. She got hungrier for sex than I'd ever seen her before. Every morning we'd do it at least once. She'd wake me up at five o'clock, just to make certain I couldn't use being late for work as an excuse not to take care of her. At night, when I'd come home, so hot and tired from my thirteen hour days, she was all over me, even before I'd had a chance to run in and take a shower, or get to cool myself off enough to be somewhat refreshed. Later, when we went to bed, she'd make me give her some more attention. It was a wonder I managed to get up and go to work at all. "Baby, you have to let me get some rest. I have to get up again in six hours. Remember, I work hard all day, I can't sit around watching tv, and snacking all day." "That isn't all I do. I take care of your laundry, and help your mother get dinner ready. I fix your lunches too, so you'll have something good to eat at work everyday." "I know you do, and I appreciate it, but, I still need to get my rest. That's how accidents on the job happen. Guys don't get enough rest, and then someone always ends up hurt because of it. Let me sleep good tonight, and let me sleep until quarter to six before the alarm goes off. If you do that, tomorrow night we'll go somewhere, and do something. Whatever you want to do, a late supper, or we can even go see a movie if that's what you want to do." "If we go to a movie, you'll just end up sleeping through it, like that last time. How about one more time, and then I'll let you sleep in tomorrow morning?" I was too tired to put up any more of a fight, so she had her way with me. The next morning though, that alarm still went off at five o'clock anyway, and she ended up wanting it twice, so I had to hurry up with my shower, eat my breakfast on the run, and doing all this in order to make it to work only a few minutes before seven. Don't get me wrong, under other circumstances, I'd have been thrilled with Dorothy's display of eager enthusiasm. If I'd ever been able to get caught up on my rest, I'd have been pretty happy with all the action I was getting every night in my bedroom. One night, very late, after we'd made love three times, I was so tired and exhausted that all my defenses and resistance were down. Dorothy was under the sheet, using her mouth to find out for herself whether or not I was truly finished like I'd been telling her constantly, for the past ten minutes. "Look, I love you, but I can't keep up with all this anymore. Leave me alone, or else I'm getting up and going out in the living room to sleep." I wasn't even aware that I'd just told her I loved her for the first time. It was a defensive thing on my part. Something I'd said to cushion the harshness of the rest of what I'd told her. I did love her by then, but it wasn't the romantic kind of love. I loved that she was carrying my baby, and that she had made me such an integral part of her life. I loved the way she made me feel in bed, and how she always tried to pack some little surprise in my lunch pail, something that would make me smile when I first opened it up to eat. She stopped sucking on me when I told her that, coming right up to kiss me passionately, before then turning her back to me and pulling my left arm back over her, and placing my hand on her rapidly growing stomach. "I love you too, Jim. Good night." The next morning, it was five forty five before the alarm roused me from a sound sleep. Breakfast was ready by the time I walked into the kitchen, after my shower, and my mother, my sister, and Dorothy had these big grins on their faces. I barely remembered the words I'd spoken the night before. I kissed Dorothy as soon as I got up from the table, taking my lunch pail from her hands, and walking directly out the front door. Later that day, when I opened my lunch pail, there was this long, three page letter, that Dorothy had stayed up all night writing to me. In it, she wrote about how long she had loved me, and how much it had meant to her to hear me tell her those words the night before. She ended the letter simply, your loving wife, Zinat Flanagan. It was the first time she'd used her old first name like that with me. It was, apparently, how she still thought of herself deep inside. Something I'd never have guessed she felt that way. We were married a week after that. An event that pleased every member of my family who attended, as well as Dorothy, and me. None of Dorothy's family chose to come to our wedding, and I wasn't bothered by that at all. I knew Dorothy felt bad that none of her sisters or her mother had attended, but there was nothing to be done about it. They had their own values and standards, and they needed to do whatever they thought would be best for themselves. On February fourteenth, at one fifty three in the morning, my daughter, Valentina Zinat Flanagan came into the world. She weighed in at nine pounds five ounces, and was twenty one and a half inches long. Her hair was every bit as dark as her mother's, and her face was the reddest face I'd ever seen on a new born. She had a healthy set of lungs on her too, and cried for the first twenty minutes after being born. Dorothy was happy to be past the ordeal of childbirth. She had gained over forty five pounds while pregnant, and had found it difficult to get around for the last month of her term of confinement. My parents seemed quite pleased with becoming grandparents for the first time, and were putting together a nursery in Kevin's old bedroom, and switching around all my bedroom furniture with Nancy's. She was getting my old bedroom, but without the key to unlock the deadbolt my father had put on the door leading out to the side yard. Dorothy and I were getting Nancy's old bedroom, and the adjoining bedroom that had once been Kevin's. Kevin had graduated high school and then enlisted in the Air Force for four years. He was down in Mississippi, attending some kind of electronic technical school, but was expected back home on leave, just as soon as he graduated, in early March. ------- I stayed working on Jack's crews for another three years after little Zinat was born. I managed to find time to take some classes at night, picking up skills I knew I'd eventually need if I ever decided to strike out on my own. With Jack, I was making good money and getting an opportunity to learn every aspect of the housing construction trade. I'd come a long way from the eighteen year old boy who'd started out as a helper, without any experience in construction. I knew how to build from a detailed set of plans, and was familiar with all the pertinent building codes in the area where I'd been working. I knew what building inspectors looked for, and how to do the job quickly and competently without any wasted time or energy. Experience teaches you how to do the same things, but to do them both faster and better. A few years before, and I'd been amazed at the way some of the older guys just seemed to get the job done with minimal fuss, stress, or even effort. They made it all look easier then it actually was. There were little secrets and shortcut's you learned on the job, but the biggest gains came from having the many necessary tens of thousands of repetitions to make you able to do something perfectly, and to do it almost without any conscious thought. I was reaching a point where I almost never ran into anything that I hadn't run into many times before. I knew I could build a house by myself, as long as I had two unskilled helpers to lend me their two sets of willing hands. I was happy with the path I'd set myself on, back when I was fresh out of high school. Over the four plus years I'd been working in construction, I'd managed to save over eighteen thousand dollars. I kicked in fifty dollars a week to my mother, for household expenses. That was all she would accept from me. In June of 1961, I was twenty three years old, married, with one child already, and another on the way. I had thirty five thousand dollars in cash, and some coins that I knew I could sell for at least another forty thousand dollars more, if the need should ever arise for doing so. I felt that I was ready to go out and try to build a house on my own. In April of that year I had taken the state general contractor's exam and had passed it. I'd paid out all the necessary fees, and acquired the fictitious business name to operate my new company. JF Construction was up and running, and looking to acquire a nice lot somewhere, in order to build our first speculative home on. I was afraid, but more excited. Worried about the future, but anxious to test myself in the career I'd chosen for myself. I realized it was possible that I might fail to recover all my costs on my first project, that I could fail in what I'd be attempting. I had my years of experience in construction to fall back on, should the worst actually occur. All signs pointed to years of continued growth in the area's housing economy. Prices were rising, and thousands of new people were flocking to California to live every year. They needed houses, and I was anxious to build them for at least a few families each year. I had no interest in building large subdivisions of cookie cutter tract houses. I already had several of my own designs, and building plans that I was ready to turn into actual dwellings for some people looking to buy themselves a new home. ------- Chapter 13 I managed to find three finished lots over on the East side of Santa Ana to buy. Not really the best side of town, but far enough out of the way that I was able to buy all three for four thousand dollars. Each was a bit less than half an acre, and zoned R-1, ready for one single family residence per lot. What had drawn me to them was the fact that all the lots were level and wouldn't require any grading, and that the street in front of the three properties was paved, with sidewalks already put in by another housing developer who was currently building out a twenty acre tract that was less than a quarter mile from where my new lots were. The other builder was selling fifteen hundred square foot homes for fifteen thousand dollars each, including built in range, oven, dishwasher and garbage disposal. I had gotten a chance to walk through his three different models as they were going up, and I wasn't impressed with the materials he was using, especially the aluminum wiring, and the eighty amp electrical boxes, or with the way each house was being thrown together. I could foresee future problems for the people unfortunate enough to buy into this tract of homes. He met all the minimum specs of the building codes in effect at the time, but he'd cut as many corners as he could get away with. Even the lumber he was using was sub standard. Every other piece I looked at in the newly framed interiors showed evidence of being warped and having been improperly dried and cured. The exterior wall insulation was a cheap and inferior brand as well. The builder was probably going to clear sixty five hundred to eight thousand per home, but, if he stayed in business, was going to use up the bulk of those profits in taking care of future homeowner complaints. Building homes like that wasn't anything I'd be willing to engage in. I almost didn't buy those lots of mine, because I didn't want JF Construction's first building project associated with the reputation that other builder would have in the immediate area. In the end though, having three contiguous lots like that, for so little outlay on my part, was more than I could resist. I continued working for Jack for an additional six months, after purchasing the lots, in order to allow some time to pass for that other builder to sell off his remaining unsold inventory. To my surprise, few homeowner's made complaints about their homes during the one year period they had to discover and get corrected any flaws or building shortcomings. I asked Jack about this, listing all the problems I saw with the materials and construction. "I know that guy, and he's been building around here for a lot of years. He's always careful with the plumbing, and doesn't cut any corners there. He doesn't get involved in any grading problems either, and always uses the best concrete he can find, so his houses seldom have any issues involving the foundation settling, or cracks suddenly appearing anywhere in his houses. Chances are that no one will be tearing out their wallboard to take a close look at his framing work, or at the materials he used for it. As far as that insulation he used, the temperature here in the worst of winters doesn't require R-19. I know some guys who use old newspapers, folded up into tight balls. The only big thing you told me about is where he cut corners on the electrical. That will cause trouble later for people who'll need to get their house rewired, but that probably won't happen right away, probably not for at least ten to fifteen years. You said yourself, he met all building codes and minimum material specs." "For an extra thousand dollars per house, he could have done all the rest of it the right way. Why screw people like that for so little money?" "I agree, but he makes a lot more than that from using crews that have little idea of what they're doing when it comes to putting up the sticks in the first place. Have you ever gone and taken a look at most of the people who make up his crews? Usually there's one guy on each crew who has a good idea of how to go about putting a house up, and the other four or five guys are people who don't have the first clue as to what they're doing. In most cases, its one guy building the house, with four or five unskilled helpers." "I was thinking of building houses like that myself, Jack. Just me and a couple guys to move things around and hold them up for me while I took care of anything that needed doing." "Big mistake doing that, kid. Take you too long from start to finish to do it like that, and you'd have no one there to tell you when you were making mistakes. You can't be the builder, the foreman, and also the guy with the hammer, putting the house up too. You run into one big patch of bad weather, at the wrong time, and you lose all the profit you would otherwise have made. You get sick or hurt on the job, and what then? You can't put all your bets just on you, that isn't smart." "What would you do, if it was just you starting out as a new builder?" "If it was me, I wouldn't do it. Not enough extra in it for me to take on all that added headache and aggravation. If I had to do it though, I'd go find myself three other guys like me, and I'd build houses with a four man crew, one that really knew what they were doing. I might hire a kid to fetch and carry for all of us, but that would be it. I'd build eight to ten houses a year that way, nothing too grand, but steady work for everyone. But that's just if I had to do it. If you wanted to do something like that, build eight to ten houses a year, and were willing to pay top wages for good men, I could put a solid crew together for you with just two phone calls." "When you say top wages, what are we talking about?" "Thousand dollars a month, for each of us, guaranteed, for all twelve months of the year. Health and accident insurance, workmen's comp and full Social Security withholding too. On top of that, maybe a Christmas bonus for us, if you end up having a real good year for yourself." "What would be left for me, if I paid everyone that much? I'd end up working for less than I'm making now." "Not if you do it right. You'd need to go into custom homes, not these tract houses. People with money expect to have to pay more to get things built the way they want them. You'd have to work with real architects, and do the build out according to their specs and plans. You'd never bid a job that didn't net you out at least ten thousand. Figure out how long each job should take, then tack on an extra twenty five percent to that, just to be on the safe side. If your end is eighty to a hundred, you wouldn't have any trouble paying out forty or so to us, including benefits. Your biggest problem would be trying to find enough hours in a day to do everything you need to do, and still be there everyday, swinging a hammer with us during working hours. I know three very good architects that would probably let you bid their jobs, just on my say so." "I don't think one crew could build out eight to ten custom homes a year." "Greg Milton and I did it with two other guys, for three years, ten or twelve years back. Trick is to have three houses all going up at once, so you always have someplace to work, when there are the unavoidable delays for inspections, or for building material snafu's. You need to give yourself plenty of wiggle room in the contract you sign too. Four month build out's, with a clause for time extensions, if the owner or the architect insist on changes in the plans from what you had originally bid. You also need to make sure you have every kind of insurance for the job. Have that written into every contract. Things always happen on job sites, even if you fence them in." "I wanted to build my own designs. Build them on speculation, and sell them once they were ready." "Good way to go broke in a hurry. What do you do when all your dough is tied up in a house that you can't sell for some reason? You can't pay a crew if you don't have the capital to keep them working." "I've got some money put aside. I've got more than enough to put up the first three houses I have it in my mind to build." "So, let's say we build them, and then what? No one is going to quit a good job to go to work for some new builder without a proven track record, and no outside backing to speak of. My advice to you is to forget it. If you just have to try it anyway, go bid some custom jobs with established architects." I listened to Jack telling me what I didn't want to hear. I had started out, some four years before, with a very clear idea of what I eventually wanted to be doing with my life. Since that time, everything I had done had been with that deeply entrenched goal in mind. I wasn't going to abandon my dream now, not when it was so close to becoming reality. "I've planned on someday building my own designs for a long time now, since before I ever got a job in construction. Everything I've done over the past four years was part of my working toward that goal. It isn't about how much money I'll make, its about the satisfaction I'd get from taking something I dreamed up in my head and turning into an actual house, one that people would live in and appreciate. I first got the idea when I saw how my mother fell in love with our house, the first day she walked through a model of the floor plan. I want to make other people feel like she felt that day." "It's nice to have a dream, kid, but you better remember that making money is always the most important thing. You can't eat satisfaction, and you can't pay your bills with it either. You're doing pretty well right here with us. With another kid on the way, why don't you forget about all that other crap you've got in your head, and maybe think about building a house for you and your family to live in?" I could tell that Jack wasn't a dreamer. He was more than content to work for someone else, satisfied with bringing home a nice weekly paycheck. He was close to fifty, so maybe whatever dreams he had once nourished were only distant memories. I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do with my life, and I thought I had the skills and the resources to turn my vision into actual homes for people to live in and enjoy. I wanted the thrill of being able to drive by homes, knowing that I had designed and built them. To know that they existed only because of me. Still, I stayed working on one of Jack's crews. While I did it though, I was also moving forward with my own plans, pricing all the materials I'd need, and deciding on the building sequence I'd be using. One good thing was Dorothy had listened to me telling her of my future plans, and she understood, encouraged, and supported me in pursuing these goals. Many evenings she and I would be at the kitchen table, constantly going over each set of building plans, checking to make sure we hadn't forgotten any detail, or failed to consider any expense we might encounter. The first set of plans I decided to build was for a twenty seven hundred square foot, two story home that I'd designed over the past two years. It incorporated many of the best new features that Dorothy and I had seen in the model homes we usually went out looking at on most Sunday's, and had a few others that I'd come up with on my own. I had decided to emphasize spaciousness, building in large bedrooms, and including more bathrooms than the one or two that most homes came with. There were four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms in the plan I was ready to start building. The first master bedroom was downstairs, with a nice attached bathroom and a generous walk in closet. The downstairs master bedroom had a vaulted ceiling too, so that no one would be above them. Upstairs, there were three other bedrooms, one was a second master bedroom, with its own full bathroom and huge walk in closet. The other two bedrooms shared a bathroom between them, with connecting doors. I had a full three car garage, with two of the upstairs bedrooms centered over it. The third upstairs bedroom was over the kitchen, pantry, and half of the living room. I planned on putting in quite a bit of sound insulating materials in most of the interior walls. My kitchen area would feature large dual sinks with a built in garbage disposal, a dishwasher, walk in pantry, built in range and oven, as well as a recessed area to put a large refrigerator. There would be a door off the kitchen leading to a fully equipped laundry room that featured a built in sink, ironing board, storage cabinets and new washer and dryer. The laundry led directly out to the garage which I had on the side of the house, instead of at the front. Beneath the staircase leading to the second floor, I was building in extra storage and the guest half bathroom. I had shown my plans to many women, finding out from them, firsthand, what features they liked and didn't like about my design. The kitchen and living room were open to each other, to give the feeling of increased spaciousness. There was a third open area, which I planned on having used for family dining. For that day and age, this was an ambitious size for a somewhat affordable family home. I could close my eyes and see all the details come to life. I planned to build this home on the center lot of the three that I'd purchased. Counting all the materials, utility hook up's, and included appliances, my building costs would be a shade more than ten thousand dollars. Add in an additional five thousand for my labor costs, assuming I hired my own fully experienced two man crew to work along with me, and I'd be in the house seventeen thousand dollars, counting land costs. I planned on listing the house with a local real estate sales specialist, so that would add another six percent coming off the top of my eventual sales price. Realistically, I needed to be able to sell the home for thirty thousand dollars, in order to come out of it with the ten thousand dollar profit I had been hoping to make. Housing prices were moving up, but even in the current market, my parent's house would appraise for no more than twenty thousand dollars, including their block wall fence. Their house was only four hundred square feet smaller than my own design. I had almost no doubt that I could sell the house for twenty five thousand dollars, but thirty thousand was a bit of a stretch, given comparable sales within the County. To get thirty for it, I'd need to wait to find a qualified buyer, one who could appreciate the advantage of buying a very well thought out and constructed family home. If I waited around for someone who would appreciate the home enough to pay top dollar for it, I might end up spending quite a long time waiting to get my money back out of it. I knew I could continue working for Jack, and be pretty sure of making a nice living by doing so. I also knew that I might end up broke, or even in debt, if I insisted on following through with going out and trying to achieve my dream. Talking with Jack hadn't helped me in the way I had hoped it would. I kept coming back to things Jack had warned me about during our conversation. He had given me his best advice, and here I was, failing to profit from his many years of first hand experience. Instead of following his advice and building at least three houses at a time, I was planning on only building one. Instead of building a house that fit in well with the prices other houses in the neighborhood were going for, I was going to try to build and sell a thirty thousand dollar house in a neighborhood where fifteen thousand was the average selling price. Instead of giving myself a leisurely four month building schedule, and budgeting my labor costs accordingly, I was going to try to get it all done in ten weeks. There had been a good reason for me asking Jack for his advice, and now, having gotten it, I was recklessly planning on going against it. There had to be something very wrong with the way I was thinking. I also knew which set of plans I liked the most, and why I wanted to build the best house I possibly could. I wanted to build something I could take pride in. If I didn't do what made the best financial sense, then I wasn't in business, I was indulging in a hobby. A hobby that could end up costing me more than I could comfortably afford to pay. When I went home that night, I was upset with myself, and discouraged, because I no longer believed in the prospect of being able to build the house I wanted to, while still having a reasonable expectation of making a decent profit while doing so. When I had discussed my building houses in the past with Dorothy, I had always presented my ideas using the best case scenarios. That night we both sat down at the kitchen table, and I told her what Jack had advised first, then I told her what I had been planning on doing instead. She let me finish telling her everything, without once interrupting me "Don't build the house for anyone or anything else. Build it for yourself. If it sells for what you want, great. If not, you can either sell it for less, or we could move into it ourselves. We can't live here with your parents forever, Jim. Either way, you'll have finally done what you've wanted to do since the beginning. I'm sure you'll learn a lot just from having built the house from your plans. The next one you build will be even better. If we run out of money, you can always find another job somewhere." "I could wind up making a big mess of the whole thing, We could lose the whole investment if that happens." "Jim, you've built an awful lot of houses over the last few years. What would be so different about this one?" I had a feeling that I had to go ahead and start building. If I didn't, and kept putting it off, it would become harder for me to ever give up a steady paycheck to try my hand as an independent builder. It took a little more than fourteen weeks to build, using two experienced guys for my main crew, and two high school kids recommended by one of my old shop teachers. As the house started taking shape, I began to notice people driving by to look at the progress we were making. There weren't any two story houses anywhere nearby, at that time. People are always curious about something that is different. By the time I was done with my final inspection, I had nineteen thousand dollars invested in the house. I did almost all the interior finish work myself, using one of the high school kids, on weekends, to help me put in cabinets and install needed fixtures. I hadn't hired a real estate guy like I'd been planning on doing. Instead, I bought some furniture and moved my family into the new house. The three of us lived in the downstairs part of the house while we waited for Dorothy to give birth to my first son. We hadn't been in the new house more than a week before Dorothy came to me with a list of changes and improvements that she and my mother had come up with. When you draw something up on paper, it is never exactly like you thought it would be when it actually gets built. Dorothy was right, we did learn a lot by building the house. After my son, Eric was born, I decided that I'd go ahead and build a more modest house on the lot to the right of the house we now occupied. I had put up a "for sale" sign on our house, but wasn't doing anything to advertise it. I called back the same two guys from before, and hired back the best of the two high school kids from the earlier build out. This new house was eighteen hundred square feet, but it was a single story three bedroom design, with two baths, and a two car garage. I built it as a solid upgrade from the best house the other builder had put in over at the nearby tract. It was nothing fancy or special, but it showed nicely, and I was confident I could sell it fairly quickly, once it was finished. I planned on asking nineteen thousand for it. I had twelve thousand invested in it by the time we were finished building it. Right before I finished building the three bedroom home, a couple stopped by to ask me questions about it. They were somewhere in their thirties, with him about five years older than her. While I was showing them around the unfinished house, they mentioned that they had three children, all in their early teens. "That's my house, next door. When I first built it, I had planned on selling it, but my wife and I decided we'd like to live there. The only problem with that idea is that our two kids are too young to be climbing up and down the stairs. We just live in the lone bedroom on the bottom, not even using the other three upstairs bedrooms. We really like the house, but the kids need to get a few years older before we can take full advantage of all it has to offer." "Jim, would it be possible for us to see your house? We sure do like the sound of having three upstairs bedrooms, all away from the downstairs master bedroom. Do you think you might be willing to build one for us, if we can find the right lot to put it on?" "That house is over twenty seven hundred square feet, with a three car garage. I think I overbuilt for this neighborhood. I can check with my wife, but I'm sure it will be fine with her, as long as you don't mind hearing two babies crying. I have a three year old with a back baby tooth coming in, and a one and a half month old who likes to make frequent loud fusses as well." The couple weren't in the house more than five minutes before I saw that same look in the woman's eye that my mother had that first day she came back from seeing the model they had finally ended up buying. He asked a lot of questions, which I answered as well as I could, but she just went around touching everything. I could see she really liked the upstairs master bedroom with the private bathroom and the extra roomy walk in closet. "The downstairs bedroom is the same size as this one, twenty by twenty, with another large bathroom, and a ten by ten walk in closet. Altogether, each of the master bedrooms takes up a thirty by twenty square foot area. The other two bedrooms are twelve by twenty and fourteen by twenty. The connecting bathroom those rooms share is ten by seven. Each of those rooms has a six foot long four foot deep closet." "How long would it take you to build one of these for us? After we found a lot?" "I'd need at least six months, to get all the permits and to build it. If I built it on your finished lot, I'd still need to get thirty thousand for it, in order to be able to come out okay on the job." "If you don't mind me asking, how much were you going to sell this one for, before you decided you wanted to live here?" The wife asked me this question as she ran her hand over the stairway banister and rail. "I was going to ask thirty thousand for it too, but I bought this land at a real good price, and material prices have gone up some since I built this one too." "We really like this house. Would you consider selling it to us after you finished that other one?" I saw her husband giving her a sharp look. I imagine he thought himself a pretty cagey negotiator. "I'm not sure my wife wants to make another move, so soon after the baby. How much are you offering me, because that would be a consideration in our decision?" "I was thinking twenty eight. I remember you telling us that you had over built for this neighborhood." He looked at his wife right after telling me this. I'm sure he hoped he was communicating with her the fact that he didn't want her saying anything else about how much she liked this specific floor plan. "That makes it easy for me to turn you down then. Did you also remember me telling you that the materials prices have gone up? Besides, over building is a good thing, for people who might want their house to be the biggest and nicest in the area. There aren't any other houses with a similar floor plan that I've seen, and I've gone to just about every model opening in the past three years, over more than a thirty mile radius." "No salesman, so no commission. How much do you save there, another two thousand?" "The sign out front cost me two dollars. That's how much I'd save if I sold you this house, because I'd move next door, and put my sign in front of it. Find your own lot, and we'll talk about building this floor plan for you over there. If you really want this one, I'd need thirty two for it. Depending on how much you had to pay for a finished lot, you might still save some money by buying this one already built." "Maybe we could split the difference, and give you thirty?" "Let me go speak to Dorothy to see what she says. In the meantime, you and your wife can look around up here some more, and talk it over in privacy." Two weeks after the deal was struck, for thirty thousand, my father, Willy, and I started moving all our furniture and personal things over to the other house. It was the day after I got my final inspection for the new house approved. As soon as we'd moved into the new house, I had my crew start work on putting up another one over on the last lot. This was another single story eighteen hundred square foot model with a different look and interior floor plan than the one we were now living in. This became our regular routine, always trying to have one house built and occupied by us, and a second one in the process of being built. As land prices for finished lots kept moving up, and building material prices rose too, the sales prices of the homes I was selling kept pace. A house I started out making eight thousand on, when it cost me twelve to build, and I sold it for twenty, might end up costing me eighteen to build, and be sold for thirty. I was building four to six new homes a year, and moving, from one house to another, on average, twice a year. Dorothy started calling what we were doing house sitting. I knew she wanted us to get a house we could move into for good. By the time Zinat turned seven and had been to three different schools, Dorothy put her foot down and told me she wasn't a Bedouin. I took that to mean she didn't want to keep pulling up our tent and moving from oasis to oasis. I had this great new floor plan that I'd been working on. Eric would be starting school the next year, and I had found a real nice corner lot, one block from a good elementary school in Garden Grove. It was only a two or three minute drive over to my parent's house from there. Dorothy's family had reunited, once Dorothy, and then, later, Sonia, had left home. Sonia had met an American guy, and had later moved with him to Phoenix, Arizona. There had been no marriage. That second family scandal was more than Dorothy's mother could tolerate, so the men were invited to move back in and take over family management decisions once again. The lot had once had a home on it, but it had been gutted in a fiery blaze some two years before it came back on the market. I bought it from the insurance company that had insured the home, after the owners of the burned out ruin had decided not to go to all the trouble to rebuild, settling for a greater amount from the insurer in the new settlement process. It was an established neighborhood, and I had this new floor plan that took advantage of a lot open on two sides. I was putting in a large porch area in the front, and all along one side, leaving the entire front of the house an open area where our children could run around inside and play. The back of the house would contain the four bedrooms, and the front would be a panoramic kitchen, dining, and living room combination, all spread out in an "L" shape with five by six foot windows separated by a two foot wall all the way around, except for a double door front opening directly into the living room, and a sliding glass door opening into the kitchen. I loved the openness of the front rooms and the amount of light it gave us during the day. The front porch, also "L" shaped was forty feet by forty feet, extending out ten feet, with a covered roof and pillars spaced every ten feet on each side. I was building this to be our "permanent" home, but that didn't mean I wouldn't sell it, if the right buyer came along. ------- Chapter 14 By the time my second son, Bellamy Francis Flanagan came along, we had been living in that same corner lot across from the elementary school for four years. Zinat was finishing up her last year at the elementary school, and Eric was already in the third grade. I was thirty one years old, healthy, happily married, doing well enough in my business, still loved what I was doing, and really had no complaints to speak of. My life might not have been perfect, or ideal, but it was certainly very good. It should have stayed that way too, but it didn't. What happened to me shouldn't happen to anyone. I was standing in line over at the Stanton City Hall, waiting to file papers for a requested zoning change on some property I had purchased. I was waiting patiently for my turn to get to the head of the line, so I could file my request and get back to the current job site where I was putting up yet another of my housing designs. When the guy in front of me finished up his business and walked away, I found myself looking at the most beautiful creature I'd ever laid my eyes upon. It was something at first sight. I'm not saying it was love, but it was something more than simple lust too. I was immediately drawn to her. It was strange, and completely unexpected. One minute I was a happily married, responsible, father of three, and the next minute, I had changed into a completely different person. I saw her, and I wanted her. Even more than that, I wanted her to be with me, forever. Instant attraction. It had to have been glandular. There is simply no other explanation for what happened next. "Hi, I'm Jim Flanagan, and I'm here to file a request for a zoning change on a piece of property I own. They told me I needed to come here to do that?" She took the paperwork from me and looked it over. When she was done, she looked up and gave me this wonderful smile. All her teeth were white and straight, and her tongue was wet and pink when she spoke. "Everything looks okay. The zoning commission meets on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month. You'll be notified at least one week in advance of when your request is coming to the board for review and possible approval. It might be helpful, if you, or a representative of your company, were in attendance at that meeting, to answer any questions the board might have." I was mesmerized by the sound of her voice, and the way her tongue moved in her mouth as she enunciated each word so slowly, clearly, and carefully to me. When I realized how she was speaking to me, I thought she had somehow mistaken me as a foreigner, someone who might not understand English. Later, I found out that was just the way she spoke to everyone. She came to California from Georgia, by way of Florida and Alabama. She'd been born and raised in a little town in Florida. She was so cute. "Are you seeing anyone at the moment?" "The next gentleman in line, right after you leave." She had a light, lilting laugh that took all the sting out of what she'd just said. Embarrassed at my foolish behavior anyway, I thanked her for her help and departed. This had been in the morning, the first time I'd seen her. She had been wearing one of those little black plastic name tags that said her name was Melanie Meyers. I stopped at the first florist I came to, on Beach Blvd (Highway 39), and ordered a dozen red roses to be delivered to her at the city hall. I paid an extra five dollars to get the flowers delivered right away. On the card, I wrote: 'Melanie, please make me the happiest man in the state by agreeing to going out to dinner with me tonight. I'll be back to get your answer at two. Hopefully, Jim F.' At five to two I went into city hall again and got in Melanie's line. I saw her start to grin when she first saw me again. By the time I'd worked my way to the head of the line again, it was ten past two. "Hi again. Did you get my note?" "I got it. The roses were lovely. Thank you. Before I give you my answer to your question, is that a wedding band on your finger there?" I looked at my hand, noticing the gold band I'd been wearing for more than eleven years. I never took it off, even though a lot of construction workers removed theirs, because of safety concerns. "Yes. I'm married, and have three kids. My youngest is only two months old. I don't know how to explain it, but as soon as I saw you, I knew we had to get to know each other better. I love my wife, but it isn't the romantic kind of love. She is like a really good friend to me, or maybe I should say she is more like my sister than a wife. I'm not good at explaining our relationship, but I know I really would enjoy taking you to dinner tonight." We had both been talking very quietly, almost in whispers. I knew I sounded desperate, and that wasn't what I had wanted. It was only after she'd asked me about my wedding ring that I had given any thought to how something like this would affect Dorothy and my three children. Now I felt guilty about what I was trying to do, but not guilty enough to even consider retracting my dinner invitation to Melanie. "Where I'm from, a decent woman doesn't have any interest in going out with a married man. Why should I make an exception to this very good rule just for you?" As she told me this, I could see the laughter in her eyes. I knew she was toying with me, and that she planned on letting me persuade her to join me for dinner. Even knowing this, I decided to be cautious. "Where I'm from, there isn't a thing wrong with people going out to dinner together, married to others or not, since sharing a meal together isn't against any laws or rules that I'm aware of." "Will your wife and children be present at this dinner you have in mind for us?" Again, I had the definite feeling that she was teasing me. I knew we were at a critical juncture in our negotiations at this point. I still didn't want to say anything to ruin my chances with her, but I also knew I had to start showing some backbone soon, if I wanted to have any chance with this woman. I reached into my wallet and handed her one of my business cards. "This is my home number. My wife's name is Dorothy. Why don't you call her and ask her if it would be all right with her if I took you out to dinner tonight? Tell her you work for the city of Stanton, and that I gave you my application for a zoning change earlier today. I'm certain she won't raise a fuss once she knows it will be a business dinner. My wife is hoping I get those new lots approved, so I can start building more houses to sell. She's afraid I'll sell our current house, if I don't have new construction to be working on." "You'll need to sell your home if your plans aren't approved?" "No. My wife knows I'll be too busy working on the new houses to bother with trying to sell our current home. She hates moving, and wants to keep the home we now live in." "If I did agree to dinner then, it would be strictly business?" "I didn't say that. In fact, business would be the farthest thing from my thoughts, if you were to agree to go out with me tonight." She laughed when I told her this. I loved the way she laughed. I loved everything I'd seen or heard from her thus far. I couldn't explain any of this, as I'd never experienced anything like this before. I was enthralled by her, putty in her hands. She wrote down an address, then passed the piece of paper to me. "Come by at six thirty, and we'll talk about this. No promises about dinner, but, I'm intrigued that you would permit me to speak with your wife. You'll have to explain to me, in far greater detail, the nature of the relationship you have with her that permits you to act this way with other women." "I don't act this way with other women. You're the only one. I've never done anything like this before." "There are other people waiting. See you at six thirty, and we'll talk about it then." I left the building and went directly to a pay phone to call Dorothy. My intention was to let her know I'd be at a business meeting about the Stanton zoning change for the new lots. I hadn't had time yet to really think about what I might be letting us all in for with this craziness I was setting in motion. All I knew for certain was that I'd be at Melanie's house or apartment promptly at six thirty that evening. I felt a sense of guilt about what I was doing, and knew that I was ready and willing to take things much beyond a simple dinner with this new woman. Dorothy took the news that I'd be eating out and might be home late without any arguing on her part. I'd been ready to go to some lengths to convince her of the business importance of this meeting. She asked no questions, just accepting it as if it were something I'd done regularly in the past. After I'd hung up the telephone, my guilty feelings became much stronger. I considered going back to City Hall and telling Melanie that I'd changed my mind about our getting together that night. I didn't like thinking of myself as someone who cheats, or one of those husbands who runs around on his wife. I wasn't like that. I hadn't ever cheated on Dorothy before, or done anything at all along those lines. Our sex life was still going strong, even after all these years. I had no complaints along those lines, that was for sure. I'd never given Dorothy any reason to be suspicious or jealous before this. At six thirty I found myself knocking on Melanie's second floor apartment door. She lived in Buena Park, right off Orangethorpe Avenue, in a large apartment complex that catered to either single tenants or childless couples. It was a small, single bedroom, apartment. Her living room was tiny, with a small sofa, a wooden table with a lamp on it and another overstuffed chair. There was a television set in one corner of the room, sitting on a TV stand. The television was off when I came through the door. "I wasn't sure if you'd really come tonight or not." She said this while leading me over to the living room sofa. I noticed the flowers I'd had sent to her sitting in a vase on her dining table. She'd changed into a different dress from the one she'd been wearing at work. This new one was fancier, and it showed off her body quite a bit more. "I wouldn't have missed coming for anything." I sat on the sofa, watching her as she turned back and sat on the overstuffed living room chair. We were now separated by about six feet. She was smiling and looked like she was waiting for me to start our conversation. "I haven't called your wife yet." She said this a bit nervously. For the first time I realized she was a bit uncomfortable with this situation. "I called her and told her I wouldn't be home until sometime later. Thank you for letting me come see you again. I know this must seem strange to you. When I first set eyes on you today, something happened to me. I can't really explain what it was, other than to say I feel a very strong attraction to you." "That much you made obvious. All the girls in the office have been talking about you all day. You aren't exactly subtle, are you?" "I guess not." "In a way, its very flattering. It is also a bit frightening. You seem so intense, the way you look at me. One of my friends said you looked like a hungry lion looking at his next meal. You do have the look of someone hungry for something. Tell me about your wife." "Dorothy? What would you like to know?" "Where did you meet her? How long have you been married? How many children, and their ages? What kind of married relationship do you have together?" "We met in back in high school, right after I moved to Garden Grove from San Pedro. We got married after Dorothy got pregnant with our oldest child, Zinat. She's eleven years old. We have an eight year old boy, and another son who is only two months old. As far as what kind of marriage we have, up until today, I thought it was like most other people. We get along pretty well. I can't say I have any complaints, other than the fact that I've never been in love with her. I love her, but I'm just not in love with her. I've wished, many times, that I could be, but something has been missing in our relationship since the very beginning. There isn't that romantic spark. I have more of a romantic spark with you, and I don't even know you yet." "That isn't very nice to say. Does your wife have this romantic spark for you?" "I think she does. We've never spoken about it. She knows that I don't have the kind of burning passion for her that they show in the movies, or write about in the books. We have a good relationship, but that other thing is completely missing." "What is it you're after that makes you want to come chasing after me?" "I guess I'm looking for what I'm missing, what I've never had with her." "You and your wife must enjoy a decent sex life together. Three children spread so far apart would argue for that." "I'm not complaining about the sex. I'm not here because there is anything missing in the physical part of my sex life. I'm missing that animal attraction that should have been there and never was. I feel that attraction with you." "A selfish attitude. How could you marry someone you aren't attracted to. How can you stand to sleep with her if there's no attraction?" "I've said it wrong. There isn't the romantic emotional component in our marriage that there should have been. That yearning, burning, need for me to be around her, with her. I feel it with you. I feel it very strongly." "Go home Mr. Flanagan. I've listened to all that you've said, and have decided that I still have no wish to participate any further in the destruction of your marriage. I confess to feeling the attraction for you that you spoke of earlier, but that isn't enough to justify all the pain that a relationship with you would cause your family. I feel so sorry for your wife." I got up from the sofa and left her apartment. Maybe I was a little relieved, but I was also hugely disappointed. I'd had a chance to make my case, and had somehow blown it. I knew I had sounded pitiful to her, whining about not having everything, when I should have been grateful instead, for all that I did have. I drove away from Melanie's apartment, disturbed by what she'd said, but not yet willing to give up. I knew she was interested, maybe not as interested in me as I was in her, but still interested. I needed a different approach, one where she would see that she wasn't taking anything away from Dorothy, our marriage, or from the children. It would be a separate relationship, one that wouldn't have to impact on what I now had. Dorothy was surprised to see me home so early. I told her that the meeting hadn't been fruitful, and that I'd have to reschedule another one, after I had better answers to their questions. We watched a bit of television, then went to bed a bit earlier than normal. I was somewhat distant and distracted during our lovemaking that night, concerned with trying to come up with a different approach to Melanie. Dorothy, riding me from above, remarked on the fact that I seemed to have more than my usual staying power. I managed to cum, finally, but only after I'd reversed positions and cleared my mind of Melanie and that whole situation. The next morning Dorothy surprised me over breakfast. She was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing the baby and watching me as I wolfed down the ham and egg breakfast she'd gotten up to make for me. It was a little before seven o'clock in the morning. The two older kids were still in their beds, asleep. "Jim, is something the matter?" She looked right at my face as she asked me this. Dorothy seldom looked at my face while we were talking. "Everything's fine, as far as I know. Why did you ask me that?" "When you came home last night, something seemed different. In bed you were different too. You seemed distracted by something when we were doing it. Are you having some problems at work?" I was a bit shaken up that she was able to notice I'd acted differently than usual. I hadn't been aware of it. "Nothing's wrong, Dorothy. I submitted my plans and the zoning change request yesterday. It will probably be another month before anything gets approved. We still have six more weeks of work left on the job we're building out now. Don't worry, I don't have any immediate plans to sell this house, not any time this year at least." "I got a letter from Sonia. She wants to leave Milt, and she asked me if it would be all right if she and Jake came here to stay with us for a month or two? She doesn't want to go back to live with my parents again. She told me, in the letter, that she caught Milt fooling around with a woman from his work. What should I tell her when I write back to her?" Sonia had been living with her boyfriend over in Arizona for more than ten years. Jake was their eight year old son. Milt was a dispatcher for a large trucking firm based in Phoenix, and not the sharpest tool in the box. It was difficult to imagine any woman wanting him, especially with the huge beer belly he was sporting the last time either of us had seen him. Sonia was still a very cute woman, better looking than Dorothy, and she'd managed to get back her nice figure after having Jake. Dorothy seemed to put on an extra, permanent, ten pounds with each new child she bore. I had made some small hints to her that she might want to start exercising to get all that extra weight off. So far, my gentle hinting hadn't produced any positive results. "I'll leave it up to you, Dorothy. If we let her come here, we'll have to do some switching around with the sleeping arrangements. I guess it would be all right if Zack went into Eric's room, and Sonia took the bed in the nursery with the baby. If you don't want her in there with him, she could sleep out in the living room, on the fold out sofa bed." "You wouldn't get upset if I write and tell her they can stay here for a few months?" "A few months? What happened to a month or two? Doesn't matter, because I already said I'm leaving it up to you to decide. Is she planning to go out and get herself a job? I don't want her just lazing around here doing nothing. You know how lazy she always was before?" "I'll talk to her about it. She's older now, and she's been taking care of their apartment and her family. I'm sure she won't have any problem with going out and getting a job." I went to work, unable to get Melanie out of my thoughts. I wondered if Sonia leaving her boyfriend because he was fooling around was some kind of message for me. I wasn't very religious, but that didn't mean I didn't believe in the idea of signs from above. It sure didn't seem like anyone was making it easy for me to stray too far from my marriage vows. Sonia coming to live with us would complicate things as well. It might be smarter for me to just forget I ever saw Melanie. I laughed ruefully at the thought. I knew I wasn't likely to be giving up on this so easily. ------- Chapter 15 Dorothy wrote her sister to tell her that we would welcome her into our home, but only until she got herself a job and was able to care for herself and her son. A week later we heard back from Sonia again, this time asking Dorothy if she could borrow three hundred dollars, to offset her moving expenses. Dorothy came to me with Sonia's letter, and we ended up sending her the money through Western Union. Jake and Sonia showed up in Garden Grove two weeks after we'd sent her the money. It was less than three hundred miles from Arizona to our house, but Sonia gave no explanation for the long delay in getting back to California. I had to go back over to Stanton for the zoning board hearing, and was pleasantly surprised to see Melanie sitting off to the side of the planning commission members. I was granted my variance request without any questions being asked of me, a pleasant surprise, and told that I could come by the city hall and pick up my new permit in a week. I was happy, since this would give me an opportunity to see Melanie again, and, hopefully, get her to change her mind about seeing me. During the hour that I was sitting in the hearing, my attention was pretty well fixed on Melanie the whole time. There was something about her that just drew my eyes to her face. She was gorgeous, but that wasn't the whole source of her attraction for me. Just seeing her gave me pleasure. To me, she was like a work of art, something that you could stare at forever. She fascinated me, the way no other person ever had. I'd look at her, and I'd feel a real definite sense of enjoyment. She approached me as soon as the zoning meeting was concluded. I'd remained at the meeting after my petition had been granted, hoping that she and I could exchange a few words. "They sure didn't put you through any bother over your petition, Mr. Flanagan. They almost never approve a variance request without asking the petitioner some questions." "I wasn't asking for anything big, just a five foot change in the front setbacks on the four lots. I needed that in order to have decent sized back yards for the houses I'm going to be building. Forty foot setbacks aren't reasonable anyway. I wish you'd call me Jim though, not Mr. Flanagan." "How is the rest of your family, Jim?" The way she asked me that let me know that she might still be a bit angry at my earlier attempt to date her. "They're all fine. My sister in law and her son are staying with us for a short while, so the house is pretty crowded at the moment. She's moving back here from Arizona." "I'm still not sure that I shouldn't be offended by what you tried to get me involved with. A married man, one with three young children at home. What kind of woman did you think I was?" "I told you when we talked at your apartment, that I never have done anything like this before. It isn't like I'm always running around trying to pick up women. You're the only one I've ever been interested in this way. I can't help it that I find you irresistibly attractive. I wish I didn't." I was getting a bit upset with her coming up to me like this. It looked like she just wanted to tell me how out of line I was before. "I almost believe you. I am glad that you were honest enough to tell me that you were married and had a family. A lot of guys try to hide that, at least until after they get what they're after. Because you didn't try to hide any of that, I can almost believe what you're telling me now. I don't understand how you hoped to have a relationship with me, while still keeping your wife and family together?" "That's why I suggested we go have dinner somewhere, so we could talk about how we could do that." "I'm not a home wrecker. I wouldn't go out to dinner with a married man, especially one who has told me he finds me so irresistible. If you weren't married, I might be very interested, but you are. I wouldn't feel right letting you take me out anywhere." "So, we're right back to where we were when you told my to go home that other time. I'm still interested, and you still aren't. I'm still glad I had a chance to see you again. I didn't think you'd be here tonight. It was a nice surprise." "I'm at all the zoning hearings. Who do you think it is that writes up all the changes for them to either turn down or approve? When you come by city hall later, to pick up your variance, I'll be the one who wrote it all up for them sign off on." "Speaking of that, when will the paperwork be ready for me to pick up? I'm anxious to start building on those lots." "You can start now, if you want to. The variance has been approved already. The document is just for your records, in case there are questions asked later on. You can pick up the variance on Thursday, if you want it in your hands before you start building." "If I come by to get it at noon on Thursday, will you let me take you out to lunch?" She laughed, not seeming to be at all offended by my offer. "I really shouldn't. If I did go with you, it would only be to see how scandalized all the old biddies would be because of it. I know I'm probably going to regret saying yes to you, but, I will, if you first promise to behave yourself if I do?" "Not a problem. For right now, all I expect us to do is talk, to try to get to know each other." I'm pretty sure we both knew that there was going to be a lot more between us in the future. Melanie had approached me after the meeting. She must have known that she would accept an invitation if one was made to her. I was relieved, knowing that the biggest hurdle had been overcome with her. I still had an even larger hurdle, Dorothy. I had no ideas about how I might make her understand and accept my doing anything with Melanie. On the face of it, what I was contemplating was entirely inexcusable. This was certainly going to put a tremendous strain on my marriage. Dorothy would be hurt by this. There was no way to avoid that. Not if I was actually going through with my plans for Melanie. Driving home that night, no longer in Melanie's presence, I started feeling the weight of what I was putting in motion. Was it worth it? I believed it was. Sonia was looking good. She had gotten her black hair cut short, with bangs in the front. Before, when she still lived at home with her family, she'd dressed very conservatively. No more. Now, she wore short skirts that ended above her knees, and tight blouses that put her nice full chest on display. She was the most Americanized of all the sisters, much more so than Dorothy, who was, in turn, more Americanized than her older sisters. Sonia also liked to drink beer and wine, and smoke, although Dorothy allowed her to smoke only on the back patio, not inside the house. Another bad habit Sonia had was to come out to the kitchen in the mornings wearing only a nightshirt. The way her boobs bounced around inside the nightshirt was a real distraction to me. She'd be fixing Jake's school lunch or making him some breakfast, and I'd be forced to see her nice butt cheeks jiggling around, as well as her boobs bouncing back and forth. She had a very hairy pussy too, and this was evident in the mornings, since she never wore panties to bed. I said something to Dorothy about Sonia prancing around the house in the mornings, but her only comment was that I should turn my eyes away if I didn't want to look. On Thursday I came by the Stanton city hall and picked up my variance papers. Melanie and I went out to a nice Mexican restaurant about a mile from her work and had a long (2 hour) lunch. We talked about a lot of things, including her life and my own. She told me that she had never been married, but she admitted to having been engaged twice before, and also admitted living with her second fiance for six months before breaking things off with him. She told me that both relationships had been ended by her. The first because she decided she really didn't love him, and the second, after she found out that he was just too much of a mama's boy for her liking. I told her about moving to California, and about Cheryl, my first girlfriend. I tried telling her about my early relationship with Dorothy, so she'd understand how we'd gotten together, but she said she didn't want to talk about that with me. I got the impression that she had decided to pretend that I wasn't married. After thinking about her doing that, I decided that it would be a fine thing, at least as far as I was concerned. "If we start going out together, Jim, where do you see any relationship we might form going?" "I haven't given that much thought." "Obviously, since you're already married, it couldn't lead to our marriage. I'm just wondering if it would be worthwhile for the two of us to start something we both knew wasn't ever going to lead to anything?" "Right now, we're enjoying a nice lunch together. That's something." "You know what I mean. You aren't going to be satisfied with just lunches and dinners. Sooner or later, you're going to try to get me to go to bed with you." "We don't ever have to do that, not if it would be a problem for you. I can't explain to you why, but just being with you, like this, would be enough." "You have your wife to take care of your needs, but what about my needs? You can see how something like this would never work well for me? I ought to have my head examined, thinking that I could go out with you without messing up all our lives. Please take me back to work, Jim." I paid the bill at the restaurant and drove Melanie back to city hall. I'd had a good time, being with her, until she had directed the conversation around to worrying about the future. When I pulled up inside the parking lot, Melanie had opened the truck door quickly and started walking away from me. She hadn't said anything during the short ride back to her workplace. She didn't even say goodbye. I was a bit put off by her sudden change in attitude. At home that night, Dorothy and I were curled up on the sofa after all the kids had been put to bed. Sonia and Jake were in their rooms as well. We had ended up keeping the baby's crib in our bedroom, giving Sonia the baby's room. Jake was bunking in with Eric, and the two boys seemed to be getting on well enough together. My wife and I were watching a movie, and my hands had been straying all over her body as we sat together. I was almost to the point of telling her we should take it to the bedroom when Sonia came waltzing out in this very thin nightshirt. It wasn't like one of those deliberately sheer nightie's, just an old nightshirt that had been washed so many times it was becoming a little threadbare and worn. "What are you guys watching? I can't seem to get to sleep." As Sonia asked us this, her hand had drifted down to her pubic area for some casual scratching. I looked over at Dorothy, hoping she was going to tell her sister that we were both just heading off to bed. I knew my feeling around her body had gotten her nice and sexually aroused. Usually, whenever she got all worked up, Dorothy wanted me to make love to her, right then and there. "Come sit down on the other side of Jim. We're watching this murder mystery movie." Dorothy surprised me by saying that to Sonia, but not as much as Sonia did by plopping her ass down about a quarter inch from mine on that big sofa. The next hour was difficult for me. Dorothy still seemed to want my hands on her, and it was difficult to do much with her while her sister was close enough on my other side to be practically joined to my hip. Sonia's nipples were both quite obviously erect inside her night shirt, a fact I couldn't help to notice as soon as I looked at her. About every five minutes or so, Sonia's hand would slip between her thighs to give her pudenda a quick caress over her cloth covered nakedness. I was happy when the movie finished and Dorothy and I could go off together to the privacy of our own bedroom. "Sonia's horny, Jim. Did you notice how many times she played with herself out there?" "No, I was watching the movie. Besides, it wouldn't be very polite to notice things like that." "She told me she hasn't had any for three months now. Milt wasn't very good in bed, she said. She also told me that Milt wasn't the only one of them that fooled around. She has had a few boyfriends on the side herself." "Don't be telling me stuff like that, Dorothy. It isn't anything I want to be knowing about her personal business. I hope she doesn't try dating while she's living here. I don't think I'd care much for her to be bringing guys home with her." "Do you ever think about doing that? Fooling around with someone else?" "I'm getting all I can handle right here at home, Dorothy. Are we going to do something while the baby's asleep, or are we going to lay here talking about stuff like this until he wakes up wanting to be fed?" We stopped talking and got down to business. Dorothy was very wet already, and we dispensed with any further preliminaries. I didn't realize it at the time, but this night was really the start of a tremendous upheaval in our marriage, leading to a huge change in the status within our family. Over the following weeks both Dorothy and Sonia became more blatant in their attempt to get something started between Sonia and me. It seemed like most nights, after all the children were asleep in their beds, the three of us would end up out in the living room, watching television with my wife and sister in law wearing nothing but a nightshirt. Whenever Sonia left the living room during this time period, Dorothy took advantage of her absence to encourage me to start feeling her up and make out with her. I had no problems at all with our doing that. What I was having problems with were those times when Dorothy decided to get up and leave her sister and I alone in the room for short periods of time. It was always for one plausible reason or another. Whenever that happened, Sonia seemed to do something to cause me to notice her near nudity. She had "accidentally" exposed her hairy pussy to me on several of these occasions, usually during her attempts to adjust her sitting position, and twice by lifting one of her legs up and tucking it underneath her bottom. Those times she ended up sitting with her heel pressed against her pussy. When Dorothy came back into the room I noticed she and her sister smiling at each other. I knew I was being conspired against. After several weeks of this I decided that I wanted to bring everything they were doing out into the open. "All right, Dorothy, this has gone on for long enough. Why don't you tell me what it is that you and Sonia want me to do?" "What do you mean, Jim?" "The two of you parading around half naked every night, for one thing. You guys taking turns leaving the room so that you and I start making out, or else so she can contrive of some new way to put her pussy on display, or shake her tits and ass enough that I have to notice." Dorothy just laughed, not even bothering to deny it. "You're complaining?" "I didn't say that. I'm asking you for some clarification about what it is you are wanting me to do? You must have a reason for going to all this trouble?" "It isn't any trouble. You don't think what we're doing is fun, or exciting?" "Fun for who? Exciting for who? Maybe, if you let me in on what you two want, then I'll think this is fun and exciting. Right now, it just bothers me, mostly because I don't understand what the two of you hope to accomplish by doing all this." "Sonia is horny. I already told you that. You said you didn't want her bringing boyfriends here. I've told her things about our love life, about how good you are in bed, and now she's curious to see if I've told her the truth or not." "Just like that, huh? Suppose I end up falling in love with her? You ever think that might happen?" "You won't. Why would you? I'm your wife, and you don't really love me. Don't lie to me and tell me you do either. I know you love our kids, and that's enough for me. Sonia isn't going to be taking anything away from me, no matter what happens between you two." "I don't have any interest in Sonia. It might not mean anything to you, but I take our marriage vows seriously. I've never stepped out on you." "And I have? Is that what you're saying Jim? I haven't been with anyone, not since before the day I first met you. Sonia is family. If she wants it, and I don't mind, what's your big problem with it?" "If I do her, why not the divorced lady down the block? Why not the girl over at the market, that little blonde kid who always likes to flirt with me? This is a big can of worms you're opening up by telling me this." "Are you proposing some kind of trade off? I let you do other women, and you'll take care of Sonia here at home too?" "I'm not proposing anything. We're having a "what if" discussion here, that's all. Answer my question, what about those other women?" "As long as you took care of our needs, were careful, and didn't bring any diseases home, or end up getting them pregnant, you can do whatever you have the time and energy for. You're the man here, its up to you to decide what you'll do. I'm used to the man making all the decisions. If you're strong, whatever you decide to do is all right with us." "You'd get off on me fucking your sister. You actually want me to, don't you?" "It would solve her problem, and I'll be honest, having her here makes everything easier for me. She knows she has to help me out around here if she wants me to keep on letting her stay with us. She doesn't want to work. She wants the life I have. Don't worry about her acting up or running around on you either. I'll always be the first wife, and it will be my job to make sure she doesn't shame either one of us." We went to bed right after that, with me not making any commitment to her concerning anything we'd spoken about. The two of us went at it in bed that night like two people who hadn't seen each other in months. It was like it had been with us back when we were in high school. We fucked until we couldn't do it anymore, then fell into a dream less sleep. After that night I made a little game of it with Dorothy and Sonia. I made it a point to be much more open and blatant about intimately touching Dorothy in front of Sonia. I started coming out to watch TV with them wearing only my robe and a pair of slippers. I waited for the two of them to initiate the first physical move with me. I knew they were both very passive women, and that their culture dictated that the man be the one to first initiate sexual contact. Things came to a boiling point one night when Dorothy put her head in my lap while we were all watching a movie. I knew she was frustrated by the delay I was causing. Sonia was on my right, her hip pressed against mine. The tension was rife, and I could smell both women's sexual excitement. I felt Dorothy's wet tongue briefly and tentatively touching my inner thigh. I knew I'd managed to out wait them then. A few seconds later and my blood engorged cock forced an opening through the loose folds of my robe. Game on! ------- Incomplete and Inactive ------- Posted: 2010-01-01 Last Modified: 2010-04-22 / 07:45:19 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------