Storiesonline.net ------- The Good Years by Openbook Copyright© 2006 by Openbook ------- Description: Kenny learns to cope with his emotional problems. In the process, he brings all the loose strands together, weaving a better life for himself and those he touches. Codes: MF FF rom cons D/S group anal ------- ------- Chapter 1 As soon as we crossed over the bridge into Kansas, at Kansas City, I started feeling better. By better, I mean I felt peaceful about returning. Prior to that, I would have been content to take things one day at a time, just like I had been doing since I'd left to go on my little five month long Odyssey. Joyce was asleep when we crossed over into Kansas. I would have woken her, to let her know we were in Kansas, but she didn't feel the same as I did about the state. We had spent the day talking all about her plans for our future. She and I saw different visions, but I allowed her to tell me all about hers. Joyce wanted us to both go off somewhere to attend college together. It was part of her 'new start' program for us. She'd have the babies, then after, in the fall, we'd find a school we could both attend together. I'd asked her about who would be taking care of the babies, but she hadn't planned all the details yet, that's what she told me. I asked her about what was going to happen with her job at the company. Joyce pretty much ran our entire shipping and warehousing program, for the entire country. She was the person who kept everything integrated, and running smoothly. My father depended on her to do that for him. I asked her about that, and again, she informed me these were just details that she'd attend to. Joyce was the most determined person I'd ever met, and I found myself believing her when she told me she'd find ways to make everything work for us. Driving on towards Ridgeline, I decided that I'd be well served to rely on Joyce's willingness to handle the details of our day to day existence. She was better suited to dealing with the little frustrations that kept cropping up for me. To repay her for this, I decided that I'd do my best to make sure she got the best I had in me to give her. Just being around Joyce again was comforting to me. She was a resource to me. She was the extension of me I needed to help get things done. My strengths were more in the area of conception, getting the idea to make something good happen. Joyce's strengths were to take all the loose ends and bring them together in the best possible way. She told me that she always knew she needed someone to point her in a good direction. She said that is what I'd been doing for her, ever since the first day I'd hired her away from the accounting department. I didn't tell her that my picking her had just been a happy coincidence. I'd picked her mainly because I knew Shirley wouldn't be jealous, because of the way Joyce looked. I didn't say anything, because I knew it made her feel good, thinking that I had recognized, right from the beginning, how well she and I would work together. It had worked out very well though, and, as I drove towards home again, I was determined to make sure it continued to work well, for both of us. I loved Joyce, and it was a love that kept evolving and changing, growing, as we spent more time together. Maybe it was simply appreciation, because she was able to make me more than I would have been without her. I didn't think it was only that though. Sex with Joyce was as good as any I'd ever experienced. Joyce never held anything back. When she gave herself to you, it was her whole self. She didn't know any other way. It was almost four in the morning, on a cold February night, when I pulled my car into my garage. I woke Joyce up just enough to get her to help me bring her into the bedroom. I helped her undress, watching as she crawled under the covers, falling instantly asleep again. I couldn't sleep myself. I felt energized, in spite of the fact that I'd been driving since early the previous morning. I was home, and more than that, I felt like I was really back. One of the reasons why I wasn't sleepy, was because I had so many thoughts running through my mind. I felt more like I used to feel, before the first trouble with Mama, and before the problems that had caused me to flee. I wasn't well again, suddenly cured, but I was back in a frame of mind to participate in the process of living again. I was ready to re-enter the fray. Someone had been using my office while I'd been gone. All of my trading records and statements had been put in a cardboard box, and left beside my desk. On my desk, there were a bunch of papers and computer printouts detailing the shipping, sales and deliveries for the vending machine business. I was curious enough that I went through the sales and delivery figures for the last quarter of the previous year. I was impressed with our growth. My being gone certainly hadn't had any negative effect on the vending business. Maybe I should have been a little disappointed at finding out that was the case, but I wasn't. I stacked up all of Joyce's papers, as neatly as I could, then went through the contents of my box, reviewing the statements from my broker, and the status of my account balances in various trusts. I saw where Frank had transferred my trading balance to another broker, then, after a month, he'd invested the money into a high yield money market account. In all the time I'd been gone, the funds taken out and transferred to the various group home accounts had amounted to far less than the income from the interest on the funds in my trading accounts. Right before the end of the year, Frank had made a large distribution into a new charitable trust he had created. I made a note to call him, to thank him for taking care of cleaning up the mess I'd left him to deal with. Still, the earnings from the money market account were far less than I would have made if I was back at home attending to my business. Since I'd been gone though, I hadn't once looked at where any of the grain market was moving. It had taken me many months to feel comfortable with the rhythm of those markets, and by ignoring them for all these months, I might have lost that sense of comfort and familiarity that had made my trading decisions almost automatic for me. I decided that I'd just ease myself slowly back into it. There was no hurry, no urgency for me to make new money to support the group home program. I started regretting the fact that my going off like I had, would necessitate a delay in opening up the two new extensions I'd been planning on building by the coming summer. Again, instead of feeling upset or stressed about it, I reminded myself that it was simply a delay. The homes would get built, the children would have a better place to live. Joyce came out of the bedroom at a little past nine in the morning. She found me working in the office. I was trying to balance my personal checkbook. While I'd been gone, Frank had continued depositing funds into my personal account. This was the interest and earnings from the trust accounts that Uncle Bunny had left me. I was concerned about this, because I hadn't bothered keeping track of the funds I'd removed from the trusts with several large cash advances I'd taken on my Visa cards. I'd have to ask Frank how to replace those funds, plus, I'd need to get all of my earnings together to give to the accounting people in Frank's office to file my various tax returns. I usually had everything together for them by the first of the year. "What are you doing, Kenny? Didn't you go to sleep yet?" "I was just going over some of these statements. I don't know how to reconcile my checkbook, because none of the money I took out on my trip is showing up on my personal account statements. I need to get things together for my taxes too." "Frank's doing all that for you, Kenny. He has duplicates sent to his office, on all your accounts. That's one of the few good things that came out of you being gone. Frank's installed a new system for the whole family now. Mama says it's saving us a lot of time too. We check over the monthly statements, and if we don't see any problems, we can just ignore them. Frank's people handle all the rest of it. Even mine is being taken care of now. It makes it a lot better too, having everything in one place, in case they need to cross check something." "How are you feeling this morning? I was worried that long drive would tire you out." "I feel good. While I was asleep, I thought of a way we could both go to college together, even with the babies. Brenda. She told me she wasn't going to go to college. She could come with us, to cook, and to watch the children for us, while we were in our classes." "That's a terrible idea. First, it's not fair to Brenda, even if she would agree to do it. Second, have you forgotten how worried you were about Brenda taking me away from you? Third, we still have other responsibilities here, ones that we have to be here to deal with. Your job, and all the group home business things. We're already half a year behind on opening the two new extensions for this year." "Kenny, before you get all excited about the problems having Brenda with us would cause, or about how it wouldn't be fair to her, let's just talk to her, and find out what she thinks. I've been thinking about that other thing too, about me worrying about you leaving me for one of those other girls. Now that you told me you're going to marry me, I'm not so worried about that happening. We both know Brenda. I'd trust her to watch the babies for us. We're going to be pretty busy, so it would be nice to come home to a good home cooked meal. As far as your third thing, about my job, tell me why I need to be here to do it, or why either of us needs to be here to keep the group homes running? Another thing, we're not behind at all with opening the three new extensions." "Why do you say we're not behind? We were going to open them this summer. Did you say three?" "Mama and I decided we're going to open an extension for little kids, boys and girls both. Mama's already bought the land for all three of them, and she and Hans are working with three contractors. I've got Sandy interviewing candidates for the three executive director positions, but she says we should find a fourth one to replace her, so she could spend her time supervising all the group home directors." "Joyce, I think it would be a big mistake doing this thing with Brenda. You know the effect she has on me. It's bound to cause us some problems. You know how she is too. We all might say we wouldn't do anything, but, something would eventually happen." "If I was right there, I wouldn't mind if we all did things together. What I don't want to happen is you deciding you love her more than me, or you and her doing things behind my back." "I still don't think we can do everything we need to do, and still have time to go to college. College is a full time job, all by itself." "Mama says you need to go to school. She says the longer you wait, the less likely it is that you'll go. Your father feels the same way. I'd go with you, to make sure you didn't meet someone else. Your father wants me to get a better education too." "Mama and I have a deal. I need to do certain things first." "She said that was before you ran off like you did. Kenny, we were all so worried about you. Mama was the most worried. When you get like you do, someone needs to be there with you, to make sure you'll be taken care of." "I managed fine this last time, Joyce. I ate, I slept, I took care of myself. I'm starting to understand this better now. I can shut things down when they get too much for me to handle. After I rest for awhile, I can start opening up again. That's how I can deal with this." "If you keep having to do this, and it takes you five or six months to get better, who's going to run the company when you take over for your dad?" "I guess he either needs to find someone else to do it, or else find someone to be my understudy, in case it happens to me again." "That's me, Kenny, I'm going to be your understudy. That's another reason why we both have to go to college. I wouldn't know how to run a company now." "You can go, and I'll stay home and watch the babies. I don't feel like going to school yet." I remembered what I'd been thinking earlier, about my decision to let Joyce run the day to day details. This was more than that though. This wasn't deciding where to go for dinner, this was deciding the whole direction of my life. If I'd been managing to do it better myself, I'd have a stronger argument to make against these decisions she was announcing. "You have to give Brenda her money, before we ask her to go with us. That's the only fair thing to do, to make sure she's doing it because she really wants to." "I don't have three million dollars that I can just get at, not without tapping out most of the trust money in the little trusts that Uncle Bunny left me. If I did that, we wouldn't have any money to live on for ourselves." "I talked to your father. He has discretionary powers over making distributions to you. He said he'd let you have that money." "You talked to my Dad about me giving Brenda three million dollars?" "I talked to him about everything, college, Brenda, you needing me there with you. He agrees with me about most of it." "Did you tell him that you plan on the three of us sharing the same bed?" "I didn't come out and tell him that, but I think he knows already, because of that time we did it at the office, and because of you talking about your group with him. He doesn't have any problems with us taking Brenda with us, or with me being gone from the business. I told him I'd continue doing whatever I could from school. We'd still have the summer to work." "Do you have plans for Emily and Shirley too?" "I do, but not what you're hoping for. Emily is going away to college, and Shirley is going to college over in Bolling in the fall. Both of them work for the girl's extension, as big sisters now. They help out the group home parents in the evenings. Sometimes, they take the girls out to do fun things, like you used to do with the boys." "So, you've got this all figured out now? You're going to be running my life from now on?" "I'm going to be helping you, so you can take care of the things you do best. Are you going to give Brenda her money?" "Are you talking about me giving it to her, right away? She didn't even finish high school yet. She'd probably quit school, and go on a three month shopping trip. How about if I just put the money in an account for her, and she can have it later, when she's all grown up?" "Kenny, Mama thinks you should give her the money too. She'd give it to her herself, but she thinks it would be better if you gave it to her. It would be like you were setting Brenda free. If she wants to stay with us after that, it wouldn't just be so she could stay close to your money. We'd find out if she really does love you like she says." "Let me tell you what I'd be worried about with Brenda, before you go making all these plans. I like fucking her. I like it a lot. I don't think I'd ever want to marry her, but I might want to make her pregnant too. Maybe not now, because you're already having twins, but I might change my mind later. I don't think you'd be happy if I decided to do that." "I don't want to talk about her getting pregnant. If that happens, it would have to wait until after we both finished our schooling. We don't even know if Brenda would be willing to do this to her body." Joyce moved her hands over her swollen belly, indicating all the changes taking place with her. "If we did go to college, where could we go? It would have to be someplace where we could both get in. Did you have good enough grades to get into a four year university? It isn't like some little community college, where they let anyone in." "I was second in my class, Kenny. I scored over fourteen hundred on my SAT's. What did you score on yours?" "I don't remember exactly. I know it was pretty high though." "Twelve thirty, Kenny. Mama showed me your scores. If they'll let you in, I'm sure I'll have no problems either. Does this mean you'll go?" "I'll go to K.U., but I'm not going out of state. We'll get an apartment or something in Lawrence, then we'll come home on the weekends. I think we should let Gerta and Mama spend some time with the babies too. Not all the time, but maybe for a few hours, when we're home for weekends. If Brenda says yes, which I doubt she'll do, you and I are getting married before we leave for school. I don't want you ever doubting who it was I chose. I don't want anyone confused about that. If we get married soon, we'll just hire someone later, to take a whole second set of wedding pictures, after your braces come off. This is only in case Brenda decides she'd like to come with us." We went to the bedroom right after that. Joyce was right about there being lots of ways to fuck a pregnant woman. I fell asleep after we got done, and slept until about three o'clock the next morning. I woke up feeling pretty good about things. I crawled out of bed, trying not to disturb Joyce when I did so. It was Wednesday, February eleventh. I spent three hours organizing all of my records and accounts. I went into a spare room off the entry way, trying to decide if it would be large enough to put in an office for Joyce. There wasn't enough room for both of us to share one office between us. I called Gerta at seven o'clock, and told her that I wanted to convert some things over at my house. She was happy to hear from me, and we spoke for about thirty minutes. Very gently, she managed to scold me for not keeping in touch with anyone while I was gone. I tried to explain to her that I was operating on automatic pilot for most of that time, but she told me I could have called from time to time, at least. It was no good trying to give her any excuses. In her mind, there was never a good enough excuse for my not doing what she wanted. She treated Hans the same way. She told me she'd send some people over, in a few days, to look at what I needed done to my house. At eight, I called my Dad. He and I talked for a long time. It was probably the longest conversation we'd ever had together. We talked about the problem I'd had with Darrin. Dad told me he'd investigated the whole thing, even going to Chicago, to see the trade slips that each pit trader had executed. He told me it was a legitimate out trade, and that in the haste and confusion that went on inside the trading area, things like that were bound to occur, especially when prices were really jumping around. He told me about all the volume of trading that had occurred in the fifteen minutes that surrounded the point of my first purchase, and the subsequent sale. I finally stopped him by telling him that I was over it. "You should call Darrin and apologize, Kenny. He's been very bothered by what you said to him. He didn't mind you pulling your accounts, but he didn't want you thinking he'd ever deliberately stick you with a bad trade, so that he could avoid taking any loss he deserved." "I'll call him and apologize, if you think that's what I should do. Did you tell Joyce that you'd give me three million dollars from my trust, so I could give it to Brenda?" "I told her I could do that, if you requested it of me. Is this for the money that Bunny was going to leave her?" "No, it's so Joyce can be sure that Brenda really wants to baby sit and cook for us. It's apparently all the rage now. You find someone, then you give them a few million dollars. Later, if you ask them to do something for you, you'll know if they really want to do it, or not, because they'll have enough money to just tell you to go to hell, if they don't want to." "Kenny, you don't have to do it." "I know I don't. In a way though, it would be better if I did go ahead and do it. Uncle Bunny really loved Brenda. He wouldn't want her needing to worry about money. Maybe having some of her own would change her. If you could transfer it over to Frank for me, I'll give it to her. Speaking of Frank, are you comfortable with him getting duplicate statements on all of our accounts?" "I'm comfortable, but then, I always go over everything, whenever any of my statements come in. I know Frank carries some type of insurance policy that protects against employee theft or embezzlement. I think we have sufficient safeguards in place. Don't you trust Frank?" "No, I do trust him. It just seemed like it needed us to be putting a lot of faith in him, and his people. Joyce said it made things a lot easier for them to be able to check everything though." "I believe the main advantage to us is that it frees up a lot of our time. This is time we could put to use more profitably, attending to our other endeavors." "Joyce mentioned that she ran her idea by you. The one she has of having Brenda go away with us when we start college. Do you have any questions, or any advice you want to give me about any of that?" "I don't have any, no. I'm sure your mother would have some advice for you, if you were foolish enough to invite her to offer it." "I think I'll let Joyce discuss those kinds of things with her. Between the two of them, they seem to have my life pretty well planned out for me already." "I do have one thing I'd like to tell you, Kenny. I guess it would fall under the general heading of advice. If you ever decide that you need to choose one of them over the other one, you'd be better off, in almost every way, if you decided to choose Joyce." "Better off how? Are you speaking about it being better for me personally, or for the company?" "Better for both, I'd imagine. I'm not just saying that because of her pregnancy either. While you were gone, Joyce spent as much time taking care of your business as she did taking care of her own. She never let up in doing anything she could to keep things going until you returned. Loyalty, such as that which she has demonstrated, is a rare commodity. She isn't a fair weather friend." "Which is one of the reasons why I'm going to marry her. There are a lot of other reasons too though. She does grow on you." "She does. She reminds me quite a bit of your mother. There are similarities in many different ways. I've never regretted my decision to marry your mother, even though we've experienced some periods of disquiet." "Do you think I'd be making a mistake, if I agreed to do what she's suggesting we do with Brenda?" "She's the one who's suggesting it?" "It's all her idea, not mine. When we were coming back from Florida, she seemed like she was worried about something like that happening, even after I told her I'd decided to marry her, and forget about those other girls." "Women seldom tell you, from the very beginning, what it is they really want to do. I've found that it's best if you wait until they get tired of hoping you'll be able to figure it out for yourself. Your mother told me the names you've decided on for the children. She said you were the one that suggested to name them in this way?" "You mean Bunny and Little Bertie? We talked a long time ago, and she said I could only name my kids that if I was having mixed twins. You don't think I should?" "I think, if you can stand doing so, it would be something your mother would cherish forever. At this stage, not doing so would present a problem for you." "I want to do it. It seems almost like everything has come together just so I could do it." "I'll transfer that money over to Frank's office for you. Have you thought about the best way to give it to her?" "I'm just going to hand her the check and tell her it's from Uncle Bunny. I already told Joyce that she'll probably go shopping for two or three months, as soon as the check clears." "Just handing over that kind of money to her, it seems like it might be a dangerous thing to me. What if she goes off the deep end, and just runs right through it all?" "One of my new resolutions is, that I'm not going to worry about everything that could possibly happen. Brenda will be happy to finally get her hands on a big chunk of money. It's what she's wanted from the day I first met her, and she probably had wanted it for years before that. At the very worst, she'll just spend it on clothes, cars, houses, and jewelry. If she spends it all, she'll have caught up with her mother, at least as far as having been rich once goes. That's the only kind of deep end I can see her going off." "Let's both hope you're right. Please call Darrin soon, if only to let him know that you're back, and feeling like your old self again." "You know, you're right, I am feeling like my old self. It's only been since I got back here too. I'll call him today, and I'll apologize. Do you think I should offer to give him back that seven thousand dollars?" "No, I already took care of that. I knew you'd want me to do it, after I had first assured myself that the out trade was a legitimate one." "I'll pay you back for it." "No need, I had Frank pay him from one of your trading accounts." After I got off the phone with my Dad, I decided I felt like going over to see Mama, and Hans and Gerta. I left a note for Joyce, on top of my office desk. Mama was gone when I got there, but Gerta made me a big breakfast while Hans filled me in on what I'd missed by being gone. When he was done, Gerta gave me her report on the troubles Mama had when I was off licking my mental wounds. She'd been in a three week depression, a bad one, where nothing anyone did could bring her out of it. Joyce used to go in her bedroom every night, just to talk to her. Mama wouldn't respond at all, during any of these visits. When Joyce told her she thought she might be pregnant, Mama had snapped right out of it. She had grown weak though, from not eating, and it took her several days before she felt strong enough to take Joyce to the doctor's, to see if her suspicions were accurate. "Did Joyce talk to you about any of her plans for after the babies get born, Kenny?" Gerta looked at me, trying to tell if I knew what she meant. "She said she wants us to go to college together, and that she wants us to hire a nanny or something." "She told you a nanny?" "No, she said someone to cook and watch out for the kids while we're in our classes. I told her I could stay home and watch them while she goes. I have other things I could do at home while I'm babysitting them." "Kenny, she didn't say who she could get to do this babysitting and cooking?" Hans was looking at me now, he had an almost pleading look, because he wanted to talk about what Brenda and I would be doing. "I think she has an aunt that's a widow, I know she lives somewhere up close to Lawrence. I think all her kids are grown now. We might ask her." I could see how frustrating this was to Hans. Gerta must have told him he couldn't be the first one to tell me, in case Joyce hadn't told me yet. "When will Mama be back from this meeting of hers. I needed to ask her some questions about Brenda. Joyce had this crazy idea that I should give Brenda that money that Uncle Bunny set up for her." "She's meeting with some architect, about those homes you're going to build. She has some changes she wanted to suggest to him. She said she'd be back for lunch. Joyce thinks you should give Brenda money?" "That's what she told me. She said it would keep Brenda from wanting to hang around us all the time. I told her it would be a lot cheaper to just get some kind of restraining order against her. That's a lot of money that Joyce is asking me to give away." "Bunny's money though, Kenny. You have enough already, with what he left for you." "Bite your tongue, Gerta. You're talking about three million. I could do a lot with three million." I was having fun with her, because I knew she and Mama had discussed this same thing many times. Mama would give Brenda the money if I wouldn't. It would just get me into trouble with Joyce if I tried to get out of doing it. It was fun watching how Gerta was trying to be so subtle in pointing out the correct way for me to proceed. I think that was why Hans sometimes pretended not to understand her instructions. "It would be something good for you to do. For Bunny." "It would be something good I could do for Brenda. Hey, Hans, how grateful do you think Brenda would be? I'm thinking she'd be all over me, for giving her that three million dollars. Maybe I should take her for a ride in the limo when I tell her. That way, she could let me know how grateful she was. You wouldn't try to peek at us, would you?" "Never!" Gerta and I both looked and him and started laughing. Gerta had tumbled to what I was doing, as soon as I started talking to Hans about maybe giving Brenda the money. Of all the people that I considered family, I really believed that Gerta understood me better than anyone else. She'd seen me when I was having problems dealing with things, and she never tried to push me about anything. Even Joyce didn't understand that about me yet. Gerta seemed like she had known about it from the very beginning. "Joyce said we should ask Brenda to cook for us, and to watch the babies while we're in school. Do you think Brenda would want to do something like that? I'm betting she'd decide not to if she had money of her own." "Brenda would do anything you asked her to, Kenny. You'd have to ask her though. I don't think she'd do it if Joyce asked her." I could see that Gerta was serious when she said that. "Brenda almost never did anything I asked her to, right from the beginning. You're wrong if you believe this time would be any different." "Before, when she was so young, but she's not so young anymore. She knows what she wants now. She had many talks with your Mama while you were gone. Your Mama told me that she is convinced that Brenda has changed." "Sure, she's convinced, because that's what she loves to believe. With her, it's always been like that, no matter what Brenda ever did." "Maybe, but your Mama understands Brenda, because she understands Georgia too. She knows that Brenda needs someone strong in her life." "All of you women, you always have these ideas about what all us men need, or what other women need. Mostly, you're wrong." "Your Mama and I, we both agree that you need more than just Joyce. Hans agrees too, right, Hans?" "Yes, I agree too. There will be more trouble, if it is just you and Joyce." "I know there will be more trouble if all of you keep trying to make me do what you think is best. Talking about it is one thing. Trying to make it happen, pushing me to do things, that's more than I'm able to permit." "This is just talking, Shatzie. We're not doing anything. You have to permit talking. Hans and I both have spoken about this many times. We tell you what we think. I do this with Bertie, and I did it with Bunny as well. It never hurt to hear what someone else thinks." "You're right, Gerta. It never hurts, unless it makes you feel like people are pressuring you to do something you don't want to do. When I lived at the orphanage, I had to put up with it. I was able to hide myself, inside my mind, to take some kind of refuge in there. In some ways, it was like what Mama does. Out here though, I can't keep going back to that. I need to be able to make up my own mind, without a lot of outside pressure. Even from the people I love the most. If I can't do that, then the same thing is going to happen to me again." "This is true? That's why you left?" Gerta looked so sad when she asked me that. "It isn't anyone's fault, Gerta. It's just how I am. Something happened to me when I was at that orphanage. I changed myself so I could cope with how things were there. I've been working on being less overwhelmed by it, but I've still got problems. I can't afford to have people push me to do things. It's worse if they are people I really care about, because then, I feel worse about disappointing them." "You never disappoint me, Kenny. Never. I'd never do anything, not if I knew I could hurt you. I didn't know about pressure hurting you. Did you tell your Mama this?" "I've never really talked to her about it. I don't even really understand everything myself. I just began thinking about the type of situations that always seem to cause me problems. This is what I've come up with so far. I may not be right about this. It's just what I'm thinking right now. I want to avoid having pressure put on me, and being upset, at least as much as I can." Just then, Joyce came into the house and we all heard her yelling my name as she came through the downstairs area. "In here, Joyce. In the kitchen." I yelled it loud enough for me to be heard. Joyce came through the swinging door. "There you are. I woke up, and then I saw your note. Where's Mama?" "She's meeting someone. How come you came over here? You could have just called." "I was hungry too. There's no food in the house. I need to pee, so don't go anywhere til I get back." She left, and Gerta was busy fixing her a bowl of oatmeal, and some German pastry thing she must have gotten from the deli in Bolling. When I saw her pulling that out, I went to get myself another glass of milk, pointing at my plate, to let Gerta know I wanted some of the pastry too. "I'll be so glad when I only have to pee four or five times a day again. I swear my life is measured from toilet trip to toilet trip now." Joyce had come back into the kitchen and she immediately grabbed half my pastry off of my plate. When she was done, she brought the bowl of oatmeal over to herself. She took about half a cube of butter, dropping it in her bowl. When she had watched it melt sufficiently, she started pouring half the sugar bowl on her oatmeal, and only after doing that, did she add in the milk. All three of us just stared at her, wondering if she really planned on eating it. We need not have worried, because she wolfed the whole thing down in about a minute. When she was done with her cereal, she reached for her own pastry, then cut it in half. When I reached to take back the half of mine that she'd taken off my plate, she brought the butter knife down on the back of my hand. It stung. I sat there and watched her eat both halves of the pastry. She was putting her finger down, trapping tiny pastry crumbs on it, and bringing that to her mouth. She looked like she could stand to eat something more. Maybe something like a side of beef, or a big pot of spaghetti. Gerta turned and brought a large chunk of salami out of the fridge. She got a sharp knife and put them both down in front of a smiling Joyce. She used the knife to peel away the white coating around the salami, and then she bit into the end, the part where the skin had been peeled back. It was about half a pound of heavy German salami, and she polished it off in a couple of minutes time. She sat there, licking her lips and looking around for something else. This time, Gerta didn't budge from where she stood. Joyce tried to stare her down, but Gerta wasn't having any of that. Finally, she stood up. "Can we go shopping for some food, Kenny? Somebody emptied out everything at your house." She looked accusingly over at Gerta when she said it. "You are eating too much, Joyce. It isn't healthy for your babies. The doctor told you that you need to cut back, and eat healthier foods. You're gaining too much weight." Gerta was putting her most commanding voice in this pronouncement of hers. "You didn't tell me that, Joyce. You said everything was just like it was supposed to be. You don't want to be fooling around with something as important as this is." "I get hungry, so I eat. No matter how much I eat, they still want more." I went around behind her and lifted up her large maternity top. I looked at her ass, it had really grown a lot since her pregnancy started. I pointed at her ass. "These don't need any more, no matter what they've been telling you." She started crying. I hadn't even said anything that bad to her. I had been making a joke. From the look Gerta was shooting at me, you'd have thought I'd punched Joyce in the stomach or something. "I didn't mean anything by it. I was joking. Quit crying." "You think I'm fat and ugly." "No I don't. I never said that. I'm worried about you not doing what your doctor said, that's all. You aren't fat, and you sure aren't ugly. Would I do what I did last night, to an ugly woman?" I saw Hans starting to grin when I said that. "You should have seen her last night, Hans. She was even hungrier then. It's a good thing I hadn't seen how she eats salami before last night." Joyce stopped crying while she slapped my arm. I could tell that it had pleased her that I admitted that we had fooled around together the night before. I told Gerta that we'd be back for lunch, then I told her to be sure to make something that would be healthy for my babies. "What about me?" "Make it healthy for my babies, but delicious for my woman. Make it small though, so her doctor will be happy too. Come on, honey, we're walking home. We'll walk back here for lunch too." We walked home. It was normally a twenty minute walk for me, but with Joyce, it took us almost an hour. I could see the exercise had tired her out too much, so I called over to ask Hans to come pick us up at noon, in the limo. We sat on the sofa, with Joyce leaning in on me, and my arm over her shoulder. She asked me to massage her back and neck, and I lifted up her top and started giving her a little back rub. "Did you ask your father about giving you the money to give to Brenda?" "He's sending it over to Frank. I'll get a check and give it to her in a few days. I don't want you asking her about the other thing, not until after her graduation. You need to let her decide, on her own, if she wants to do it or not." "We need to apply to K. U., Kenny, then we need to find ourselves a nice place to live, close to the campus." "We can do all of that without involving Brenda. This is important, Joyce, too important to take advantage of her. You're asking her to make a big commitment to us. Let her have some time to enjoy being rich and carefree." I called Darrin St. Julien and apologized to him for my outburst and tantrum the last time we spoke. I told him I was satisfied that he was right and I was wrong. Neither of us mentioned me bringing my trading business back to his brokerage. If he had inquired, I would have been happy to bring my trading accounts back there. I guess he thought it was better to avoid any chance of a repeat of that earlier incident. I didn't really blame him for that. I picked up the check the following Monday. It was a lot of money. I didn't mind giving it to her, but, like my Dad, I wondered if giving it to her before she was even out of high school was the right thing for me to be doing. Joyce asked me if she could be there to see me give Brenda the money. She wanted to watch Brenda's reaction. We drove over to Brenda's house together that afternoon. I had put the money in an envelope. When we rang the door bell, Georgia answered. "Hi, we came over to see Brenda. Is she here yet?" "No, but she'll be home soon. Come in Kenny. You too, Joyce. I heard you were back, Kenny, is everything okay with you now?" "It's pretty good. I'm going to have to find an easier way of dealing with being upset." "Did I hear it right, you two are getting married?" "Probably. It just depends on whether or not Joyce can stop eating long enough for us to fit a wedding ceremony in." "He's kidding. We're getting married before the babies come. We don't know yet when we're going to do it." I heard Brenda's Buick pull up in the driveway. Her door opened and closed and she came running into the house. She had seen my car parked out front. "Kenny! I got your letter. Hi Joyce. I'm glad you came back, Kenny. Isn't it exciting about Joyce and the babies?" "Yes, I'm back, and yes, it's exciting about Joyce and the babies. I brought you something, Brenda." I handed her the envelope. She took the envelope from me. "Is this from your trip, Kenny?" "No, this is from Uncle Bunny. He wanted you to have it." Even before Brenda opened the envelope, her mother was standing by her side. Brenda reached in and slowly drew out the check and stared at it. It was a bank check, just like a Cashier's check. All Brenda had to do was deposit it at her bank and she could start drawing on the funds immediately. Georgia was even more excited than Brenda, and Brenda was pretty excited. "You're really giving me this?" "No, it's really from Uncle Bunny. He wanted to give it to you. All I'm doing is delivering it for him." "What about my money, Kenny? He wanted me to have the money too." Georgia had a hard look on her face. She must have known what I was going to tell her. She just wasn't able to not ask the question. "That wasn't anything I wanted to deal with. Brenda's money was." "Richard gets money and now Brenda, but I get nothing?" "Uncle Bunny and Mama did DNA testing on Brenda and Richard. Uncle Bunny knew she wasn't his. He never blamed her for that. When he died, he still loved Brenda." "I did more for him than any of the rest of you did." "I guess that's true. You never did what you said you did though, and that's one of the reasons he changed his will. You could have had it all, Georgia, but now you have nothing." "You're wrong. Richard might not want to share with me, but my daughter will." "You're wrong about that, Mama. I'm not spending any of my money. Kenny, can you invest this for me? Do whatever you did before that made so much money. I want my money to make more money for me. Richard's already spent half of his money. I want to stay rich. This is your money, Kenny. I know you're the one who's giving it to me. Thank you." I told Brenda to take the check down to Frank's office and to endorse it. I'd call Frank and have him establish a trading account for me to trade Brenda's money. In one way I was surprised, but after thinking about it, I really shouldn't have been. As much as Brenda wanted to get rich, she wanted to stay rich even more. "Mama predicted Brenda would do something like that. Did you know she's giving Mrs. Connor her money too? She wanted to wait until after you gave Brenda hers. Did she surprise you when she asked you to help her invest the money?" "Yes, but not really that much. Brenda wants to stay rich. I'll bet Richard and Georgia will be trying to borrow money off Brenda in a few years. I bet she'll give it to them too." Joyce and I tried to make gentle love, but there was just something that made both of us press for more direct contact. I was worried that we'd go too far while carried away. I hoped we didn't harm our babies in any way. ------- Chapter 2 I was settling back into a routine that was comfortable for me. I spent two hours in the mornings, on group home business. Usually between six and eight in the morning. I'd have my breakfast, then spend two hours on my trading programs. I had set up two new accounts, one for Joyce and me, and one for Brenda. There were several trading accounts for the charitable trusts, all set up to manage risk. At ten or ten thirty, I'd quit my trading and go over to Joyce's new home office, so I could spend time with her. Gerta had found us an older lady, to live in, and do our laundry and cooking. Her name was Irene, and she was a Cuban lady. She was heavy set, and seemed to have a real good sense of humor. I had a difficult time understanding her English because it was so heavily accented. Irene was a good cook, but Gerta had explained Joyce's weight problem to her, and she kept giving Joyce only healthy snacks to eat. Everything she cooked seemed to have a flavored rice dish with it. Joyce and I would talk and work together until lunchtime. We usually ate anytime from noon, to one or one thirty. With Joyce, I became more focused, and I got a lot more accomplished when we worked together. Irene had one glaring bad habit, she liked to drink while she cooked. It was mostly just wine, although she seemed to like dark rum when it was available also. I asked Gerta about this, but she said as long as Irene did her job, and all the food was being cooked well, she wasn't that concerned about it. I was glad Irene didn't smoke too. I didn't want her getting drunk and nodding off with a lit cigarette in her mouth. Joyce and I both liked her. We worried about her drinking. "Kenny, it's almost time for Brenda to graduate, in another month. We should talk to her about what we said. I don't think we should wait until practically the last minute." This was about the fourth or fifth time Joyce had raised this issue with me. Each time previously, I'd told her I didn't want to discuss it. "We agreed that we'd wait until after she graduates to ask her. Can't you just wait like we agreed to?" "She asks me all the time if you're avoiding her. She thinks you're mad at her, Kenny. I'm afraid, if we don't ask her soon, she's going to be too mad at you to come with us." "I'm not mad at her. She knows how busy I am now. I wanted to wait until after the babies are born. This isn't a good time for us to be talking to her about it. I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea for us in the first place. We're going to have our hands full with everything we've already got going. Complicating our lives further doesn't make any sense to me." "I don't want to have some stranger watching the children. We're going to both be gone. I trust Brenda." "Look, Joyce, this can't just be about who is going to watch the babies. If you're doing this just because you want to fool around with Brenda, that's one thing. That doesn't bother me at all. This other way though, with all of us fooling around together, I can see that leading us to trouble. It scares me, I'll be honest with you." "Kenny, it's too late for you to change your mind now. I'm due in a couple of weeks. We've applied and been accepted at KU. You can't just go changing everything at the last minute. We've already made plans." Joyce was getting herself excited. I didn't want her getting upset. In truth, the thought of us doing things with Brenda again was very appealing to me. It was all the rest of it that troubled me. I wasn't sure it was worth the danger it would pose to the relationship Joyce and I were forging. I kept thinking this was Joyce's way of trying to compromise with me, over my earlier plans for having my own little harem. Joyce and I had decided on holding two weddings. The first one was supposed to be a simple civil ceremony, attended by my parents and hers, and a few of our close family members. It was to take place over at the courthouse in Bolling. We had already had our blood tests completed, and had gotten our license, so it was simply a matter of making an appointment to do it, and having some judge read the words over us. The second wedding was planned for Christmas time, and would take place in a church, with all the trappings and ceremony that Mama seemed to want. There was going to be a lavish reception held at the lodge, over at the golf learning center. "We need to get over to Bolling soon, and get married, Joyce. Have you called your parents yet?" "I told my brother to tell them we were getting married soon. I'll tell him the date, whenever we decide when it's going to be." "I'd like to get it done before the babies come. We should get it done just in case you deliver early. The longer we wait, the more chance you're going to go into labor before we do it." "How come you haven't said anything to me about one of those prenuptial agreements?" "If you need to protect something, Joyce, have your lawyer write one up, and I'll sign it." "Do you trust me so much?" "You trusted me when you let yourself get pregnant. I don't care that much about the money. Of course, a lot of the money is being held in trust for me, and some of the provisions in these trusts would make it pretty difficult for a wife to get anything from them, in the event of a divorce." "I'd sign one of those agreements, Kenny. I'd never try to take your money." "I only brought the wedding up because I wanted to tell you that I didn't want to talk to Brenda about coming to Lawrence with us until after we get married. She needs to know that I'm already married, before we ask her to come with us." "She knows we're getting married, Kenny." "Then there isn't any harm in waiting until after you deliver, and she graduates. I want her to know we're already married before she decides if she wants to do this or not." "Mama's already talked with her about it, just to feel her out a little for us. She thinks Brenda would agree if you're the one that asks her." "Joyce, you and Mama seem determined to create problems for me by acting on your own when I've asked you not to do that. If that's what you want, then go ahead. Don't be surprised if I end up taking another trip, so I can be alone again." "This isn't just concerning you, Kenny. This concerns all of us. We can't make plans when you want to wait until the last minute to arrange things. We can't all wait on your schedule, because there wouldn't be time to get everything done if we did." "You're pushing me again, Joyce. You and Mama both. The more you do it, the less chance you have of ending up with what you want. In about one more minute, I'm going to just tell you to forget this thing with Brenda. If I get mad enough about this, you can also forget about us going off to college together." "I don't control Mama, Kenny. You're getting mad at me for something she did. Something I asked her not to do. We weren't trying to get you upset, but we need to know what she's going to do so we can plan what we'll be doing." I picked up the telephone and dialed over to Mama's house. Gerta answered the phone. "Hi, Gerta, is Mama there?" "She's still upstairs, Kenny. You want me to ring her room?" "Sure, I need to tell her something." "Hello, Kenny?" "Hi Mama. I've been talking to Joyce this morning, and she's been telling me that you already asked Brenda if she wanted to go to Lawrence with us, in September. I'm wondering if you're trying to deliberately hurt me, or if you just can't stand not being able to meddle in my life?" "Kenny, it wasn't like that. Brenda and I were discussing her future plans, for after she graduates. She was the one who first brought up that you and Joyce were leaving the area. She was upset about everyone leaving here but her. I suggested she try to get into college also. It just came up, while we were talking, that she might be able to live with you and Joyce, if she decided to go to Kansas University also. Brenda doesn't have the grades to get into Columbia with Emily." "Did you discuss any part of Joyce's idea for Brenda cooking and watching the babies for us?" "I might have sounded her out about something like that, as one possibility for something she could do, but that was only after she had already stated that she wasn't interested in pursuing any further education, when she was finished with high school." "I just got done telling Joyce that I'm getting very close to calling off college for myself too, Mama. In fact, I'm seriously thinking about moving down to Florida permanently, with or without Joyce. I can't take being pushed right now, and that's what you guys are trying to do." "You can't be serious? How can you be upset over something as innocent as this was? Kenny, you're overreacting to this. It was just an innocent conversation that Brenda and I were having. She gave me an opening to see how she might react to the possibility of living with you and Joyce in Lawrence. I was simply gathering information, when the opportunity presented itself, information I thought that you and Joyce might find useful." "You better decide what's more important to you, Mama, doing what you want to do, or staying in touch with me. This whole business is really getting me upset. I'm not going to be pushed into doing this. I'm pretty sure now that I don't want to have Brenda come live with us. You and Joyce need to come up with a different plan." "You're just upset now, Kenny. Take a few days to think about it some more, you'll see that this is the best way. Having Brenda there with you would make it so much easier on Joyce." "I'm going to end up in Florida if you keep pushing me, Mama, and then you'll need to travel pretty far if you ever want to see the twins. You seem to have this uncontrollable urge to interfere in my life. I've told you I wouldn't continue to allow you to do that, and I meant it." "This was only interference in the broadest possible interpretation of that word. I didn't advise you, or even try to discuss this with you. I've told you what I was trying to do." "I'm telling you what I'm planning on doing too, Mama. You seem to want to make this some kind of a contest, to see how far you can push me. I can't afford to play this game with you." I hung up the phone in the middle of her next denial of having had any intentions of meddling. I knew I was getting too worked up. When Joyce started to speak to me, I held up my hand, telling her to stop. "Kenny, can't we just be calm, so we can talk about this?" Joyce wasn't calm herself. She realized that I was more upset than she ever wanted me to get. "No, we can't. I would like to talk to you about it some more, but I've reached my limit. Right now, I just want you to leave me alone for awhile. Go over to Mama's, go anywhere you want, but I don't want to discuss this with you anymore right now." I went to our bedroom and shut the door. I needed some time to try to talk myself back down from where I'd gotten to. I knew this was going to be a real test for me. I had to find a way to prevent myself from giving in to all this anger and resentment I was feeling. This had been such a small provocation, especially when you considered the response I had given to it. It looked like I was grossly overreacting. I knew it appeared that way to everyone else. I was the only one who knew how much I'd been bothered, from the very beginning, by Joyce's suggestion. I didn't understand her reason for wanting to bring Brenda back into our lives. Ever since I'd started coming to terms with realizing I was being so easily overwhelmed by these relationship problems, I'd wondered what I could do to overcome that tendency. There had to be a way to fix it. What Mama had said on the phone, combined with Hans and Gerta's earlier statements about Joyce not being enough for me, had convinced me that this whole Brenda business had been more Mama's idea than it was Joyce's. They had somehow convinced Joyce that I needed more than just her. Mama had always pushed Brenda at me, ever since the first month I'd lived in her house. I tried to clear my head, to focus on all I had to lose by allowing myself to slip into another long period of shutting down, to going back on autopilot. I'd miss out on the birth of my children. I'd also go further down the path towards showing people that I was mentally unstable. How many more of these episodes would Joyce and the rest of my family tolerate from me? How much longer could I keep giving in to this self indulgent need of mine? I knew I was fast approaching a quality of life crossroads. If I gave in to the pressure I was feeling, I'd be taking another big step backwards. I closed my eyes and tried to think of Joyce, of the two new babies that were almost ready to be born. I had so much to hang on for, but I feared it wasn't going to be enough. I needed something more. I wanted something more. I tried to picture in my mind what it was I didn't have yet, something that I lacked and really wanted. I knew it couldn't possibly be anything material, because I didn't lack for anything material. If money could buy it, I either had it, or else I didn't really want it. I was missing something though. I had this particular flaw that represented a grave danger to me, and to my relationships with all my loved ones. It must be something that prevented me from having the capacity to accept being led into a direction I didn't want to go. I wasn't like that when it came to other aspects of my life. I could adapt easily to business changes, or work around problems that arose in the group homes. Even with my trading, I'd had some difficulties, but none that affected me like this Brenda situation was doing to me now. It had to be some kind of fear that I wasn't able to face. Brenda had really hurt me, so had Shirley, Emily, and Joyce. Mama hadn't hurt me, but she and I had many shared personality traits. Neither of us liked to give in. I didn't handle conflict with her very well I remembered that Mama and I had been able to reach accords at times, when each of us was willing to give up something, in order to get something else we wanted more. What did Mama want more? I couldn't find it. With Joyce now pregnant with the twins, I thought that was finally it. I thought she had everything she'd said she wanted or needed from me. I got up from my bed, and went racing back out of the room. I looked for Joyce, but she was already gone from the house. I checked with Irene, but she didn't know when Joyce had left, or where she was heading. I had this thought, and I needed to talk to someone about it. There had to be a link between Mama and Brenda that she wasn't telling me about. I had gotten DNA tests done on Mama, Brenda, Mr. Connor, Georgia, Uncle Bunny, Senior Chalmers and myself. Brenda definitely wasn't Uncle Bunny's daughter, and she wasn't Mr. Connor's daughter either. If I could find out who her real father was, I could probably find some kind of connection between him and Mama. I noticed that I had shaken off a good deal of my anger and resentment of Mama's interference with Brenda. I had substituted something else for me to dwell on. She had to have a reason to keep pushing Brenda at me. In all my dealings with her, and my countless observations of all Mama's actions, I knew she seldom acted without a reason for doing so. She had a reason for doing this thing she'd done with Brenda. She'd shown, in the past, that, in spite of all the pressure I'd applied to her, she wouldn't voluntarily divulge what this reason was. I needed to talk to Georgia Connor, and I needed to do it before Mama gave her that three million dollars. My best chance was if Georgia didn't know about Mama's intention to help her. I went out and got into my car and drove over to Brenda's house. I would have preferred to have had the opportunity to first discuss my idea with Joyce, so that she could come up with the best way for me to accomplish what I wanted to do. When Georgia answered the door and saw it was me, she was surprised. Since the run in we'd had when I gave Brenda her money, Georgia and I hadn't seen or spoken with each other. "Hi, Georgia, can I come in?" "Kenny, Brenda's still in school. I was just on my way out the door." "I know Brenda's still in school. I really came over to see you. Can I come in? It won't take long." "Of course. You wanted to see me? What about?" She had opened the door, and I had walked past her, through the entry, and into her living room area. She followed behind me. "Are we alone?" I could see my question alarmed her. I couldn't imagine why it should. She and I had always pretty much been on the same side. She was ambitious for Brenda, and willing to allow pretty much anything, so long as it moved Brenda closer to their shared dream of someday being wealthy. "Walt's at work. Richard is off visiting his friends. What is it?" "I wanted to ask you to tell me who Brenda's real father is." "Bunny was Brenda's real father." "No, I already ran some tests on everyone in both our families. Richard is Walt's son, but Brenda isn't his daughter, and she isn't Uncle Bunny's daughter either." "Why does it matter to you, if you really believe that then?" "It does matter, and that's what should be important to you. If you tell me, and if I can confirm it with a DNA sample test, I'll make sure that you get your three million from Mama." "It was Bunny. I can't just make up a name for you." "It wasn't Bunny. I can prove that it wasn't. I'm not going to spend all day with this. If you don't want the money, just keep claiming it was Bunny." "It was either Bunny or Walt, Kenny. I never once slept with anyone else. I thought it was Bunny, because of Brenda's hair coloring. Senior had the same hair when he was younger. I saw it in the scrap book that Bertie keeps." "I'm sorry we weren't able to help each other, Georgia. These tests don't lie, and it wasn't Uncle Bunny or Walt. Think about it. My offer to help you stays open until three today. After that time, your information is useless to me." "Wait a minute. I need time to think. Are you that certain it wasn't Bunny?" "As certain as I can be. His markers, yours, and then Brenda's don't match that well. Other than the fact that all three of you are related. It is someone else that fathered her." "There are two other possible's then. Ken Dyer and Dwight Nunes. You know Ken, the town constable? Dwight doesn't live around here anymore. We haven't kept in touch. They were both friends of ours, from school. Ken would know where Dwight lives, if anyone would. They were very close friends. One night, one of those times when Bunny and I were fighting, he just left me at this party. Everyone had too much to drink that night. I was so angry with Bunny for leaving me there like that. Ken offered me a ride home, when he and Dwight were leaving. It was just something unfortunate, something that shouldn't have happened. It only happened that one time." "You slept with both of them that night?" I had hoped she could pin it down to one individual. I found it difficult to believe that Georgia would do those type of things with Mr. Dyer. I didn't know anything about this Dwight Nunes. I'd never heard his name mentioned before. "It just happened. It wasn't planned. Ken was married, and I was too, of course. Dwight had come back home for a very short stay, to settle his mother's estate. I hadn't seen him since he'd gone off to college some years earlier. We'd always had this attraction, back when we were in school, but we never had gotten together. It was a mistake, all of us knew it when we sobered up that next morning. By then, it was too late to take it back though. When I found out I was pregnant, with Brenda, I was so sure it was Bunny's. When I told him I was pregnant, I told him it had to be his. I so wanted Brenda to be his child. When I told him, he refused to even consider marrying me. He said that you can only suffer with your addictions, you don't embrace them. That's all I ever was to him, an addiction." "You think Mr. Dyer knows where this other man lives?" "I'm sure he does. They were good friends. I wasn't the only woman they shared between them. They were very fast in high school." I thanked her and left. I figured it would be easy to get something of Mr. Dyer's to send in to the university for testing. I remember wondering why Mr. Dyer had gone along with the cover up after Georgia shot Elizabeth. I thought it was in payment for Uncle Bunny's helping him with his re-election. I didn't know he was friends with Georgia as well. I wondered if Uncle Bunny had ever found out about what happened that night. I still didn't see any connection between those two men and Mama. My father said he and Mr. Dyer had come from similar backgrounds when growing up. I couldn't see Mr. Dyer hanging around with or associating with people like Mama, Uncle Bunny, or Georgia. I didn't know what would come of my investigation, but it had already accomplished one thing for me. It had distracted me from my earlier situation with Joyce and Mama. ------- Chapter 3 I had decided that it shouldn't be so important to me that Joyce and Mama were pushing Brenda at me again. It came down to having to decide what represented the greater risk to me. If our having Brenda living with us ended up ruining my relationship with Joyce, that was going to be terrible. If, instead, I ended up getting much more upset and angry with Mama and Joyce, for their pushing me to do this with Brenda, it would probably cause me to have another one of my withdrawals. To me, that was more terrible than having relationship problems with Joyce. What finally decided me was the uncertainty about whether adding Brenda to our relationship would have to end up being either a poor or harmful decision. There were certainly positive things that would come to us, if we did have Brenda cooking, helping with the twins, and spending time in bed with Joyce and me. I already knew I was allowing myself to get too upset about being pushed. I was very afraid of what the consequences might be for that. The primary goal was to remove the cause of my being upset. They'd stop pushing if I let them have what they wanted. Who could say they were wrong? I felt like they all loved me. If they were mistaken, it wouldn't be because they wanted me hurt. Given all of these conflicting fears and hopes, I decided I'd embrace their idea. In the back of my mind, I started hoping that Brenda would think about what she was being offered, then decide not to participate. There were very good reasons for my rationalizing my decision to go along with this. For one thing, the more I convinced myself that it wasn't that poor of an option, the less pushed into it I would feel. Joyce came back home at around five o'clock. She had driven herself over to Bolling, going there to see her parents. She wasn't on good terms with her mom and dad. Her being pregnant hadn't improved the relationship with them either. "I told them we were getting married Friday morning. I called the courthouse, and we have an appointment with Judge Grayson at eleven o'clock. You still plan on marrying me, don't you?" "Friday, that's good. We'll go over early. Did you tell Mama that we've decided on Friday yet?" "She said any day was good with her. Mama wants to invite Brenda and her mom too." "That's fine. It will give us a chance to talk to Brenda, to find out whether she's interested in going off to Lawrence with us." "Really? Do you mean that, Kenny?" "I'm tired of fighting with you and Mama about it. I still think this is more Mama's idea than yours, Joyce. My biggest fear is that it will end up causing problems for you and me. Unfortunately, fighting against it was already causing problems that were potentially far greater for us. I want you to remember something, Joyce, in my mind, once I decided that you were the one I loved the most, you were always going to be enough for me." "Kenny, this way is better for us. Brenda and I are good friends. I'm not as jealous of her. Even though she's the prettiest of all the other girls, with her, I feel like I'm still the one that would be best for you." "You are. Even without this, you'd still be the best one. You're the only one who ever made me better than I was. That's what Mama kept telling me, and I knew it was true. You're my best possible partner." "Guess what else I found out today?" "From your parents?" "No, from my orthodontist." "Your braces are coming off before Christmas?" "Not quite, but he is going to be changing bands again. My teeth have moved down enough to put on regular braces now. He's going to take off these old ones right before our big wedding, and then he'll put on the new ones, right before we go back to school after the first of the year. I'll be able to smile in our wedding pictures." "That's good. I'll be able to find out if you can suck as good without the braces and all those rubber bands." "Why did you decide to change your mind about Brenda, Kenny?" "Because I knew if I didn't, something bad was sure to happen. If I did, something bad might still happen, but maybe it won't. I don't know what's going to happen with Brenda back in the picture, but I'm pretty sure that Mama wasn't going to let up with her pressure, not until I either gave her what she wanted, or I went into another one of my withdrawals. I still don't understand why putting Brenda together with me is so important to her." I told Joyce what I had done over at Georgia's house, and what I had learned. She told me that she'd never heard Mama mention either man's name. "Kenny, can I call Brenda, and invite her over for tonight? We can invite her to the wedding too, and you can decide if you want to ask her about coming with us or not. At the very least, it would prove to her that you weren't mad at her." "You can call her. Now that I've decided, there isn't any reason not to spend time with her. I don't want to come out and ask her yet though. I still want us to get married first. Right now, Mama is happy that we're getting married. I don't want anything to happen to make her think I need to marry Brenda instead." I got just the reaction from Joyce that I had expected. If we were going to have Mama meddling in our lives, with her getting Joyce to assist her, I wanted Joyce to know that Mama was capable of deciding things like that. Things which would hurt her. ------- Irene made us a nice chicken and rice dish, garnished with garbanzo beans, with a nice fresh salad. Brenda had accepted Joyce's invitation, arriving at our house a little before six. She spent the first five minutes talking to Joyce, about the babies and the wedding. After Joyce invited her and her mom to our wedding, Brenda said she'd skip school to be there. "Kenny, you haven't told me anything about my money. I'm wondering if you've done anything to invest it yet?" "You should be getting statements of trades, Brenda. I told Frank to send them to you. The brokerage sends out a monthly statement recapping all account activity. One comes here, one goes to Frank's office, and you are supposed to receive the third one." "I haven't gotten anything, Kenny. Have I made any money?" I stood up, and Joyce and Brenda did too. The three of us went into my office. I had a separate file for all of the trades and accounting for Brenda's account. We'd been trading her money for about three weeks. The monthly statement had been sent after about four days of trading. It didn't show much activity, just two closed trades and three more that were still open. I had a pad where I kept loose track of trades for her account. Every trade was listed, showing entering and ending prices, number of contracts, and gross profit or loss for the trade. So far, Brenda was up a little less than one and a half per cent on her account. In monetary terms, it came to just under forty four thousand dollars. I knew that trading expenses would bring the total down to around forty two thousand. "It looks like you've made about forty thousand dollars so far, Brenda. We got a nice bounce when crop reports came in so bearish for the market. When they predict surpluses, it's very easy to make money. Shortages can be a lot trickier for us. I try to be conservative in my trading, but I also like to make about one per cent a month on each trading account." "Forty thousand dollars? This, plus all my other money is still there?" "Yes, that's how it works. If you lost forty thousand, your balance would be two million nine hundred and sixty instead of three million forty thousand. The goal is to make money overall though. You can't expect to do well every week. Some weeks you lose money. You just hope that most weeks you make a lot more than on the weeks where you lose. For your account, I'm hoping to make about three hundred thousand a year. After taxes, that should still give you about fifteen thousand a month you can spend if you want to." "I can take money out of my account?" "Sure. All you have to do is tell me what you want, and I'll have it transferred to your checking account. You need to make sure you don't spend everything you earn though. You need to pay taxes, and you have to leave some extra in, to cover possible downturns and inflation." "Inflation?" "Yes. The purchasing power of your money. If money inflates by four per cent this year, your money is going to buy about one hundred twenty thousand dollars less in goods next year. You always want to keep your capital's value equal to or greater than before inflation." "If it keeps getting worth less and less every year, won't it get to where it isn't worth anything?" "It might, but there will always be something that is worth having. If you have three million this year, and three million one hundred twenty thousand next year, your net purchasing power is about the same, if the dollar is four per cent inflated for the year. There are economists who figure this stuff out for us. We just need to stay ahead of the curve. It was harder a few years ago, when inflation was in double digits." "Could I just take a thousand dollars out then? I don't want my money to shrink down to where it's worth less to me." "It's all your money Brenda, so you can take as much as you want. I was just explaining how rich people stay rich, because you said that was your goal." "It is, but I'm going to need money to live on too. I'm moving out, as soon as I graduate. I can't stand having my mother pestering me all the time, trying to get me to give her some of my money." "Joyce told me that Mama was thinking about letting your mom have the money she told her she'd give her. The money she promised, if you and Richard both did what Uncle Bunny set up for you to do. I think she wants to do it because I decided to give you the money from Uncle Bunny first." "My mom will have it all spent, just like Richard's spending all of his." "I'm sure Mama's thought about that. Maybe she thinks that's okay." I could see Joyce practically biting her tongue because she was so anxious for me to follow up on what Brenda said about moving out after her graduation. "Did you need to go to the bathroom, Joyce? You look like you're fidgeting around over there." I smiled over at her when I said it. That's also when I had a different idea, and this one made a little more sense to me than the one that Mama and Joyce were both pushing. "Brenda, if you want to, you could live here. Joyce and I will be leaving to go up to Lawrence in a few months anyway. We've got loads of room in this big house, so having you here wouldn't be a problem. You could keep Joyce company, and maybe give her a hand, after the babies come." "You want me to come live with you guys?" From the way Brenda said this, I started understanding that it wasn't only Mama and Joyce who were in on this plan of theirs. Brenda wasn't a very good actress. I decided that didn't have to matter to me either, not unless I allowed it to. "Well, that wasn't what I was saying. We're going to be leaving soon, and it would be better if there were someone living here, and taking care of the house for us. We'll be coming back here some weekends, probably most of them, so we'd need to keep two houses going anyway. It would make things easier if there was someone here, bringing in the mail and available, in case we needed to check on something here. It wouldn't be living with us so much as sharing the same house while we're here." I saw Brenda and Joyce exchanging puzzled looks. Both of them knew this wasn't working out the way it was supposed to. I felt better about crossing all of them up like this. If they were going to conspire like this, they deserved to end up unsure of what they were actually getting. This was especially true for Mama. "You'd rent me a room?" "No. We wouldn't rent it to you. You'd be a guest. Joyce didn't pay us rent, and neither did Jane or Grace. It would be more like that, except you'd still be living here when we were gone." "Can I talk to you alone for a minute, Kenny?" Joyce seemed nervous. "Honey, that's not polite. We don't want Brenda to start thinking we've got secrets, do we? Go ahead and speak in front of her." I was really starting to enjoy myself. It's funny, when the shoe's on the other foot, and it's you that is controlling things, it doesn't seem as serious to you. I sat there, a smile on my face, waiting for Joyce to decide how she wanted to proceed. I really expected her to go phone Mama first, to find out what she was supposed to do next. "Brenda and I talked about it, and we want to have things go back to how they used to be, except without Emily and Shirley being involved." She tortured the admission out of herself. I could tell she hated to have to say the words to me. "Tell me what you mean by saying back to how they used to be. What does that mean to you, Joyce?" "The three of us being together. Living together, and doing sex things together. We would all be part of a group, like you said before." I looked over at Brenda. She was leaning forward in her chair, watching Joyce and me. "Is that what you want too, Brenda?" I saw her looking at Joyce before she spoke. She started out haltingly, trying to choose words that would correctly express her position. "You're going to marry Joyce. I wanted to marry you, instead of her. You made your decision, and I don't think you're going to change your mind. The problem is, I still love you. Your mother and Joyce both explained to me about why you should be with Joyce, and be married to her. Your mother told me a lot about what my mother and your uncle did for so many years. I didn't know he was doing all those things to help take care of her, or that my father's whole business was just your uncle's way of getting some money to us so we could live well. I saw that myself when I worked at your company, how easy it was for you to let him make more money from you. I don't want to sneak around like my mother had to. I don't want to be with, or marry, someone else while I'm still in love with you. What Joyce promised me, was that I could be with you, love you, as long as I didn't ever try to take you away from her." "Joyce, it's time you decided who you're going to be most loyal to, Mama or me. There are some things that are too important for you to try to hide them from me. This is one of those things. I know Mama wants me to be with Brenda too. I don't know why it's important to her, but I know it is. She won't tell me why. Do you know?" "Kenny, I'm loyal to you. Mama said this would be better for you. She doesn't want you making the same mistakes her father and brother made with women. She said one woman wouldn't ever be enough for you, but that four just wasn't a practical number. She told me it was better for me to agree to share you than to spend our whole marriage, worrying about where you were, and what you might be doing with some other woman." "I knew this wasn't something you'd come up with on your own, Joyce. Now tell me how you feel about the idea of sharing me with Brenda." Joyce started blushing. "I don't think of it like that, Kenny. We're all sharing each other. If I looked at it the way you said, then I'd be the one who was giving up something, the victim. I don't want to be the victim, or to spend my life resenting the way things have turned out with us. I picked Brenda for myself too. I don't think it would work if all she was to you was a mistress. She has to be more, and if she is, then she has to be more to me too. We talked about that, and I told her she had to accept this as a three way partnership, or else I wouldn't go along with it." "You don't believe me when I tell you that you're enough for me?" We were getting to the heart of it with that question of mine. If this was simply her having been conditioned to believe she could never hold on to me alone, I couldn't go through with it. She had to want this for other reasons, reasons that were for her benefit, not just mine. She had to admit she had other reasons, or else say she didn't have any. "I enjoyed it when the three of us did those things together. When it was Emily, Brenda and me, it wasn't the same for me. I didn't love Emily, only Brenda did. I don't feel that way towards Brenda, except when you are there too. I know Brenda loves you, probably as much as I love you. That makes us closer, because we have this love for you in common." "Brenda, Joyce is going to be my wife, my closest partner. You and I won't ever share the same type of closeness or interests. If we decide to do this thing, you can't change your mind all the time, or start going out with other people, guys or girls. It isn't some optional thing where you can be in one week, and be out the next. This would have to be for keeps, just like any other committed relationship. It would be something close to a marriage to me, including any children that the three of us might have." "I know that, Kenny. I'm really not like that now. I'm willing to go along with what Joyce told me I had to do, because that way I'd be able to have you too." "Stop it, Brenda. This is the same thing you pulled with Emily. I can't accept you doing it like that with Joyce. I saw how you responded to Emily and Joyce. You were as anxious for that stuff as they were. It can't be any sort of real partnership if you project that attitude to us. Suppose I acted like I was only fucking you so that Joyce could have sex with you too? Do you see how that would make you feel?" "Kenny, I already told you it's different when we're doing it. That time in the office, that was the best sex I've ever had. Part of that time, it was just Joyce and me, but I was already so hot it didn't matter to me. Doing it is a lot different than talking about doing it. Joyce will know how much I like what we're doing, but not while we're sitting in your office just talking about things." "All right. We can wait and then see how it works in practice. The next thing is Emily. What are your plans for her?" "Joyce said she didn't mind if Emily and I continued doing things while she's here." "I'm not Joyce. I admit that Emily is a special case, but I think the principle is more important than any one specific person. If we agree to do this thing, then no more Emily for you." I could see this was an area where Brenda had serious misgivings. "You can wait to join us until after Emily leaves for New York. It isn't Emily I'm objecting to, it's one of us going outside our group. That would be cheating." There was silence in the room. I picked up the yellow notepad, the one where I'd kept track of Brenda's trades. I tried to concentrate on all those numbers, wondering if there was some type of pattern to the trades I was making. I saw I had been a lot more active in beans and meal than with some of the other grains. It had always been easier for me to make money in a fast trading market. "Kenny, maybe we could make an exception for Emily, if all of us agreed. Brenda would have to be willing to share her with us too though, and it would have to be unanimously agreed on by all four of us." I looked at Joyce, then I looked at Brenda. Brenda appeared to be considering it. I couldn't read Joyce's expression. This seemed to go against everything she'd said earlier. "Are you thinking with your head, Joyce, or with your pussy? Remember what Mama told you about complications and being practical? Having Emily come by, so we could all have sex with her isn't very practical." "Why isn't it? I'm not talking about every night, but why not do it once in awhile? It's only sex if we do it like that. Your way, you're asking Brenda to give up an important friendship. My way, it would be up to Emily to decide if she wanted to come visit with us or not. We'd set the rules and she could decide for herself." Joyce was trying to catch Brenda's attention. I could see she wanted Brenda's support for this. Something else was going on that I didn't know about. How many agreements did these girls have with each other? "Joyce, why don't you just tell me yourself what you and Brenda have agreed to?" "About Emily? Only what I just said, that if everybody was all right with it, the four of us could get together." "Brenda, do you have anything to add to that?" "Just that Emily is willing. She isn't going out with anyone else. She still misses you too." Just after Brenda quit speaking, Irene called all of us to dinner. I looked at my watch, surprised that an hour and a half had passed since Brenda came over. We all went to the dining room and had dinner. At dinner, the conversation turned back to Georgia, and what would happen when she got her money from Mama. I finally told Brenda that she should address those concerns to Mama, rather than to me. Mama was nobody's fool. She had known Georgia, and her high spending desires for many years. I had no doubt that she realized already what Georgia would do, if given the opportunity. If she just handed over a lump sum, it was because she wanted Georgia to run through the money. I believed Mama had too much respect for money to ever do that. It was after ten when Brenda went back home. Joyce was very tired, and couldn't stop herself from yawning. We had spoken more about the mechanics of Brenda moving in, and the timing of it as well. It was decided that Brenda could move in whenever she was ready to do so, but that we wouldn't do anything together until such time as Joyce was once again back in commission. In the meantime, I told Brenda she was free to continue seeing Emily, but not to bring her over to the house for any sexual activity. Outside the house, I had no problem with. In bed that night, Joyce spent a long time sucking on my cock. She let me diddle her pussy a little with my fingers, and we both laughed about how hard it was for me to manage to get my tongue on her clit. I did manage it, and both of us had satisfying cums. ------- The wedding at the courthouse was businesslike and impersonal. It took five minutes to perform, and Joyce and I were both extremely uncomfortable around her parents. I liked her brother fine, but her parents just got on my nerves. They constantly complained about everything. The light wasn't right for the camera they had brought, a courthouse was no fit place for a wedding, Joyce looked ridiculous getting married with her belly all swollen up with her babies. It went on and on until the bailiff called us all into the judge's chambers for the ceremony. There were twenty three of us in the judge's chambers. Besides Joyce and me, my parents, Gerta and Hans, Irene, Georgia and Brenda, Grace and Jane, Marie and her husband, Joyce's parents and her brother. Emily was there and so was Shirley. Both of them were surprises to me. The biggest surprise were my Aunt Clara and Mildred Coulter, my birth grandmother were both in attendance. The judge was there, of course, and his bailiff, and a woman who was his stenographer or court reporter or something. Like I said, it was crowded and it was over in a hurry. I had my father as my witness, and Joyce chose Mama as hers. I noticed this didn't sit too well with Joyce's parents, but that didn't surprise me either. The important thing was that we were married, and the twins hadn't been born yet. On our drive back home, Joyce started feeling some pain, but not enough to go to the hospital with. This continued for another two days. Mama got Joyce's doctor to come out to the house to examine her. He told her that she was getting ready to go into labor, and to go to the hospital when her contractions started coming every five minutes. Mama moved in with us when the doctor left. It was all I could do to prevent her from setting up a delivery room right there in the house. She was so anxious, and her anxiety was being transferred to Joyce. "Mama, you need to calm down. You're making Joyce nervous. Everything is fine, the doctor said she's doing well right now. Just relax and let nature take it from here." Of course, Mama had me as jumpy as a cat walking near water. I had been worried before, but seeing Mama pacing all around, worrying, didn't help things. It was Wednesday morning before Joyce really started in with heavy contractions. When the were about ten minutes apart, we put her in the Lincoln, and drove to the hospital. They started telling us we were coming in too soon at admitting, but Mama told the woman that Joyce was in pain, and we wanted her seen by her physician. As soon as I saw Joyce's doctor, I calmed down a little. We waited for six hours after they prepped her and got her ready. I'd go in and out of the room, but Joyce had been given something to relax her, and she was a little out of it. Some of the things she was saying were very unlike Joyce. She seemed comfortable though, and after seeing her in distress for so long, I was happy to see her acting a little bit spaced out. The twins were born nineteen minutes apart. Bunny came first, and Little Bertie came after. You couldn't believe how moving it was to see each of them for the first time. I examined each perfect little toe and finger, marvelling about how well everything fit together. I also worried about every wrinkle, the way Little Bertie's head seemed misshaped, and about how Little Bertie cried so loud, while Bunny seemed so placid, and laid back. Both of them had a head full of very fine black hair. If you watched Mama looking at them, you'd have thought she was staring at the Hope Diamond and the Holy Grail together. Even Dad had this kind of goofy look on his face. I caught him making faces and talking baby talk to Bunny, who was laying quietly in his incubator, waiting to be wheeled into the nursery room at the hospital. For some unexplainable reason, I felt proud of myself, like I had accomplished something. I knew I'd had very little to do with the pregnancy, after providing the initial required impetus, but still, even if you plant a seed and stand back to let it become a tree, you still feel like a big part of the gardening process. I was a father. I would have promised God to make a better father than mine had been, but that hardly seemed worth expending my breath for. I didn't mean my current father, I meant my sperm donor. I slipped out of the delivery area, and went downstairs for a few minutes. When I was there, I went to this small gift shop and bought some flowers, asking for all my change to be in silver. I phoned the Webb residence in San Diego and spoke with Anne Coulter. She was very happy living where she was. She told me that her life was really going well, and that she was feeling very peaceful. I told her she had two grand kids. She didn't seem to be very excited by my news. After I hung up, I realized that Anne didn't really think of me as her son, simply as her benefactor, the man paying her bills. That was fair, because I didn't think of her as my mother, or as the kid's grandmother, except in the narrowest biological sense. I went upstairs to be with my real family. ------- Chapter 4 The day that Brenda, Emily and Shirley graduated, the twins were two weeks old. Mama had hired some help for Joyce. They were two sisters that lived about a quarter mile away from our house. Karen was seventeen years old, and her sister, Lina, was either fifteen or sixteen. They were the oldest of six children, and Mama knew their grandmother. I think she had once worked for Mama, as a maid or something. The girls would come in and do whatever they could to make it easier for Joyce to care for the twins. Bunny was a happy little baby. He slept well, didn't spit up his mother's milk, and when he cried, it wasn't very loud. Roberta was an altogether different story. She loved to be fussed over. She was loud, and she made these terrible faces, where her eyes would get all scrunched up, and her face would turn red, as she protested whatever condition she found herself in. The thing that worked best, when she was like this, was to pick her up and walk all around the house with her. This was something the two sisters excelled at doing. They would walk with Little Bertie until she calmed down and went back to sleep. Karen was especially good about changing diapers. I had changed a few, in the very beginning, and was amazed at what little babies could put out. Joyce seemed to love everything about taking care of the kids. We had put both little bassinets in our bedroom, and each of the kids would wake up a couple of times a night, wanting to be changed and fed. Brenda moved in the day after graduation, and she wanted to help with the babies too. It seemed like there was a competition over who would be allowed to hold the babies. Too many girls, not enough babies to go around. Joyce was breast feeding, and her milk had come in very strong. She had plenty of milk for both children. I would pass by Joyce sitting on the couch, feeding one of the twins, and there were usually at least two of the other girls there, standing around, watching her as she did it. I had tasted Joyce's breast milk, but it didn't do anything for me. Joyce and Brenda invited Shirley and Emily over for a small graduation dinner, and a meeting of the X's afterwards. It was funny, listening to them sitting at the kitchen table, talking about me like I wasn't right there to hear what they were saying. It was embarrassing too, because they all seemed to like to go into vivid detail about things that we had done in bed together. I took it for about forty minutes, but then I just had to get up and leave. I remembered most of the things they were talking about, and I also realized the girls were doing some careful editing while telling their stories. When Joyce came to bed later, with Brenda helping to carry one of the sleeping twins, she told me that the other girls had gone home. "If you want to do something with Brenda tonight, Kenny, I wouldn't mind." "No. We'll wait until she decides, and until you can participate with us. You girls went and made yourselves all horny, telling each other those lies about what we did together. Shirley was the worst one too. I couldn't believe some of those things she made up about us." "How come you never made me scream at the top of my lungs, Kenny?" Joyce was in a playful mood, I could tell, but the doctor had told us we needed to wait six weeks for everything inside to heal, and get back in the right places. "She's a screamer, Joyce. I never made her faint, and I've made you faint several times." "I already decided, Kenny. I told you that when we talked before." Brenda had put Bunny in his little bassinet, and had walked over to where I was sitting on my bed. I had put down the book I was reading when everyone came into the bedroom. "It isn't that simple, Brenda. There's still the summer, and Emily. I wouldn't feel right about us doing anything when Joyce wasn't able to join in if she wanted to." "Emily wants to move in here, and so does Shirley, if you'll let her bring Derek. Just for the summer. We all talked about it, and we all promised not to get jealous." "I'm a married man, Brenda, with children in the house. Besides, I gave up on that harem idea a long time ago. It's too complicated. I promised Joyce too, so forget it." "Joyce was the one who first said it might be fun, just for the summer. We can all go to work at your dad's company, and use the bedroom as a place for Bunny and Bertie to be. I can cook, and we can all take turns with watching the babies." "Is that right, Joyce? Are you planning for us to hold orgies at work?" "It would just be for the summer, Kenny. We're leaving after, for Lawrence. Emily is going back east, to Columbia, and Shirley is going to school over in Bolling. This would be the last summer all the X's will be together. If you think about it, it's just like what you proposed before, except, this time, everyone has already said they'd like to do it." "Shirley said she'd like to do things with other girls?" Joyce and Brenda both laughed when I asked that. I looked at them, waiting for them to tell me why what I'd asked was so funny. Shirley was the only one of my girl friends who'd never shown or expressed any interest in other girls. "I don't think Shirley would have a problem doing things with anybody right now. Every time we see her, she's always complaining about how much she misses sex. She's always asking Emily and Brenda about what they do. She was the first one who said she'd like to move in too. Emily wasn't sure if she wanted to move in or not." Joyce gave Brenda a look, and I wondered what they weren't telling me. I saw Brenda nod to Joyce. "Emily had a new boyfriend. At least, she had a boy that she did things with. I don't think she's seeing him anymore. She's afraid you won't want her living here now." I'll admit that I had an emotional response to hearing that news. I'm not sure why that was, since I'd long considered things over between us. It wasn't jealousy I felt, it was more like disappointment. I don't know why I even felt that. "We're all moving on. This is probably a good thing too. I don't think I want to get re-involved with Shirley and Emily just for the summer. It doesn't make any sense, and it would just make it harder when everyone splits up to go off to school later. Thanks for the offer, but I don't think I'm interested in it." "What about the other thing you said, with Emily, and us? Are you going to change your mind about that now?" "As I remember it, it was you suggesting it so that Brenda and Emily could continue their friendship without violating the agreement about no outside relationships. I said I'd be willing to wait until the end of the summer for Brenda to join us, so she and Emily could continue things the way they were. The truth is, I don't really want to get involved more than I already am. Brenda is a different case for me. I'm still ready to do what we talked about. As far as what you girls want to do with each other, I'd have to think about how I'd feel about that. Right now, I'm tired, and I want to get some rest." Brenda left, then Joyce kept me up for another thirty minutes while she tried to explain why it would be a good thing for us to have Emily and Shirley living with us for the summer. "Even if there were no sex, it would be a good thing. This is especially true for Emily, because she's having problems at home right now. Shirley is having money problems, and she needs to get her own car to get back and forth from school every day. Her mom needs to have her car at home, if she's going to be watching Derek all day, while Shirley's in school. We could use Shirley at work, and, if she lived with us, we could all go back and forth together." "I'll buy her a car, Joyce. As far as Emily's problems at home, I'm sure she can work those out if she has to. I know how you operate too. You just want to get them here in the house, under any pretext, then you're going to start doing things to make me tempted. If you want to do things with those girls, Joyce, I'll give you my permission. I don't want to complicate my life by doing things with them too." "If I promise you, if we all promise you that we won't try to get you to do anything with either Emily or Shirley, will you let them come here to live?" "Joyce, tell me what makes it so important to you." "Brenda, it's important to her. Not Shirley so much, but Emily. She thinks Emily needs her right now. Brenda is thinking about getting a place for her and Emily, for the summer." "What's wrong with that? It might actually be better if they did it like that." "Mama doesn't think so." "Mama again. Is she worried that Brenda might decide to go off with Emily, when she goes east?" "She didn't say that, but she thinks Emily is dangerous for our plans." "Our plans, meaning hers and yours? Having Brenda go off to school with Emily isn't dangerous to any of my plans. I've said it before, if Mama has something she really wants or needs from me, about Brenda, all she has to do is come to me, and tell me why it's so important to her. Until she does, I'm not going to do anything to try to keep Brenda from doing whatever she chooses to." "Did you mean it about buying Shirley a car?" "Sure. We should get you a new car anyway. I'll buy yours from the leasing company, and we can give that to Shirley. It's still a good car, plus it's big enough so she could drive it comfortably. We'll have the company lease you a new one. Do you want another Lincoln?" "Actually, I was thinking I might try a Cadillac next. I like driving yours, and now that I'm so much taller, and my belly isn't so big, I don't even need the pedal assists, or to scoot forward, because your seat comes further forward than the one on my Lincoln." "We'll get you whatever you want, Joyce. See? That was easy." "When I tell Brenda what you told me, Kenny, she's going to want you to give her some of her money so she can move out to be with Emily." "That's fine. She can have as much of it as she wants. She's only taken out two thousand so far. Don't be worried about Brenda, Joyce. I don't think she's ready to move that far away from home." "It would be so much easier if you'd let everyone move in here. Emily and Brenda could share a room together, and we could wait to start our group until after Emily leaves." "I'm not going for it, Joyce. I've seen the looks you guys are all giving each other. How you all react every time I happen to say something. I know you and Mama both believe I'd be better off with you making decisions for me, orchestrating my life the way you think would be best. You and Mama are going to find there's a big problem with attempting that. The difficulty with your ideas is, we don't always agree on what is best." "I promise we won't try to trick you into having sex with Emily or Shirley, Kenny. We have all this extra room. I like all the X's, and we really could use their help at work, and with the twins." "What about Karen and Lina?" "They were only temporary. Mama just hired them until I was back up to full strength again. I think Lina has to go to summer school next week anyway. Karen wants a full time job for the summer. I think Gerta is going to help her get something that pays better." "If I went along, it would mean I'm not going to do anything with Brenda, not so long as Emily is living here." "I'll explain things to all of them. What about Derek? Can Shirley bring him to work with her?" "I don't see why not. We should set up some kind of kid's nursery, away from our offices anyway. I'll put the John's on it. I think there's an empty office off the kitchen. That way we wouldn't need to hear them when we were trying to get things done. Were you planning on putting Shirley and Brenda in charge of watching them?" "What about Emily?" "What about her? This is your plan, Joyce, not mine. She does things for the girl's group home, so you know what she can do. Use her however you think is best. Dad wants me staying closer to him this summer. He says he wants me to start thinking like a company president. I'm supposed to watch and learn from him." I also had plans to get my pilot's license over the summer. I'd put it off, mostly because I was worried about my mental stability. My Dad was the only one who thought I should still get my license. I think Mama and Joyce were worried I'd go into one of my withdrawals and crash on purpose... I asked my Dad why that didn't worry him. He said I could do the same thing in my car, or fifty other ways. Flying wasn't going to be any more of a risk than allowing me to continue shaving myself. My Dad was a practical person, not given to worrying about problems he couldn't control. Mama could have learned a thing or two from him. I was getting sleepy before Joyce decided to quit while she was still ahead. I had agreed to having all the girls move in with us, but she had to accept my decision about Brenda, and about me not having sex with Emily or Shirley. I knew my life was going to get very interesting. Most guys would have killed to get themselves into my position. I was going to be living with four girls, girls who had all openly declared that they wanted me to fuck them. If I was being honest with myself, I would have admitted that I wanted to fuck all of them too. The problem with it, for me, was that I didn't want to just have casual sex with any of them. I believed, once I'd loved somebody, there was some kind of bond between us. The idea of us having friendly, non-committed sex, just didn't have any appeal to me. I slept pretty well. I was developing what Joyce referred to as father's hearing. I would wake up at night when one of the babies started crying, just enough to give Joyce a little wake up shove, and then I'd fall back to sleep. Later, when Joyce started using the breast pump, she stopped letting me get away with that. The next morning, our house was once again full of the four X's. Brenda moved her things from the bedroom she had previously selected, to Elizabeth's old bedroom, over in the back part of the house. Emily was moving her things in there as well. Gary had come along to help her. Shirley had her brother, Ron, helping her and Derek move in. Irene was walking around the house all day, watching as the house filled up with girls. It was in the early afternoon when she came into my little office and told me she was quitting. I asked her what the problem was, thinking it was the extra food she would need to prepare. It turned out that she had a sensitivity to noises, much like Anne Coulter had. With four women and three babies, she said her nerves were already getting rattled. I wrote her out a check, paying her for the whole month, and phoned over to Hans to have him come with the limo, to drive her and all her stuff, over to her sister's house, near Bolling. Gerta laughed when I told her why I needed Hans. Hans was laughing too as he watched all the X's scurrying around the house, carrying things from one room to another. Joyce and I walked Irene to the door of the limo and saw her off. She looked happy to be on her way. Brenda was already in the kitchen, taking inventory, and planning that night's meal. I went back to my office and closed the door. The noise didn't bother me that much, I just wanted a buffer, between myself, and all those girls. The reality of living with a houseful of young women was starting to set in for me. Brenda told me we needed a lot more refrigerator and freezer space, and she had a whole page of things she wanted for the kitchen. I gave her the phone number of the restaurant supply man in Kansas City, and told her to get what she wanted. I gave her five hundred dollars to buy the food and spices she said she needed. Brenda had already cost me a ton of money for kitchens and equipment, and I had yet to taste one bite of food she'd prepared. I wondered why other people were able to make do with what Uncle Bunny had left in the house. At dinner that night, the meal was really great. Brenda had made three separate entrees, including a baked fish dish that was absolutely fabulous. There was a rib roast with a special horseradish sauce that I loved, and then there was a Philippine pasta dish with a funny name that she made that had shrimp, pieces of lobster, assorted vegetables and flavorings, all mixed into these finely cooked strands of something even thinner than angel hair pasta. Her meal was a huge success with all of us. It was right after dinner, and all of us were in Uncle Bunny's big family room. Shirley and Joyce were sitting on one couch, each holding a baby. Derek was so big, that he dwarfed Little Bertie. Brenda was sitting in my chair, holding Bunny. Emily was sitting on one end of the couch I was sitting on, so there were eight people in the room. It wasn't that crowded, because three of the people were being held in laps. Conversation was still centered around the dinner we'd finished. Brenda was telling Shirley and Joyce about what she was making for the next day's dinner. I was trying to decide if it would be acceptable for me to sneak off and read some of my studying material for learning how to fly an airplane. I decided, since it was the first evening for all of us being together living like we were, that I'd stay in the room, just to see what was going to get said. "Kenny, Joyce said you were okay about me and Emily being in the same room?" Brenda was chosen to be the one to start things off at what they were now calling 4X's and a Y. I guess they weren't counting any of the kids yet. I had to smile at Brenda's question. In my mind, I pictured the four of them voting on which question should lead off our discussion that night. "Why would I have any problem with that, Brenda? Just so long as you don't try to do two things at once." I was curious about how they planned to approach the next part of it. I'd been very clear with Joyce about what was acceptable, and what wasn't. I knew she had understood me too. "Kenny, I tried to explain to the girls about what we agreed on, but I wasn't able to tell them what your reasons were for deciding about how it would all work. They asked me some questions that I didn't know the answers for." Joyce was deliberately re-opening ground that I had carefully gone over with her. I had expected this would happen, but in my misplaced optimism, I'd expected it to take a lot longer to begin. "Why don't you ask me those questions now, Joyce? Any that you had trouble giving answers for. I thought I'd made it all pretty clear last night." "Well, what about Emily, Shirley, or Brenda dating? Is that okay with you?" "Fine with me, but they can't bring their dates home with them. The house is already pretty crowded, and I don't want it to turn into some kind of apartment complex. Shirley, you'd need to arrange for someone to look after Derek when you went out." "Suppose they wanted to do things with their dates?" Joyce was wasting no time. I thought it was probably for the best. I was pretty sure she expected me to have some objections to it. I had been thinking about that very thing, ever since Joyce had told me that Emily had done things with another boy. "I have no problems about that, with either Emily or Shirley. If Brenda starts dating though, we'll need to discuss a change in our plans with her." "Why is it different for Brenda?" This was from Emily. Her tone was angry, and she was directing one of her combative stares right at me. "Because I have future plans with Brenda." When I said that, I noticed that Shirley flinched. They had wanted to get into this discussion, not me. I was willing to let things go for a few days, to let everyone settle in before deciding on what all the rules were. "You don't have any plans for me or Shirley?" Emily seemed less angry or hostile when she asked that. "No. I'm not into casual sex, and that's all either of you could give me, or get from me. It isn't enough, not after the history we've had together." "Why is it that Brenda gets another chance, and we don't?" Shirley had joined in the fray. That was good, because now, that meant everyone was participating. "I think the main reason has more to do with my mother than with either Brenda, Joyce, or me. She has this thing about Brenda and me being together. I love her, and I try to let her have her way, if possible. For some reason, Joyce is going along with it too." "Do you mean you don't really care that much about Brenda? This is just to please your mother?" Emily had gotten up from where she sat on the sofa. She had moved closer to where I was still sitting. "Emily, don't go putting words into my mouth. I do care for Brenda, and you know that. If you want Brenda to go off with you, just ask her. Don't try to undermine what Brenda and I feel for one another. You hate it that you can't compete with me for her. That isn't my fault. Joyce is your real competition, not me, Emily. If you're going to be upset, be upset with her." "I'm not her competition, Kenny. Why did you tell her that?" "Because it's the truth. If it wasn't for you, Brenda might have decided to take her money and run off to New York with Emily. With you in the deal, she decided she wanted to stay here with us." "Kenny, that isn't why I decided. I love you, and that's why I'm staying." Brenda was holding Bunny closer to her, patting him while she spoke to me. "It doesn't really matter, does it, Emily? The main thing is that she decided to stay with us. We told her she could stay with you for the summer, but that's it after that. She has to make her final choice when you leave for college." "You set this up on purpose, Kenny. You know that Brenda is going to choose you and Joyce over me this summer." "No, I don't know that. I haven't done anything to cause her to do that. I'm deciding for me, not for you, not for Brenda. This whole thing where you needed to move in here because you were having problems at home, it was just so you could try to take Brenda away from what she's chosen she wants. The same goes for you wanting to include Shirley, so Brenda would feel like she was less special to us. It isn't going to work. I don't want to compete on your terms. I don't have to. I'm perfectly content to let you have this last summer with Brenda, but after that, there won't be any more." "What about me, Kenny. I didn't come here to do anything bad to you." Shirley was looking right at Emily, and she didn't look happy about what had already been said. "I don't know what more I can tell you, Shirley. I'm married now, and I've moved on without you. I still like you, but I don't have any interest in rekindling any kind of romance with you. That doesn't mean we can't be friends if you want, or that I'm not interested in helping you. I'm pretty sure that you're going to like living here, but only if you don't try to get involved with any of the plotting and scheming that's going on." "You're married, but you still have an interest in Brenda. What kind of marriage is that?" Emily was still in front of me, still hoping that she could make some kind of fight out of it. "Emily, you need to stop and think about what you're trying to accomplish. This way isn't going to succeed for you. You want Brenda, so you have to find a way to convince her she'd be happier with you. Joyce and I have both been honest with her. We've given her a free choice to make. We've even given her time to think about it, to change her mind if that's what she decides she wants to do. Joyce, Brenda and I have had sex together, and it worked for us. You've had lots of opportunities to convince Brenda of what you want. Trust her to choose whichever choice she decides is best for her." "Sure, when you give her three million dollars. You don't play fair." "I did play fair. I gave her the money before I told her what we wanted. She gets the money no matter how she decides. It wasn't a bribe to get her to decide what she wanted. It actually worked the other way, making it easier for her to choose you, if that was what she wanted." "You never asked me what I wanted, or asked me to join you." "That isn't true. I did ask you, but you didn't want to. By the time you changed your mind, I felt differently about the whole thing. Joyce's main interest is me, and Brenda's main interest is Brenda. My main interest is probably me too, but I'm also very interested in what happens to Joyce and Brenda. Your main interest is you, and then it's Brenda. Whatever interest you have in me is tied to Brenda too. I started back up with Brenda to bring you back, but then, I realized that you'd only be coming back for her, not for me." "Brenda's more important to me than she could ever be to you." Emily was getting a defeated look on her face, almost a pleading look. "I'm not sure that's true. But, even if it was true, it's only important to Brenda, not to you. I'm willing to let her choose. I already told her that Joyce was number one with me, and that's why I married her. Brenda knows exactly what her place is going to be with us, and she also knows it's an important place. I'm going to tell you one more thing, Emily, then I'm through with talking to you about Brenda. Brenda likes girl things, she always has. She likes them a lot better though, when she'd doing those girl things with a hard dick rammed up her pussy." "Do you want me to leave, Kenny?" The way she asked it, I'm certain she expected me to tell her yes. To her, this was a competition, and she felt like she had lost. I never felt that way. I had started out using Brenda to get Emily back, but I ended up having Brenda, but not wanting to take anything away from Emily before it became necessary. I actually preferred that Emily and Brenda pass the summer together. "No, Emily. You can stay if you want to. Enjoy the summer with us. I just wanted all of you to know where things stood, at least as far as I'm concerned. This summer, while you're here, Joyce and I won't be doing things with Brenda. When it's time for you to leave, she can decide what she wants to do. Whatever she decides, we'll accept." The room got quiet after that. I think everyone was trying to understand what this new round of discussion had done to their older hopes and fears. I got the impression that Brenda was upset by Emily's attempt to take her away from Joyce and me. Shirley didn't seem happy either. I think she'd been led to believe that it was just a matter of time before she'd be back in bed with me, screaming out her orgasms again. She was the least complicated of the four young women, and the one with the lowest expectations. In bed, later that night, I got another hour, filled with both critique and criticism, from Joyce. I told her that she needed to better understand the dynamics of the relationships she was trying to put together. I also told her she shouldn't assume that people were always being candid with her. She didn't have even a clue as to what Emily's real goals had been. "Did you really meant it, about us not doing anything with Brenda, until after Emily leaves for school?" "I meant it for me, Joyce. I already told you it was all right with me if you did something with any of them." "It isn't the same without you being there, Kenny. I still remember that time at the office. I thought our whole summer was going to be like that. Brenda wanted that even more than I did. I think it would have worked out better, if you would have gone along with it." "This summer is already going to be a hard one for Brenda, Joyce. She knows she's going to have to actually give something up now. Before you brought all the girls over here, I thought it would be easier for her to choose. Now, with her spending every night with Emily, it's going to make her choice that much more difficult. Emily out maneuvered you this time. Just by moving in, she's gotten closer to getting what she wants, and you are closer to losing what you already had." "We need to make Brenda either jealous, or worried." I paused my hands on her back as I thought about what she'd said. "Why do we want to do that? How would we go about doing it?" Joyce was looking at me. We were less than a foot apart on the bed. I was rubbing her butt and massaging her back as we talked. I had spent time softly rubbing the back of her thighs too, and she was already jumping whenever I touched her anywhere near her pussy. She had my cock in her hand, and had been pulling on it, and rubbing it against her stomach. She was already pretty excited, I could smell her arousal, and feel the added warmth on her upper thighs. "Shirley." She scooted down on the bed, putting the head of my dick in her mouth, sucking it with a practiced ease. I put my fingers back in the recess of her crotch, gently stroking between her butt hole and her pussy. "I already said I wasn't going to do anything with Shirley or Emily. I'm not going to go back on my word just to make Brenda jealous." I was getting caught up in the pressure of having Joyce sucking me. We hadn't done much in the way of sex since a few weeks before the twins were born. A little touching, and a few blow jobs, that was it. Joyce was still sensitive about what her pussy looked like, after the babies had been born, so she wouldn't let me eat her. I had a feeling all of that was about to change real soon. "Not you, Kenny. Me." She lifted off of me long enough to tell me that, then she went back and resumed her steady sucking on the head. I remember filling her throat with my cum, and her wiggling around on my suddenly stiffened fingers. We were both cumming right after she said that to me. I remembered I still had that big oven screwdriver that Steve Lusby had given me. I bet myself that Joyce could walk into Shirley's bedroom, holding that screwdriver, and get almost anything she wanted with it. ------- Chapter 5 Over the next two weeks I managed to avoid falling into any of the traps that were being set for me. The eight of us became traveling nomads, pitching one tent at the office in Bolling, and the other one at Uncle Bunny's house. I left the logistics of traveling to the girls every morning, and then again, every afternoon. We usually used three cars to get to and from work. Joyce and Brenda rode in one car, with the twins. Emily, Shirley and Derek rode in another. Dad stopped by most mornings, to drive me into work with him. Once, when he was out of town for two days during the week, I drove myself in. Brenda did all of our cooking, and she really was quite an excellent cook. Soon, Dad was coming down to my office with me, every day at lunch time, to eat his lunch with us. He and I worked better together once I was given space inside his office. Myra had put in a small desk, and my own phone lines, and Dad kept me filled in on everything he was working on, and thinking about. I began to get some understanding of the overall complexity of meshing the separate businesses into a single whole. One of the advantages of our new shipping and warehousing methods was the seamless integration of our, heretofore, separate product lines. Everything was being shipped to the same hub points now, then repackaged, and shipped to final delivery rail yards. Joyce had set everything up so that all hub deliveries were being coordinated by one department, based in Bolling. Corporate sales were increasing at more than twenty-five per cent per year, with net profits rising at an even higher rate, because of all the new efficiencies the rail shipping and warehousing made possible for us. Dad's main job was ensuring that everything was working. He was constantly tweaking things, with an eye towards improving overall total performance. A large portion of his responsibility was finding the right mix of people to accomplish each task. He had successfully negotiated a satisfactory line of credit to cover the costs for our expansion, and he was making full use of those funds to increase the footprint of our national presence. Dad and I had been talking about the importance of selecting the right people for different types of jobs, and he brought up, what he liked to call, my harem. He chose to treat it as Joyce's girls, rather than as mine though. "What I like is the way Joyce knew she had to bring in more people to help her care for the twins, both at home, and here at the office. Otherwise, she would be too distracted with the twins to get much of her work here accomplished. You need to remind her that it's important that she get someone trained here in Bolling. It has to be someone who can follow through to make sure her daily instructions are being implemented. It needs to be someone who can report back to her in the evenings, to keep her updated on how things are running here. Joyce is handling a very critical component of our expansion program. There are constant daily changes needed, in order to keep our distribution operation running smoothly. It's very critical that everything needs to be coordinated precisely, or else, the products won't arrive on time to our retailers, If we aren't totally dependable, they'll find a supplier who will be." "Dad, what would you think of my idea of having Joyce hire Ellen to be her assistant here, after we're gone?" "I thought you and Ellen were still having that conflict with each other." "We have a conflict, but I wouldn't be the one working with her. If she and Joyce could somehow manage to get along together, Ellen would be almost perfect for the job of coordinating with Joyce. She is very bright, and we never once had any problem with her work. I'll be here with you for the summer, and then, I'll be gone to school with Joyce in the fall. Ellen would almost be perfect for this sort of thing." "You continue to impress me, Kenny. I had the same thought, but I wasn't going to suggest it to you. I didn't want to stir up old antagonisms between the two of you. How do you propose we proceed with getting into contact with her? We should make use of the time we have left, to get her in here, and used to working with Joyce." "If we're going to do it, we should call her, to see if she and Joyce can make peace with each other. It was really Joyce who was being threatened by her. She might decide she can't work with Ellen. I think she'd be willing if we could get Ellen to accept that Joyce was her real boss, and she needed to keep her pleased. Give her a title that included the word assistant in it. Maybe assistant to the vice president of distributions." "You think we should make Joyce a vice president at twenty two? We'll ask her today, at lunch. It's important that Joyce leave someone here that can help keep things on track for us. I hope Joyce is able to put Ellen's past behavior behind her. I can have a talk with Edith and Ellen if need be, Kenny." "We'll talk to Joyce first, find out what she thinks. I think she'll be willing to give Ellen another chance, if we ask her to. I don't think Ellen could intimidate her now anyway. I'll talk to Shirley too. She and Ellen are friends. I'll explain to Shirley that Ellen's job depends on her not causing any problems around here." Joyce seemed in favor of bringing Ellen on board. In fact, when I brought the subject up, she told me that Shirley had already spoken to her about Ellen. Joyce already knew that Ellen was a valuable resource, and a very capable worker. What she didn't yet know was whether the two of them could make the kind of communications connection that would be necessary for them to work well over the telephone. I told her that I had been impressed with Ellen's intelligence, enough so that I'd have been willing to let her have the job I gave to her. I would have given it to Ellen too, if she hadn't been so good at the more important sales order desk job she already had with us. It was agreed that we'd invite her to come in the next day for an interview. Shirley informed us that Ellen was working in the customer service department for the J.C. Penny's store, in Bolling. According to Shirley, she hated the work she did, which was dealing with unsatisfied and complaining customers all day. We told Shirley to call her, and invite her in for lunch, letting her know that we were interested in discussing a possible job offer. I went back upstairs with Dad after lunch, and we spent the rest of the day working on a problem in our Delaware company. This company was the one weak link in our consolidation program. Dad said it was because all the executives were probably afraid to embrace the many changes we were implementing in our shipping and warehousing. To be effective, the changes needed someone, on site, to champion them. In Delaware, it seemed there was no one that wanted to supervise implementing our newer distribution programs. They constantly lagged behind the other divisions, and as a result, their profitability was lagging behind all the other divisions. "Kenny, I want you to go back there next week, you need to light a fire under those people. Find someone who will take responsibility for implementing all the necessary changes. This foot dragging needs to end, it isn't good that they're lagging behind like they are." "I don't know anyone back there. It would take me at least two weeks to recognize where the problems were. I think I should stay here with Joyce too, at least until the twins are older." "Don't kid yourself about whether you'll be able to recognize their problems, Kenny. It might take you two weeks before you find out everything that's wrong, but I'm willing to bet you'll see plenty of things that need correcting, and long before those two weeks are up. I'm giving you full authority to act while you're there, including hiring, firing and promoting. In effect, I'm going to let you run the division, until you have it running as well as the other divisions are." "Dad, I can't operate a division by myself. It isn't something I've trained to do. I don't want to go there and fall flat on my face." "You won't be by yourself. The division is being run right now, but it's being run poorly. I want it improved, and I can't afford to take the time to go there and see what needs to change. I'll send you out there, and you can either make the changes you think necessary, or else, if you are worried, you can call me every night, and we'll discuss making the changes together. I think you'll be able to recognize the problems there, just like you did here, and up in Omaha." "If you send me like this, aren't you afraid it will undermine morale in Dover? Nobody likes having people come in and make wholesale changes to their way of doing things. Isn't there a less disruptive way to do this?" "Why should I be afraid? I've waited over a year for them to straighten themselves out. I've spoken to every department manager in the division, asking them to look into the problems and get back to me with their ideas for improving the integration of their departments with our combined operations. The few that have responded at all, have complained there was simply no way to implement our changes into their current working environment. We're going to have to make enough changes to make it possible. I'm confident you'll identify the most obvious stumbling blocks." "You want me to go there and fire the division president. You want me to be your hatchet man." Even as I said it, I felt a sense of satisfaction that my Dad would choose me for something like that. It meant I'd passed another test with him. Now, he wanted to find out if I had the stomach for going in and making the necessary wholesale changes. It was thrilling to me to have such an opportunity. I knew my Dad wouldn't send me if he didn't believe I was capable of doing what had to be done. "I want you to go out there and fix the problems. If that means you end up firing everyone, I don't care. I want that division to stop under performing. I can't believe they're all that incompetent, so someone must be deliberately poisoning our attempts at making progress. It's possible it's only one person, but I'm betting the rot is a lot more widespread than that. If it were simply Gus or Tony, someone would have mentioned them by name." Gus Trianos was the division president, and Tony Velpner was his right hand man. Tony ran all the production and plant operations, and he was twenty years younger than Gus. Gus was nearing retirement age, probably in his early sixties. I'd met Gus two or three times, when he flew into Bolling for meetings with Dad. I had liked him a lot, because he was very funny, and seemed full of energy. The idea of firing him held very little appeal for me. Tony, I'd met only once, and he struck me as being quietly efficient, and very well organized. I'd been impressed with the preparation he'd shown the one time I sat in on a production meeting, where all of the baking divisions were discussing switching over to an extended baking schedule for our expansion. It was Tony that had first suggested we go to staggered shifts, rather than going immediately to two separate shifts. I told my father I'd discuss things with Joyce that night, and that I'd be ready to leave on Sunday. I wanted to leave early, so that I'd be in Delaware, at the plant, early Monday morning. I still had serious reservations about my ability to manage on my own, but I knew I could always call my Dad, to tell him what I'd been able to observe at first hand. If nothing else, I'd be his eyes in Delaware, and then he and I could discuss what should be done. My Dad handed me about a foot high stack of reports and folders, telling me to read everything over, so I'd be familiar with the operation by the time I actually started working in Delaware. It was almost all the information available for plant operations over the past year, including monthly reports, that contrasted unfavorably when compared with any of the other baking operations. I could see, almost immediately, why my Dad was so upset. He had been busy, implementing our new sales and delivery expansions, for the combined operations. He was concentrating almost exclusively on our growth and the financing necessary to sustain it. Going through the monthly sales and delivery reports, I could see how frustrating it must have been to him to have this one division doing so poorly, compared to our other three baking divisions. They were showing the same low level of profitability as they had before our acquisition. If anything, it looked like their domestic sales were beginning to trend downward. They were losing market share in their own region, but this was being offset by the products they were shipping out to our new expansion areas. Their sales in the expansion areas now accounted for thirty per cent of their total sales, but their overall sales totals were flat. On the drive home, Dad and I discussed what I'd read so far. He confirmed my understanding of what I'd read. How could the division lose thirty per cent of it's market share in their own region? Why wasn't every eye in the company turned to this hemorrhaging? It didn't make any sense to me that something like this had been going on steadily, over the course of a whole year, without anyone in charge addressing the problem. "Gus and Tony will both have to be let go, Dad. Didn't they notice what was happening to their bread sales? It's the bread deliveries that make all the other product sales possible." "They both talk to me about it almost every day, Kenny. I never said they weren't noticing and reporting it. They just can't seem to pinpoint why it's happening. They say the only reason for it, other than some oven malfunctions they've experienced, malfunctions that aren't being repaired quickly enough, is the general market down turn in their region. They say they aren't losing any of their customers, its mostly that their bread business is way off in the area. They claim their competitors bread sales are off as well." "You don't just slowly leak out thirty per cent of your core business, not unless there is a giant economic depression in their area. There isn't, or else we'd have heard about it on the news. Their bread sales are off thirty-seven per cent. There's nothing more basic and stable than bread sales. What are they saying about that?" "Increased competition, and their customer buying habits are changing. They have good explanations for everything, Kenny, but none of them can be accurate. If I had the time, I'd have gone out there, and had a good look for myself. I can't afford to keep on delaying doing something about this though. Once you've lost it, it's very difficult to regain market share. We have to act now, and try to regain what we've lost." I found myself intrigued by what I was starting to see as a fascinating puzzle. It was a real mystery, a challenge. That night, after yet another great dinner, I had to delay talking to Joyce about my upcoming trip to Delaware, because she and the other three girls wanted to have another meeting with me. The twins were a month old now, and Joyce and I were back to doing more fooling around. We hadn't resumed fucking yet, but we were doing just about everything else. I tried to get Joyce to give me a hint about what the girls wanted to talk about, but all she would tell me was it involved a change in plans that they all wanted to discuss with me. At that point, any change in plans would present problems for me. I felt like I'd already given in to Joyce as much as I possibly could. Things had been relatively calm and placid for the past two weeks. It seemed to be working out better than I thought it might. We had settled into a routine that was comfortable for me. We all went back into the family room, and this time, everyone chose the same seating as we had the prior time that we had met for the other discussion. Shirley and Joyce, with Derek, and Little Bertie, all on the one couch, Brenda, sitting in the easy chair, with Bunny, and then Emily, sitting on the same sofa as me. It was Emily who started talking to me this time. "Shirley and I decided we want to go to KU too. Your mother told us she can arrange for us to be admitted there." "I thought everything was all arranged for you to attend Columbia. Didn't you tell me their journalism department was one of the top programs in the country? I'm not sure they even have a school of journalism up in Lawrence." "They have a journalism department there, but I was never locked into journalism school. That was more my father's idea than mine. One of the problems I'm having, is that he says he won't pay for me to go to KU. Your mother says she'll help me, if I'll work summers, for the girl's group homes." "She says she'll help me too, Kenny. I want to stay with you guys when you leave. Derek and I both like living with all of you." Shirley was definitely worried about something. I could see tension on the faces of all of them. There was something else going on, something in addition to what they were telling me. I needed to just stay quiet until they told me what it was. I didn't want to announce anything, not until after they told me everything. "What else is there, Joyce?" I looked over at her, waiting for her to tell me what else was going on. Instead, it was Brenda who spoke up. "None of us want Emily going off to school by herself, Kenny. She'd be lonely if she had to do that." I saw everyone looking at Emily. She had a nervous smile on her face, but she was looking only at Brenda. I was pretty sure that she had managed to convince Brenda to go to New York with her, at the end of the summer, if I refused to let her stay with us up in Lawrence. As for Shirley, I had no real objection to her coming with us. She hadn't tried to cause me one minute's worth of trouble since she'd moved in. She and Joyce got along well together, and she was good at taking turns watching the kids at work, with Brenda and Emily. "I think you have to make a decision, Brenda. If you decide to go to Lawrence, with us, after the summer, you can't still be carrying on with Emily. You can go to Lawrence with Emily, separately though, so you would need to find yourself your own place to live, if you choose to live with her. Shirley, as long as you stay within the rules I've set, you're welcome to come to Lawrence with us, but only if it's the same way things are right now." "Kenny, if Brenda decides to stay with Emily, we'll still need someone to look after the twins, and to cook our meals after classes start up. I've told you, I trust Brenda with the twins. I'm not leaving my babies with a stranger." Joyce could see that I wasn't reacting like she had hoped I would. I was willing to bet this wasn't how Mama was hoping I'd react either. I was guessing that Brenda had said something to Joyce about feeling like she might need to stay with Emily in the Fall. This meeting was probably Mama's idea, attempting some sort of damage control. She probably figured it was better to have Emily staying with us, than to take any chance of us losing Brenda permanently. Her offering help to Shirley with her college expenses was probably just a case of her natural generosity towards people that she knew. "What is it you're suggesting we do, Joyce? I'm not going to be changing my mind about what I said was necessary for Brenda to do, if she was joining us. She has to make a choice, and I won't make any changes or exceptions to that requirement. I won't agree to do anything with Brenda, not as long as she's doing things with Emily." "Why are you being that way, Kenny? What difference does it make whether I do things with Emily, or with Joyce? Before, when we talked about you not wanting to have Emily and Shirley join us, you said it was because they were going to leave in September. If they decide to go to school with us, why won't you want to do things with them too?" Brenda was upset. Brenda was always going to be upset when she didn't get what she wanted. I thought she was upset now, because she thought she was going to get out of the necessity of choosing either Emily, or Joyce and me. I didn't believe Emily would be able to be close to all of us. She seemed interested in having sex with me, with Brenda, and in having sex with Brenda and me together. That seemed to be the full extent of her interest in our group. Because of her lack of interest in the other two girls, I was reluctant to allow her back into my heart again. With Shirley, I never had gotten over the way she had treated me when she moved before. Being around her was fine, but I didn't want to get close to her again. Having sex with them would bring me too close to them. "Brenda, I told you, right from the beginning, that you would have to make your choice. Emily leaving to go back east, or us leaving to go to KU, that wasn't all the reason why I said no to her and Shirley joining us. Emily loves you, but she doesn't love Joyce, Shirley, or me. That's fine for you, but it would eventually mean trouble for the rest of us. I don't handle that kind of trouble very well, and I'm not going to invite more of it on myself. That particular kind of trouble finds me easily enough already, without my inviting more of it, willingly." "You're the only one who says I don't love you, Kenny. I've never said that. I've always said I loved you. Maybe I love Brenda more than you, but I don't know how you could measure it. Brenda loves you more than she loves me, but she loves me more than she loves Joyce. These things are never exactly equal. What about, Shirley? She's always loved you. Why won't you let her join your group?" Emily was zeroing in on one of the several inconsistencies with my previous argument. I knew those inconsistencies were out there, but I hadn't worried about it after everyone had seemed to accept my argument. "Joyce, you better start getting control over these girls. I won't just sit here and allow them to question the reasons for every decision I've made." I was willing to hide behind Joyce's skirt, if that was what needed to be done. "Kenny, you need to give them some reasons about why you decided you had to do things your way. I can't just tell them they aren't allowed to question any of your decisions." I had found out in a hurry that Joyce was willing to do her own advocating. I was standing there all alone, one man, arguing against four determined women. I knew my Dad had been right before when he warned me against all the complications I was letting myself in for, living with four women. "It's up to you to make what we've agreed to work, Joyce. I'm leaving here on Sunday, I'll be gone for a few weeks. When I come back home, this whole thing needs to be worked out, just like I told you I'd accept. We have a deal, and I expect you to live up to your end of it." I watched as first Joyce got up, with Bertie, then Brenda, with Bunny, and they left the family room. Soon after they left, Shirley got up with Derek, and they left as well. I sat there, looking at Emily, waiting for her to either say something, or leave also. "Kenny, why can't you just try to be reasonable for once? You always come up with these unreasonable decisions, that only ever satisfy you, and then you get mad, when nobody else likes them the way you do." "I like them, Emily, and that's enough for me. All my decisions make good sense to me. I have to live with them, so I try to make them decisions I'm going to be comfortable with. Joyce is my wife, and she's supposed to be loyal to me. I'm not disappointed about you and Brenda. I always knew it was going to be a hard decision for her to make. I let you come stay here, because I wanted her to be sure before she made a commitment to Joyce and me. You claim to love me, but you really don't. That's okay though, because I've got Joyce and the twins now. Shirley might love me, I don't know, but I feel different now because of the way we broke up. I can never be sure about her again. I feel okay about you leaving now too. If Brenda goes with you, I won't have any problem with that. My mother will, and maybe Joyce will too, but I won't. I already have enough, just with Joyce and the twins." "It's you who isn't enough, Kenny. You aren't dependable enough. The X's need each other, for support, for the next time you decide to run off to be by yourself again. I went out with another boy while you were gone. I wanted to find out if being with him would be that much different than being with you. I prayed that it would be as good as being with you always was. It wasn't. Shirley told me the same thing happened to her, when she slept with that other boy. Brenda told me that she has never even come close to having an orgasm, with any boy, except for when she was with you. You worry that you aren't being loved enough by us, but none of us ever worry about it. You don't ever seem to see the love we have for you. You see only insults and slights that you think we're giving to you, even when we didn't mean to give any. " "Emily, it really doesn't matter to me what you think I should want to do. I've already made my decision about you, and I'm not going to be changing my mind. I don't want you as part of our group. I also don't want Shirley to be a part of it. I'd prefer that Brenda wasn't a part of it either, but that isn't going to be acceptable to either Joyce or my mother. If this keeps on, the four of you ganging up on me, if it comes down to me needing to make a decision, I'm willing to have it end up being just me again." "I told Brenda you'd react this way. I told your mother that too. She made me promise that I wouldn't let Brenda leave, without first trying to get you to let me join you. She made Brenda promise she wouldn't leave without my trying it too." "It was unfair of Mama to make you promise her that. If Brenda wants to go with you, I want her to go with you too." "I don't want to go, Kenny. I want to stay with you and Brenda." "Emily, it isn't just me and Brenda. Joyce is my wife. You can't pick and choose who is in the group. Joyce and I do that. I don't want you to join us anymore. Having you here for the past two weeks, I've seen that you are only interested in Brenda. I think it's only because of Brenda that you're willing to join us. You should go when school starts up again. Go find whatever you need to make you happy." When she didn't say anything else, I got up and walked to the bedroom. Joyce and Brenda were sitting on the bed talking. The twins were both asleep in their bassinets. Joyce looked at me, and I could see that she'd been crying. When Brenda turned to see what Joyce was looking at, I saw she'd been crying too. I didn't take any pleasure in upsetting them, or in making them cry. I would have preferred that they respected my earlier announced decision. I didn't think I was asking for that much. "I've got a lot of reading to do, Joyce. If you want to talk to me, we'll only have tonight and tomorrow to get it done. I'm leaving early Sunday, for Delaware." "We can't talk about it if you've already made up your mind. When we ask you something, all you think about is that we're conspiring against you. How can our marriage work if I'm not allowed to have my own opinions?" "You told me your opinions when we made the agreemant we have now. You agreed to go along with what we both said would happen. Now, two weeks later, you're trying to change things by acting as though our agreement wasn't already in place. Most of the time, you bring Mama's name into it. We have a group already, you, me, Little Bertie, and Bunny. You want to have Brenda too, and I guess Mama wants that even more than you do. I went along with it, but I set some restrictions. All of you said you could live with my restrictions, but now, you're trying to change things around again. When I tell you no, that we already agreed, you tell me I'm the one that's being unreasonable. I don't see it that way at all. I've already told you what I expect. I've told all of you that I've gone as far with this as I'm willing to, hoping it would be enough. From this point forward, Joyce, I'm willing to do whatever I have to do just to make sure you don't push me beyond where I'm already at." "You make these rules so all of us have to revolve around what you allow, Kenny. Why does Brenda have to choose between you and Emily? Why can't they live with us in Lawrence the same way things are now?" "Why? Because there are two separate relationships, ours and theirs. Emily doesn't fit in with our group, she doesn't belong with us. I don't want her in the group. I don't want Shirley in our group either. I never got over the way she did things when she knew she was leaving. I don't trust her now. I don't trust Emily now. I'm getting close to the point where I'm not going to be willing to let Brenda into our group either. Brenda, you need to decide very soon. I wouldn't say this to you right now, but I don't want to leave this whole thing up in the air, with all of us in turmoil, for the entire summer. I want you to decide before I get back. If you choose Emily, that's fine with me. I won't be angry." "I already told you my choice. I feel bad for Emily, Kenny. I don't feel bad enough to ruin things with you and Joyce though. Your mother didn't make me promise anything. I told her I was going to stay with you and Joyce though. It was Emily's idea to ask if she and Shirley could stay with us after the summer is over." Joyce nodded that Brenda was speaking the truth. "Joyce, you still need to live up to the agreements you make. Tonight wasn't living up to them. Failing to live up to them puts everything else we have in danger. If you decide to keep on doing what Mama tells you to do, you and I aren't going to be happy together. We won't even be together. If you're going to be Mama's loyal minion, you can't continue being my wife. This keeps on upsetting me, and you keep on being caught right in the middle of it." "What choice do I have, Kenny? You would never have done anything with me if it wasn't for Mama. If I take your side and don't do what she tells me to, she'll turn you against me." "Joyce, that's nonsense. How could you even believe something so silly? You think I married you because Mama wanted it?" "You said it to me yourself, Kenny. You told people you were marrying me so that Mama wouldn't change her will. You were almost avoiding me before Mama helped me get you." I thought about what she said. It all seemed true, except that isn't how I really felt. Somewhere along the way, I'd done a very poor job of explaining how I really felt about Joyce. I was going to have to find some way of explaining things so she'd believe me. "What about you, Brenda? Is that what you believe, that I married Joyce to keep Mama from changing her will?" "You did say that, because I heard you say it. I think you love Joyce, but I also think part of the reason you married her was that it was something your mother wanted you to do." "Do you believe I might be able to love you more, someday, more than I love Joyce?" "I thought you did already. You never said it, but I still always thought you did. We all see how you look at me, Kenny. What do you call that look, if it isn't love?" "Well, you're wrong if you thought it was that. I had already decided to marry Joyce before I left here the last time. Not because Mama wanted it, but because I already knew that Joyce would be the best possible wife for me. The only mistake I made was in believing she knew that I'd decided to do it for myself, not because of anything Mama said or did. I always liked fucking you, Brenda, especially when Joyce was there with us too. Maybe that's the look you mistook for love. There's always been something about you that made me want to fuck you. Just looking at you makes my dick hard. Even when I thought I hated you, my dick got hard whenever I thought about you. The problem isn't whether I love you or not though. You really need to make up your mind that this is what you want, to stay close to us, and be willing to permanently give up doing things with Emily. If you can't give her up, and still be happy, then you should stay with her." "I will give her up if I have to, but I still don't understand why I have to. You told Joyce she could do things with any of the rest of us. Why does Joyce get to do that, when you've already married her, and I don't?" "Joyce, since I told you it was all right for you to do things with the other girls, how many have you done things with?" "None of them. I told you I only like it when you're there too." "When I told you that you could do things though, did you think I really meant it?" "I thought you did. Why would you say it if you didn't really mean it?" "I did mean it. I never had any doubt that you loved me more than you loved Brenda, Emily, or Shirley. Brenda, I do have some doubt about you. I don't think I'd mind if you ended up loving Joyce more than me, but not Emily. Joyce would never shut me out, or leave me for you. Emily might very well do both. Joyce is a close part of me. When you make love with her, it's the same as making love with me. If I don't feel the same way when I'm making love to you as I feel when I'm making love to Joyce, like you're a part of her too, then I wouldn't want to do it." But, you told us you wanted the four of us to be in your group." Brenda blurted that out, interrupting what I was trying to explain to her. "Before, when I had my group or harem idea, it was only me that I was thinking or concerned about. I wasn't too worried about the relationships you four would have with each other. Later, right before I went away, I realized that the three of us were a natural group. The other two wouldn't be as natural. Maybe you and I could be in a group with Emily, Brenda, but I'd always be worried that Emily would do something to screw it all up. Shirley and I could probably be in a group with Joyce too, but I don't trust Shirley anymore." "Shirley loves you, Kenny. She never stopped loving you. It isn't fair that you don't trust her. What could she do when she was sixteen years old? She had to leave with her parents." "I agree, that she had to leave. What she did after she found out, she didn't have to do. There was no reason why she needed to pick a fight with me. She had to know that I'd feel bad about myself, feel like I'd done something wrong, to drive her away from me. You don't do something like that to people you're supposed to love. She was young, but she should have been more concerned with how I'd feel when she pushed me away like she did." "Can't you forgive her, Kenny? This is what Emily says when we all get together to talk about our time with you. You hold these grudges against us." Joyce was saying the words, but Brenda was shaking her head in agreement of those words. I didn't think they were a fair accusation. I had already forgiven Shirley for things she did in the past, like not trusting me when Richard kicked me in the head at the country club. Maybe it wasn't forgiveness, but we did make up in spite of that. This wasn't a second chance she wanted, it was like a fourth chance, because we had earlier fights about Ellen too. "Why are you pushing this, Joyce? What is there that you hope to gain, that's worth risking what you might wind up losing?" I didn't understand what she hoped for with this. I realized that I was only able to see one side, my side, but it didn't look like what she had to gain was worth all the trouble it was causing us. "We all got a lot closer while you were gone, Kenny. We don't want you to ever feel like you have to leave like you did before. You said yourself that the worst things happen when you feel like you're all alone. With four of us, you'd never be all alone again. It isn't just the sex either." I looked at Joyce, waiting for her to continue. She was looking over at Brenda. I worried about all these looks. What did they mean? What were they hiding from me? Joyce looked at me. She was studying my reaction, trying to decide if it was better to tell me what she had to right away, or to wait until all four of the X's were there with us. She made her decision and got up off the bed. "Stay here, Kenny, I'll be back in a minute." Joyce left the room, leaving me alone with Brenda and the twins. In a couple of minutes, she was back with Emily and Shirley. Derek must have been asleep in his crib, because he wasn't with her. "Kenny, the four of us decided that we're all going to live together. It isn't Mama's decision, it's ours. We'll live by your rules though." "How can you say you'll live by my rules, when I told you I didn't want Emily or Shirley in our group?" "You don't have to do anything with Emily, Shirley, or Brenda. I need help with the twins, Shirley needs help with Derek, and Emily needs to be close to Brenda. This is the only way we all get what we want." "I don't get what I want. I don't have any agreements with Emily or Shirley, and the one I had with Brenda required her to give up her relationship with Emily. That leaves you and me, and we have a special agreement, our marriage. You aren't going to get what you want, while remaining married to me. It has to be a choice you need to make, between what you want, or what I want. I won't agree to what you're asking." "All we're asking is that things stay just like they are right now, Kenny. Is that so bad?" Joyce was more determined about this than I thought. These were very high stakes we were playing for. Joyce knew what she was risking, and so did I. I couldn't think clearly, not with the four of them in the room with me. "I need to think about this, Joyce. I didn't think you'd force me to make this kind of a choice. It feels like you're offering to stab me in the heart, to make sure I don't come down with cancer. You're asking me to decide if I prefer to let you have your way with this, or else divorce you." "No. I'm telling you that the four of us want to live together, and take care of you, however you'll let us. We know you're going to have to think about it, but we all love you, and we all want what's best for you." "I'm going over to Mama's tonight. I'll have Hans drive me to Bolling in the morning, so I can go to Delaware early. I'll be gone for at least two weeks, maybe longer. I'll think about what you told me. I'm pretty sure I already know that I'm not going to go along with this, but I need to be sure, before I make my final decision." I grabbed my large suitcase and started packing clothes for my trip. I started with four pair of dress slacks, six good shirts, a few ties, my travel kit and some underwear and socks. I threw five of my suits into a suit carrier, and took that as well. I could buy anything else I'd need in Dover. When I was all finished with my packing, I went over and looked at the twins. This was one of the hardest things for me. I had a feeling that Joyce had delayed making her ultimatum until after the twins were born, knowing that it would be harder for me to decide against her plan, once they were a part of my life. It had been my original plan to fly out commercial on Sunday morning. When I got to Mama's house, I asked Dad to call and have the company plane ready to fly me out at eight the next morning. I told him he'd need to arrange to rent me a car out there, and I'd get myself a motel room near the plant, so I would have a chance to get myself up to speed, and ready for a quick start on Monday morning. Dad asked me several times if everything was all right with me. I assured him that I was fine, thanked him for calling to make the plane and rental car arrangements for me, before going up to my old room, and bolting the door behind me. I woke up at five the next morning, and got Hans to drive me over to the airport in Bolling. I had slept fine, without doing any dreaming that I remembered. I had to wait for an hour at the airport before the plane was fueled up, and ready to fly. The trip to Dover was uneventful, as was getting my rental car. I found a motel less than a mile from the plant, and settled myself in for a day and a half of reading. I wanted to keep busy, to give myself some time to accept this new development that Joyce had sprung on me. I was finally beginning to realize that at least part of Joyce's reason for doing this was her trying to surround me with a stable support system. She must have remembered what I'd told her about being able to survive losing any one of the girls if I didn't have to lose the rest. Is that why she thought I would accept it when she told me? If she did think that, was she right? All I knew was that Joyce and I were still having issues. I had told her how I wanted us to live, and she was telling me what she wanted. I didn't see how we could reconcile such vast differences. ------- Chapter 6 I had spent three days at the Dover plant, mostly observing the employee attitudes and their morale. I didn't like any of what I was seeing. From top to bottom, employees were putting in their time, just going through the motions. Every department I looked at was being operated as if the results didn't really matter. There was no accountability for anyone. When I spoke to either Gus or Tony, they said all the right things, but they didn't seem to be following through on most of what they agreed to do. Four of our largest and newest bread ovens were down, supposedly waiting for spare parts that were on back order from the manufacturer. It was no wonder bread sales were way down. Our production capacity was severely constricted, but almost all of the lost production was in perishable breads, breads that were only being sold locally. On the third day, unable to get anyone to supply me with a firm date for the ovens to be back on line, I got on the phone and called the oven manufacturer's myself. When the manufacturing support people tried giving me the run around, I just kept demanding to speak to someone with the authority to get me what I needed. I was finally given to a public relations vice president. The man knew absolutely nothing about replacement parts availability, but he did understand the impact of what he was being threatened with, and knew our following through with the threat would result in an industry wide spate of negative publicity for his company. Soon, I was speaking with someone who did understand the need for getting parts to us quickly. I asked him what I had to do to convince him of the necessity for his company to get our ovens back up, producing once again. There were a few more tense minutes while we each went back and forth about the conflict of our needs with their needs. I finally just told him that two of our ovens had been down for almost sixty days, waiting on parts. The other two had been down almost thirty days. I told him what that meant to us in lost current sales, and in our down the road costs, in terms of loss of market share. He told me that sending us the needed replacement parts could only be accomplished if he took the parts out of finished floor models in the sales and display room. He told me there was a strict company policy against doing that. "Jack, unless we have the problem resolved to my complete satisfaction, sometime this morning, and that would mean me knowing for a fact that those parts are on their way to Dover, I'm having our lawyers file a suit for the monetary damages your unreasonable delay is causing to our business. We'll let the lawyers and the judges decide whether this delay is reasonable or not. You might win in court, but the bad publicity is sure to hurt some of your future sales results. My father and I will both make sure your reputation stinks with every big baker in the country. You can't treat customers this way, and you damn well know that. This isn't something that you can continue to ignore and just hope it goes away on its own. Once we get started, once the word goes out about your poor customer service, you'll be through in this market. You might as well just close your doors." "You won't get what you want by threatening me, Mr. Parsons. I've already told you, I'd look into the problem, and I'll follow up, in the promptest way possible." "I've already told you too, Jack, we've listened to that same bull shit for two months now. We have records showing our first request for replacement parts was made almost two months ago. Even worse, all of these ovens are still under your factory warranty. This business is already going to cost a few people their jobs here on my end. Right now, I'd be satisfied to just get the parts I need to get fired back up, and producing bread again. I'm saying that I'm willing to assign all the blame for this to my people, for not doing what they needed to do to light a fire under your asses, for not doing what it took to get those parts sent out to us. You keep screwing around with me, not shouldering what is your clear responsibility, and I won't rest until I know that you are personally out looking for a new job for yourself. That isn't an idle threat, Jack, that's my personal promise to you." "I can't authorize cannibalizing any of our floor models, no matter what threats you're making. I also don't appreciate you personalizing this problem. This is a routine business situation, nothing for you to be making any personal threats about." "All right, Jack, we'll play it just like you seem to want to. I'll be on the phone for the rest of the day, and I'll be telling every baker I know in this country, exactly what kind of service and support you give to a customer who's spent more than five million dollars with you, over the past eighteen months. I will stay on the phone, talking to these people, until every oven we have is back up and operating again. The bakers that I don't know, either my father knows them, or there's someone he knows real well, who will agree to call them for us. Your reputation, all over this country, will smell just like shit, before this weekend even gets started. When your boss calls me later, begging me to quit blackening your company's reputation, I'll ask him whether you still work for him or not. My Dad and I will keep calling people, until your boss tells me he fired you, and that our parts are on their way." "Why should I believe you? How do I know you have the ability to do what you claim?" "My grandfather was Ronald Chalmers. My mother and I have a combined net worth of almost a billion dollars, Jack. With that kind of money, we can get almost anything we want. I don't usually act like such an ass hole to get what I want, but, right now, I'm very upset with the cavalier way you've been treating my very serious problem. You've caused me to believe the only way to get my problem fixed, will be to give you an even bigger problem to deal with, in the event you decide not to do exactly what I want. When I get this upset, I make damn sure the people responsible for it will sincerely regret causing it to happen. Do I get what I need, or do you and I go to war with each other?" "I need to check to see if I can get authorization Mr. Parsons. Can I call you back in fifteen minutes?" I gave him the number, and told him to just ask for me if I didn't answer the phone personally. As soon as we got off the phone, I was on another line calling my father. I told him what I'd threatened, and, after filling him in on what the problems were, I told him I thought we needed to fire both Gus and Tony. "Gus can elect to retire, Kenny. He's earned that much. We'll need to give Tony a nice severance package. Have him call me to negotiate it, will you?" "I don't think so, Dad. You said I was in charge here. There's a lot going on here right now. This isn't everything, just the one thing that was most noticeably wrong. Don't talk severance pay with a man we might want to turn around and criminally prosecute later. This could be a case of deliberate corporate sabotage. The people I finally ended up talking to, over at the manufacturing plant, told me that no one from over here has even been calling them to complain about the delays in getting our ovens back up, and producing." "Kenny, your mother is worried about your mental state right now. Should I be concerned as well?" "Dad, you sent me out here to look into this problem, and to get this division turned around. Have I said anything that indicates I'm not tending to that?" "No, but if she's worried, I need to know for myself that you're okay to be representing us." "Dad, I'm really fine. In fact, I've been too busy to worry about any personal stuff. I'll take care of it when I get back. Tell Mama not to worry so much. Half my problems are caused by her meddling anyway." "She loves you, Kenny. She wants what's best for you." "I love her too, but I wish she'd find another hobby. Don't worry about me. I'm starting to really get a good handle on things here. I'm enjoying having the need to make decisions several times each day." After I got off the phone with my Dad, no more than ten or twelve minutes had passed since getting off the phone with Jack. The president and founder of the oven manufacturing company called me personally, to apologize, and to assure me that my needed parts were being air freighted to Dover. "I knew your grandfather, Ronald Chalmers, from Kansas, right?" "Yes. He died while I was still very young." "A powerful man, and a man who didn't suffer fools gladly." "People tell me I'm a lot like him. Then they tell me he was a lot nicer about these sort of things than I am." He laughed at that. We talked some more about the need for keeping in touch, and he gave me a direct phone line, so that I could call him personally, if we ever encountered problems with any of the products we bought from him. I felt pretty good about getting what we needed. I wanted to call my Dad back and let him know that one problem was getting solved, but I didn't want him to think I wasn't already expecting to get things all fixed up in Dover. I figured he already had a few people in place, in Dover, people that would be reporting my progress, or the lack of it, back to him. I didn't kid myself that he wasn't fully aware of what had been happening in Dover. I had set up a meeting with Gus. I'd wanted it earlier, but eleven thirty was the earliest he could squeeze me into his busy schedule. I showed up at eleven twenty five, and he had me sitting in his secretary's office, cooling my heels, until twenty before noon. When he buzzed his secretary, telling her he could see me now, I got up and calmly walked into his office. "Hi Gus, good of you to squeeze me in on such short notice. I just wanted you to know that I got off the phone with Lou Elderson, in Michigan, and our oven parts problems are finally taken care of. He's air freighting them out to us today. I have two crews standing by to install the new parts." "Really? That's great news. I've been expecting the parts any day now. This is about average for those guys. We made a big mistake buying from them. I told your dad that, but he wouldn't listen. He was in too big a hurry to increase our capacity. I knew something like this was going to happen." "I bet you did. I'd be very surprised if I found out that anything happened here, that you didn't know was happening." "What is that remark supposed to mean?" "It's supposed to mean that I'm pretty sure you and Tony sold us out to one of the competitors. I'm going to find someone over at the competitor's that likes making extra money just as much as you and Tony did. When I do find that person, and he tells me what happened, I'm going to the district attorney, and I'm going to have him dig into your personal finances, from the time we acquired this division, until the present time. I'm betting that they will find you received a large, unexplained, sum of money. People will always talk if you make it worth their while. In the meantime, I'm firing you for cause. Have your lawyers contact our lawyers if you want to appeal, Gus. I want you clearing your stuff out of this building before five o'clock. I'll be leaving now, to go see if I can find Tony. I hope the next time I see you, it will be in a criminal courtroom." The meeting with Tony was a lot shorter. Gus had already called to warn him. He blustered about suing me for slander, but he stopped talking when I told him I'd be spending up to a million dollars of my own money, to dig into every financial transaction he, or any member of his family, had made in the past eighteen months. Tony wouldn't have made a very good poker player. I could see his anger changing to fear. By five o'clock, both of them were gone, stripped of their corporate credit cards, their company leased vehicles, and anything else of value, belonging to the company. I spent the next day, meeting with every department head, separately, in Gus's office, which I had taken over for myself. The men I met with were all nervous, thinking that I might be calling them in to fire them, like I had Gus and Tony. I explained to each of them that I was holding them personally accountable for the results being shown in their departments. If they performed their jobs adequately, they had nothing to fear. If they didn't perform, they'd be gone as soon as I found their replacement. I didn't try to act friendly with them. I'd start acting friendly when I saw some improved results in their departments. I told our marketing manager to have all our local sales people offer our bread at twenty per cent off our normal prices, for the next month. We needed to do something to win back the confidence of our retailers. We wouldn't make a profit on our bread sales doing this, but I hoped to regain some high percentage of our lost market share. Once we had regained market share, I'd raise our prices back to the previous levels. I spent the next week visiting every part of the Delaware plant, talking to our employees. I encouraged them to tell me what they liked, and what they disliked, about the way we were operating things. At first, they were reluctant to be frank with me, but, when they saw that I wasn't making trouble for the people who had elected to speak out, I began getting a lot of honest opinions, and some frank evaluations, from the people out working on the baking floor. People who do the actual work at a bakery often know what needs changing far better than the executives do. They always know what's really going on. They'll tell you too, if you have the good sense to ask them. I got many good suggestions on how to improve operations, and the working conditions. I implemented as many good suggestions as I could, spending some of our money to improve the things the employees had told me were important to them. Some of the suggestions paid immediate returns, especially the ones concerning new ways to do things that were better, more efficient, or simply safer. Most of these were obvious, once someone took the time to look at what was being talked about. For every suggestion that resulted in any kind of significant improvement, I presented a cash reward to the individual employee that made the suggestion first. Joyce called me at work, after I had been in Delaware for two weeks. She wanted to know when I was coming back. I told her I'd been busy, trying to make progress with the division, and I needed to stay for awhile longer, to see some of my changes implemented. "Did you decide yet, Kenny?" "No. I've thought about it, but I still can't see any way I could give in to the four of you on this. You're asking me to accept being uncomfortable and unhappy, so that the four of you can stay together. How are the twins?" We talked about the babies, and I started really missing them. So much happens in the early part of a baby's life. I was missing out on all of it. When we finally finished our call, I think both of us were feeling sad. My Dad called me too, at least every other day, and we usually spoke for about half an hour. He liked the way our bread sales had spiked up sharply, but he hated the fact that we were giving it away at our cost, or even less, when you counted in some fixed depreciation costs. I told him about some of the changes I was making, and about progress being made in integrating our overall shipping and delivery systems with the rest of our companies. It was too soon for anything good to show up on the profit column, but I told him he'd be seeing greater profits down the line. I told him there was no one in the division capable of running it. We were going to need to go outside to bring in replacements for both Gus and Tony. Replacing Tony was going to be more difficult than finding someone to take over for Gus. I had two people working on filling in with Tony's duties, and even then, things weren't being run very well. Operations was the key department in any baking company, and it needed someone with a good understanding of all the support departments, someone who could make them all work together, to assure things got done on time. I started looking around in our other companies, for someone to bring in, on a temporary basis, to run operations, until we could hire a permanent replacement. I was talking with Virginia about my problem with finding a temporary operations V.P., when she gave me the name of someone she knew that had left another company, after being passed over for a vice presidency he thought he'd earned. I called him at the number Virginia had given me, and we spoke on the telephone for about fifteen minutes. I knew that I didn't know enough about bakery operations to be qualified to interview him properly. He seemed knowledgeable to me though, and I liked the way he answered the questions I did ask him. "Clark, I'm willing to give you a chance to come in here and show me what you're capable of getting accomplished. I'm no operations or production guy, but I know how to read a spreadsheet, and I know how to tell when production and profits are up. I'm trying to turn this division around, and it's going to take a lot of hard work and long hours to do it. I need someone to take over operations here. Virginia told me you were a good man. Do you want to give this a go?" "How soon would I start? What compensation are you offering?" "As soon as I can get you out here, and we'll discuss your compensation after I see what you can do for me. My last operations guy was making sixty three a year, but he had twenty years experience with the company, and was the number two man in the division. If I decided to keep you here, I wouldn't pay you less than fifty a year, with a company car, and adequate expense allowance." "What would my entry title be?" "If I decide I like the way you handle things, you'll be VP, operations. If not, they'll call you that guy Kenny hired that didn't work out." "Are you as loose as you sound?" "I usually am about business, but I don't like failing. Are you close to Omaha?" "I'm in Lincoln, Nebraska." "Try to catch a commercial flight out to Dover, Delaware. If you're here in Dover, before five o'clock tomorrow night, I'll pay you a thousand dollars, to reimburse you for your travel costs. If you're not here by then, you'll have to pay your own costs. I'm staying at a seedy motel, a mile from the bakery. The company will pay for your room there too, until you find something more permanent for yourself." "I've got a car I'd like to bring out there. It's about 1,200 miles by car. If I leave now, I can be at work by Thursday morning." I gave him the name and directions to my motel, telling him I'd have a room reserved for him for Wednesday night. I gave him my room number, and told him I'd have his room key. Now that I had a new operations guy, I wanted to find myself a young hotshot, to take over as the division president. Dad and I had already decided to bring someone in from outside the corporation. Young to me meant, under thirty, while it meant, under fifty, to my father. I didn't want some New York, MBA. We didn't need a lot of flash and little substance. We needed someone that got things done, quietly, someone who was willing to take direction from above, leading those under him, while letting them do their own jobs. We didn't need an innovator, we needed a hard worker, someone tenacious enough to see everything through to a successful completion. Virginia called me at four o'clock, to thank me for giving her friend, Clark, a chance. I told her I was looking for a new division president too. She started asking me questions about what qualifications I wanted in the new president, so I told her. "Kenny, I know the perfect candidate for you. She has no experience running a bakery company, but, she was tops in her class in graduate school, and she is the hardest worker I know. She is in a job now where her chance of further advancement is very limited. I spoke with her four or five months ago and she was so envious that I had gotten a chance to head up my division. I know she'd be perfect for this, Kenny." "What kind of money is she making where she is?" "She makes a lot more than I do, but money isn't what she's looking for. What's your budget for her slot in Delaware?" "Hard to say. I told Clark I'd start him at fifty at least, if it looks like he'll work out for us. Gus was making one thirty, but he'd been with the company for almost thirty years. Does she make more than one thirty?" I knew Virginia was getting eighty, but her division had started out as our smallest when Dad negotiated her compensation package with her. She was due a big raise. I'd have to mention it to my Dad. "She's got to be close to one fifty, Kenny, but that's Chicago. I think she'd come over for a hundred, if you could tell her she'd have the same kind of free rein your father allows me." "You're a different case, Virginia, you grew up with your Dad's company. Your free rein is only free until you mess something up for us. So far, we've been pleased that you haven't, but I'd hesitate to really call what you have free rein." "She'd only be reporting to your father, right? That's free rein as far as we're concerned. Kenny, if you hire this woman, it will be one of those decisions you'll always be happy you made." "How old is she, and what's her name?" "Late thirties, and it's Kathleen Ulliott, spelled with a "K" and two "EE's". She's from Omaha originally, and we've known each other since the fourth grade. Let me call her for you, Kenny. I'll tell her about the job, and let her know that she will need to take a cut, if she wants the bigger title. I'll talk to her tonight, and I'll call you at nine, your time, to let you know what she says." I called Joyce at the house, at nine my time. I had been in my office, going over some sales data I wanted to talk to Dad about. Brenda answered the phone, and she and I spoke for a minute, while Emily went to get Joyce from our bedroom. "Kenny?" "Hi. I'm still at the office, but I was thinking about the kids and you. How are you all doing?" "We all miss you, Kenny. Me, the twins, the other X's, we all miss you." "I think I'm going to be stuck here for at least another month. I've got a guy coming to take over operations, and Virginia has this woman she thinks would make a good division president. I can't just leave, and throw them to the wolves. I might not know the answers, but I know where to go to find them." "Did you think about what we asked you anymore?" "I haven't thought about it enough to change my mind. Are you still determined that it has to be your way?" "Don't put it like that, Kenny. It isn't just for me. It isn't even mostly for me. Doctor Jerome says everything's back like it should be. He says I'm ready to start having regular sex with you again." "Nice way to change the subject, Joyce. What are the twins doing now? Did I miss anything important?" "Bunny smiles when I change him. He likes it when I rub powder on him. Bertie has a lot of gas. She makes rude noises now, and she makes faces when she poops." "Everybody makes faces when they poop. Are they gaining weight? Did the doctor examine them again?" "They're fine. Everything is perfect with them. Yesterday they played together. Brenda put them down on the floor, and they looked at each other. I think Bunny was trying to reach out and touch Bertie. Mama brought over a photographer, and we spent over an hour taking pictures together." "I better hang up now and go get something to eat. I love you, Joyce. Bye." "We love you too, Kenny. Bye." We love you too? Did she mean her and the twins, or her and the X's? I really missed Joyce. I wished she hadn't said that about the doctor saying it was okay to have sex again. I'd been thinking more and more about her and Brenda doing things with me, and together, with each other. I felt like they'd all left me on the outside. I was lonely. I thought about possible ways for me to change my mind. The easiest way would be for me to just give in to them. The truth was, I really missed them. How would I be able to have any kind of control over them in the future though, if I gave into them on this? They'd run over me anytime they decided they wanted something more. Soon, they'd be wanting me to let them have their boyfriends over. It would just get out of hand. The easiest way was definitely not a viable option then. I called Joyce at her office the next morning, needing some information on revised shipping schedules. That was my pretext for calling her. I got all the information from her, and then I asked her if the babies were still too young to travel. "Travel to Delaware? They need to be at least six months old for that long of a trip. Why did you ask me that?" "I wanted to see them, and you. I was going to take the weekend off anyway. I thought it would be nice to see my wife and kids again." "You could fly home. We could send the plane for you. You'd be home late Friday, and you could fly back on Sunday." "I could do that if it was going to just be you, me, and the twins. We could meet over at Mama's house." "Kenny, I can't do that to the other X's. It wouldn't be fair if I did that." "Is Brenda there? Let me talk to her if she is." I had to laugh when Joyce hung up on me. She and I both knew that Brenda would have agreed to do it. At noon, Joyce called me back. "We took a vote. You can spend the nights with just me, but you have to eat and talk with all of us." "I took my own vote, Joyce. I'm going to stay right here in Dover. In fact, I'm spending the weekend looking for a house here. Tell Brenda she can come visit me anytime, as long as she leaves all the other X's at home." "It won't work, Kenny. It's going to be all of us or none of us." "I thought about it, Joyce, and I can't give in on this. If I did, you'd all keep asking me for more. Get yourself a divorce lawyer, but I want liberal visitation rights with the twins." Emily's strident, angry voice came on the line ten seconds later. "What did you say to her, Kenny?" "I told her we're getting divorced, not that it's any of your business, Emily. I'm staying here in Delaware, and I'm starting all over again. The whole pack of you can just kiss my ass." At two thirty, my mother called me. "Kenny, tell me you didn't mean what you told poor Joyce." "Can't do that, Mama. I meant every word of it. I've been telling Joyce for a long time that I wouldn't be pushed any more about the X's. She didn't believe me, or else she did, but it didn't matter to her. I put a large part of the blame for this on you, Mama." "You'll come home, and we'll all work this out together." "I'll stay here, and I don't have anything left to work out, thanks to your interference. I'm done trying to work things out, with Joyce, and with you." "Don't make me angry with you, Kenny. You are behaving like a spoiled child. You don't just end an important negotiation with some unilateral 'take it or leave it' position." "It wasn't a negotiation, Mama. It was our lives. I love Joyce, and I love the twins, but I'm not willing to let anyone dictate to me about how I'm going to live my life. I told her what I was willing to do, but it was never enough. Now, I'll find someone else. This time, it will be someone who understands reasonable limits." "You aren't being reasonable, Kenny." "Maybe not now, but I was being reasonable before. You better go find someone else to do whatever it is you need done with Brenda, Mama, because I'm done with all of those girls." "If I get Brenda to watch the twins, will you meet Joyce somewhere, and talk to her about this?" "No. I'm finished talking to anyone about any of this." At three thirty, my Dad called me. He sounded very upset with me. I listened to what he said for awhile. Mostly he was talking about cooler heads prevailing, and the need to keep an open mind when discussing emotional issues. "Dad, I appreciate you calling, but I've given up on being able to work this out with Joyce. Do you even know what it is we're fighting about?" "Not the specifics, but I gather you are being difficult about Brenda going to Lawrence with you in the fall." "I didn't mind Brenda going with us, but Joyce insisted that I had to let all four of the girls live with us, and that I needed to let Brenda keep sleeping with Emily. I don't mind Brenda sleeping with Emily, but I thought they should get their own place to do that. Joyce said I had to accept all four of them. It was supposed to be some kind of 'take it or leave it' package deal. I decided to leave it." "Kenny, is divorce the only answer?" "When my only choices are divorce or capitulation, I'll choose divorce every time." "There has to be a better way. Look for a compromise. Divorce is so hard on the children." "I'm done compromising with her. Her agreements are only good until the next time she thinks of something better that she wants. I need to get off the phone, Dad, I've got a lot of work to get done." "Very well. I won't keep you from your work. Think about some way to move a little from your last position, Kenny. Joyce is taking all of this rather poorly. She left work early today, they all did. I'm missing important information I need to complete my own work. This is no way for us to run our business." "Would you be willing to support me, if I decided to stay here, and run this division?" "Of course. I'd feel better about doing so, if you could find a way to resolve this situation with Joyce. Marital discord always proves to be a large distraction." "Dad, this is one of the first times I've had an emotional situation come up that hasn't left me distracted. I'm working my butt off here, and starting to make some real progress with turning this thing around. Tomorrow, I've got some help coming, and Virginia is trying to line me up with a potential successor for Gus." "If you have Gus's successor, how could you run the division?" "The same way you run the Lucas Company, or any of the other divisions. She'd be the president, but she answers to me, instead of you. That would leave me free to look into other problems, but from here, not Bolling. I'd be closer to the Virginia plant too. I could look in on them from time to time. You don't have the time to do it, why not let me?" "Your mother would banish me to the apartment in Bolling, Kenny. She'd make my life miserable, if I go along with you on this." "True, but it would be a good business decision on your part. She'd come around after awhile. She always does." "Very well, but you have to give me something I can bring to her." "Tell her I agreed to meet with Joyce, to discuss our differences, here in Dover, but only if she comes here by herself." "She'll have to accept that, Kenny. That's a sure sign that you're being reasonable. I'll tell her." Mama couldn't complain to my Dad, when Joyce turned my offer down. It was exactly what Mama had asked of me, when I'd turned her down earlier. I wondered how much Joyce would enjoy having Mama pressuring her to leave the twins, to fly across half the country, to come visit me in my dingy little motel room. If she came though, I was going to try to make her glad she did. If she tried to cross me up again, and sent one of the other X's, I was going to make them feel just as happy as I would have made Joyce. If Mama came instead, I wasn't even going to open my door to her. ------- Chapter 7 Clark Sanders showed up knocking on my motel room door at one thirty Thursday morning. He woke me from a sound sleep, to get his room key, and to let me know he'd made it to Dover okay. We spent a few minutes getting acquainted, and then he left, to get some much needed sleep. In the morning, I knocked on his door at seven thirty, waking him up. I gave him a map I'd prepared, with directions to the plant, and then told him I'd meet him there at noon, for an orientation tour. Clark was thirty eight years old, with sandy colored hair, thinning a little, with a pronounced widow's peak in front. He was just under six feet tall, and stockily built, rather than heavy. He had heavily calloused hands, but I didn't know what from, because he'd been an executive for his entire career. There was a deep scar right under his chin that appeared to have been left unstitched when he'd gotten it. I wondered about that as well. I put him in Tony's old office, then took him around to all the department heads, making the introductions. Clark spent a lot of time looking around carefully at each man's office. It was almost like he was deciding things about each manager by the look of the office. At two thirty we were back in Clark's new office. "You can have access to any report from any department. I've told accounting to give you copies of the sales and delivery daily's, and floor supervisor reports will be cc'd here also. I told Miss Clancy to cut you a check for one thousand dollars today, and you can cash it in accounting as well, until you get set up with a bank of your own." "Gerard and Gilley will have to be replaced, Kenny." That surprised me. We'd spent about five minutes with each department head. "Your call, Clark, but I'm interested in finding out why you decided that." "Gerard, because it was his job to keep those ovens operating. He should have been pushing hard, every day, to get those parts delivered to us. Gilley was already half in the bag, at one o'clock. That sets a terrible example for the other employees. If he can't control his drinking better than that, he's just too big of a liability to us." "Fine. Do you want me to handle those two for you? It might be better, since you're so new here. No necessity to get off on the wrong foot on your very first day." "I'll do it. If firing those two gets me off on anybody's wrong foot, that's too bad for them. How do I get access to the personnel records, for the rest of the people in those two departments?" "Karen Graffo runs that section. Her office is next door to accounting. She'll give you whatever you require. Any problems with her, have her call me." I went back to my office. At three o'clock Larry Gerard, walked through my doorway. He was an older, mid forties, very gruff, maintenance technician, who had slowly climbed up the ladder to be a department head, after almost thirty years. I had pulled his records, and knew he'd been working for the company since finishing high school. "That new piss ant you hired, just went and fired me." "He beat me to it then, Larry. What did you expect would happen, when you doing nothing, ended up costing us close to four million dollars in sales?" "Do you mean about those ovens with the blown elements? Tony told me he was personally handling all of that. I asked him every day what was happening about those parts. He always told me to forget about it. Said he had it under control." "What was your job, Larry? What was it we were paying you to do?" "I maintained the floor machinery, and I ran my maintenance crew. I've been here more than twenty seven years. This is my only job ever, Mr. Parsons." "You're fully vested in the pension plan, Larry. We're giving you thirty months of severance pay, which I think is more than fair. You didn't take care of our business, which is what you were being paid to do. Didn't it bother you at all that Tony and Gus didn't seem that concerned about four of our bread ovens being down for a month or more?" "They told me they were taking care of it. I worked for Tony, and he didn't like it when you didn't do what he said." "I told Clark to fire you, Larry, and we aren't done yet. I told all of you, back when I first took over, that I was going to make sure something like those ovens being off line for so long, couldn't possibly happen again. Letting you go, that will go a long way towards ensuring that it doesn't." "All the hard work I put in here, over all those years, it doesn't mean anything to you?" "No, it does. That's the only reason I'm giving you two and a half years of severance pay. You'll get another job, Larry. The next time something happens in your area of responsibility, maybe you'll do your job, and not let someone else use you to injure your employer." At four, Clark stuck his head in my doorway, to let me know that Bruce Gilley was gone too. He had gone over the employee records and was thinking about hiring Jerry Davis to replace Larry. I had no idea who Jerry Davis was. Clark took a minute to fill me in on his employment record. The only blemish on his record was his outspoken verbal criticism of Larry's handling of the oven parts fiasco. "Send him up to see me before you give him the job. I want to hear his take on what happened with those ovens. Those oven elements were almost new. It doesn't make sense that nine of them would go bad in less than two months." "You think they were made to go bad?" "I don't know. I thought I'd ask our Mr. Davis how it could have been done, if someone wanted to put an oven out of commission." Jerry Davis was a great big bruiser of a man, well over six feet tall, weighing at least two hundred and seventy five pounds. He was also articulate, in a very profane and blue collar fashion. He'd worked for the company for seven years. When he came into my office, he was shaking with anger. For a minute, as I stared back at him, I was sure that he was considering the best way for coming around my desk and attacking me. I knew there was nothing I could do to prevent the attack from succeeding. I felt the strong sense of menace and danger his obvious malevelent intentions were broadcasting. "Tell my why you're so pissed off right now." "Fucking Gus and fucking Tony. Fucking Larry too. I knew they were going to end up costing me my god damned job. That whole mess was one big fuck up from the get go. Go ahead and fire me then. Nothing I can fucking do about it." "Tell me what you think happened." "I don't think, I know. Fucking Tony did something to those wires, he bypassed the circuit breakers and then fired the elements at night. When those first two went out, I knew someone was doing it on purpose. Number seven was down that day for routine PM's." "PM's?" Preventive maintenance. I went through the oven, making sure everything was working like it should be. The next morning, we've got four burnt elements, and two of them were in the number seven oven. Since it had been down all the previous day, it didn't take any fucking genius to know that someone had done it on purpose, while the plant was shut down. When I left, that oven was up, and running on standby. I came in at eight the next morning, and it had two fried elements. You don't burn up an element on any fucking standby." "So what did you do?" "I went and got our two spares, and switched out the bad elements in the number five and the number three ovens. The next day, four and six had more burnt elements. I took two good elements from number seven, and got four and six back up and working. Seven was down anyhow, why not use the good elements still in there? Fucking Tony reamed my ass, and told me I was fucking up the warranty on the ovens by taking out parts and replacing them. Said I couldn't canniblize with an oven still under factory warranty. Which was just more of his bullshit, but, when the head honcho tells you to quit doing something, what the fuck can you do?" "Sounds to me like you did as much as any employer could reasonably expect. You haven't told me why you're so pissed at me yet?" "You're firing me, right?" "Hell no! Why would I want to fire the only guy we've got who seems to know that we need our ovens working in order to stay in business?" "You fired Larry, I just figured I was gonna be next." Some of the anger and bluster had gone out of his voice. Now he was just confused. "I wanted to meet you, to find out what you thought had happened to those ovens. Why do you think it was Tony that burnt out those elements? "I saw the wiring after. Tony used a left handed crimping grip. He used to like to keep his hand in with the maintenance guys. Liked to show he still knew what he was doing. The wires were all crimped at the two o'clock and eight o'clock positions. A right handed guy, he would crimp at the ten and four o'clock positions. Plus, it had to be done at night, when no one was there to watch. It's just the dirty kind of shit that Fucking Tony liked to pull too. He was always coming down and getting into our stuff, stealing little things. The fucking guy just liked to mess with people." "Thank you for what you did to keep our ovens up, Jerry. I appreciate it. Go see, Clark Sanders in Tony's old office. He wants to talk to you about who he should get to take over for Larry." "Take over what? His office? Larry never liked to leave that little office of his. He never did anything, so why does he need to be replaced? Save your money, if you want my fucking advice." "Go see Clark, Jerry. Give him your best advice. We want to make this plant a better place." After he left, I had to laugh. That was a very scary man when he was angry. I thought it would be interesting to see if Clark promoted him or not, after spending five minutes with Jerry. If he did promote Jerry, I was going to name his as my new VP, operations. Jerry had scared me, so I figured if Clark ended up making him a department manager it was because Jerry didn't intimidate him. I wanted someone who wasn't easily intimidated. I was getting ready to leave at seven thirty Thursday night. On my way out, I saw Clark's lights still on in his office. I found him working, coat off, sleeves rolled up and poring over floor plan pictures of our main baking floor. "Time to leave, Clark. Whatever it is, can wait until tomorrow. Let me buy you some dinner, and you can fill me in on your day." "What did you think of Jerry?" "He was interesting. He told me about what probably happened to those oven elements. Did you give him the promotion?" "I tried to, but he wouldn't accept it. Kept saying he wanted to stay honest. In his opinion, people who don't work with their hands, they can't be honest." "Speaking of hands, how did yours get so chewed up?" "I make cabinets. It's a hobby of mine. Sometimes, I get in too much of a hurry, and accidents happen." He held up his hands and showed me a lot of scar tissue. He then lifted his chin to show me that scar. He seemed proud of his injuries. "My dad, he was a real cabinetmaker. You should have seen the mitts he had. Compared to his, mine look prissy. He never let them stitch him up. Said he wanted to remember the mistakes he made. He really knew how to do beautiful work with wood. I like to fool around with it, but he was a master of the craft." "Tomorrow, you tell Jerry the new department head is going to be working with his crew, not sitting in some cushy office, with his feet up on a desk. Ask him who the worst guy on the crew is. When he tells you who it is, tell him if he doesn't take the job, that's who you're going to promote over him." "You think it was only the office he was objecting to?" "No. I think it was the way he sees the job he thinks you want him to be doing. Tell him we're done having maintenance department heads. From now on, we'll call them crew chiefs. The pay is the same, and they'll be treated like department heads, but it's a hands on working position. Jerry likes those ovens. You couldn't pay him enough money to sabotage one of them. I'd hate to be any guy he caught trying to do that too." "There are a lot of problems here, Kenny. I've been making a list, but I need you to tell me where you want me to begin. Most of the important ones will take some time, and some money, to get them fixed." "I want them all fixed, Clark. I'll leave the order for it up to you, as long as you devise a plan that makes sense to you, and keeps us up and running. You have authority to spend up to twenty five thousand on any repair or improvement, just on your own say so. If there is something that costs more than that, you should run it by me, or whoever we hire to be the new president, for approval." "How long am I going to be on probation here. I'm only asking, because I'm paying rent back in Lincoln. I need to know when I should give the landlord notice." "You get off probation as soon as you manage to convince Jerry that he should be your new crew chief. I'm going to start you at sixty three, which is what Tony got. For that much money, I really expect you to put your heart and soul into getting this plant to run as well as it possibly can. Our parent company is involved in a very large expansion right now. We need to get as much production as we can, in order to fuel that growth. We need to tighten up on our quality control too. The key to our expansion is our warehouse and shipping methods. The thing you need to understand right now, is that we can sell everything you can produce in the plant. Don't pay attention to the old production schedules. They are six months behind in any case." "That's it, just convince Jerry?" "I need somebody that's good, and Virginia told me you were. I'm giving you a top salary, because I want you happy and loyal. Get Jerry, just to prove you can show a manager a better way to get things done. Jerry won't ever be a polished diamond, but he'll lead by example. Make sure all the other department managers recognize that you approve of Jerry staying in the trenches and keeping right on top of everything that goes on in his department. We need more hands on managers. We've got too many damn executives. Tell them all that you have orders from me to fire any manager that doesn't have a real firm grip on controlling his department in six months time. They have gotten fat and sloppy over the past few years. We need to get some energy and enthusiasm going." "Anything else?" "Yes, move Jerry's office down on the baking floor. Put a desk and some filing cabinets there, with a phone. All out in the open, so he can always see what's going on. I want you to take the old office and put in a desk and a chair, but no phone. Put in a fresh notepad, with some pencils and pens. Put a sign up on the door that says "THINK TANK"." "Why?" "Because I need a place to send people that's quiet, and where they can write out ideas and suggestions for making things better. On the production floor, there are too many distractions. There are a lot of good people on the floor, and most of them know several ways to do things better than we do them now. Part of your job is to read what they write, and to help them to get their thoughts down on paper, so we can give it a fair evaluation. I don't want the room abused by someone nursing a hangover, but I also don't want to miss out on a better way for us to do things. Any idea you use, the person giving it to you needs to be rewarded. I'll handle the rewards while I'm here. When I leave, I'll set up a fund for the new president to use. A lot of times, its just the personal recognition that matters to them, but some money never hurts either." "Virginia told me you were different, Kenny. You are. She also said you're married and have some kids?" "Yes, I have twins, a boy and a girl. I really miss them too. I hope I recognize them when I see them again." "How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?" "Almost nineteen." "Nineteen. Your parents have you running a division at nineteen?" "Not really. My Dad knew we had a big problem here, but he's too busy with our expansion to get on top of this. When it got too bad for him to ignore, he was getting desperate, so he sent me. I talk to him on the phone a lot. I'm more like a different set of eyes for him." When I got back to the motel room, after dinner, I was restless. I drove back out to the plant, hoping to get myself something to read. It was nine o'clock, so I decided to phone Joyce at home, just to check on the kids. She didn't seem surprised to hear from me, and she started talking to me as though we weren't fighting, and getting ready for a divorce. We talked about the kids first, then we talked about what each of us was doing at work. It was comfortable for me. I wasn't as lonely when I could talk to Joyce. "Have you decided yet about the other thing, Kenny?" "What other thing?" "You know, about all of us living together in Lawrence." "I already told you, Joyce, I'm not going to change my mind about any of that." "Okay, I was just checking. I can't leave the twins this weekend, Kenny. Brenda, Shirley, or Emily all said they'd like to fly out and see you. I told Shirley that Mama and I would watch Derek for her." "Joyce, how many times do I have to tell you that it isn't going to work? Every time I talk to you, you're always bringing up all the X's. Don't you love me? Don't you want to be with me anymore?" "Of course I do. We all do, Kenny. I just can't leave the twins, because I'm still nursing them. I told you that you could come home, and it would just be the two of us in bed. I was hoping that you'd come. We were all hoping you would come home." "The thing is, I can't go home when we still have this unresolved problem, Joyce. I know what you want, but I'm not going to give it to you. You have to accept that. All the X's have to accept that. The only way we can be together is if you decide that it will only be you, me, and the twins." "I understand, Kenny. Emily wants to talk to you. Will you talk to her?" "What does she want to tell me?" "She has to tell you that, Kenny, not me." "Put her on then." "Hi, Kenny. We all miss you. When are you coming home?" "I don't know. It's starting to look like it will be a long time from now." "Can I fly out to see you this weekend? I promise not to fight and argue with you." "What would you do out here, Emily?" "Whatever you wanted to do. I really do love you, Kenny." "No. I don't want to be with you like that, Emily." "Okay. I'm sorry you feel like that, Kenny. Brenda needs to ask you something now." "No, don't put Brenda on. Put Joyce back on." "Hi, Kenny? Can I come out to be with you this weekend?" "Brenda, what is this? Are all of you determined to drive me crazy?" "I love you, Kenny. I miss you too. Joyce said we could fly out to keep you company. We flipped to see who got to ask you first. Pick me. I really miss our lovemaking." "Put Joyce on the phone, Brenda." "You didn't answer my question yet." "No, now put Joyce on." "Hello, Kenny. Does this mean you're going to let me fly out for a visit?" "No, Shirley. It means I'm tired of playing this game with you guys, and I need to talk with Joyce." "Kenny, I'm going crazy thinking about you. Every day, when I start thinking about you, it becomes a very good day. Do you remember my very good days?" I was starting to get flustered. I did remember when Shirley had her very good days. I also remembered Emily's good days, and Brenda's too. They weren't what I wanted to think about though. I wanted to think about Joyce, about her and I having some good days of our own. "Shirley, please put Joyce on the phone." "Hi, Kenny. Did you have a nice talk with all the X's?" "It was nice enough, Joyce. Which one do you think I should marry after our divorce is final?" "We talked about that. Brenda and Mama both say it should be Brenda. I think you should marry Emily, because you love her the most." "I love you the most. I wish I could convince you of that." "I meant the most after me." "No you didn't. You still think I don't really love you, Joyce, but I swear I do. I love you more than all of them put together." "We could all be happy, all you have to do is come back home." "How many more times do you think I'm going to call you to see if you've gotten some sense, Joyce? I've let a crazy woman have my babies. It makes me want to cry." "Kenny, we're all here, waiting for you. We all love you, and we all miss you. Please call Mama and tell her you're sorry for the way you spoke to her. She's very upset. You need to call and talk to Gerta too. You never have called her, not even once since you've been gone." "I'll call Gerta tomorrow. I need to think about how I feel about calling Mama. Joyce, I want you to quit thinking about what you and all those other X's want. You're my wife now, and the mother of my little babies. You need to start thinking about what's best for us." We talked some more, but Joyce was pretending to be all nice and reasonable, while still insisting that I needed to do what they all wanted me to do. She made me want to jump through the phone line and strangle her. I was getting ready to hang up on her, when she asked me again about which of the X's she should send for a visit the next day. She wasn't listening to me anyway. It was like I was talking to a light pole or something. "I don't care, Joyce. You pick one for me. It doesn't matter anyway, does it?" "I'll send Emily then. She won the coin flip. She should be first." "No, not Emily. Send Shirley. She hasn't had any action for awhile. If you do send her, I'm filing for divorce first thing Monday morning." "Can you meet her at the airport if I call you with her flight information?" "Sure, I'll meet her. Did you hear what I said about filing for divorce?" "I heard you. Emily's going to be disappointed, but you're certainly right about Shirley needing some loving. Thank you, Kenny. We'll all be thinking about you, and missing you back here." I went back to my motel room. I knew I needed to rent a much nicer hotel room, if I was going to be entertaining Shirley. I also had to ask around for a good divorce lawyer. I really loved Joyce, and I hated having to divorce her. I didn't know what else I could do though. It was obvious she had gone crazy, the way she was treating this business with the X's. Friday morning, I called Gerta. It was six o'clock back in Kansas, but I knew she'd be up and in the kitchen already. We talked for forty minutes. She kept asking me if I'd talk with Mama, but I told her I'd called especially to speak with her. I told her everything that was going on, including my decision to divorce Joyce, and my suspicion that she had gone crazy. "Kenny, wait until you get back here, before asking for a divorce. You want to be in the same state as the twins when you file, so you get better custody rights." "So, you agree with me that I should divorce her?" "I can't say about that. The way you're going to be living, with all those girls, what does it matter which one you're married to?" "I'm not going to be living with any of them, Gerta. They can live together if they want to, but I'm not living with them. They can live in Uncle Bunny's house if they want to, but they better stay away from me." "Joyce called last night to get Mr. Parsons to make reservations for Shirley to fly out of Bolling this morning. She will fly to Chicago, and then make a direct connection for Philadelphia. Joyce wants you to pick her up at the airport there." "I can pick her up, it's only an hour's drive there. She's really sending Shirley then?" "Kenny, you might as well get used to it. We all agree that this is the best thing for you." "Not you too, Gerta? I expect that from Hans, but not from you too." "Kenny, you know I love you, right? You think I wasn't paying attention to all you went through with those girls. Each time though, it only lasted until you had a new one, or until you went back to one of the old ones. Always, those girls loved you. Before, during and after, they loved you. You love them too. You have the power, the same as he had it. Don't fight it like poor Bunny did. Make it work for you, not against you." "You still believe in ghosts, Gerta. This is just more of that same kind of superstition. I don't have any power. Is this part of the nonsense that Mama's been feeding those girls?" "It isn't nonsense, and you do have it. Bea and I used to talk about it when she was here before. She was drawn to you, Kenny. That wasn't like Bea. She told me the power was much easier to feel with you. She said it was like you just oozed your power out at people. Later, with Bunny, his having the power surprised her, because he was so good at keeping it hidden. You never hide yours. Sometimes, your power drives your Mama and me crazy, but we were already used to it, because Mr. Chalmers and Bunny were always around us at home. This was before Bunny learned how to hide his power." "I love you Aunt Gerta, but sometimes it's hard to take you very seriously. Tell mama I said hello, and tell her I'll call her when I stop being upset with her." At ten thirty, Joyce called me. She gave me Shirley's flight information. I told her I'd pick her up at the Philly airport, and take her back when her flight was scheduled to depart. "Treat her nice, Kenny. This has been very hard on her." "I don't want to discuss this anymore, Joyce. I talked to Gerta this morning, and she told me I should file in Kansas rather than here. Just because you haven't gotten the notice, don't think I've forgotten about filing for divorce. I wish it was you that was on that plane flying to me today." "It is me, Kenny. We decided, we're all your wife. You can divorce us, but it won't make any difference. You have to love us, and take care of us anyway. Please hurry up and get finished in Delaware, Kenny. Every time I look at the twins, I think about you." After I got off the phone with Joyce, Kathleen Ulliott called me from Chicago. I'd spoken to Virginia again, and she told me that Kathleen was interested, and that money wasn't a problem with her. Autonomy was going to be a critical issue with her though. I already understood that. The best part of rising up in any company, was that the higher you rose, the more people you had under you, to help you get things done. There were also fewer people above you, to stop you from getting things done the right way, or, at least, your interpretation of what the right way was. I had seen this at work wherever I observed any part of our companies. Freedom and power were strong incentives to offer people. They all didn't admit to it, but most of the people who were capable of managing large businesses, disliked others having the ability to tell them what to do. Good managers were always looking to grow and expand too. As long as it was profitable growth and intelligent expansion, my family was all for it. "Kathleen, Virginia has been burning up the phone lines, singing your praises to me. She told me I'd regret it if I didn't try my darnedest to get you to come out here to Dover, to run this division for us." "I have some questions, and frankly, some reservations. I've had a little time to look up your company. For such a large company, very little is really known about it's inner workings." "We're not a public company. We prefer that outsiders not have too much access to our plans and what we're already doing. It makes it easier when we change directions to exploit a new opportunity. All the stock is in the family. We have no immediate plans to change that." "Part of my current compensation package includes some attractive stock options." "That won't happen with us. All our stock is in three people's hands, and we have no plans to change that. We pay salaries, not equity." "I see. What performance incentives do you offer?" "You do your job well, you get praise, bonuses, and the right to keep drawing a paycheck. You don't do it well, and you'll be out looking for another job." "What do you think of having a woman as head of a large division?" "I like it, but I'm not quite nineteen years old yet, so what do I know? We hired Virginia because she already knew that business better than anyone else we could find. We keep her, and are about to give her a substantial raise, because she gets the job done very well. She's easy to get along with, as long as we stay out of her day to day operating of the Lucas Company. We stay out of it, as long as she's getting the job done for us. We'd have the same arrangement with you. You'd be reporting to me, instead of to my father, like Virginia does." "Reporting to someone young enough to be my son?" "No, reporting to someone young enough to be your son, who also owns forty per cent of the corporation you'd be working for. Who also has enough remaining and uncommitted money to be able to afford to buy another forty per cent, if it was available for purchase." "So you're rich, and you own a lot of stock. Why does that make you qualified to judge my work?" "Because I'm rich, and I own a lot of stock. Because the money you make or lose for the corporation is partly mine." "Ginny told me I'd have to take a big pay cut to get this title. I want to be the top person." "What do you make now in salary?" "One ten, but I'm getting fifty more in options and benefits, plus a month of annual leave." "Virginia make eighty, and her division is bigger and makes more money than this one will ever make." "Ginny's working too cheap." "I agree. That's why we're raising her up to one hundred, so she'll be making as much as you, if you decide to come with us." "I can't afford to go to work for a hundred, not without having options, or some other performance incentives." "I'm sorry then, Kathleen. Thank you for calling." We said our goodbyes, and hung up. I didn't feel bad. I really didn't want someone that thought doing their job well entitled them to a share in ownership. It might be different with a public corporation, where those options diluted the ownership of faceless millions of small shareholders. What she wanted was to dilute my holdings, and I wasn't interested. Thirty minutes later, Virginia called me. "Why didn't you hire her?" "She didn't want to work for what you're making." "You offered her eighty?" "No, I offered what you make after the raise we're giving you, one hundred." "I'm getting a raise?" "Of course. You've done a great job for us, Virginia. It's actually long overdue, but, Dad has been up to his ass in alligators, with the new financing for the expansion. Any delay is simply an oversight which we're now correcting." "She turned down a hundred?" "She turned down the hundred, plus the idea that she'd be reporting to me instead of my father." "She was so excited when I talked to her. She must have called me ten times, asking me questions about the company and our growth prospects." "That was because she loves stock options. When I told her we don't give away equity for performance, I think she had a tough time accepting it." "She would have made a great division president, Kenny." "She probably wouldn't have been nearly as good as you are, Virginia. The best thing about you is how much you wanted to be the president of the Lucas Company. She doesn't have that going for her." "Thank you, Kenny. I've never had a nicer compliment. I'm going to call that girl back and tell her what a mistake she's making. She doesn't know how much you could teach her. She's too used to the traditional corporate mentality. I've learned more from you and your father, than from any professor I ever had." "You should have gone to a better school then." We laughed and talked some more. When I looked at my watch, I saw I needed to get on the road, if I wanted to be waiting when Shirley arrived. Driving into Philadelphia, I sort of let my mind get distracted. I didn't really want to sleep with Shirley, but I did want to too. In a way, for me, it would mark the end of my marital commitment to Joyce. It wasn't me I was setting free, it was her. She didn't want a marriage to me. She wanted a kind of partnership, with a lot of interchangeable pieces. By sleeping with Shirley, or with any of the other X's, I was setting them all free. I relinquished with my act, any hold I might have had on them. I found Shirley waiting outside the terminal, near the curb. She carried a small valise that I recognized as a piece of Mama's luggage. She didn't notice me at first, so I had to roll the window down on my car and yell her name out. She bent her body down and looked through the window at me, her face suddenly breaking out in a smile of happy recognition. I popped the lid on the trunk, so she could throw her bag in there, and then waited for her to climb into the front with me. Hi, Kenny. We got in fifteen minutes early, that's why I was out here already. How long a drive is it to Dover?" "It's an hour, but we're not going there. There are better accommodations here in Philly. I've booked us a room at a nice hotel. Are you hungry?" I could eat if you're hungry, but I had something on the plane already. Maybe we should go check into the hotel first?" I drove to the hotel, and let them park the car for me. I had packed a bag with the few things I'd need for the weekend. There was a little problem at check in, but when my company card accepted the room charge, all was well again. The room was nice. It was an old hotel, but well maintained, and the room was nicely appointed. The big bed had a beautiful, polished, wooden frame. It was one of those beds where the mattress sat up very high. The mattress was comfortable too, especially if you compared it to what I'd been sleeping on for the past few weeks. I looked up from where I was sitting, on the bed, and saw Shirley staring at me. I'd seen that look from her before. It was a hungry, wanting look. "Is today a good day, Shirley?" The nodded her head emphatically, up and down. She was blushing, and didn't seem to know what to do with her hands or arms. She was nervous, and I wondered what she could possibly be nervous about. "Do you want to talk some?" "What about?" She looked like she hadn't expected that we had to talk. I got the feeling that it wasn't talk she'd come here for. "Let's talk about the twins, and Derek. How do you like being a mother?" "I like parts of it, but it's such a big responsibility. I'm so thankful that everyone has been helping me with him. I get afraid that I'll do something wrong, make some kind of mistake that will let him get hurt or something." "I think we need to talk about what happened before, before you went to South Carolina to live." "No, Kenny. I don't want to talk about that. I know you're mad at me because of that, but there isn't any way I can take it back or do it differently now. I stopped being mad about so many things that you did. Can't you do the same for me?" "I'm trying to explain to you why it's different now, Shirley. We're both different. It won't be the same for either of us now. You seem to think we can take off our clothes and fuck, and then all the rest of it won't have mattered to us. I can't do that. I don't want to do that." "You told Joyce I could come here. You said it was all right." "It is all right, but it won't be the same. I don't want you getting your hopes up, because then you'll be disappointed." Shirley came over and sat on me. I was still wanting to talk to her, but she had decided we were done with talking. She didn't believe me that it would be different, and if it was different, she wanted to find out for herself just how it was going to be different. We started out kissing and just kind of rubbing each other. Shirley was ready for anything by the time she threw herself on my lap. In a way, I started making little adjustments to the familiar shape I held in my arms, and had draped across my lap. I knew I had to stop thinking about what we were doing, and just try to lose myself in the doing of it. Like I said, she was ready. It didn't matter how or where I touched her. She loved the feeling of just being touched. She was starving for the kind of touching we were doing, for the kisses that kept getting more and more desperate and demanding. I had stopped thinking about who she was, or what she was to me. She was one of the X's, and I was going to take her, and use her for my pleasure. It was partly in anger, and partly me punishing all of us for what I was doing to them, and what they had done to me. It started out as one last final act of defiance against Joyce, a repudiation of our marriage vows. If she didn't care, I wouldn't care either. The middle part was more about two horny people making love, taking comfort with each other. It was the end though, that provided me with the final insight. I don't mean the end when Shirley was yelling and screaming and carrying on so loudly, or when I managed to drain my balls of every last drop of cum they had. Not that kind of end. The end I mean is when we were finally uncoupled, and lying on our backs, our faces turned up to stare at the ceiling, each lost in our own private thoughts again. In my end, nothing happened. The earth didn't open up and swallow us whole, and I wasn't flooded with any overwhelming sense of contrition or remorse by what we'd just done. I felt peaceful and composed, sated and satisfied, warm and relaxed. I felt like any young man who'd just had a very satisfying half hour of intensely physical sex. Shirley felt like a friend to me. A close and comfortable friend. It had given me intense pleasure and satisfaction, to bring her to the highest edge of sexual arousal I'd ever seen from her. I thought I'd accomplished that before, but this had been far more intense, but only on a physical level. I really liked Shirley again, but it wasn't like the love I had for her before, and it didn't affect, in any way, or take away, in the slightest, from the love I felt for Joyce. I suddenly realized that this had been what I'd feared so much, that being with the other X's would somehow diminish what Joyce and I shared. It didn't though. I'm not saying I didn't still have doubts about what might happen if I kept on doing things, with Shirley, and with the other X's, but, they were now doubts, not full blown fears. I could manage my doubts. It was the fears I always had trouble with. I knew I'd found out something important about my relationship with Joyce. I also knew that Joyce had somehow made her own decision, some time before, that she was going to undertake the task of managing my life for me. I wasn't going to be an easy person to manage, I knew that, because I'd failed so many times before when I'd attempted it. I was roused from my own reverie by the way the bed started shaking, and from the crying sounds that Shirley started making next to me. "What's the matter, Shirley?" "It wasn't the same. You were right, Kenny. I didn't feel that special way I always used to feel with you. I was so sure you were just saying that to keep me from getting you to make love to me." "The peaceful, belonging together feeling?" I was holding her in my arms, having pulled her close to me. She didn't resist, snuggling even closer so that we touched together from head to toe. I waited for her tears to stop, and for her body to quiet down again. "The fucking was still great though, don't you think?" "God yes! That was better than before, I think, but it wasn't as good as it used to be, after we got done. It's more like it was that time, at Christmas, after we had that big fight." "It is like that, Shirley, but still, you have to admit the fucking was better this time. If the fucking is this good, I won't miss the other as much as I did before." Shirley giggled, and moved her ass around, wiping it against my dick. "I'm not on any birth control, Kenny. Suppose I get pregnant again?" "I don't know. If you want to be pregnant, and have the baby, I guess it would be all right. You need to check that out with Joyce. I'm sure she has some rule already prepared for that. It shouldn't hurt your plans for school at least. I don't think the university discriminates against pregnant women." "Would you get mad if I decided I wanted to have your baby?" "No. I meant you should be the one to make the choice about it. If you did end up getting pregnant. I don't think any of the rest of it should matter. I think you definitely need to talk to Joyce though, just to find out if she's already planned for something like that to happen." "Are you going to come home now?" "I've got a lot of work I still need to do here. The lady I wanted to hire to run this division decided to stay where she was. I can't leave until things are running better, and they won't run better without someone here in charge to see to it." "Joyce wanted to come here herself, Kenny. She needed to stay home with the twins though. You don't know how hard this is on her now. Now that Brenda stopped doing things with Emily again, all of us are on edge." "Why did she stop?" "Why do you think? Joyce told her she didn't think you'd do anything with her if she was still doing stuff with Emily. She told Emily the same thing, but I think Emily was willing to risk it. She doesn't think you'll ever want to do anything with her again. She's mad at me now, because this was supposed to be her weekend." The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and fucking. We did go out to eat once, although we mostly relied on room service. Shirley asked me if it was okay if she used the hotel phone to call home to find out how Derek was. I told her sure, and she started calling back to Kansas, three or four times a day. She talked with all the X's, her mother, and once, she tried talking to Derek, who was teething and being kind of cranky and restless. Each time she called, she would ask me if I wanted to talk to whoever she was talking to. Just for the hell of it, I spent five minutes on the phone with her mother. It was awkward, but it was kind of funny too. Sunday, at about eleven in the morning, I dropped Shirley off at the airport. We kissed for a minute or two, before she got out of the car. I didn't say anything to her about it, but I was starting to get a little of that calm, peaceful feeling back with her. It wasn't from the sex either, it was just from being comfortable around her again. ------- Chapter 8 I got into the office at eight on Monday morning, and my phone rang about a minute later. I felt pretty good, well rested, and in a positive frame of mind. I had to admit that having Shirley come out for the weekend had been a real benefit to me. "Kenny, this is Virginia. Did you fill that vacancy yet?" Hi, Virginia. You're up awfully early today. No. I took the weekend off, to relax, and recharge my batteries. Do you have another candidate you want me to look at?" "Not another one. Katie changed her mind. I told her what you said about her not being as good as me, because I really wanted to be the president of this company, and all she cared about was getting her stock options." "I never said it like that, Virginia." "No, but that's what you meant. When I called her, she was already regretting that she hadn't accepted the position with you. When I told her what you said though, it struck a nerve with her. This was her dream job, Kenny. She really does want to run her own company, and in the excitement of negotiating with you, she somehow forgot that. She asked me to call you and do what I could to get her another interview. This time, she wants to come out there. She wants to have a face to face meeting with you. Kenny, she really is good enough that you should give her another chance. Once you get to know her in person, you'll have a chance to find out what she's really like. You'll see how perfect she is for this." "I took your advice about Clark, Virginia. I started him at sixty three, and made him VP of operations. I like the way he does things. I think he's going to really work out well for us." "I know about most of it. He called me. He told me that story about Jerry too. He got a real kick out of how you decided, if he talked Jerry into becoming a department head, that was going to be enough of a probation. I love Clark to death, Kenny, and he's good, but Katie would be the real find for us. She can do it all. She's a problem solver just like you are. You remind me a little bit of her, the way you think differently about solving problems." "When can she come here? I'm pretty flexible, I can fit her in any time this week." "She can be there Wednesday morning, she's driving out with all her belongings. I already asked her why, she just said she wanted you to know she wasn't afraid to make a real commitment. I talked to your father, and Katie's name came up. I faxed him her resume, and I told him how special she was. I also thanked him for the raise. You should have warned me that you hadn't told him yet. He pretended that he'd just forgotten that you and he had talked about it." "I told you how busy he's been. If he'd been thinking about it, he'd have told you about the raise himself. He likes the way you always say yes to him, whenever he needs more product for those new vending machines. Did he talk to you yet about us setting up another plant in Omaha, another plant for you to run?" "What plant? Where in Omaha? No, he never said anything. I don't see how I could do that, Kenny. I'm already spending too much time just trying to keep this one running as well as it can." "You need to learn to delegate more, Virginia. You should also know we're going to pick one of our division presidents to run all of the baking divisions. There are too many other new projects clamoring for his attention. He already understands he needs to step away from the bakeries and allow someone else to coordinate the running of all the baking plants. We've got some big plans for you, Virginia, but you really need to learn how to delegate. Nobody can run everything all by themselves. If you keep on trying to do that, we'll be screwed when you collapse some day, and they have to cart you off to the bone yard. You need to make some time for other things too. Don't end up like my Dad has, reading reports about the latest improvement in cart rollers every night." "Do you know how few women ever get a chance to run a big company, Kenny? We can't afford to settle for doing as little as you guys can." "Virginia, that isn't true with us. It never was true. Learn to delegate, and learn to bring good people up with you. The one we hire to head up the baking companies will already have her successor trained, and ready to take over." "It sounds like you're saying that job is mine." "No, I think it's a three horse race now though. You, Joyce, and your good friend Kathleen." "I'm competing against Joyce too?" "Absolutely. I am too though, so don't feel bad. I already know she's better at business than I am. That's another reason why I married her, to keep her tied to the company. Now, I'll probably end up working for her." "I'll tell Kathleen that you expect her at nine Wednesday morning. She said she'd call me later today. Don't let her fool you with that bright polished professional career girl veneer of hers. Underneath all of that hardness, there's an insecure little farm girl, from Omaha, with a ton of ability, and a burning drive to be a success." At ten o'clock Joyce called me. We talked about just about everything, except what she had really called me to find out about. After a while, it got to be a game with me. I could tell, from the clipped way she was talking to me, that she was becoming very frustrated with me. "Shirley told us the two of you hardly left the hotel room. She'd never been to Philadelphia. You could have taken her around and showed her some of the tourist sites." "I asked her, but she just wanted to stay in the room, and fuck all day and night. If she wanted to see anything besides the head of my dick, she should have told me." "When are you coming home?" There was more than a hint of icy frostiness in her question. Good, at least she was a little bit jealous. "I don't know. Who are you planning on sending out for me this weekend?" "Brenda and Emily both want to go. I wish you'd take both of them. You can't believe how tense everything got here after Brenda told Emily no more fooling around." "I heard it was you who put her up to it." "No I didn't. She asked me if I thought you'd make love to her, if she told you that she and Emily had quit. I told her it would probably make it more likely to happen. I didn't ask her to quit it." "Is Brenda there with you?" "She's in back, with the twins. I can get her for you if you want to speak with her." I could read Joyce better from a distance. She was having more trouble dealing with the actual reality of me fooling around with the X's, than she had when it was only the hypothetical possibility of it happening. "Yeah, go ahead and get her for me." I waited less than a minute for Brenda to come on the line. "Kenny, I'm here." "Brenda, why did you quit messing around with Emily?" "Because you said I should make up my mind, and I have. I want to be with you, Kenny." "Joyce tells me you and Emily are fussing with each other all the time now." "Emily's the one that's fussing. She's being mean to me now, and she's being mean to all the other X's too." "Is she there with you guys?" "She and Shirley went to get some things I need for lunch. I'm making a special veal dish that your father likes, and I needed some stuff." "When she gets back, I want Joyce to call me again. I want you to be nice to Emily, Brenda. You can do things with her until I get back, if you want to." "I don't want to. I'm telling you, she's been so mean to me. This morning she told Joyce I was holding Bunny too loose, and she told her I almost dropped him. I never did that." "Have you been mean to her too?" Brenda laughed, guiltily. "Maybe." "You both better cut it out. Joyce thinks I should invite one of you out for this weekend, because she needs a rest from you two sniping at each other. If I hear any more complaints, I'm giving Shirley your turn instead." Joyce called me back an hour later. "Put Emily on the phone for a minute, but don't go anywhere." "Hello." "Emily, why are you feuding with Brenda?" "You know why." "I heard she decided to quit playing with you. Is that why?" "Look, Kenny, I'm not really in the mood to be laughed at by you. You got what you wanted, let's leave it at that." "I'm not laughing, Emily. I'm trying to find out how bad it is back there. Joyce is upset by what's going on. She doesn't like to see you guys fighting with each other. I told Brenda she can play with you while I'm not home, but she says you've been so mean to her that she doesn't want to." "You told her it was all right if we did things?" "All right with me. I'm a thousand miles away anyway." "Are you going to let one of us come out to visit you this weekend?" "I'm not sure yet. I need to talk to Joyce again. I want you being nice to Brenda, in case I do decide to ask someone to come out here. If I hear any more complaints about you two, I'm going to invite Shirley again." "Kenny." "Hi Joyce. I tried to calm both those girls down for you." "I hope you did. Derek and the twins feel the tension that those girls are causing. The only one of us who seems immune to it is Shirley. We all know why she's so calm. Why don't you come home and make me calm too?" "I'm thinking about flying home this weekend, to Mama's house. I need to talk to them about this idea I've got for the business. I'm going to get Dad to send the plane for me, but I'd like to see the twins while I'm there. Do you think you could have one of the girls bring them over, so I could see them?" "I could bring them over, Kenny." "You better not do that, Joyce. We might end up fucking, and then the other girls would get upset with you." "Why should they get upset?" "I don't know, but when I suggested the same thing to you awhile back, you said it wouldn't be fair to the other X's. This is mostly a quick business trip, and I'm not even sure I'd have time for seeing the twins, and doing some fucking too. Maybe we should wait for when I have enough time to do a good job of it." "Okay, if that's what you think would be best. Which girl did you want me to send with the twins?" "How about Shirley? That would be a good choice, in case I do find some extra time. I'll call you when I know for sure if I'm coming or not." Wednesday, I finally met Kathleen Ulliott in person. She didn't look anything like I'd imagined by how she sounded on the telephone. She was a heavy woman, maybe fifty pounds overweight, and not very tall. She had dark hair, cut short, and her business suit was clearly tailored for her, and very expensive. All of her personal grooming was immaculate. I was glad I'd chosen one of my nicest suits to come to work in. Still, I felt a little scruffy, and I was conscious that I needed to get my hair cut. I gave her an hour's tour of the plant, explaining what I could, and fielding all her questions. She seemed more concerned with the financial nuts and bolts of the operations side. Interested in what our profit margins were, rather than in how we managed to keep our costs low enough to compete, while still maintaining healthy profit margins. It didn't seem to me like she was asking the right kinds of questions. Her primary concerns were with our output, and how we were financing our ongoing planned expansion. In one sense this was not a problem, since all purchasing of ingredients for our ovens was handled in Bolling. Still, it worried me that she didn't realize we were insulated from most price fluctuations by the way we managed to acquire our grains and flours. She didn't ask how much of our own growing we did, or about what our grain storage capacity was. She did understand our distribution advantage right away, and seemed real interested in my father's hub concept. I was about to give up on her, when she started rattling off facts and figures about our farming operations, my grain trading, and our use of independent grain brokers. She knew more about that side of our business than I did. I realized she'd deliberately set me up with her earlier questions. She had done her homework, or else Virginia had hand fed her some confidential information about us. "Virginia needs to be more circumspect with internal corporate data." "Circumspect my ass. I put all of this together by myself. I'm a trained analyst, and I find out whatever I need to know. Your companies are more difficult than most to investigate, but you can find out almost anything if you know where to look for it. I know where to look." "What do you see as the main focus of your job, if you were to take over here?" "Feeding the machine with whatever it needs to maximize profits." "Which machine?" "The production center. All those lovely ovens that keep cranking out salable product. How long before you convert this plant over to producing vending products?" My dad had been thinking about doing that, but he'd finally decided on building a second vending product plant in Omaha. Somehow, Kathleen had figured out we were approaching maximum production capacity, with no end in sight to our projected increased product need. It had made a lot of sense to diversify geographically, before Joyce had managed to stumble into the railroad shipping and storage program. My Dad had just purchased a plant site less than an eighth of a mile from the Omaha rail yard. The railroad was putting in spurs for us on three sides of the new plant we'd be building. It was going to be all ovens and packaging, with direct rail head loading. Dad had calculated that all the new efficiencies would pay for the plant cost within the first twenty-seven months of production. Most new plants took between eight and eleven years to pay for themselves. "We're building a new plant in Omaha. Virginia is going to be running that one too. It will come on line in the second quarter of next year. They're building the ovens and the inside automation for us now. We'll be cutting our labor costs in half. We'll be using those new profits to build a similar plant in Reno, Nevada in three years time. We have the land for it already." "Jesus. What happens to your core business when the vending overtakes it in gross sales?" "We're packaging the three cereal and bread bakeries into a single, autonomous division. We might spin it off, and take it public, to raise some money for our expanding vending operation. There just isn't enough margin anymore in bread and cereals. The vending business is the real future for us." "Where will that leave the three division presidents? It wouldn't make much sense for me to come to work here, if it was only going to be bought up and then folded into a larger operation." "Probably holding some valuable stock options, and answering only to an elected board of directors. There are advantages and disadvantages to being with a large public corporation, but some of them get taken private again, when the top people find the financing to do that. Cereal and baking company's, they don't usually sell for much of a multiple." "You'd be giving up control?" She had her eyebrows raised in wonder. I could see her mind cranking over probable figures. She was already trying to figure how much she'd need to borrow, in order to take the spin off private again. I knew she was very savvy about the financial possibilities. She was openly avaricious too. Mama had always told me that greed didn't have to be a bad thing. It had certainly proven itself to be a wonderful motivating factor for people. "We were thinking of retaining a nominal stake in the spin off. Perhaps as little as thirty eight per cent, held in nine blind charitable trust accounts." "The same trustee for all of them?" "We haven't decided that yet. To be honest with you, I've only been tinkering with this idea for a week or two. So far, it is only an idea. I'm going home to run it by my parents this weekend." "Why use charitable trusts?" This was an excellent question. It was also one I'd prefer not to answer. "We don't need the money for ourselves, but we want to retain permanent control for other, important, strategic reasons." I was telling her a lot more than I'd planned on. It was due to my enthusiasm, and the newness of my ideas. If there were obvious flaws in my ideas, I'd much rather have Kathleen discover them, than to have it be one of my parents "Is one of the strategic reasons for doing it that way, your Chicago trading programs?" I felt a slight lurch in my guts. Had I become that transparent to people? I hadn't even committed this idea to paper yet. I'd barely had time to call Frank, to have him research the legal problems with the plan. I knew Mama wouldn't want to give up control of her father's business again, but time had passed it by. I made more money trading grains with my seven trading accounts in a year, than we were netting from the three cereal and bread plants. Even the specialty rolls were having some trouble competing in the crowded marketplace. All the farms we owned were held in either my big trust, or in Mama's name, privately, never having been a part of the company's assets. "We sponsor some charities that I sometimes trade for. They have a tie in to other, personal holdings." "Your farms?" "My father guarantees certain percentages of my grain sales and purchases. It makes the trading less risky." "I'll say it does. Which also explains why you can make do with so many marginal profits in your trading. You're middling both sides of every trade. With three grain hogs, like these bakeries, you can afford to take such large virtually risk free positions. Do you offset against the farm production too?" "I can, but it's usually simpler to buy it at spot. We need everything we produce, and more. You seem very interested in my trading methods." "I'm fascinated. I didn't realize that it was you doing all that trading. I already knew about the trusts. Who is Brenda Connor, and is Joyce Parsons a relative?" "Brenda is a family friend. I trade her account as a personal favor to her. Joyce is my wife. Those are the only two accounts I trade for regular income and profit. Those other accounts, the charitable trust accounts, they are all tied into a large tax exempt charitable program my family is interested in." "I really want this job now. Are you planning on having one overall CEO for the spin off when you do it?" "Didn't Virginia tell you?" "No, was she supposed to?" "It's going to be a woman CEO. It will be at least three years from now, maybe longer. Other than the sex of the CEO, the position is relatively open. I'd have to say that Virginia is the front runner. My wife is in second place, and it looks like you're just entering the race." "Why your wife?" "Because she's the best at what she does. She came up with our whole shipping and distribution program. It was all her idea, from start to finish. She runs the whole thing now, while nursing our two new babies, and running most of the group homes we founded together. In her spare time, she manages my life for me. Kathleen, if she wants the CEO job, believe me, she's capable of earning it. It wouldn't be nepotism either. Luckily, for either you or Virginia, she probably won't want to take it." "All that's left then is to work out who I need to report to. I think it would be better if I reported to your father, like Ginny does." "I was thinking, since you obviously don't care to be reporting to me, that I'd put you under Virginia. You'd still be a division president, but one who reported to another division president. She would still report to my father, so, if you look at it the right way, you'd be getting what you want, except it would need to go through Virginia first." "It would make me subservient to Ginny. I don't want to enter lower than she is." "Is it some title thing that bothers you? Is it that you want to be reporting directly to the CEO?" "Ginny does. It makes a difference when people are sizing you up later." "Virginia reports to me too, it just isn't a formal arrangement. In fact, though she never involves herself in the business like that, Virginia would also need to report to my mother, if my mother required her, for some reason, to do so. What you don't seem to grasp, Kathleen, is, while this is a very large corporation, it is really just a family business, and we're all actively involved in it. Would it help with your needing to report to me, if I became the company's CEO?" "Your father is the CEO." He has our irrevocable proxies, for another eight years, covering one hundred percent of the outstanding stock. We don't take too much real pride in our titles. I can become the CEO easily enough, and he'd then become the Chairman. They're only titles. Someday, it will all be mine anyway, and you'll be telling people you once worked with me." "What's your current title?" "I think I'm carried on the books as a summer intern, but they don't pay me. My wife is a vice president though." "You don't care?" "In the last eighteen months, with very little help from me, the value of our holdings has more than tripled, mostly because of my father and my wife. We just took out a line of credit from a consortium of banks, for a little more than half a billion dollars. We're paying prime, minus a point, and my Dad is currently earning twenty-eight per cent on that money. With that kind of return on my investment, what does it matter to me what my title is?" "My choice is only between you and Ginny?" It troubled me that this was such an important point with her. The job was going to be the same, regardless of who it was she was reporting to. Maybe it was a big city thing. In our business, titles had never meant that much, unless the title was owner. Ownership was a title that meant something. Regardless of how you expressed a title, unless it conveyed ownership on you, you were simply an employee. "Kathleen, I'm afraid so. I'm an owner of forty percent, my father owns only thirty percent. You'd be reporting to an extra ten percent, reporting to me." "Which would you choose? Ginny or you?" "If I was ambitious, like you are, I'd choose me. If you had once reported to Virginia, it would be difficult to justify promoting you over her." "That's what I think too. Okay, I'm ready to report to you. When do I take over?" "As soon as you can move your things into my office here." "If you can get me two men to help carry it all up for me, I've got them sitting outside, in a U-Haul." "What about the need for giving notice at your other job?" "I already quit it. My ex-father-in-law was mad that I just quit, but I don't think he'd dare give me anything less than a really great recommendation. They just got finished deciding to give my ex-husband the job that I was in line to get. I deserved that job, deserved it a lot more than he did. I'd earned it, but he was born into it." "Did they void all your stock options?" "I didn't need the money. David never had me sign a pre-nuptial agreement. I married that idiot just to get that job. Those options won't be worth much anyway. I couldn't exercise them for another year and a half, and by then, the stock will be below the exercise price anyway. I'm thinking of shorting the company, but I'm worried it might be considered insider trading." "You need to meet my mother, Kathleen. She could help you channel this aggression better." I got some people from packaging and receiving to help Kathleen move all her personal items into her new office. I put all my stuff into two empty cardboard boxes they were able to round up for me. I walked around, until I managed to locate a small, mostly empty room to leave my things in. When she was through moving in, I took Kathleen down to meet Clark. After making the introductions, I then left the two of them alone, to become better acquainted with each other. I went downstairs for awhile, looking for Jerry Davis. I found him kneeling in an open delivery bay, cleaning grease off of some old tools that he'd immersed in a pan of solvent. From the fumes the solvent was giving off, I suspected it wasn't on any government agency's approved use list of cleaning agents for commercial bakeries. In Delaware though, with their long time ties to the big chemical companies, maybe there were no proscribed solvents. "So, Jerry. Are you my new crew chief or not?" "Looks fucking like it, boss. I don't trust that Fucking Clark guy either. Do you know who he was going to make crew chief if I didn't take it? Fucking Lenny Bowers, that's who. You want to know what I fucking did, not ten minutes after I agreed to let him make me the fucking crew chief?" I could see great amusement dancing in Jerry's eyes. He really didn't care what I thought of him. He knew who he was. He wasn't like Kathleen at all. For just a few seconds I wanted to take Jerry back upstairs with me, so that he and Kathleen could size one another up. I resisted the temptation though. "You went and found that fucking Lenny Bowers, and then you fucking fired his lazy, incompetent ass?" Jerry looked up from the pan he was stirring, and he laughed boisterously, fully. It was a short lived, barking kind of laugh, but I knew it was an honest laugh, not something he'd do to be polite, or to curry favor with a boss. He nodded his head that I had guessed right, then he went right back to working on what he was doing. I left him to it, as happy with him, as he was with himself. I was pretty sure our plant machinery maintenance situation was in some very capable hands. By six o'clock, I could see that Clark and Kathleen were still hard at it, bouncing ideas off of each other. I went back to her new office, and started making some phone calls. "Hi, Mama. I'm coming home, sometime Friday. Why don't you set up a tee time for you, Dad, Shirley, and me, for about ten in the morning?" "What about Joyce?" "What about her? She doesn't golf." "Why Shirley?" "She golfs." "Are you planning on staying here, or over at Bunny's?" "I'll be staying with you for awhile, I think. Joyce and I can't seem to agree on too much anymore." "She's closer than a daughter would be to me, Kenny. Those are my grandchildren. I won't give any of them up, not even for you." "Who's asking you to? Not me. Those are my kids as much as they are hers." "Are you still thinking divorce, then?" "Joyce already told me it was no use divorcing her. She said I had to love and take care of all of them anyway. She said it didn't matter to her if we got divorced or not." "Are you okay with that? She's right, divorce changes nothing." "Doesn't really matter if I'm okay with it or not. All of you have already decided for me anyway. Since no one seems to want me to be able to decide things for myself, I've been looking into other people's business." "Sweetheart, we're all thinking about what's best for you. Whose business have you been looking into?" "Mostly yours, Mama. I've found out some interesting things, some suspicious things. I'm thinking about what I'm finding too, trying to get it to fit some pattern, to make some sense to me. I only wish you and I could both find a way for us to agree on what it is that's best for me." "I've thought of almost nothing else, Kenny. I've decided that Joyce is best for the main part of you. The others, the X's, they're like an insurance policy for you and Joyce. They'll keep you from making the worst of my father's mistakes, or the worst of Bunny's. For someone like you, dear, it's best to surround yourself with women who will always truly love you. The other kind of women will only bring trouble for you." "I sure don't want or need any more trouble. I feel like I've already got more trouble than I can comfortably handle. That's part of the reason I've been looking into your business, Mama. It takes my mind off of all my troubles." "Will you be here in time for dinner on Friday? We could invite the girls and the twins. It could be your welcome home party." "I think I'll be a little later, and I'll be too tired to want to entertain. I'm trying to get some DNA that I want tested. I think I've found Brenda's real father, but I want to make sure." "Are you feeling well, dear? What possible use could you have for knowing who Brenda's father is or was?" "I feel fine, Mama. I met a woman today that's even more ambitious than you are. She married a man, in order to get a job she wanted." "I'm not at all ambitious, dear. I have all that I require now." "You were ambitious when you were younger, Mama. I told you I've been looking into some of your business." "How so? What is it that you think you've found?" "Lots of things, just by going through some of Uncle Bunny's old things. Things he saved from back when he was in school. Things he liked to write about. That's why I say you were ambitious when you were younger. You created a job opening, just to get a man you wanted. Do you know how Uncle Bunny felt, Mama, when you told him he needed to go to law school, instead of taking his place in the family business? He hated it." "Did he really say that in his writings?" "That and a whole lot more. It broke his heart to know you preferred Dad to him. He really loved you a lot, Mama." "It was Georgia he loved more. Bunny's gone now, Kenny. What good does it do to bring up old wounds like that?" "Tell me about Dwight Nunes, Mama." I waited for about twenty seconds for her to say something to me. When she didn't respond, I spoke again. "You remember Dwight, don't you, Mama? "What about him? He was Bunny's friend, much more than he was mine. They chased girls together. It was after my mother died, and Bunny was started to act up with girls." "I need to go see him, because Georgia says he was Brenda's father too." "You don't know that, and I doubt very much she does either. She would have told me. What do you mean her father too?" "He wasn't much of a friend to Uncle Bunny, was he? I mean, you'd think making one sister pregnant was bad enough, but then, for him to be coming back, years later, and making the other one pregnant too, that seems too despicable to me." "This speculation of yours, it's based on what, exactly?" "In the very beginning it was only based on Brenda. I kept coming back to the realization that there had to be a reason why you feel it's so important that she and I should produce a child together. I wondered what it could be? If it wasn't because of Brenda's mother, and you said it wasn't, then it had to be because of her father. Georgia said she'd been intimate with only four men, and I believe her. I've been able to determine that Ken Dyer, one of the four possible's, isn't Brenda's father. We already knew it wasn't Uncle Bunny or Walt Connor. Who else does that leave? According to what Georgia told me, that only leaves Dwight Nunes." "If you were right, and I don't know this. Why would any of this make any difference to me?" "Let's just say, when you got pregnant at fifteen, that it wasn't your father's baby. Just for the sake of my argument, let's say it was Dwight's baby that your father forced you to abort. You almost had a child, but it was taken from you. Years later, you find out that Dwight has a daughter, and your father has this other bastard son that you and Uncle Bunny located, me. If you pair us up, Brenda and me, then any baby we would have would be, genetically speaking, pretty close to the one your father had aborted from you." "Interesting, if your suppositions were all true, which I deny. I still don't see why, even if it were all true, I should have such a morbid curiosity about what this aborted child would be like. Am I supposed, in your imaginings, to have gone to all this trouble just to find out what my aborted fetus would have looked like?" "No. From what you told me earlier, you fully expected that Brenda and I would present him or her to you and Dad, for you to raise, because we were too young for so much responsibility. You knew that Brenda was dying to be rich, and that she'd want the same thing for any baby of hers. Then, when it didn't happen the way you planned, after Brenda and I were both older, and capable, both physically and financially, of raising our own children, you were willing to settle for just being the benevolent grandmother of any child we produced." "If you really believe what you're saying, why are you telling it to me? Why not hide your suspicions, and then make good use of it at a more propitious time?" "This is a propitious time, and I want to propose a trade with you. A trade I'd be willing to make with you right now. Partly, I'd be doing it because I want you to let me live out my life, without any further interference like what you've done in the past. Mostly though, I'd be offering this, because I truly do love you, and I want you to have whatever it is you most desire. You've given me much more than I can ever repay, and this is something I can give back to you." "A trade you said? What would I be receiving in this trade?" "I'd need to talk to Brenda first, to explain exactly what it is I'm proposing. Knowing Brenda, and the way her mind works, I see no problem with us winning her acceptance. I'm proposing that I make her pregnant, a pregnancy which we will bring to full term. It will be our child, Brenda's and mine, but you will be given great access, and strong input into the way he or she is to be raised. In return for this, you agree to stop meddling in my romantic life. Totally stop, Mama, and for good this time." "What else?" "That's all. I told you I love you. If you had asked me, three years ago to do this for you, I would have. We didn't have to go through all of what we went through." "You don't object to my raising this child?" "No. I know how much you love children. I think I understand why this one would be so special for you. I hope to have many more children, and I want all of them to be special to you... "You aren't going to be angry with me? You won't use this child as a way to try to control me?" "No, I wouldn't do that, because I know any child would love you like I do. I just wish you had been more straight forward about things from the beginning. I wanted to please you, but I didn't know how." "I don't know what to say. For me, it wasn't always about you and Brenda having a child. You must see that I loved you for your own sake?" "Say okay. That's all you need to say. If I wasn't sure that you loved me, I couldn't do this for you." "Okay." After I got off the phone with Mama, I called Joyce. Mama hadn't admitted anything. She almost never did. I would never be certain that I was correct with all or any of my conclusions and suppositions. Once she held the child in her arms, I believed I'd be able to see it in her expression. Whatever she believed, it was still just a baby. She could invest whatever magical fantasy she wanted for this baby, to make it fit exactly whatever it was she thought she needed to have. "I'm going to be over at Mama's, sometime Friday night." "I asked Shirley to bring the twins over to you." "I've changed my mind. I want you to bring them over. Bring the bassinets too." "How long will you be staying?" "Until we head off to school I think. Unless Dad decides to send me somewhere else." "Did you talk to Mama yet?" "Just got off the phone with her. We were able to work our things out. You need to ask Brenda if she's willing to have my baby." "I don't have to ask her, Kenny. We're all willing to make babies with you." "This would be a special baby. I'll tell you about it after I get back." "Did you hire that woman that Virginia recommended?" "Yes, I think she'll do well. She's nosy, and she likes to dig into things. She reminds me of you, except you're a lot cuter." "Brenda and Emily made up. Brenda moved back into Emily's room." "That's good too. Is it more peaceful there now?" "Yes. Is that why you told them it was all right?" "It's fine with me. When you talk to Brenda, if she says she wants to make a baby with me, ask her to stop taking those birth control pills." "None of them are taking the pills anymore, Kenny. They all quit before you went to Delaware. I thought Shirley told you about that." "She said she wasn't on birth control, but she didn't say anything about the other X's." "You should get Emily pregnant when you get Brenda pregnant. If you don't, Emily will cause trouble." "We need to get up to Lawrence and buy a big house." "Mama didn't tell you? We have a new house up there already. She has pictures. We'll show you those on Friday. I think we should build some group homes up there too. Kenny, how come nothing bad happened to you this time?" "I'm not sure. It felt different this time, like there was always hope for it to get better. Before, I didn't have any hope, but this time I did. Maybe it was the twins." "Why is Brenda's baby going to be special? Aren't our babies special too?" "Our babies are very special, but mostly to us. If Brenda and I make a baby, it will be special to us, but it will be something that Mama has wanted, ever since before I met her." "Were you finally able to find out why Mama is so concerned about you and Brenda?" "You have to ask her that question, Joyce. It's her secret, not mine. Mama loves our babies, and they're very special to her also. It's just a different kind of special." "What about Emily?" "What about her?" "Are you going to let her live with us too?" "Do you think I should?" "She's always telling us about how she needs to be held down when she's with you. I remember all those cuts and scratches she gave you. I'd like to see how you do it with her. I'd like to watch you fuck her really hard." "Do the other X's know how nasty you are?" "I'm not nasty. I'm just curious. I never saw anybody who was so wild they needed to be held down." "You aren't fooling me, you know? Did Emily do the same thing to you that Brenda did that time on the couch, back when we were teasing her?" "They both did. They took turns doing it. I didn't care for it very much either." "Did you want me to hold her down so you could do that back to her?" "I'm not sure. First, I'd like to watch you be really rough with her." The rest of the week seemed to go by very slow. I spoke on the phone to all of the X's, and to Joyce too. Brenda said she wanted to have a lot of babies with me. I told her that she had to allow Mama to have a lot more than normal grandmother type access to the first baby. She agreed right away, never bothering to ask me why. I had been very worried when I first started thinking about making this deal with Mama. Let's face it, Mama wasn't exactly normal. Then I started thinking about it. None of us were normal. I didn't have a single normal member in my whole known birth family, or in my adopted family either. Brenda sure wasn't what I'd call normal either, and neither was Georgia. I didn't know this Dwight Nunes, but from what I'd heard, he certainly wasn't normal. Kids were being born all the time to people who weren't normal, and being raised, sometimes, by people even less normal than the parents had been. That was just the reality. Mama, and the whole rest of the family were building places to help some of these children that needed better than what they had been getting. Our money was making a real difference in all their lives. If you weren't normal, it was a lot better to be rich than poor. I'd been poor and not normal, and it had sucked. Any of my children were going to be rich, whether normal or abnormal. Being rich didn't suck in either case. By Friday morning, I had given Kathleen all the help and guidance I could provide. She and Clark both had my phone number, and I had promised to keep in touch with them. I had set up a system to forward all the raw sales and delivery data, by computer, from Dover to Bolling. Dad had hired this computer whiz who was spending money hand over fist, trying to set up communications between all of the divisions. I didn't know how he was doing it, but we could get reports over a phone line, from one computer to another, from something called a modem. It was slow, but data was being transferred a lot quicker than if we had mailed it. I didn't understand it, so I didn't trust it. Joyce loved it. Soon, she had her own modem, and was sending and receiving data all by herself. She liked to scare me by predicting how computers were going to change everything, including the way all businesses were operated. I was sitting on the plane, heading back to Kansas. I was heading back home, to whatever fate held in store for me. In a sense, I'd given up. Given in to Joyce, and to all her crazy ideas about what she had decided I needed. I couldn't help wondering what Mother Superior would have made of my surrender. I wanted to believe that she would have been proud that I had managed to find a way to build better homes for more boys and girls than she had ever had under her care, at least more at any one time. She wouldn't have approved of the way I lived my own life, but I hoped she would decide to cut me some slack, because of the other work I was doing, work that she would approve of. Did she ever know how much she had taught me? Sometimes, I felt like I was the new Mother Superior. If I was, then Joyce was the Pope. When the plane taxied over to the maintenance company we used, I looked out the window, seeing Hans standing next to the limo. He was waiting to take me home to Mama's house. I couldn't see who was inside the back seat because of the darkened tint on the windows. My guess was there were seven people back there, the X's, and three little babies. The part of me that still wanted to resist told me to sit up front, with Hans. Why make it easy for any of them? I opened the door, and was surprised to see only Joyce sitting there. I had stopped for a minute to speak to Hans, but I deliberately didn't ask him who was sitting in the back. I hopped in the back and gave my wife a kiss. "All alone today? Where are you hiding all the X's?" "I left them at home, and they're all mad at me. Are you disappointed I didn't bring the twins?" "No. I'll see them. I'm happy to see you. I've missed you." We did some major fooling around for three or four minutes, then it changed from fooling around to wild, abandoned, all out, fucking. I threw her all around both back seats, and had her writhing under me on the floor too. Once, Hans drove over a pot hole or something, and I ended up hurting both of us when we bounced up, and came crashing down again. It slowed us down for only a second or two, as I lifted her up, and threw her back down on the seat again. Joyce had gotten bigger and stronger since she gave birth to the twins. She wasn't as easy to throw around anymore. Before we were quite finished, Hans was pulling up the long driveway at Mama's house. We were both a mess. I had dribbled some cum stains on my black slacks, and they were already starting to dry. Joyce's hair, which she had let grow out, was all messed up and sweaty. The passenger compartment was warm, and the scent of sex hung in the air. I noticed a small cum puddle on the rear facing seat, with a wet spot surrounding it from either our sweat or Joyce's juices. We straightened ourselves up a little, and got out of the limo. "Hans, you need to check the passenger area before you allow people like my wife to get in it. Someone made a big mess back here, and she was embarrassed to be close to it the whole time. I hope you haven't been taking Mama's limo and using it for your own nasty pleasures? I'll tell Gerta if I even start to suspect that. Get it cleaned up before Mama needs to use it." We walked into the house with as much dignity as we could muster. I heard Hans growling and muttering to himself when he went to the passenger compartment to see what I was complaining about for himself. Served him right for being such a voyeur. Girlfriend's were one thing, but you'd think he'd show a little consideration for my wife. I wanted to see if he'd dare come into the house and hand me the cleaning materials like he'd done in the past. If he did, I was going to tell him it wasn't my mess, and hand the stuff to Mama. Speaking of Mama, here she came, and then I was locked up in one of her biggest, big hugs. I gave her a return hug, but gentler, with a kiss on her cheek. "Mama, look at you. You look great. I'm going to need extra strokes tomorrow. Maybe five a side?" "Two a side, the same as I'm giving your father. Don't try to hustle me, Kenny." "I already did, Mama. With two a side, you'll need to shoot in the sixties to beat me." "Well, I'm feeling good, and I'm playing extremely well. I've been getting a lot of practice out at the academy. My long irons are picking up. Have you been playing?" "Not at all, no time. That's why I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Where are the twins?" "In your room, Kenny. I got them two darling little cribs. Hans has been having back trouble again, and I didn't want him lifting those bassinets with his back out. We bought these in town and they delivered and set them up for us. Now it will be more convenient when you want to come visit us." I excused myself and ran back out to the limo and told Hans I'd clean up my own mess. I had to practically fight him to get the cleaning supplies away from him. Next time, I'd leave an even bigger mess, but I'd make sure first that his back was feeling okay before I left it. It took me twenty minutes to do the job well enough to be sure it would meet with Hans critical approval. Back upstairs, in my bedroom, Joyce and all the X's had gathered. I noticed both cribs placed over against the far wall, away from my bed. When I said hello to all the girls, I was moving over to the cribs. I saw Derek and Bunny in one crib, both sleeping peacefully. In the other crib, Little Bertie stared at me with her very dark eyes. She showed no expression on her face, but she was following my progress with her eyes. I moved very slowly towards her crib, not wanting to set her off to wake up the other two. Joyce and all the X's had moved close behind me, watching me to see what I'd do with Bertie, and how she would react to me. Bertie was starting to fidget impatiently, so I took my hand and placed it on her bare arm. She became still again. As soon as I tried to move my hand away from her, she became agitated, so I leaned in, with both arms, and picked her up, bringing her into my chest. She made a contented little gurgling sound, and just rested right there in my arms, snuggled against me. I held her, rocking her in my arms for only a few minutes before Joyce got in front of me and made a sleeping face for me to know that Little Bertie was asleep again. After I put her back in the crib, the five of us headed out to the hallway, where all my X's demanded that I give them each a welcome home kiss. I noticed Joyce stood in line too, at the back. Brenda was first in line, and while I kissed her, I had both my hands on her butt, kneading the muscular flesh. Brenda still had a really great butt, and she still loved having my big hands kneading it. Emily was next. Our kiss was shorter, but only because I'd trapped both her hands in mine and moved them back behind her, pinning her helplessly. I made all the other X's squeeze her boob while I held her like that. By the time Joyce took her turn, Emily's face was all red, from all the effort she was using, pretending to try to get loose. Joyce pinched both nipples hard, hard enough that it just had to hurt, but Emily didn't protest. Before I released her, I kissed her again. It was while she was responding to my kiss that I let her hands go and broke the embrace. Emily looked disappointed and aroused. The kiss with Shirley was also short, and I felt her body stiffen when I had Joyce feeling her boobs too. She looked scared. "Relax, Shirley. Joyce is just trying to see which of you has the bigger boobs now. She won't hurt you. No one will hurt you." After that, Brenda, Joyce, Shirley, and I went back downstairs, leaving Emily to watch the children. I found out they were each taking hour long shifts, watching the babies. I went into the kitchen to find Gerta and give her a hug and a kiss too. she was busy putting the finishing touches on dinner, but she gave me a little snack of the beef she was carving for us. "So, you and Brenda are making this baby for your Mama?" "Well, we haven't actually gotten started on it yet, but we will soon." "She is so excited." "Aren't you excited too?" "Me? I'm excited for her." "Do you think Mama knows he's dead?" "Who is dead?" "Dwight Nunes. Been dead for over sixteen years. Took some pills, and then went swimming. Real strong swimmer too, just like Mama's mother. Pretty hard to swim when you're unconscious though. Dwight was found right away though, so the autopsy revealed that he had taken all those pills. They said it was suicide." "You suspect your Mama did this?" "No, it was probably someone who loved Mama. Someone who didn't want to see either of his daughters or his sisters hurt again. He probably didn't do it himself though. He would have had someone he knew and trusted do it for him." "You think it was Hans?" "I don't know. I'm sure, whoever did it, they thought it was the right thing to do. It doesn't matter how it was done, or who did it." Gerta and I looked at each other, until she finally turned her head away. "I hope she doesn't know, Gerta." "She doesn't. Bunny knew it though. Hans told him, right after it happened." "I'm glad Bunny knew. He probably felt better about it, after he found out about Brenda." "He didn't know about that part, he only knew about the other, about your Mama's baby." "We're a strange family, Aunt Gerta, all of us." "Not so strange. Family should help each other. What you're doing with Brenda, it will bring your Mama some peace. Finding out about what happened to that man, that would only hurt her." "I'm starving, Gerta. Is it time to eat yet? I've missed your cooking more than I can tell you. Don't tell Brenda I said it, because she thinks she cooks better than you do." "Kenny, you won't speak to Hans of this? It wasn't a good thing for him. He took it harder than he should have." "Speak of what? Of ghost stories my dear sweet Auntie tells me? You know I don't believe in your ghost stories, Gerta. I also don't believe that Senior Chalmers would have let you be the only one of the girls in the house to ever escape him. I won't speak of that to Hans either. Some stories are best left untold." ------- Chapter 9 Joyce, Shirley, and Brenda brought the babies downstairs for dinner. The girls were holding them all as they lay sleeping in their laps, while we ate. My Dad and Mama had listened carefully as I started giving them a brief outline of my idea for spinning off the bread and cereal bakeries. At first, Mama didn't like the idea at all, but when I explained to her the benefits we'd get from donating the remaining stock to the charitable trusts, she started to come around. Mama understood that control was the biggest part of ownership. We wouldn't own the bakeries, but we'd still have control over how they were run. We'd be able to select our own management team. We decided to make Joyce the trustee for all of the new charitable trusts involved. This was mostly Mama's idea. I think she meant it as part of her system of checks and balances on me. She was determined to keep Joyce and me tied together in as many ways as she could. I passed a sheet of paper over to Mama, showing her the current projected return on our invested capital, with the vending business alone, and then what it currently was, with the vending business, and the three bakeries we would be divesting. She liked the huge difference in the two returns. When she was done looking at the two columns of figures, she had Brenda pass them to my Dad. "We'd still hold the controlling interest in the bakeries, Mama, except now the profits from it would go to pay for the work we're already doing with the group homes. By keeping control in the charitable trusts, I can continue doing my profitable grain trading. We wouldn't have to worry about paying any taxes on most of those earnings either. Every penny of income from our shares in the bakeries would be available for us to invest in the group home kids, or in other kinds of charitable things. We could give scholarships to whoever we wanted to, without having to worry about whether we could write it off or not. The bakery employees have plenty of kids that could use a little help with their school expenses too. These trusts wouldn't have just one specific purpose the money could be used for." "Could we give Shirley a scholarship from this money?" Mama wasn't concerned about the money for Shirley's college, she just wanted to see if the trusts were as practical as I'd been saying. "Joyce probably shouldn't give her one, but Frank certainly could. He's the trustee for one of the tax exempt trusts that Uncle Bunny created. He could award Shirley a full ride scholarship. I could have Joyce transfer her charitable trust funds into his trust. It would just be a dispersal from one charitable tax exempt trust to another. We would just have to make sure the money we sent over to Frank's trust was earmarked for a different purpose than Shirley's scholarship. It wouldn't be hard at all, and I have some ideas about having Uncle Bunny's trusts help out the local Meals on Wheels program that helps some seniors with getting better nutrition." "What effect will this have on the credit line I've negotiated, Kenny? What will happen to that?" Dad had gone to a lot of trouble getting all the funding set up for the vending and baking expansions. He had needed to pledge all the corporate assets just to pull it off. We were in hock, up to our eyeballs, but Dad had every penny of that money he'd borrowed out there working hard for us, and it was making us a big return. "The spin off won't be for another year, at least, maybe as long as three years away. These things need to be done slowly, and carefully. By that time, the vending business that we'll be retaining, after the spin off, will be half again as valuable, as what the current value is. The longer it takes to do the spin off, the more valuable both types of holdings will become. The expansion is helping both businesses. Remember, Dad, the vending operations left for us, after the spin off takes place, will be valued at a lot higher multiple than what we now have is valued at. Banks take rate of earnings, and profit margins into consideration when figuring value. We might end up being worth a lot more under this new valuation, even after removing the value we'll lose from our divestiture." "Do you have a plan for employing all this money we would be raising from selling the sixty two percent ownership of the bakeries we'd be spinning off?" Dad was always looking for new money to feed his expansion plans. He was deliriously happy to be able to grow at a rate of twenty-five percent each year. He'd be delighted to continue with it, just as long as he could find the money to finance that growth. "I'd want us to put all of it straight back into the vending expansion. With the money you've been making from our expansion, we can't afford to slow down." "What changes will you have to make to the trading you've been doing?" Dad was satisfied with my answer about where the money should go. "I'll start looking into other trading possibilities. We can make good money trading in the other ingredients. It doesn't need to be limited to just the grains. There is world sugar, all the different cooking oils, coconuts, mixed fruits. How many different kinds of flour do we use now? Nuts, syrups, and all the different dried fruits and fruit flavorings. All of that is being traded on live markets somewhere. There is always money to be made from us trading the ingredients we use, especially when we have a real long term underlying need to use them. We have that need, and we also have almost the perfect vehicle for storage, using the rail cars. I want to retain all our privately owned grain storage too. We need to trade more aggressively, when these grain prices are historically low enough for us to begin storing it for our later use. We can make several million dollars a year just from buying and holding for our own later use. We can start brokering grain ourselves, to other big bakers. We haven't been taking advantage of that part of our assets." I looked around the table. Mama, Joyce, and Brenda were listening to Dad and me talking. They were interested in it, and listening attentively to what was being discussed. Emily and Shirley, on the other hand, were bored, and neither was making any attempt to hide that fact. I looked right at Joyce, until I was able to finally catch her attention. I made an exaggerated swing of my head around the table, while my Dad spoke of annual projected quantities of ingredients we'd need for the vending products. Even I had trouble being very interested in a dry recitation of pure quantity forecasts. Mama didn't though, and neither did Brenda. It had to be something that the females of the Chalmers bloodline inherited. After dinner, Joyce got me alone in the library, and asked me why I wanted her to look at the people at the table, while my Dad was talking. "Brenda has the same interest in business as us, Joyce, but the other two really aren't interested. Business is a large part of what we do, it shouldn't be something that members of our group find boring. It isn't enough that we're all compatible in some ways. It isn't enough that we love them, or that they love us. Ask Mama, she's spent fifty years listening to her father, brother and my Dad talking business almost constantly. She never gets tired of it either. Brenda fits in with that, but Emily and Shirley never would. This thing of yours, it isn't going to work, not the way you're hoping for." "Both those girls love you, Kenny. They'll fit in enough to live with us. If you're right, and they later get so bored that they decide to leave, we'll still have you, me and Brenda left. It won't be like everything got all smashed up." "You aren't thinking this through. Having kids with them would complicate that kind of solution, Joyce. They aren't going to be willing to leave us without taking away their children. I wouldn't want to face something like that." "Kenny, it's only you that thinks they'll ever want to leave. If you and your parents had been talking about golf, it would have been Brenda, Emily, and me that would have been looking bored. You should see the look that you and your father had on your faces when all of us women were talking about sweaters before." "Aren't you going to give me just a little something, Joyce? I need something so I don't feel like I'm being run over with a steamroller. I'm ready to agree to all the parts that make good sense for us." "What do you mean give you a little something? I'm already giving you everything, Kenny. All of this is being set up for you." "You're giving me everything? Then why not take some of it back? I don't need or want all that you are offering me. Take back all the parts that give me a houseful of the X's. You, me, and Brenda, that's more than enough." "You don't really mean that, you know you don't. You need to think about the rest of us too. Do you think about what Brenda and Emily's preferences are? They want to be together. I promise, I'll give you anything you really want, anything, as long as it's good for you to have it." "You're playing with me now, Joyce. What you just said, it sets you up as the judge of whether what I want is good for me or not. You aren't paying any attention to what I'm trying to tell you. You've got everything worked out in that head of yours, and you're planning on controlling everything." "No I'm not. If you give this a fair trial, I won't have to control anything." "Do you have some kind of map I can look at, a map to this happy path you've chosen for me, or is it mostly whatever you decide I need at any particular moment?" "I'm on the happy path, so are the twins, and all the X's and any babies they have. We've all agreed that we'll do anything we can to make you happy. You don't trust us to make you happy." "Are you all going to take care of me, like I was some kind of pet you had all adopted? Is that what you think I need to be happy?" "That isn't what we want at all. You can do anything you want to, as long as it makes you happy, and it's good for you. Like today, when we made love in the limo. Wasn't that what you wanted? Seeing the twins, and talking business with your mom and dad? How about having all of us here at Mama's house, so we could give you a proper welcome home? We try to make you happy, Kenny. We don't want you being sad like you were before." "Give me an example of what I can't do. How could I slip off your so called happy path?" "You can't send any of us away from you. You can't deliberately do things to hurt any of us, or yourself." "I can fuck any of the X's, but not anyone else? Are you managing all of that part of things too?" "I don't think about it like that. It depends on who you'd want to fuck, I guess. Do you have someone else you want to sleep with, Kenny? Someone you met in Delaware?" "No. I just meant how far are you going to go to control what I do." "We don't plan to control you in that way, or to try to stop you from doing whatever you want to. Not unless we see that it's starting to hurt you, or make you sad again. We won't interfere in how you run the business. None of us will tell you what you should do with your money. We want to help you, and we want you to love us, like we all love you." "I might decide that I want to just pull up stakes here, and move to Florida. What would happen if I decided to do that?" "We'd all move with you. We're your family. You decide where you want us to go, and we'll go there, as long as it's with you, and it's what you want." "How about if I get tired of the lot of you, and want to take some time off to be by myself?" "You can, if that's what you really want to do. Do you want to go off somewhere, without us again?" "I guess I don't, not if I'm able to. I want to be free to go away if I want to. I'd like to be able to decide for myself how best to run my life. I'm getting better at managing some of the bad stuff." "We all talked about that, too. While you were gone to Delaware this time. Not all of us think it's fair or right that we force ourselves on you like we're doing. We decided that we'd try it together for one school year, all of us, like we are now. When school's done in June, we'll let you pick who gets to stay, and who has to leave. Whatever you decide, that's what we'll do." "Tell me where you stood on this, Joyce. How did you vote?" "We didn't vote, Kenny. We talked about it. We all think it would work, all of us together, but we can't convince you to give it a fair test. I like the idea of all the X's being together with you. Sometimes I get jealous, like right after Shirley came back from Philadelphia. I'm sure they were all jealous when I told them I was going to pick you up at the airport, alone. We fight about what's fair. Shirley was thinking about leaving, because she thought you didn't want her in the group. Now though, she wants to stay again. Emily wants to pick what she will do and not do, mostly with who, not what. She makes me mad sometimes, because she makes some things harder for all of us. She isn't willing to put up with some of the things the rest of us agreed to." "What has she said she wouldn't put up with?" "She doesn't want anybody doing anything with her or with Brenda, except for you." "What does Brenda say about that?" "She says she's going to do whatever you want her to do, and not do whatever you tell her not to do. When we were all talking about that, she got mad, and she told Emily that she'd give her some money to go live by herself, if she was going to continue causing trouble for the rest of us. Emily started crying when she said that." "That's why this won't ever work. Emily told me that people don't like everyone the same. She's always going to feel like it's okay for her to pick and choose who she does sexual things with. I can't blame her, not if that's how she feels. Just because you and I would do things with all of them, that doesn't mean they'd want to do things with all of us." "Brenda says she will, and Shirley said she'd try, but she asked me to get you to make her really excited first, before we do any girl things to her. She's willing to try it, but she doesn't think she could do it, not unless she was already really hot." "Did you X's discuss what happens if I decide I only want to have sex with you?" "We didn't discuss it like that. We talked about what we'd do if you decided not to do anything with any of us." "What did you decide?" "That we'd all stay together, and wait until you changed your mind." "What would happen if I decided to only have sex with Shirley?" "I'm not sure. I hope she'd tell you it wasn't fair, because we all love you. That's what I've told you." "You told me that, but we had sex anyway." "Only after you had sex with Shirley first." "Are you going to come sleep with me tonight?" "Yes, if you want me." "What about tomorrow night?" "Tomorrow night is Emily's turn, and the next night is Brenda's. Emily told me that she and Brenda would like to have both nights together, with the three of you." "I'm not sleeping with Emily tomorrow, or any other day, not until she changes her attitude. What happens if I do that, decide not to sleep with one of the X's?" "You can't sleep with any of us, not if you don't sleep with Emily on her day." "For just that day, or until I decide to sleep with her?" "Just that day. You can always refuse to sleep with whoever you want to. We're not going to force you to fuck us." "That's good, because if you did that, I couldn't live with that rule. If I understand you correctly, you and I can sleep together every fourth night, and I don't have to sleep with any of those other girls, except I need to get Brenda pregnant, so I'll need to sleep with her too." "That might be okay with Brenda, Kenny, but it isn't okay with me. We want you to give this group thing a fair try. That means you need to do things with all of us." "That's enough questions for now. I'm getting sleepy. Send the X's home, and lets go to bed." Joyce left the library, and went over in the living room to talk with Emily and Shirley. Brenda was upstairs with all the babies. Five minutes later, Emily and Shirley came down with Derek, and left in Emily's car. Joyce and I had already said good night to everyone, and so we went up the stairs to my bedroom. "Brenda and I want her to spend the night with us, Kenny. If you don't want to, she'll go home. You get to decide." "Does Mama know you were going to spring this on me, Joyce?" "She knows that Brenda might be spending the night too, but we never talked about what any of us would be doing. We'll lock the door." "I'm going to tell you we can't do that tonight. I need to talk to Emily before we do anything with Brenda. I'd like to spend my first night back with my own wife, just like we were a normal couple." "I'll tell her. You've got all her hopes up with this talk about making her pregnant, and she's in a good part of her menstrual cycle for that right now. Can I at least tell her that you'll be sleeping with her on Sunday?" "No, because I still need to talk to everybody first. I'm worried about what to do with Emily. You X's have all these ideas, but you don't really have any plans about what to do when something goes wrong. We need to all sit down together and have a discussion. I think you'll find that not everybody thinks like you do." "Can I tell her that you want to get her pregnant, but not until we've all had a meeting to discuss everything?" "Joyce, just let me tell her myself, okay?" Joyce just nodded to me as I walked into my old bedroom. Bunny and Little Bertie were both fussing and crying in their cribs, so Joyce swept past me and went to help Brenda, who was holding Bunny, and trying to calm Little Bertie by talking to her. When Joyce picked up Little Bertie and took her over to the bed to nurse, Brenda and I drifted over that way too. Bertie was a greedy little eater, and when they both were hungry at the same time, Little Bertie always wanted to be the first to be fed. Joyce put some pillows under her head and placed Bertie down next to her, with Joyce's nipple fastened between her lips. When the two of them had a comfortable rhythm going, Brenda lowered Bunny to the other breast. Joyce put an arm around him too, and held him steady across her side. There is something about watching a woman nursing a baby, and it is even stronger when it's two babies, and they're both yours. It isn't necessarily a religious experience, but it isn't that far from being one. Watching Joyce feeding the twins made me feel closer to her. It also made me horny, although I'm not sure why. "I want to do that." Brenda was watching Joyce feed the twins just like I was. "Wait until the babies get their fill first." Brenda turned and slapped my arm. I grabbed her hand and held it at her wrist. "Joyce was telling me what you both had planned, Brenda, but it can't be tonight. We all need to get together and talk about some problems I'm worried about first. After, if everything gets settled, I'd like nothing better than to have the three of us in one bed, doing things together, like we did that other time." I could see that Brenda was disappointed. I hoped she understood that what any of us did would affect everyone else too. There was no sense getting started, not if we couldn't all agree to the same things. I felt like I needed to get Emily to take a firm position and stay with it. Shirley had also looked very uncomfortable when Joyce was touching her breasts, at my request. It was easiest for me, and I realized that much. If there was another guy thrown into the mix, I could never go along with it. I knew Joyce could see the same things I did. I didn't understand why she still wanted to try it. Of all the girls, I thought Emily was more into girl things than the others, followed by Brenda, with Joyce a very close third. Brenda was the least possessive though, and that had to be an advantage for her. I didn't know how far Shirley would be willing to go either. After the twins were fed, and back asleep, Joyce and Brenda walked together down to Brenda's car. Brenda was subdued, not really responding to me when I wished her a good night. Joyce was back up in my room, inside of five minutes. "Brenda's upset, Kenny. She thinks you're rejecting her again," Joyce and I had gotten undressed and were in bed. I wanted to concentrate on making love, and to just enjoy being able to sleep with my wife again. I wasn't in the mood to talk about Brenda and her feelings of rejection. By rights, Brenda and the other X's should have allowed the two of us to spend a quiet weekend together, at least. I'd been gone for a month. Somehow, we had gotten away from it being just an idea that Joyce and I had been arguing about, and were discussing together. Now it was all the X's jockeying with each other to get what they wanted. Joyce had lost control of them, and I had never had any. Rather than get into it with Joyce, I started kissing her. She continued to try to get some sort of verbal dialogue started, but, after awhile, my insistent kisses wore her down, and she decided to just relax and leave our discussion for a later time. Saturday, I drove Joyce and the twins home at nine and picked up Shirley. We all played golf. I was rusty again, but I managed to beat Dad and Shirley. Mama shot a sixty nine, fleecing me out of three hundred dollars. She got Dad for the same amount, and I managed to get him for a hundred too. "I need more than two strokes a side Bertie. I just don't get to play enough to be able to play to my handicap. You should at least give me enough so I have some chance of winning. Don't you agree, Kenny?" My Dad looked over at me, hoping for my sympathy and support. Since even before Uncle Bunny had died, Dad had been losing pretty steadily to Mama and me when we played together. "Dad, when you keep playing the same people for money, you need to look around to find out who the sucker is. If you can't spot one, that means you're probably the sucker." I saw the look Dad gave me. I thought it meant that he'd be finding the time, somehow, to get out to the practice range and hit some golf balls. I hoped he did. He'd probably do a better job at work if he took some time for himself, to go out and play and relax. I drove Shirley back to Uncle Bunny's house. I drove slowly, because I wanted to ask her about her feelings about this whole group idea we were thinking of giving a try. I didn't start out with easy questions either. "Shirley, you didn't look very happy to have Joyce playing with your boobs. Is that girl thing going to be a big problem for you?" I watched as she sat up a little straighter, taking some time before replying to me. "I'd much rather not do anything with any of the other X's, Kenny. I already told them that. I don't really think any of them want to do things with me either. If it wasn't for Brenda and Emily liking to do stuff together, we probably wouldn't even be setting it up that way." I disagreed with her, but I didn't tell her that. Joyce was as much responsible for wanting to do girl things as Emily or Brenda were. "Joyce told me the four of you want to give it a try the way we talked about doing it before, when you were pregnant with Derek. When we were talking then, all the girls were talking about them doing things with each other. Mostly, it was Brenda and Joyce discussing doing things with Emily too. I've done things with Joyce and Brenda together, and some things with Emily and Brenda together. In those combinations, it worked out pretty well." "I told Joyce I thought I could do things, if you already had gotten me excited first. You know how I get, Kenny. If I was already excited, it might not matter so much to me. I don't think I could just hop in bed with another woman and start doing things with her." "If you were going to do something with me and one of the X's, which one would you prefer?" Shirley was staring straight ahead, but her cheeks had suddenly flushed with a bright pink color. I waited for a few seconds as I pulled into the driveway of the house, "You don't have a preference?" I could have sworn I heard Shirley groan as she leaned a little forward, and then pushed back against the back rest. "You wouldn't do it with any of them?" "Brenda, because she's so pretty, but Joyce too, because she's nice, but she's so tiny." "Not Emily?" She shook her head back and forth, saying with this motion that she wouldn't do it with Emily. "Even if not doing it with Emily meant we wouldn't keep this group idea alive?" "I could leave. I told Joyce I would leave if that meant everyone else could get along better. I'm not looking forward to the other stuff, just to doing things with you again." "What about if you stayed with us, but didn't do anything with any of us?" "Joyce said we couldn't do that. I don't think I'd want that either, not if all the rest of the X's were doing stuff with you." "Let's go inside. We can have a little meeting with everyone, and we'll all talk about what each of us wants." Inside, Joyce and Brenda were in the kitchen. Emily had all three of the babies on the floor, on top of blankets in the living room. Derek was asleep, but I saw that Little Bertie was still awake, and I saw Bunny's hands moving, although I couldn't see his eyes. I went over and picked up Bertie, to take to the sofa with me. "Joyce tells me that you want to limit who you do things with, Emily. Shirley does too." "We shouldn't have to have sex with people if we don't want to." Emily never had trouble telling you what she thought. I remembered that I had liked that about her in the beginning. "You won't get an argument from me about that. I feel the same way that you do. I think we need to have a meeting about it. Have everybody make a list of who they want to do things with, then we'll see how things match up together." "I know what you're going to do, Kenny. You're going to leave my name off of your list." Again, Emily was trying to create a problem out of her fears rather than any actual occurrences. "Sometimes, you shouldn't have sex with people, even if you do want to. Sometimes, if you do have sex with them, it creates too many other problems. I'd be perfectly happy to just be having sex with Joyce. It wouldn't cause me any problems if we left it like that." Joyce and Brenda drifted into the living room. Joyce was frowning at me. "Are you having a meeting without us, Kenny?" Joyce and I had discussed our contrasting positions. Joyce was afraid I'd work on each of the other X's separately, and get them to change what they had agreed to. Joyce was smarter than I was, and she could always anticipate my next moves. "Only a discussion right now, but since we're all here now, we can make it a meeting. Emily and I have found something to agree on. She thinks people shouldn't have sex with people that they don't want to have sex with. Shirley feels the same, and so do I. It looks like only you and Brenda want to have all of us having sex together." "You need to think about what you said, Kenny. The girls can't live with us, and still have other boy friends. Brenda can't do things with Emily, and still be part of our group. These are things you said to all of us." "All right. I'll take all of them back. Shirley and Emily can date whoever they want to. Brenda can too, once we make a baby for Mama to spoil. You can't date though, Joyce, so don't even try to suggest it." "You're not giving the group idea a real chance, Kenny. You're making it so it's going to split up." Joyce was angry and frustrated. I had already started realizing how much effort she had been putting into trying to keep everything together while I was gone. Brenda was upset too. Only Emily didn't look upset. Shirley had gone over and picked up her sleeping baby. She was sitting on the other couch, holding her son, rocking back and forth with him. She looked over at me and then back to her son's face. "We don't all want the same thing. It doesn't work when people are all pulling their own separate ways. Sex isn't any fun when someone tells you that you need to do it, and who with. We shouldn't have to try to arrange a system so everybody gets a chance to do it with everyone else." "They all want to have sex with you." "I've had sex with all of them, but that was before, when it meant something to each of us. It isn't the same now, ask Shirley." "I already talked to Shirley. She thought it was fine. It doesn't have to be the same. Who said it always had to be the same? Only you. Brenda, was it different when you did it with Kenny that time in the office?" "You mean because you were there too?" Brenda didn't understand the question. I doubted if she had even given it any thought. If the sex was good, to her the rest didn't matter. That's what I thought at least. "Sex with Kenny. Was it the same, better, or worse, when you did it with him at the office? Compared to before, when he was your boyfriend?" I think Joyce realized she was asking the wrong person that kind of question. "It was good both times. Kenny really gets me hot. I love having him touch me." Brenda was smiling, sure that she had given the right answer to the question. Maybe she had. "Why don't we go around the room, and each person can tell what they want to do, and with who. Who wants to go first?" I was looking right at Joyce. I wanted her to be first. She didn't look like she wanted to be first. "Who's first? How about you Brenda?" "I'm not first. You can go first. Tell us, and then we'll all tell you." Brenda had such good instincts about protecting some parts of herself, and such poor ones about the rest. I had more than half expected that the X's would make me go first. This whole group thing was focused on me anyway. I was the only one everyone seemed to agree on. I noticed an almost pleading look in Joyce's expression as she looked at me. All of the X's were looking at me. "Okay, I'll go first. I want sex with Joyce first. After that, I want sex with Joyce and anyone of the rest of the X's that wants to have sex with the both of us." I saw Brenda was smiling at what I said. She had no problem with any of it. Joyce looked a little relieved by how I'd chosen to phrase things, but not totally satisfied because she didn't think I'd been inclusive enough. Emily just looked angry. I'm sure she thought she was being set up to be excluded. She was right. Shirley looked uncertain and doubtful. She really had strong doubts about doing anything with the other girls. She still wanted badly for her and Derek to be able to live with us. "You're next, Joyce." I knew what she was going to say. Probably we all did. "With Kenny, of course, and with anyone who wants to have sex with both of us." She couldn't really say anything else. She'd never admitted to liking girl things just by themselves. Regardless of what she claimed, she liked sex with Brenda, and she liked being overpowered too. Joyce had no aversion to doing girl things "I will do whatever Kenny wants. If he wants to have sex with any of the other girls, I'm willing to do it with them too." Brenda had spoken. As she did so, she looked right at Emily, and then back at me. She smiled when she looked at me, but her look at Emily was more of a challenging stare. "You go next, Emily. What do you want to do?" "I don't know. You don't want me, and I just can't make up my mind if I even want to keep trying to make Brenda love me. I don't know what I want right now." "I do love you, Emily. I just don't understand why you want to pick and choose. Be part of the group, or stop pretending you are." Brenda had stood up and was rubbing her palms on her butt. Maybe her hands were sweating. I didn't want Emily and Brenda to get into it before we gave Shirley a chance to tell us what she wanted. Shirley, what do you want?" "I told you in the car, Kenny. I want you, and I'll try with the other, but I'm not sure I can do it. I don't think about girls that way. I never have. Maybe, after I see how it is, I won't be so nervous about it." "Are you talking about just watching, or do you mean trying it and seeing how you like it that way?" I wondered if Shirley just wasn't sure about what she needed to do with girls. I was the only one in the room that had first hand experience with Shirley, and I was almost positive that, once she got to a certain point, she didn't really know or care who or what was providing her with her pleasure. It was only maximizing the pleasure that she was interested in. "I'd try it, just to see, but remember what I asked you about helping me the first time." "Well, I think we all learned something here today. Emily, Joyce told me that today was supposed to be your day with me. Do you still want to sleep with me?" "The two of us?" "Well, do you have another suggestion?" "You, me, and Brenda?" "No. How about just you and me? I think I only want to have sex with more than one person if it's with Joyce." I saw Emily thinking about what I said. She was looking at Joyce. Emily had been hurt by what Brenda had said to us. By Brenda not indicating any preference for her over any of the other X's. I thought she was considering requesting that Joyce join us, just to get back at Brenda. If she was, she either changed her mind, or else lost her nerve for some reason. "Just us then. Brenda needs to go sleep somewhere else if we do it in my room." "We'll go over to my room at Mama's house. Brenda, tomorrow's your turn. Do you know what you want?" I was almost positive that Brenda would pick both Joyce and me together. If she didn't, Joyce's plan was going to fail. Brenda wasn't a good person to rely on for understanding what needed to be done to break this log jam we had. "I think I'd like to do the same as that time at the office, Kenny. I know Joyce wants to try it again." I could see Emily recoiling from the blow of hearing Brenda's choice. I knew she'd be taking this hard. It had to hurt her knowing that Brenda wanted to branch out in her choice of lovers, by being intimate with Joyce again. "Let's go Emily. Joyce, I'll be back sometime in the morning. I'd like us to spend some time together with the twins. I haven't seen too much of them, and I can see they're really growing." Emily was still looking at Brenda. At first, Brenda returned her gaze, but she dropped her eyes, after only a short time of trying to stare Emily down. Emily and I drove over to Mama's house, going straight to my room there. We didn't make love right away. I held her in my arms, on top of the bed, both of us fully clothed, while Emily gave vent to her anger and her hurt over Brenda's open defection. With Emily, her state of mind depended on the most recent happening. She wasn't going to move onto the next, until she had chewed on the last one sufficiently. "She did that just to punish me for something. I don't know why I keep letting her get away with doing that to me." "Because you love her more than she loves you. It gives Brenda a big advantage knowing that. It's always a mistake to give Brenda that extra leverage. I've been telling you that for three years, but you never seem to believe me." "I do. I believe you, but I can't help myself with her. She still takes advantage of me, just like she did when I first met you." "You allow it, Emily. Sometimes, it seems like you're encouraging her to do that to you. I understand about Brenda's attraction, believe me I do. I've felt it for almost as long as you have. If you want to get along with her better, you have to force her to behave fairly with you." "She doesn't love me. She isn't ever going to either." "I think she loves you. It's just that she's so self centered and narcissistic, she really doesn't have any depth to her feelings for other people. She believes she has the same deep feelings other people have, but if you observe her, for any length of time, you'll see how shallow she really is. You have to either accept this is the way she is, or continue letting her make you unhappy. Brenda doesn't have more to willingly give you. You have to find a way to force her, if you want her to give you what you need." "She really loves you. She's willing to give you whatever you want." "I'm not claiming she doesn't love me, but I make her give me what I want from her. If I didn't, she'd treat me as bad as she treats you. Still, whenever it comes down to a choice between meeting Brenda's needs or meeting mine, hers will always come far ahead of mine. Sacrifice is something other people do for her. I've accepted it, and, if you did too, it would make it easier for you to plan and understand what she'll do in given situations." "I'm through worrying about her any more tonight, Kenny. Make love to me, and help me to forget her for a little while." I thought about what she said. In a way, that probably was a good description of our earlier relationship too. I helped her deal with Brenda's absence. She still associated me with Brenda. Being close to me, she had felt closer to Brenda. "I will. I'll do my best, but tonight is going to be the last time we can do this." "The last time? Why is it the last time? Are you kicking me out of the group?" "I'm not kicking you out, but I can't keep on doing things that make Joyce feel bad. What I did with Shirley, last weekend, and what we're doing here right now, both things hurt Joyce. She puts up with it, because she thinks this way is better for me, but it isn't what she had hoped for. She can share me with other people, but she isn't happy lending me out like this. Your decision excludes her. She means too much to me to keep on hurting her this way. I can't just do it by myself this way, and let it continue hurting her. Brenda recognized this early on. You feel hurt by what she said today, but that was Brenda instinctively protecting her own position. She knew that choosing Joyce would keep her in the group. Staying close to us gets her the security she desperately wants to have." "I don't see why I have to something I don't want to do." Emily had this strong sense of what was fair to her. She didn't want to get what was fair, but she at least understood what it was. "I don't either. I'm fine with your decision. If I had less to lose, I might make the same one you did. I tried to, but it cost me too much to stick with it." "You don't want to live with all of us, but before, you did. This was all your idea." "It all started as an idea I had to get you back. After though, I figured out I wasn't what you wanted. I wanted you, you wanted Brenda, and Brenda wants everything. Joyce wanted me, and, somehow, after I understood that, it made me want her too. Brenda will never willingly give up what she believes my family and I represent for her. We have everything she's ever wanted." "If this is really our last time, let's quit talking about all this other stuff." Emily turned around so that she was facing me. We kissed, and slowly undressed ourselves, and each other. We began gently, but I knew that wasn't going to last very long. That wasn't the type of lovemaking that brought Emily much satisfaction. She wanted me to dominate her, and she feared that I would and could. I felt her sadness, but I knew it wasn't sadness from losing me, or from being rejected by Brenda. Emily had known rejection. All orphans knew it. She was feeling the disappointment of realizing that once again, she hadn't quite managed to fit in. There is an emotional disconnect with orphans. It doesn't matter how long it's been since they were orphaned. You either try too hard to belong, or else you go the other way, trying too hard to not belong. Emily was like a pendulum, going first too far one way, and then switching suddenly, and going back too far the other way. That had been what I didn't realize during our earlier relationship. I could deal with her being one way or the other, but not both ways. We worked ourselves up to the ultimate pinnacle of our physical partnership. Emily frantically resisting my efforts to subdue her, twisting and fighting with all her strength to escape my constant invasion of her body. This was her night, and I wanted to make it as perfect for her as I could. I treated her as harshly as I could force myself to manage. I showed her how weak she was, and how futile it was to try to resist me when I wanted to do something. I took her every way I wanted to, including anally. Twice, she managed to free one of her hands, and she made me pay a price for my brutality to her. What she couldn't resist was the sexual frenzy my treatment of her was causing. Her orgasms were cataclysmic events, sending her into frenzied, seizure like, convulsions. I had never seen her so desperate and needing to be overpowered. I continued on, fucking her into a state of total submission to me. That was exactly where she wanted to be taken. I took away her ability to fight, overcoming all her will to resist me. I broke all her defenses down, and, by doing so, I allowed her to wallow in this masochistic need she had. This was a need she had showed me since the very beginning, a need to be sexually dominated by me. I hadn't discovered yet why she felt this need, only that it was present, and tied in closely with her sexual hungers. Several times I came very close to stopping myself, to quitting right there, rather than risk becoming the kind of man who enjoyed doing what she so wanted done to her. Always in the past, we had stopped well short of where we now went. Each time I felt this nearly overwhelming desire to quit, I was able to rally myself for just a little more effort, another few minutes of providing her the abuse she seemed to enjoy so much. It was good that she finally submitted to me. If not, I might well have taken it too far. I saw the danger to both of us in that. In this final submission of hers, she had opened herself up to all of her worst fears. I was very careful to show her, with my gentle caresses, and many loving kisses, that the fears she had of me were unfounded. When she was at her most vulnerable, I had refused to exploit her, or to force her to do whatever she feared I would. It seemed like she was sure I'd take some further advantage of her. I held her, trying to sooth and reassure her in any way I could think to do so. I kept telling her repeatedly, in every way I knew how to, that she would always be safe around me. I stayed close to her, repeatedly telling her that it was okay, until she finally fell asleep in my arms. She spent the whole night clinging to me desperately, beaten down, but sustained with a renewed hope as well. I didn't know if I'd done the right thing by giving Emily so much of what she'd been seeking from me. She had denied, with her words, in the past, scoffed at my assertion that she wanted to be hurt, or treated bad. Her words belied the observable sexual excitement such treatment evoked from her. We had taken things beyond sex, while still eliciting powerful sexual responses from her. I didn't understand it, but felt like I should allow her to explore this need as safely as I could make it. I worried what would happen to her if she allowed herself to get involved with someone with a strong sadistic bent. When Emily finally awakened, at nine the next morning, having slept for thirteen straight hours, there was a noticeable difference around her eyes. She seemed more relaxed, less guarded. I didn't discount the very real possibility that I was seeing what I wanted to see, rather than what was actually there. Still, it seemed to me she was more at peace with herself, less ready to dispute everything she found, in the slightest way, not to her liking. "Kenny, can we do it one more time, but nice, not like before?" The way she asked me that, it was different than how she would have told me what she wanted before. It was a question now, not a demand. We made love again, or for the first time in a long time, depending on your beliefs about what making love is. We had sex without any type of restraint or coercion. She didn't demand it, and I wasn't offering any. Afterwards, we showered together and got dressed. "Thank you for this morning, Kenny. That was the perfect way for us to say goodbye. That's how I want you to remember us, not like we were last night." Maybe the peacefulness I had seen was just that she had accepted the need to discontinue our association. If so, I had failed in what I'd been attempting with her. We went into the house together, with Emily continuing on without me, straight back to her bedroom. I noticed she didn't pause to greet anyone. In fact she left without saying anything at all. Her quietness worried me. I wondered if I'd pushed her too far. I'd wanted to push her to the edge, and then pull her back. I went to our bedroom to find Joyce. When I got there, Brenda was changing Bertie's diaper, and Bunny was on the bed with Joyce, napping on my wife's stomach. "Brenda, why don't you bring me Bertie, and go spend some time with Emily? She really needs to understand that you do care for her a lot. Yesterday, when we had our discussion, she felt like no one here cared for her. She could really use some loving tenderness from you this morning." When Brenda left, ready, as usual to do what I told her to do, Joyce and I had a discussion about what I'd done with Emily during the last afternoon and evening. Joyce, ever the kinky voyeur, became excited, from my descriptions of what I'd done, and from hearing about Emily's reactions to all of it. I knew, without being told, that she was wishing, fervently, that she had been there to witness what I'd done to Emily. We weren't normal, but I've tried to convey that to you. If someone had been sitting in our bedroom, listening to our conversation, he'd probably have run away, as fast as possible, from both of us. We had been talking for about thirty minutes before Brenda came back to the bedroom, crying, to tell us that Emily was packing her things to leave. She wanted to know what she should do. I felt like she wanted me to give her permission to go with Emily. I thought that was the best thing under the circumstances. Emily was starting to worry me. This was just another example of me putting a theory to the test without first putting in the effort to research the possible consequences. Dad was right about it being a problem I needed to work on. It had to do with my lack of patience to try out my ideas. "Take her to Mama's, Brenda. Let her move into my old bedroom, the one that Jane and Grace moved into before. Tell her you'll come visit her there, for sleepovers, just like the two of you did back when you were kids." "She'll want us to do stuff together if I tell her that, Kenny." "That might be good too. Let her know that you still love her. This isn't a good time for you to stop being close to her." "Today was my turn, Kenny. Don't you remember?" "Today's your turn to show me you can be a good friend to someone who loves you a lot. Don't be selfish today, Brenda. Emily can't afford for you to be that way." "Okay. You'll save me my turn though, right?" "Joyce will see to it. Her pussy's all wet just from anticipating all the nasty things we were going to make her do today." Brenda flashed us both her prettiest smile, the one she told me she practiced for countless hours while looking at the mirror her dad had hung for her in her bedroom. Brenda wanted me to know that it wasn't as easy as it looked for her to seem so pretty all the time. Knowing that Joyce and I were going to miss having our time with her, seemed like enough for Brenda right then. She took comfort in knowing she was wanted, and able to excite people so easily. Shirley was also recruited to help Brenda and Emily move Emily's stuff over to Mama's house. I called over there, telling Gerta to expect them. I also told her to pay close attention to how Emily was behaving, and to have Mama spend as much time with her as she could. I was still nervous that I'd gone too far with the way I treated her. "Joyce, I'm going to have to go over there in the next day or two, and fuck both of them together. I probably shouldn't have treated Emily like I did. I'm worried that I might have gone too far." "You said she wanted it. From what you told me, she should feel great about it. I don't see what there is to worry about." "I think she did like it. I think she thought it was different than I meant it to be. It sure made her hotter when I did those things. She was going crazy from the things I was doing to her, She couldn't get enough of it, but it was also pretty scary. I don't think I'll ever want to try doing something like that again." "Don't say that. I was wondering if I'd like it if you did all that to me. You get pretty rough with me sometimes, and I always liked it." "Not like this, Joyce. If you'd seen it, you'd realize what I mean." "Today was Brenda's day, but she isn't here. I guess it's Shirley's turn then." "No, today is a day off for me. I don't even want to think about doing anything today." ------- Chapter 10 I was sitting on the floor in my living room Sunday morning, Shirley and Joyce having decided that I could be trusted to keep an eye on three sleeping babies, while they rustled something up for lunch. Brenda and Emily were still over at Mama's house. I had spoken with Mama, and told her about my worry for Emily. I didn't go into any details about what she and I had done, just concentrating on my worry about whether Emily might feel abandoned by all of us. Mama told me that there had been some kind of large rift, between Emily and both her parents, that had gone on for over a month. Mama had heard Joyce discussing it with Brenda. It had started out with an argument about Emily's decision not to go to Columbia in the Fall, but had ended up with Emily telling her parents that she didn't want to be separated from her lover, Brenda. Apparently, Emily's parents had no idea of the true nature of her friendship with Brenda. Their reaction had been extreme, and had left Emily devastated. To me, this partially explained the high receptivity Emily had demonstrated for being abused and punished by me. She must have been carrying a lot of guilt over disappointing her parents like she had. I was glad that I'd thought to send Emily over to Mama's house. I hadn't been told about her situation back at her parent's house. I had known that Emily's father had gotten upset when she had elected not to attend Columbia. This explained at least part of Emily's non-cooperative mood lately. I wondered if she had been consciously pushing people away from her, deliberately being obstructive, hoping, with her display of recalcitrant behavior, to bring down punishment from Brenda, and the rest of the group, on herself. "Is Emily still planning on attending KU, Kenny?" I heard Mama's question, realizing that I hadn't thought to ask Emily about that. I really didn't know what any of her plans were. I guess I had been hoping that she would confide her future plans to either Brenda or Mama, and they would tell me her intentions. I wasn't going to be able to make any plans about the group, with Joyce, not without knowing what Emily was planning. Lunch for us turned out to be leftovers, the remains of two meals that had originally been cooked by Brenda. I was starting to get the idea that Joyce and Shirley didn't really know how to cook. We needed to discuss who was going to take over the task of cooking for all of us. I had a real fondness for eating well. I had gotten used to it, and it wasn't something I was planning to give up again, not willingly. I wasn't sure what would happen at work the next day. Joyce and Ellen were working together, and had been for several weeks. Joyce reported that she and Ellen weren't having any problems working with each other, but the two of them hadn't really clicked together, not like all of us had been hoping for. They each had their own ways of doing things, and these differences were sometimes getting in the way of them being productive together. They both needed to work on getting into some kind of sync, and working out some strategy changes, so they could both be on the same page, when it came to communicating together. Several times already, Shirley had needed to be brought in to help resolve some minor conflict that arose between the two. Joyce wasn't used to having her subordinates decide that their way was superior to hers. Ellen wasn't used to someone looking over her shoulder, constantly checking on the way she was doing things. It was a very big job that Ellen would be handling after Joyce left for school. They needed to find a way to mesh better. They really needed to gain confidence in the skills that each possessed. Time was becoming critical, because it was already the middle of July. We only had another five weeks or so before Joyce was going to be gone from the office. The thing that was worrying my father was the lack of any credible fall back position, in the event Ellen and Joyce couldn't develop some workable relationship. Joyce had just gotten too entrenched, handling all the details in our shipping, storage, and delivery mechanism. She was the only one in the company capable of keeping all the parts running smoothly with each other. That fact alone had my father very worried. It had just happened that he was too busy expanding to worry about systematizing the shipping, storage, and delivery protocols. Everything was too fluid in those areas in any case, because we were constantly adding new customers and locations. When something new needed to be added, Joyce would fit it into the system, which she apparently kept mostly stored inside her head. She was somehow able to make it all run well. It baffled the rest of us, as to how she managed to do it. Because Joyce made it run so smoothly, no one had been particularly concerned, until she went into the hospital to have the twins. In the three days she was out of phone contact, there were several serious shipping mistakes made. Luckily, they were caught early enough, so we were able to work around them, getting the right products delivered, almost on time. In a way, it had been a good thing it had happened, because it served as a wake up call for the rest of us, making it very clear we needed to do something to assure continuity in the shipping, storage, and distribution areas of our businesses, just in case something happened to Joyce in the future. Joyce herself was having our resident computer whiz set up something called a product data base for us, which she said would allow the system that was already in motion to become easier for all of us to keep track and coordinate like she did. What she wasn't telling us, was that it would also allow her, with the help of her modem, to port everything from Bolling, to wherever she was. Joyce had her own plan for ensuring continuity. The personal computer she had couldn't possibly handle everything we were using on our much larger company computer, but it would allow her to access the overall production figures from each baking plant. This, along with her shipping, storage, and delivery figures, as well as arrival and departure product flow from each hub point, would allow her the ability to keep close tabs on how everything was running. She had arranged to be faxed daily, with all the information on the railroad's shipping schedule for our products, along with our own, separate, listing of each of the cargo manifests. She couldn't process all the data on her personal computer, but she could take the product the company computer processed from all the raw production and sales data, and, working from that, devise a plan for scheduling new shipments. It was like having access to what was in the warehouse, without being able to take any current inventory. It wasn't perfect, but Joyce believed it would be adequate. At the time, we didn't even know that Joyce was working on having all this capability up in Lawrence. If we had known, we wouldn't have been so worried. We believed we were all going to have to depend on Ellen. All of us were nervous, anxious to see if Joyce and Ellen could bridge their differences, finding some way to work well together. Monday, Brenda and Emily drove into work together, in Brenda's car. Emily spent most of her time with the babies that morning, while Brenda took care of things in the kitchen, and was preparing another one of her wonderful meals for all of us. I came up to my old office at eleven thirty, to look in on the twins, and find out what we were having for lunch. I also wanted to see if I could detect anything, by watching and observing how Emily was acting around the rest of the people in our group. Joyce had taken over my office, installing Ellen in what used to be hers. As soon as I showed up, and started talking to Joyce, everyone else gathered in her office too. Even Emily came out, carrying Bunny, while Brenda brought in Bertie, and Shirley carried Derek. Ellen came in from her office as well. "Brenda, you aren't letting my lunch burn are you?" I was only half kidding when I asked the question. I hadn't had any breakfast, and dinner the night before had been cold cut sandwiches, and milk. I had told Joyce I'd be eating my dinners over at Mama's house from then on, until Brenda returned back home to resume preparing our meals. She and Shirley both told me they would be joining me in eating there also. "Relax, Kenny. I'm cooking spaghetti and meatballs. The sauce is all ready, I've got it on low simmer, all I need to do now is throw the spaghetti noodles in the pot to cook. We're having a nice salad, with some garlic bread to go with it. Emily wants to talk to you now, privately, before lunch. You go with her, and I'll call your father to tell him we're eating at twelve thirty." I looked over at Emily, and then started heading through the office, into the bedroom. When Emily stepped through, still holding Bunny, I shut the door behind her, and we walked back to the nursery. Inside the nursery, I shut that door as well. I turned and smiled at her expectantly. "Kenny, thank you for sending Brenda. She helped me, a lot. We talked about the differences in the way we see this group thing. I told her how I'd been looking at it, and she explained her way. Did you know that Brenda thinks she's your wife?" "No. She never said she thought that. I don't see what difference that would make though. If she wants to think she is, it's all right with me." "It makes a big difference to her. In her mind, this is all some polygamous relationship, and all the other X's are her sister wives. She doesn't see it as a competition that all of the other X's have already lost to Joyce." "I don't see it that way either, Emily. Joyce told me the same thing that Brenda told you. She said all the X's were one wife to me. I thought she meant that all of you loved me like a wife would, not that she thought of all the X's as my wives. If she did think of all of you as co-wives, I can see where that would make a difference." "The only thing that makes a difference to me is how you see me, as far as what our relationship is, and what it's going to be." Bunny started fussing, squirming around in her arms and then he started crying. Bunny cried quietly, not insistently like Little Bertie did. "He's hungry. Let me take him to Joyce, then I'll be right back. Don't leave." Emily left with Bunny, and I tried to figure out what she was getting at with what she was saying. I had been somewhat surprised by what she had told me. Emily had told me that Brenda considered herself a wife of mine, but Brenda herself had never talked to me about anything like that. I had always assumed that Brenda wasn't interested in putting a label on what we were to each other. I'd have to treat her differently in the future, now that I did know. At various times, in my relationships with all the X's, I had felt like I might marry each of them. I figured that was just normal for any young boy, with a girlfriend he loved, and who he was physically intimate with. Sex leads to thoughts of permanence, At least, it always had with me. I'd thought of marriage because I had loved all of them like that, at one time or another. Now, I loved Joyce like that, and we were, in actual fact, married. I was definitely planning on making Brenda pregnant. I knew, from Joyce's pregnancy, that having a baby with someone, drew you much closer to them. No matter what might happen later, having a baby in common, would ensure this permanent bond. How could it not? The idea that Brenda considered herself to already be my wife, made me feel better about what I'd promised Mama. My thoughts were interrupted by Emily returning. "Joyce is feeding the twins now. Brenda says I'm to tell you we're eating in half an hour. Let me tell you what I've been thinking about, Kenny. It's different than what the other X's think and feel. I love you, and I love Brenda. I like Joyce and Shirley too, but I don't love them. If it were me alone deciding, I wouldn't have sex with either Joyce or Shirley. If I was married to you, and to Brenda, and both of you were married to Joyce and Shirley, I could be married to them too." She stopped, looking uncertain and vulnerable, rather than angry, and expecting to have to fight me to win her side of some confrontation. I liked the change, although I didn't really trust it yet. "I'm married to Joyce. Joyce might be married to all you X's, or feel like you're all my wives. I don't want to try to change you, or force you to do what makes you feel bad or uncomfortable. Joyce already accepts you, I'm pretty sure, and she seems to want all of this to revolve around me. I see it differently, like it all has to revolve around her. She's the one who works hard to try to hold all of this together, and it's a really difficult thing to do that. I've thought about it, and the only way it might ever work is if it was one of you X's that was the focus of this group. It would have to be either Joyce or Brenda, and I'd vote for Joyce." "I'd vote for Brenda." She laughed when she said it. I knew she meant it, but I also knew she didn't believe that was what would ever be decided by the group. "No matter how it turns out, Brenda will still be your main focus, Emily. You have to be able to accept that you won't always be Brenda's main focus. I think it would be healthier for you and me, if we allowed Joyce to be Brenda's main focus. We wouldn't always have to be competing, and we both know that Brenda's real main focus will always be Brenda." "What about Shirley?" "Same thing for Shirley, as it is for Brenda, but for a different set of reasons. Shirley needs Joyce's stability, just like I do. If she focuses on Joyce, she'll be concentrating on the most stable part of this group. All the rest of us might, and probably will, rebel at some point, but not Joyce. She'll always be right there, to help us get back to where we should be." "The biggest problem I have with the whole group idea is you not letting Brenda and I stay together, like we both want." "That's wishful thinking on your part, and you'll need to finally admit it. It's only what you want. Brenda didn't come to us to say she had reservations about being with any member of the group. You've been in bed with both her and Joyce, so you've seen how she gets with Joyce. The only way you're ever going to retain a part of Brenda is to let her go, so she can be with Joyce, and all the rest of us. You can't own her, or reserve her affections or attention just for yourself. I know you want to, but you can't. She'd never allow it, and it wouldn't be good for her if she tried." "I can't help being possessive, Kenny. I've really tried. I can share her with you, maybe, but not with everyone." "It isn't your choice, to share her or not. Brenda has made her choice pretty clear already. You know it too. Joyce and I are both ready to share Brenda with you, but only if you can accept that you have to willingly share yourself with the rest of the group too. The key word is willingly. This is the same for you as it is for Shirley. The honest truth is that Brenda, Joyce and I are the core members of our group. You and Shirley can only be satellites, revolving around us. Joyce thinks both of you will one day be able to be fully integrated into the group, but I'm not so confident." "Does it bother you that I love Brenda more than I love you?" An interesting question, and the first time she'd ever come out and admitted what I already had known. I felt relieved that it was out in the open between us now. It would make things easier if we all understood our place on everyone else's pecking order. "No, why should that bother me? I love Joyce more than I love you. This isn't some competition, where any of us have to be the most loved, by everybody, or by anybody. Sex can represent many things. I like fucking all of you, but it doesn't mean the same thing to me with each of you. It doesn't have to. I don't think you'd like it if Brenda, Shirley, or Joyce treated you like I sometimes do, but, I really do believe you very much like having me treat you like I did the other night. Maybe you even need someone like me to do that to you once in awhile. I like fucking Brenda, but I like it a lot more when she's going crazy, trying to stick her tongue in as deep as she can in Joyce's pussy. I wouldn't want a steady diet of nothing but that though. Joyce likes to be forced, and played with roughly too, but she also likes to be treated nice and gently too." "I didn't like that time with Joyce. I did that to her because Brenda had just done it, and I was mad at her for wanting to. I'm not as possessive now, when it's you and Brenda, but Joyce and Brenda really bothers me." "Joyce is mad at you about that too. She practically begged me to let her watch me when I hold you down and fuck you as rough as you can take it. She wants to see it when I make you submit to me. You think of Joyce as competition with Brenda, but she isn't. Joyce is more like me. She wants to dominate you too." "She does? She'd want to watch us while you fucked me rough, like you did on Saturday?" "It makes her really hot. Joyce has a wild side to her. You've only seen her being taken advantage of, by you and Brenda. There's this other side, a side that might appeal to you. She gets as worked up as anyone, even Shirley, and Shirley goes absolutely crazy. You should hear some of the things Shirley says when I've really got her going. Joyce thinks I should do the same thing I do to you, to her, but I don't think she has any idea how rough you want to be treated sometimes." "You'd hurt her if you did her like you did me on Saturday. My butt was bleeding after. I'm still sore back there." "I was afraid I'd gone too far, I'm sorry. I was worried that I'd hurt you. It got a little too intense there near the end." "No, don't apologize. I asked for it. I wasn't complaining. I was just saying that she couldn't take your doing that to her. I can take it, but not all the time. Saturday was great though. It made me calmer. Brenda says you fucked some sense into me." "You'll have to take it, when Joyce and I do you together. You won't have any choice. Do you ever wonder how I'd treat you if it was Brenda, and the two of us together? I was thinking I might have to treat her just like I treat you. She'd hate it if I did her rough though. She isn't like you and Joyce that way. I could do it like that with Joyce, because I know she'd like it too. I couldn't do it so rough though, although I doubt if she'd complain. If we did anything with Joyce, you, and me, I'd force both of you to do anything I wanted. I wouldn't let either one of you decide about anything." I had been watching Emily's reactions closely. I was slowly selling her on the idea of us using Brenda for light and loving sessions, and Joyce for those down and dirty times. Emily had two distinct sides to her. I knew I could switch my lovemaking styles around to facilitate satisfying her from either side. Joyce would prefer the down and dirty side of Emily anyway. I wasn't sure where Shirley would fit in with Emily. There had to be something that they could share in common. "If I agreed to do anything that Brenda tells me to do, would that be enough for you? I promise I'll do everything she tells me to do." I had wondered how Emily would try to get around having to submit to Joyce's authority over her. From the point of view of how things actually were, this way she was offering would be better. Emily was Brenda's, but Brenda was Joyce's and mine "If you did it without complaining about it, that would be enough. Do you mean you'd do everything she tells you, just to please her? You wouldn't argue with her, or try to negotiate your way out of doing it?" "To please her, and to obey her too. She told me I had to promise to obey her all the time. That's what I'd want to do anyway." "You must already know that Brenda will tell you to do anything Joyce or I tell her. What difference does it make to you who gives you the order? You'll still end up doing it anyway." "It makes a difference. If she tells me to do it, I won't feel bad, because I'll be doing what she wants. I wouldn't feel that way if it was Joyce saying I had to do it." I didn't understand why it made any difference, but it was like what Kathleen Ulliott had thought, about the difference between reporting to either me or my Dad. It had made a big difference to her. At least, this way, I could quit worrying about Emily now. She had found a way to stay with Brenda. A way so she could rationalize to herself that it was okay to do things with Joyce and Shirley. We went back to Joyce's office to join the others. My Dad was already there, talking with Joyce and Ellen. He was doing his best not to watch as Joyce nursed Little Bertie. Brenda was in the kitchen, and Shirley was watching Derek and Bunny sleeping on the bed in the bedroom. As soon as we came out of the nursery though, she picked up Derek, and took him back to his crib. She came back a minute later, and took Bunny to his. Joyce got up and started carrying Little Bertie back to her crib as well. I took in all of this movement, hoping it was a sign that we were finally ready to get something good to eat. At lunch, Joyce and my Dad were talking about the desirability of separating the shipping, storage, and delivery functions of the cereal and baking companies from those of our vending operations. Dad wanted us to start doing it right away, but Joyce was opposed. She said it would make a lot more work at each of the hubs, and make her job more difficult as well. Ellen told my father that she could break up all the shipments into separate reports for the vending business and the bakeries, without Joyce needing to change anything she was currently doing. She said you could separate items by their product codes. Joyce said it wasn't possible to do that. Ellen got up from the table, heading over to Joyce's office, and we all followed her. We stood around watching her as she used Joyce's computer, showing us how easy it was to do exactly what she had claimed. It only took her about ten minutes to show all the data for each product type. Once she did that, she could show the current location and status for each product code also. All the data was in the computer, but Joyce and my father hadn't known how to access it. Joyce got extremely excited from watching how easily Ellen was accomplishing what my Dad had wanted. She hadn't known there was a way to separate each individual product out by its code number. Satisfied with Ellen's demonstration, we all went back to finish eating. Joyce grabbed her plate, moving herself over to sit closer to Ellen. As the rest of us ate, Joyce began questioning Ellen for other information about separating data using the capabilities of our computer software. Joyce's way of approaching computers was to ask someone knowledgeable about how to accomplish a specific task. She had learned to do only what she thought she needed to do. Ellen, on the other hand, had begun studying the software manuals for the program our computer guy was leasing from IBM. In the course of her study, she had happened across a lot more ways to use the software. Ellen was very bright, and she was able to understand how the computer could be used to display it's data in many different ways. For the past month, she'd been staying late, and experimenting on Joyce's computer. After lunch, Joyce and Ellen were still discussing the way the computer software stored our sales and product information. Brenda and Emily were busy in the kitchen, my Dad had gone back to his office, and Shirley was in the nursery with the three babies. I decided I should go talk to Shirley, while we would have this chance to speak privately. "I just spoke to Emily before lunch, and it looks like we've arrived at a comfortable way for her to be able to join us." "That's good, Kenny. I'm sure that will make things a lot easier for Joyce. Now, if we could only find a way for me too." I heard the pessimism in Shirley's words. She still believed doing the girl things wouldn't be possible for her. She had expressed a willingness to try, but she didn't think she could do it. "I was wondering what we could do to make things a lot easier for you, Shirley. There has to be a way to help you too." "How is Emily going to change from the things she objected to before?" "She's willing to do whatever Brenda tells her to do. Brenda will make her do whatever Joyce and I tell her. Emily says she won't mind it, not if it's Brenda that tells her." "She's lucky she can do that. It wouldn't work for me. I wish it would." "It's only the thing about having sex with the other girls that bothers you, right?" "That, and them having sex with each other too. I try not to worry about what Brenda and Emily are doing, but I can't always manage it. I wasn't raised like that. That's why it's so hard for me, because I have to go against everything I've always been taught was right. I want to be able to do it too, and fit in with you guys, but, deep down, I think girls doing that with each other is wrong." "I don't know why it would be, not if they were enjoying it. How is it any different than you and I fucking?" "You're a guy, and I'm a girl, for us to want to do that is normal." "What about what you like to do with screwdrivers, is that normal too?" "That's just how I masturbate. All the X's masturbate. I think most girls do." "Why can't you think the same way about doing girl things, like it was another way to masturbate?" "I just can't. I'm sorry, Kenny, but it's more than just masturbating. They're having sex." "I don't see it that way, Shirley. I think it's all part of the same thing. Even fucking is part of the same thing. I have sex and masturbate because it makes me feel good. Some things feel better than others to me, but it all feels good. Back when I was watching you do things to yourself with that big oven screwdriver, that was sexy for me too, because I could see how hot it was making you. I reacted to it the same as I did when I was watching Emily lick Brenda's pussy, or when I saw Joyce and Brenda licking each other's pussy. Doing things that are sexy is fun, so is fucking, or watching other people fucking. You should know that already. I still remember how hard it was to get you to cum in the beginning. Sometimes you just couldn't cum at all. You needed to get yourself turned on, quite a lot, before you could even have any hopes of cumming." "That was different, Kenny. That was when I was just beginning. Now, I know how to get myself ready to enjoy sex. I can usually have orgasms almost every time now. We didn't have any problem with that in Philadelphia. I came lots of times. Doing things with girls would make it less likely that I could have an orgasm." "That was because your mind still remembered all those good cums I'd given you in the past. Your body knew that something good was going to happen. That's why you want me to get you all worked up first, because you want your body to be more receptive to any touches you get. I want to try an experiment, Shirley, but you need to trust me. I want to blindfold you, and then start playing with you. When you get hot enough, I'm going to lick your pussy. Maybe though, it won't be me licking it. It might be one of the X's, or even Ellen. You won't know who it is, because I'm going to make you keep your hands up, behind your head." "Not here. I can't do anything like that here." "Right here. The kids are all sleeping. We'll do our experiment right here, on the floor." "I can't, Kenny. Not right here in broad daylight. I'd never be able to concentrate enough to get going. I'd be worried about who might come in and see us." "I can go get that oven screwdriver, and leave you alone in here with it for awhile. Would that help?" "You still have it? I thought you needed to return it." "I can get it. You remember how big that handle was, don't you? You'd need to be a little excited, just to fit it in you. If you let me blindfold you, I'll go get it." "I can't, not here. If you bring it home tonight, I'll let you blindfold me. Now I'm going to be thinking about this for the rest of the day. That's what you were planning, wasn't it?" "Maybe, I was thinking that talking to you about it would start you thinking about sex. I know how much you used to like that big screwdriver handle. I thought you might start wanting to feel it in you again. If we wait until tonight, Shirley, it will definitely be one of the X's who'll be licking that pussy of yours. I'll bring home the screwdriver for you, but you'll need to decide first if you're willing to accept those terms. If you agree to everything, all you have to do is ask me for it. If you do ask, you need to be ready to let me blindfold you. I already told you that one of the girls will be licking your pussy if you do." "Maybe if you just let me have the screwdriver for awhile, this time. Later, I might let you do that other." "No. I know you, Shirley. You'd lock your door, and never let anyone else in." "I'd let you in, and we wouldn't even need that blindfold." "Shirley, we're starting to run out of time. Sooner or later, you need to decide if you want to be part of our group or not. I already told you that you could live with us, but not be a part of the group, as far as any sex went. You could even date other people, if you weren't part of the group. The only thing you'd be giving up is having any more sex with me." Shirley sat there, not saying anything. We hadn't really changed at all from our previous positions. I felt pretty certain that Shirley would be okay with doing girl things, once she had gotten some experience. She had to decide if she was willing to give it a try on her own. I'd come as far with helping her as I could justify to myself. The rest was up to her. I was looking at Bunny sleeping in his crib. He looked so peaceful. I wondered if his life was going to turn out as complicated as mine had become. I felt Shirley's arms sliding inside mine, from behind, as she circled my waist. She moved in close and started hugging me to her. "I don't want to stop doing things with you, Kenny. I loved what we did in Philadelphia. I think Joyce would let you have sex alone with me, if you asked her to." I turned around, putting my own hands on her ass, pulling her in tight, so she could feel my arousal. I knew that she was already decided. I kissed her, feeling the heat of her breath in my mouth. Already, her tongue attacked mine, a sure sign that she was heating up. I broke the kiss and moved back, away from her. "Joyce would do it, Shirley, because she wants all the X's together. It would bother her to do it though. She'd be jealous, and, after awhile, she'd resent you for it. I'm the one who's telling you no. I'm not allowing any exceptions, not for any of you. If you want me, and the kind of sex I can give you, you'll have to make up your mind to do what I say. If you can't or won't accept that, then we can't be together any more." I already knew she'd do what I asked her. I felt bad that I'd been forced to make it an ultimatum for her. I was going to tell Joyce that Shirley shouldn't be forced to participate in any of the girl things, after she had tried it a few times, if she still didn't like it. I still was confident that she would come to accept doing things with girls, as long as I made certain to see her properly excited first. That first time with Brenda and Joyce together, I remember how concerned I'd been about how Brenda would react when we actually got down to having her lick Joyce, but I needn't have worried. Shirley was going to get the same opportunity, and I hoped she took to it even half as well as Brenda had. If not, I was going to have to rethink this strategy I'd come up with. "Bring the screwdriver home tonight, Kenny. I'll try it like you want. I don't have to do that back to the girl though, right?" "No, you won't have to lick her too, not unless you want me to fuck you like I'm going to be fucking her, while she licks you." "You'll fuck me first, before I let her lick me, right?" "No. I'll play with you while Joyce and I watch you playing with the screwdriver. After you're ready, she'll lick you, and I'll fuck her. When Brenda did it with Joyce, she really wanted me to fuck her, so we didn't have this come up. I only fuck the one who's doing the licking." Shirley made a crinkled up face at me, like she was swallowing something sour. All the X's liked to negotiate. It must be a women's trait or something. Shirley was trying to stack the deck in her favor. I might have let her get away with it for this first time, but I felt I needed to be fair. I hadn't let Brenda get away with that with Joyce, and I'd made a big fuss about her doing that to Emily. I knew Joyce wouldn't object, but I still thought it was only fair that Shirley reciprocate. "If I did that, you'd have to already be started with fucking me. I'd need to have that happening, in order to be able to face doing that." "Shirley, you know you're going to do it. Why keep trying to make it a bigger deal than it is? By the time I have you sticking your tongue in Joyce's pussy, you'll be so hot you'd do anything. I'm just hoping Joyce's pussy muffles the sound of some of the things you'll be saying when I'm slamming my cock into you, doggy style. What about the babies? I don't want them being kept awake all night listening to you screaming when you cum." "They won't understand what I'm saying, Kenny. We could put Derek in with Bertie and Bunny. I still have his old bassinet. Maybe Brenda will sleep in there with them, until we're done. We could use my bedroom." "We could go over to Mama's house, and use my room there. Mama always liked hearing you screaming. Do you want me to ask Brenda if she'll watch all the babies tonight? I'll have to tell her why we'll be gone, and for how long." Shirley stood there, four or five feet away. She knew she'd be committing herself if she told me to ask Brenda. If she was going to back out, she knew she had to do it now. There was still uncertainty on her face. I told her to take some time to think about it, and to make sure she let me know before three thirty, so I'd have time to check out one of the oven screwdrivers from maintenance. I didn't tell her all my screwdrivers from before, were still wrapped in a towel, stored in my closet, back at Mama's house. I had turned and was almost to the nursery door when Shirley spoke. "Ask Brenda, Kenny." ------- Chapter 11 I found Emily and Brenda working in the kitchen, putting everything back in order from the lunch we'd just had. "Brenda, Joyce and I are taking Shirley over to Mama's tonight for a few hours. We need for you to watch all three babies. Can you do that for us?" I saw the look that passed between Brenda and Emily. "Kenny, we thought you'd be with me tonight. Remember, it's still my turn, because I missed it before?" "Brenda, I thought tonight was going to be our night too, and I was looking forward to it. Shirley just told me she's ready to try it with Joyce and me tonight, and I told her I'd set it up for us." "This is a good time of the month for making a baby too, Kenny. You haven't forgotten about that, have you?" "Brenda, you finish up in here, while I go talk to Joyce. When I'm done, I'll take you up to the roof, and show you what it looks like from way up there. We don't even have to count it as part of your time with me. Tomorrow, if you can get Emily to do it, I'd like to fuck both of you in your room, together. Wednesday is Joyce's day, and she wants you to join us then too. You're going to be getting so much of my dick this week, that you'll be begging me to leave you alone, so you can rest your tired little kitty." "Really? When you do it with us when it isn't our day, that doesn't count?" "The only thing that counts is that everyone gets to have a day. That's all Joyce wants. Hurry up and get things finished in here. I'll be back in five minutes. Will you be ready to go then?" Brenda nodded that she would, and I watched Emily's face. I could see some of her old resentment, but she didn't say anything to me. I was going to need to tell Brenda to have a talk with Emily about controlling her jealousy better. I also needed to get Emily more comfortable with Joyce very soon. I had visions in the back of my mind about Joyce and I both treating Emily very roughly. By herself, Joyce could never overpower Emily, but with my help, it would be very easy for her. Given the way Emily usually reacted to rough treatment, having Joyce participating with me should make a huge difference in her attitude towards Joyce. I needed to be careful that Brenda and Emily didn't gang up on Joyce after though. I went looking for my wife. "Joyce, can I talk with you for a minute, in private?" She and Ellen were still talking about computers, and Ellen was pulling up lots of pieces of different data on Joyce's computer screen. Joyce seemed reluctant to take a break from what they were doing. "It's about Shirley and us going over to Mama's house tonight." Joyce's head came away from the monitor finally when I said that. "Ellen, can you give us just a minute, please?" Ellen moved off to her own office. I knew she was dying to find out what this was all about. She had always been too interested in my business or in Shirley's. I started wondering how Joyce would react if I told her I thought I should fuck Ellen a few times? I didn't know why that had suddenly popped up in my mind. I wouldn't want her as part of our family group, but, if she was going to be a part of our company, I needed to have a better feeling about her reliability and loyalty, before we left for Lawrence. "You seem to be learning a lot from Ellen, about this computer stuff." I was curious about how Joyce was reacting to being the student rather than the teacher. "What's this about going to Mama's tonight?" Joyce had brought me back from my reverie with her question. "I talked to Emily and Shirley today. I think I've found a way to make this group thing work, but it's going to be a little different from what you were planning on. Shirley has agreed to have sex with both of us tonight, over in my room at Mama's house. Brenda already said she would watch all the babies for us." "Tonight? Kenny, I need to study those manuals tonight. Ellen has been showing me what she's been able to learn from them. I don't really have the time tonight." "Joyce, I thought you wanted me to give this group thing a fair test? I've gone to a lot of trouble, for you, to get some things fixed, so it was all set up. You need to decide what is more important to you. You can study those manuals tomorrow, here at work. Tonight, we're doing Shirley. Tomorrow night, you can study while I'm doing Emily and Brenda. On Wednesday, you and I are doing Brenda. Thursday, we're doing Emily. You can't be bringing your work home with you every night. We have a family now, and they need your attention more than this business does. I'm taking Brenda up to the roof now, and we'll try to get a baby started up there. I'm was also thinking that it might be a good idea for me to fuck Ellen a few times, before we leave for Lawrence. I want you to think about that first though, and let me know what you think." "I've created a monster. Kenny, you can't just spring things on me like this. We barely have time to get things ready, before we leave, as it is. If we keep up the schedule you're suggesting, I'll be too tired to get any work done." "Okay. Who should we cancel then? You tell me who, and I'll do it." "No. Did you really get Emily to agree to Thursday?" "Brenda's going to make her do it. We're both going to treat her rough. You'll see how she gets when I force her to take whatever I decide I'm giving her. Unless that's one of the ones you want to cancel?" I could see the excitement in Joyce's eyes. I knew Emily was going to be in for a long and rough night on Thursday. "Tonight, what time are we going to go over to Mama's? I'll need to feed the twins, and put them down before we leave. Shirley has to get Derek down too. How long are we going to be gone?" "Until we both make Shirley cum so much that she begs us to stop. Of course, we won't listen to her then, unless you've gotten your fill to. We could cancel though, if you're really too busy?" "I'd have all of tomorrow to study. Ellen can be a lot of help to me. You won't believe how well she's learned all this stuff, Kenny. She knows a lot more than I do about this software. Why did you say you thought you should sleep with her?" "I don't want to sleep with her. I thought it might be good for me to fuck her a few times. Good fucking makes girls feel more loyal. Ellen has had a difficult time with loyalty in the past. That worries me. I don't want to take too many chances with her while we're all up in Lawrence." "You just want to fuck her, that's all. How will you do it?" "You can't always tell what might happen. For right now, I'd feel better about trusting her, if I'd had my dick in her. I probably should have done it before, and saved myself a lot of trouble with her." "Why are you taking Brenda up to the roof? We've got that bed in there, and no one ever uses it." "You want me to fuck Brenda in there while you and Ellen are working out here? You know the mess she makes when I get her going. I'm not sure Shirley is ready to see me doing Brenda at the office, and Emily might have a big problem with it too." "Go tell them that you're going to fuck Brenda in the bedroom. If they don't like it, they can cover their ears or something. Would you get mad if Ellen and I walked through, on our way to the kitchen for some coffee? I just want to see how Ellen reacts to seeing you and Brenda fucking." Joyce's eyes were two beady, shining, points of light. I recognized that look. All of this was one big turn on for her. I could see she wanted to be a part of the planning, something about that turned her on as well. It had to be part of some control thing she needed to have. I went in and told Brenda that there had been a change in plans, that we were going to need to fuck right on the bed next door. She just smiled. "Emily, you need to stay here in the kitchen while we're fucking. After I'm done, you can come out. Maybe Brenda will still be horny then. If she orders you to do things with her then, you'll do what she asks, right?" Emily was trapped. Did she mean what she told me, or was it another attempt to buy herself some time? "Emily, you come in and watch Kenny fucking me. He's going to get me pregnant today, and you should be there. She can watch, can't she?" Brenda turned to me. I knew she was taking control of Emily for me. She knew that her control of Emily was much stronger than mine. She wanted me to be sure to know that it was. If Brenda was going to be mine and Joyce's to control, then Emily was going to be hers. I understood that now. Brenda needed to be on top somewhere. I nodded that it was okay. I told Brenda to get undressed, and I'd be right with her. I went to find Shirley again. "Shirley, Brenda and I are going to be fucking in the bedroom. We're trying to make her pregnant. You can stay in here if you don't want to look, or to hear anything. Brenda and I don't mind if you want to watch though. Emily is going to be watching too." "What about tonight?" "All arranged. Joyce is looking forward to it, and so am I. I've got to go, Brenda is naked, and I'm afraid to leave her alone for too long like that with Emily in the same room, and Joyce right next door. We are still on for tonight, right?" Shirley just looked at me without speaking, until I had turned and was leaving. "Don't forget the screwdriver." I turned back and smiled at her. What the hell was I doing? I had to be absolutely crazy to be doing what I was planning. There wasn't any way this could possibly turn out well for any of us. I went through the nursery door, leaving it open behind me. Brenda was posed on the bed, as naked as the day she was born. She knew she was beautiful, and had probably practiced that exact pose, in front of the mirror, a hundred times, back in her parent's house. She had it down, perfectly. I wasn't the only one who thought so either. Emily stood beside the bed, unable to take her eyes off the visual feast Brenda was so casually offering up to us. I knew any further delay would bring in the real risk that Emily would throw herself on Brenda. I knew I needed to check with Joyce just one more time. If she didn't stop me, I'd definitely be committed. This was the culmination of four years of my social experiences. I was preparing to risk it all, going against all of my own instincts, to follow through on turning Joyce's belief into some kind of a reality. I opened the door between the bedroom and Joyce's office. I looked at her face as she sat at her desk focused on her computer monitor screen. She looked up and smiled at me, then went right back to what she'd been doing. No reprieve from the warden. Let the execution begin. I shut the door and got undressed. I felt like I was on display to everyone who knew me. I looked down and was gratified to find out that my cock didn't have any of the doubts I was feeling. He was ready to give this his all. It took but a moment to discover that Brenda's body was ready as well. She was already starting to leak out her copious juices. I snuggled up to her, taking a nipple in my mouth and rubbing her pussy with my finger. I was vaguely aware of Emily changing position, trying to get a better view for herself. Brenda always had this strong effect on my nervous system. She had this ability to shut a lot of my brain down, in a calming sort of way. I found myself able to focus only on her, and on what the two of us were doing. Once that happened, all of the rest of it just followed naturally. We may as well have been alone, for all it mattered to me that Emily was right there with us. Brenda seemed more animated than usual though. Maybe she just liked having an audience. I did spend a lot of time eating her pussy. Perhaps, this was, in part, me realizing that Emily was there with us. I may have wanted to make Brenda cum so hard that she'd squirt out her juices. Maybe it was for me though. To prove to myself that I was still capable of lifting her to the highest heights. By the time I finally got around to putting my dick in her, Brenda was already as limp as a wet sock. Her cum machinery was still very much in working order. She hadn't lost any of her affection for a real hard dick either, squirming around on mine like it was some long lost friend that she'd been hoping to see again. We were both straining hard, trying to get as much of my dick inside her as we could. I wanted her to catch on this first attempt, just in case something went wrong. Her having that baby for Mama had become important to me. I had this certain expectation that something would go wrong too, because it always had in the past. It was a positive testimonial to Brenda's beauty, and to her sexual appeal, that I had always kept coming back for more. This was in spite of my knowing that doing so wasn't ever going to end well for me. It wasn't that she was the best fuck either, because she wasn't. She was damn good, but they all were. I wanted this to be a fuck I'd long remember, just in case. I didn't want to miss any part of it, or of her, when all the wheels came off. I didn't want to have regrets about not getting everything she had to offer me. Maybe Brenda shared my fear, because she was clinging to me, and getting everything she could too. Finally, we were done. Not a moment too soon either. I was worn to a frazzle, and it felt like my motor was running on empty. I had put all I had into it. When I rolled over, all of the X's were there, as was Ellen. They stood by the bed looking at the two of us. If I'd had the strength to do it, I'd have covered myself. I didn't though, so I just lay there, letting them look at us. "You better fuck me from now on, just like you fucked her, Kenny. I'll know now if you're just going through the motions with me." Joyce sounded angry, but I knew she wasn't. She must have said that for some reason though. I was too tired to figure out what it might be. I wondered if I hadn't shot myself in the foot, by using up too much energy fucking Brenda. What would I have left for Shirley and Joyce later that night? It must have taken me fifteen minutes to summon up the strength to get up off that bed and put my clothes back on. I didn't have the energy to take a shower. I just wanted to get out of there, and go upstairs to my Dad's office. I had put things in irreversible motion now. We'd have to wait to see how it all turned out. I walked into Joyce's office, on my way out to the hall way. "Kenny, we're staying home tonight. There's no reason why we have to go over to Mama's to do this. We'll take Brenda and Emily's room. Let them spend the night in our bed with the kids. Shirley and I can come back there easier to feed them, and you'll get a better night's sleep." "Whatever you decide, Joyce. You set it up and I'll be there." "I hope you mean that, because Ellen has been asking me a lot of questions about what you just did to Brenda. Like why I allowed it, and how come I'm not mad at you and Brenda for doing that together. After I told her about our group, she wanted to know what she'd have to do to get some of what Brenda just got." I stopped and looked over at her. Ellen's red face was glued to Joyce's computer screen. She never once looked up at me or Joyce. She looked like she wished she could disappear. This was an interesting turn of events. Already Joyce was seeking to gain some advantage, for herself, from what I'd told her about thinking I should fuck Ellen a few times. "What did you tell her?" "I told her she could have a turn, just as soon as I learned all I needed to know about how to make this software break out the production and shipping data into much more useful information for me. She's coming to our house tomorrow night, to tutor me. I told her you'd be in with Emily and Brenda again." "Ellen, did watching me with Brenda get you hot?" I looked at her, wondering if she would ever be able to lift her head up to face me. She finally looked up and nodded that it had. "Joyce, if I wasn't so tired right now, I'd put my hand down her pants to find out if she's lying to me. You check her for me. If she's wet, you can bring her home tomorrow. If not, we'll have to come up with a different reward for her." "I'm not going to do that, Kenny. If you want to know if she's wet, you can feel for yourself." Joyce didn't sound very sincere to me. Not very sincere at all. "Well, I guess you'll have to just find another way to find out how to get the most out of all the information in that damn computer then. I didn't hear Ellen making any objections. You're the only one squeamish about making a simple check on Ellen's sincerity. You don't mind if Joyce checks to make sure you aren't lying, do you, Ellen?" Ellen just kept getting redder in the face as she kept her eyes on that monitor. She shook her head from side to side. "Stand up so Joyce can check you easier." Ellen pushed her chair back and stood up. This was the quietest I'd ever seen her. I liked it. "Put your hand in her jeans, Joyce. Tell me if she's wet or not." I looked at Joyce. Why on earth was I asking her to do this? I knew she liked controlling people a lot better than being controlled by them. I wanted to have at least some semblance of seeming to be an equal partner with her in these sorts of things. If she wouldn't give me this much, then we had no basis for the working relationship she was trying to achieve. Joyce finally stood up, giving me a tight, unenthusiastic, smile. She reached inside Ellen's jeans, while Ellen sucked in her breath as much as she could, to make room for her hand. Joyce felt around for a few minutes and then pulled her hand back out. I could see quite a bit of moisture on two of her fingers. "She's very wet." Joyce's eyes were slightly glazed again. She had gotten very turned on by doing what I'd asked. "Good. She was telling the truth." Ellen still stood there, her face even redder now, after submitting to Joyce's digital probing. "Does it tastes different than Emily and Brenda's?" Joyce gave me another look, letting me know I'd be paying a stiff price for mentioning that, in front of Ellen. In spite of that, she put both fingers in her mouth and licked Ellen's juices off. "A little different. Good though." I loved Joyce. She wasn't about to let me get the best of her with this. She was willing to put up with me, this time, but she wasn't going to encourage me. I needed to do something more. Something to show her that she wasn't going to be running this group thing alone. "Come here, Ellen. I need to taste it too now." Ellen moved right over to me. I thought she seemed much more willing than she had been for Joyce. She even undid her top button and lowered the fly zipper for me. I took my time in her wet little honey pot. I wanted to stir it enough to be sure I was getting fresh pussy juices. By the time I was sure, Ellen was balancing on one foot, trying to give me as much space as I needed to continue stirring. She had both her hands on my bicep, holding herself in balance that way. Some of the blood had left her face, and I had a pretty good idea exactly where it had headed. I removed my fingers and licked them off. Joyce and Ellen watched me, seemingly mesmerized by what I was doing. I took my time, eyes closed, savoring the moment, and the taste. "Tastes a little bit like Shirley, but she has a fruitier flavor than Ellen does. After tonight, you'll understand what I'm saying better, Joyce." Ellen hadn't released my arm yet. She was holding on tightly, but she was back standing on both her feet at least. I waited to see what she was going to do. I wondered how long she was going to stand there, holding on. "Ellen, you need to let go of Kenny. He has work to do, and so do we." Joyce said this kindly, in a matter of fact way, almost like she was just noticing what time of day it was. Ellen released me, as if she hadn't known she was holding on so tightly. "You hurry up and get Joyce understanding that software Ellen. I can hardly wait to get your clothes off, and my big dick sliding around inside your little pussy." "I will. It won't take long if she studies hard." I thought that this was all working out pretty much like Joyce had hoped it would. I felt sure she'd be trying to give me the credit for coming up with the original idea about Ellen. I could see her telling Dad at the dinner table how she'd finally managed to solve the little problem she and Ellen had been having. No, I didn't really think I'd ever hear a conversation like that. Not ever, not with my Dad. I did think I'd hear Joyce mentioning to him that she and Ellen were doing much better together now. It was pretty much the same thing anyway. By the time we all left the office, at about five thirty, I was feeling fully recovered from my after lunch interlude with Brenda. I rode back home with Dad, while Joyce, Shirley and all three of the babies rode home in the Lincoln that Joyce had given to Shirley. She hadn't liked the new Cadillac we'd gotten her, and I was trying to do a deal with the car leasing agent, to trade her back into another Lincoln. She said the babies all slept better in the back seat of the Lincoln. There were three baby car seats in back, and they fit there easily. Those Lincoln's were very big cars, although I still preferred my Cadillac. Brenda fixed us all a quick dinner of steaks, and baked potatoes. In the microwave, it only took a few minutes to bake a potato. I preferred oven baked though, because I liked to eat the potato skin too, and the oven made it crunchier and better tasting to me. The steak she served me was very rare, and huge in size. I think she thought I'd need my strength for later that night. "So, Emily, were you okay watching me with Brenda today?" Everyone's face came up from their dinner plates, looking straight at Emily. I always liked to do things like that, when all the X's were gathered at the table. I wasn't that big on business conversations, not like my parents always were. I figured dinner time was a good time for all of us to air out any problems we might be having. It was sure to make for a livelier conversation. I didn't think any of us were going to get bored by it. "I was fine with it. Now you're going to have to lick all our pussies for as long as you licked hers." Joyce and Shirley both laughed in agreement with her. Brenda was beaming, happy that someone recognized her value to the group. "Speaking of licking pussies, you girls should have Joyce tell you what she did with Ellen this afternoon." What the hell, I thought, I was in for it anyway. I didn't see any reason to go down quietly. All eyes were now on Joyce, except for hers, which were busy trying to burn a hole though my forehead. I decided, right then, that I better come up with a good excuse to give to Joyce, to explain my bringing that up, in front of the other X's. "He's lying. Tell them you're lying, Kenny." Joyce was embarrassed. For a second, I realized I now held the upper hand with her. This was only because I had it in my power to let her down from this easy. I could back off, pretending that I'd only been kidding. That was what she was hoping for, and expecting. It was the safest way to proceed. It was also the way I normally would have done it. "Joyce, either admit it, or else I'm going to have Brenda and Emily attack you again. You'll be sucking their pussies until you finally tell the truth. You know I mean it. Did you or didn't you taste Ellen's pussy today? A simple question, and a yes or no answer is all I require." "You made me. It wasn't my idea." Joyce tried laughing nervously. She must have been pretty desperate, using that as an excuse. Brenda started laughing too. Shirley and Emily weren't laughing. What I now saw in Joyce's eyes was an angry sort of sadness "I didn't make you. I asked you what it tasted like. You put those fingers in your mouth, on your own, because you wanted to. You've been getting me to force everyone else to be honest, and to live by your rules, but you haven't been honest with any of us." "What rules did I break? How have I been dishonest with you?" "Is Ellen a part of our group? You played with her pussy today, and you licked her pussy juices. Suppose one of the other X's had done the same thing? Girls, do you think Joyce's being fair here?" "We all said, no one from the outside, Joyce. If we have to live by that rule, you should too." Emily was all over this one. She didn't have to find out what really happened. For once, Joyce was wrong, and that was enough for her. "Emily's right this time, Joyce. You did tell us all that. Why would you do that, especially with Ellen?" Brenda was following my lead and Emily's. She wanted to be on our side in this. Even Shirley was staring at Joyce, waiting for an explanation from her. "Kenny, tell them what happened. Don't leave this all on me. I'm not the one being dishonest." There was a note of pleading in Joyce's voice now. She could see what I was up to. She didn't know why I was doing it, and I wasn't sure myself if this was the best way to proceed. It would have been simple for me to stop, to later clear things up with Joyce, in private. Something was telling me not to do it like that, to let it play out in front of the X's, and then see what would happen. "You have the floor, Joyce. Why don't you explain to them how you've been dishonest about why you wanted to form this group. I'll stay quiet as long as you're telling them the truth." "I did it for you. This whole thing is for you, Kenny. You seemed to want to fuck Ellen." "Like I don't already have more pussy around here than I know what to do with? You couldn't wait to add Ellen, could you?" "You're the one that brought it up. I was trying to help you." "Who was it that decided to parade her through the bedroom so she could have a chance to watch me fucking Brenda? That was before I mentioned anything to you. I only asked you if you thought it would be a good idea. I never told you to try and set something up." "You wanted to know if she was wet." "You can try to blame me for all of this, Joyce, but didn't you tell Ellen that you'd get me to fuck her, if she showed you all her software secrets? This was before I ever said a word to her. You were already interested in her pussy by then, or are you going to lie to us, and deny it?" This was too easy. I knew Joyce wasn't going to deny it. When Joyce got hot, it was very easy to tell. Her eyes sort of glazed over with passion. They were like that when I went back to her office. She knew I could always tell when she got excited. "This isn't fair. I didn't do anything wrong. You're making them think I was cheating, but I wasn't." "If you weren't, just explain what it is you were doing. It looked to me like you were excited from talking to Ellen. You just wanted to have some excuse for touching her. That's why you came up with that offer of yours. We all know you could read those manuals like Ellen did. You'd know more than she does, after two or three days of reading. Do you think we believe you really needed her to tutor you?" "Why are you doing this? I'm doing all I can to make things better for you. You're going to ruin everything we've done." Joyce had started crying. I was starting to feel like I had with Emily on Saturday. Wanting to stop this before it got out of hand. Like then, something was keeping me going. I had no idea what I was hoping to get accomplished by doing it this way, just a feeling that this was the best way for all of us. "I love you, Joyce, but there's something that has been bothering me about all of this, and I finally know what it is. It has me uncomfortable, and I'd like you to explain to all of us. We're all here, and we're all listening. Tell everyone what it is that has me feeling uncomfortable." "I don't know. I've done everything you've asked. I've tried my best to please you. I don't know why that isn't enough for you." "It is enough. It's more than enough. It isn't me that you hear complaining that I'm not satisfied with you. Who keeps telling you it isn't enough?" "You do. I've seen the way you look at the other X's. You never look at me like that." "Like what? How do you think I look at them?" "Like you love them. Like they're prettier than me. Like you wish you'd married them instead of me." I could see how uncomfortable this was making all the other X's. This was a side to Joyce they'd never seen. One they hadn't known existed. Joyce was always so good at doing things. All the girls, except for possibly, Shirley, knew they had Joyce far surpassed in the looks department. None of them felt like they were her equal in ability though. None of them were able to do the things she could do. Brenda was fixated on her own looks, but she knew that Joyce was her superior, in almost all other ways not related to physical things, like sport or beauty. I knew that Joyce was trying to deflect attention from the real problem I wanted her to admit to and address. This is what she'd always done when I'd brought up my questions in the past. It had always worked too. We'd end up discussing something different in the end. "So, all this you're doing for me, bringing all the X's together for me to fuck, that's just to make up to me for you not being as pretty as them?" "No. It isn't just that. It's also that you deserve more than just me. We all know that you do. We all agreed you need more." "Who tells you these things, Joyce? Whoever it is, he or she isn't your friend. I wake up every morning wondering what I ever did to deserve you. You never needed to gather all the X's together. I told you that a hundred times. You didn't have to do this for me. I think you tell yourself those things, to justify doing what you want to do. We're all here, and we're all waiting. You know all our secrets now. Tell us why you really did it." Joyce was starting to really look embarrassed and ashamed. I was on to something with her now. Everyone has secrets. I had more than a hint, or a suspicion, about Joyce's, but she needed to be the one to come out and tell us. I guess I'd always known it, at least since that first day, back in my office, when I was on the phone with Brenda and my mother. I had read her expression wrong then, but, after two years of being around her, I knew her a lot better. "There is no other reason, Kenny. It's only what I told you. You have to believe me." "If you really want this group thing to work, Joyce, you have to be honest with all of us. It won't work otherwise. Unless you want all of this to come apart, you have to tell us why you did it." "It isn't what you think, Kenny. I'm not like that." "Like what?" "You know. Like that about other girls." "You're not? You don't like any of that?" "Only if you're there with us. I told you." "I know you get jealous when I do things with other girls when you aren't there. Today you weren't jealous though. It was just exciting for you. Why is that?" "I don't know. It just was different, watching everyone looking at you while you were fucking her." "Did you wish you were naked on the bed too?" "We all did. I looked at all the girls, and they all looked like they wished it was them on that bed, instead of Brenda." "Is that what you were wishing, Joyce, that it was you instead of Brenda?" She looked at me and I could see she knew it wasn't going to work for her. She knew that I knew. She started looking to the others for some help. No one reached out to help her. We all waited for her to answer. It was pretty obvious that the X's all knew what I wanted her to say. It wasn't as obvious that they believed what I did. "Not instead, with her. Emily felt like that too. It wasn't just me. I never hid that from you. I told you that I liked what we did with Brenda." "No, you never hid that. You still hid something from me, from all of us." "I didn't." "Why is it so important that we have this whole group like this, Joyce? Why did you insist on including all my ex-girlfriend's?" Joyce got up and left the room. I was left sitting with all the other X's, and they were all pissed off at me. Joyce had done her work well on these girls. All of them were convinced that she had put everything together strictly for my benefit. No one believed me when I said that I hadn't wanted any part of it. This was Joyce's program now. After I had dropped it, she had picked up all the pieces, dusted them off, and put something together that she believed would work. I'm not sure when I first started to realize that it wasn't all just for me. It had to have begun there, somewhere in the back of my mind, first, as an unconnected series of niggling doubts. It took me so long to understand, because I found it so easy to believe that Joyce would do anything for me. By the time I made the leap, and started actively assisting Joyce in putting what she wanted together, something was already troubling me. I was already starting to believe I was doing it to assist Joyce in achieving her goals. I knew it was her goal, not mine. I'd failed to give her enough credit. All those times when Joyce and I had talked about the X's, and she had gushed about Emily and Brenda's looks, I always thought she was either complimenting me, for having the ability to get such pretty girls, or else putting herself down for not being as good looking as they were. Having secured the finishing pieces for her, something had clicked in my subconscious mind. I had begun pushing things way more than I ever normally would. The thing I said to Joyce about fucking Ellen was just one example. Allowing Joyce to convince me it was all right to fuck Brenda, practically in front of her and the other X's, was another. If I did all of this, and it wasn't anything I wanted, who was going to benefit by it? When I came out of the bedroom, to go back to my Dad's office, I saw the gleam in Joyce's eye, which I again misinterpreted as being caused by her excitement over seeing me with Brenda earlier. It was only later, after my experiments, with Joyce and Ellen, that I realized my error. I didn't realize it in the group sense, only in the finally understanding Joyce's attraction to girls sense. I was still only partly convinced that I was right. I wasn't mad at Joyce, or disappointed. If anything, I was a little relieved, because now there was someone else to share the responsibility and bad feelings with, if this whole thing blew up in our faces. Joyce had done this for both of us. In that way, it really did make sense to me. Now, I had to find a way to get her to admit it, to me, the other X's, and to herself. I wanted to get that done real soon. Early enough so there would still be time for the two of us to have sex with Shirley together, later that evening. ------- I can hear some of you readers out there, clucking your tongues and shaking your heads. "How could Kenny change on us like this? Whatever happened to that nice little orphan boy? I can't read this story anymore, because now you've ruined it for me." Too bad then, because this is what happens when you start to grow up and live in a real world. You start having to have priorities. You no longer have the luxury of treating everyone the same. What am I supposed to owe to the other X's? My main loyalties are to my parents, Joyce, and the twins. I like helping the others out, and I've never tried to hide the fact that I like to fuck the X's either. I can help them, and they can help Joyce and me. As long as our interests are compatible, they can expect nothing but good things from us. Brenda was already doing quite well financially, because of me. Emily had access to Brenda, a nice place to live, all her expenses paid, and the freedom to leave if she ever chose to. She had already told me that Brenda was her real love, and I could accept that. Shirley was the same. She found it convenient to be part of our group. I liked her a lot, and was more than happy to have her with us, if she agreed to live by the guidelines Joyce and I set up. There's no escaping the obvious about this, that I'd changed. I'd become a different person. I had adapted to the realities I found myself surrounded with. I still loved Emily, Shirley, and Brenda, and wanted all the good things for them that were possible. The biggest difference, or change, if you will, was that I was no longer willing to have any of those things come to them if it meant that Joyce, the twins, or I would be hurt by it. The same applied to my parents. I would do all that I could for and with them. I was a married man now though, with children to care for. My first responsibility was to that primary family. As for all the rest, the companies and the group homes, nothing had changed with any of that. I was still as interested, in both those things, as I'd ever been. In the real world, sometimes very good things were accomplished by totally selfish people. I hoped I wasn't totally selfish, but I was willing to be as selfish as necessary, to care for my family. There's only room in the lifeboat for so many though, and I was finally willing and able to plan for those sort of eventualities. ------- I found Joyce flopped on her stomach on our bed. The twins were both sleeping peacefully. Like any good mother, Joyce was crying softly enough that she wouldn't wake our children. "Come on, Joyce, it isn't really worth all of this carrying on about it. We all do it. We pretend we're doing something for somebody else, but we're doing it as much for ourselves, as for the other person. It's all part of the human condition." "I didn't start out thinking that way, Kenny. It really was something I wanted for you." "I know that. There isn't anything wrong with it, not unless you don't disclose it to the other people affected. They have a right to know why you're doing it. It could affect their decision about whether to join or not." "I don't want any of them to leave." "Tell them that. I know, and I'm not leaving. I actually feel better now. I was feeling sorry for you before, thinking you had to go through all of this just to try to help me. Now that I know you're doing it because you want all that pussy too, I feel a lot less guilty about it." Joyce turned over, so I kissed her. Nothing is ever so bad that a little kiss from a loved one can't improve it. "You don't hate me for wanting that?" "No. Think about it. From now on, if I see someone I just can't resist, I'll bring her home for dinner, and let you figure out the best way for us to get into her panties. You're saving me a whole lot of trouble and grief." "I don't really believe you. You're just trying to make me feel better." "Well, you're right about that. I do want you feeling better. I've got a selfish motive for it too. I need you ready to help me with Shirley tonight. She's probably pretty nervous now, and having second, third, and fourth thoughts. I left something over at Mama's house that will help us with her, but I'm afraid if I just leave to go get it, she'll think we didn't want to go through with what we told her we were going to do. I need you to watch Derek for us while she and I drive over to Mama's, to get what I need. We'll fool around over there for a little while, then we'll come back here, and the three of us will have some fun. You can tell her the other part of why you wanted the group together after. It will be easier for you to do it, after you've tasted her pussy." It was good to see Joyce smiling at me again. I went out and got Shirley. When I told her why we needed to go to Mama's house, she made no protest about it at all. ------- Chapter 12 Shirley was all aflutter on the ride over to Mama's. I told her that I'd get the screwdriver, and that she and I would play around with it for a little bit in my old bedroom, just like how we used to do it. I told her we'd go over to be with Joyce later, after she had a chance to have a cum or two first. Hearing that, she relaxed a little. "Is Joyce all right, Kenny?" "She's fine. She's just a little bit upset with some of the stuff I said to her. Sometimes, I get upset, for no reason, and I take it out on other people." "I remember. You used to do that to me too." "Did I? I guess I forgot about doing that. I hope you aren't too nervous about tonight, Shirley. It isn't anything that's going to be that hard for you to do." "I'm not as nervous right now. If you're going to make me have orgasms first, I'll probably be all right later. I've been thinking about what you said in the nursery. I never thought about all of sex just being parts of the same thing. When I did it with Clay, that seemed a lot different to me than when it was you. It was the same thing, but it was totally different too. It was mostly different because of how I felt. I didn't love him, but I love you. I like Joyce, but I won't ever love her, or any of the other X's. It will be like Clay was to me. I might not enjoy it, but I'll try to make it good for them." "I think you worry too much, and think about things too much also. Sex is supposed to be exciting, but it should be relaxing too. You need to work on that relaxing part of it." At Mama's house, I took us both up to my old bedroom. I didn't tell Mama that I'd moved back in with Joyce, but I figured she had to have known. Those two were as thick as thieves anyway. When we got to my room, I shut the door, and threw the dead bolt. I went and got out my whole screwdriver collection for Shirley, while she undressed and got herself comfortable on my bed. She and I were talking together quietly, while she renewed her acquaintanceship with her old tool friends. By the time she had worked her way up to the oven screwdriver, she wasn't talking any more. I kept telling her how hot it looked, with one screwdriver in her butt, and that big oven handle blade sticking out from her pussy. I watched her moving that big screwdriver until she had her first strong orgasm. She had her second and third, as I licked on her swollen clit, while she turned the handle back and forth. When she had her third orgasm, I took away all the tools and went and washed them thoroughly, wrapping them all up in a clean bath towel. I put everything back in my closet. "Kenny, let's not leave yet, okay? I just want to lie down with you for a few more minutes." "Shirley, we need to go. Joyce is home watching all those babies, and she's waiting for us to get back, so she can feed the twins and put them down for awhile. You need to take care of Derek too." "I'm scared. Please don't make me do this." Shirley saying that to me was more than I could stand. I didn't want to force someone to do sexual things if they didn't want to. I'd always believed that Shirley would do it, if only she just relaxed, and allowed it to happen. Apparently, I'd been wrong to believe that. "Shirley, you don't have to do anything. Joyce and I aren't like that. I didn't do this with you to force you, only to try to help." "I'm sorry. I really thought I could go through with it, but I can't." "Don't be sorry. I'm not upset with you. I know you tried. No one is going to be mad at you. I'll tell Joyce you changed your mind. She'll understand." "Would it be all right if we made love one more time. I'd like that." "I'd like it too, but it wouldn't be fair. I should be with Joyce tonight. She's still upset from dinner, and she'll be disappointed about this as well. I really need to be with her." Shirley got off my bed and started getting dressed. I put my shoes and socks back on and looked around for my shirt. I had left it in the bathroom, so when I found it, I washed my face and brushed my teeth before putting it back on. Shirley came in and peed, while I was brushing my teeth. "Tell Joyce I'm sorry, Kenny. She's been so nice to Derek and me, making us feel so welcome. I really wish I could go through with this." "You can tell her yourself, Shirley. It isn't like any of us are asking you to move out or anything." "I think Derek and I need to move back to my parent's house, Kenny. I decided before that we'd do that, if I couldn't go through with this other thing. I don't want to be the only one there who isn't really part of the group." "Are you quitting your job too?" "If you want me to I will." "No, I only asked, because I wasn't expecting you to quit living with us. You aren't going to be moving out tonight anyway. It's too late to get everything moved. There isn't any need to rush on our part. Take your time. Maybe, after you think about it, you'll change your mind." We were both quiet on the ride back. I had to wonder if my fucking Brenda earlier in the day had scared her off. None of us had anything to go by in setting things up for a group. We were all bound to make some mistakes with it. I hoped Joyce wasn't going to blame herself for Shirley's decision. I hoped she wouldn't blame me either. When we got back, Shirley went and got Derek and took him back to her room. Joyce didn't say anything, or ask any questions. It was as if she had known this would happen. She let Shirley get her son, and leave. "She decided she couldn't go through with it. She says she's moving back in with her parents." Joyce just nodded, then she got up and went to Emily and Brenda's room, to let them know we wouldn't all be switching rooms like we'd planned. When she came back, she fed the twins in bed with me, before putting them back in their bassinets. I felt bad about how things had turned out. Bad for Shirley, and bad for Joyce and me. "Do you think she's really upset, Kenny? Maybe I should go check on her?" "I think she'd rather be left alone tonight, Joyce. This has been a tough time for her. We should let her have time to think it through." "Did you make her cum?" "I did, at least three times, but I didn't fuck her. She asked me to, right after she told me she didn't want to do the rest of it." "I bet I can make her change her mind. You want me to go see?" Joyce had that look in her eye again. She took this as a challenge or something. "She said no, Joyce. I'm pretty sure she means it." "She probably does, but that's because she's afraid. I think she worries about what you'll think of her, if she does things with girls. I worried about that too. I still do. I can go in there and just talk to her. Make sure she knows that we want her to stay with us. She probably feels really bad right now." "You won't try to make her feel guilty? I don't want her thinking we're disappointed in her." Joyce got up off the bed and walked out of our bedroom. The look she had given in response to my last question had prevented me from wanting to ask her any further ones. I watched her leave, unable not to feel a little worried about what she might say to Shirley. I had gotten undressed and was in bed thinking about the situation with Shirley, trying to think of some way to let her know it was really okay, when I drifted off to sleep. It must have been about ten or ten thirty when I did that. Joyce got into bed, and it kind of half woke me up. When I felt the bed moving again, over on my side, that woke me up the rest of the way. There was no mistaking that it was a naked Shirley that moved up against my back. I must have groaned out loud, or something, because Joyce shushed me. "Go back to sleep, Kenny. I told Shirley she could come sleep with us tonight. She promised to be good." I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I moved further into the middle, and tried to fall back asleep. Shirley moved in enough to resume her former position, with her front spooned up against my back. I reached out and pulled Joyce in close to me too. I was just drifting back to sleep when Shirley reached around and found my dick. It had been nestled against Joyce's ass, so there was no way Joyce didn't notice what Shirley was doing. Shirley started playing with my dick, moving her hand up and down its length. "I can't sleep, Kenny." When Shirley said that, Joyce started giggling. I knew I was being set up, but I wasn't sure what they had decided on, between them. I didn't say anything, still waiting to see what would happen. "Do something to help me get to sleep." Shirley was still stroking my cock while she said all of this. When I didn't say anything, she let my dick go. When she did, I reached down and tucked it between Joyce's thighs. She giggled some more and soon found a nice snug home for it. I didn't move as Joyce's pussy started a slow, milking motion on my hard on. I felt Shirley's hand moving back to recapture her lost prize. It only took a second or two for her to realize what had happened, and she jerked her hand back. "Joyce, what happened?" "He pushed it in me. I thought you'd given up." "I didn't give up. I let him go so he could turn over." Joyce moved away from my dick, and we all heard it come slurping its way back out of her pussy. "Go ahead then, I guess I misunderstood." That made me laugh. How can you misunderstand like that? Besides, I remembered what had really happened, and I hadn't put it in, Joyce did that by herself. "Turn over, Kenny, I told Shirley you'd help her get to sleep tonight." I turned over, and then Shirley turned over, so her butt was pressed up against my dick. I reached down and helped to guide it into her extremely wet pussy. It slid in all the way, easily. She was definitely ready. I reached around to cup one of her breasts, kneading all of it in my hand. Shirley started her own rocking motion, and I just lay there, letting her dictate the speed and the depth she preferred. It didn't take much for her to have her first orgasm, quickly followed by her second. She moved away from my still hard dick, and I thought she was through with it. I was hoping Joyce might find some use for it, since I hadn't been able to cum yet. "Move on your back, Kenny. I want to be on top now." Shirley was being pretty pushy, I thought. I turned over anyway. When I did, Joyce turned over so she was facing me and moved down to start sucking my cock. She was really licking all the juices off of it, but it looked like she was sucking it. She had only spent about twenty seconds doing that when she released me and rolled back away, so she was facing away from me again. I looked at Shirley, and she looked confused about what Joyce had just done. "Did you change your mind, Shirley, because I'm sure Joyce would like a turn if you have?" Shirley swung a leg over my waist, and grabbed hold of my dick, to fit it up inside her again. It didn't take her more than a second or two to get it in, then she started moving back and forth on me, using her legs to push up and back. I remembered how much Shirley liked this way, it was her favorite, except for doing it from behind, doggy style. The biggest advantage she had from doing it while riding on top, was I almost never could cum like that. That wasn't the case with her though. She had really started getting herself going from the earlier playing over at Mama's house, and from the two nice cums we had just gotten done with. Now, it was time for her to do some serious fucking. Every time she would get herself seated all the way on, with her down stroke, I'd grab at her waist with both my hands and grind her clit down hard on my pelvic arch. From past experience, I knew what this repeated clit grinding would accomplish. I hoped the babies wouldn't be afraid when those obscene screams of hers started spewing forth from her lips. I was convinced no one in the house would be able to sleep through what was surely coming. It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would. When I looked up at her face, it was a mask of passion, a look of strained concentration. I could see she was trying to will herself not to begin screaming. She probably wasn't going to succeed anyway, but when I released her waist with one hand and started using a finger to probe her little butt hole, any chance she did have, flew right out the window. "Not my ass, Kenny. Don't put that finger in my ass. No! Oh, God damn it! You fucker! Shit, Kenny, stop! Oh God, not so deep. Please stop." I might have stopped if she hadn't trapped my finger up inside her, by sitting back, and having a long series of shuddering spasms on my finger and cock. Luckily I had my wrist turned so she couldn't break it, or my finger. For the next four or five minutes she'd alternate between stopping, and then hurrying up again. First she'd hurry, with a dozen quick back and forth movements, all made in quick succession. Then, she'd stop and cum some more. The second time she started moving again, I was ready for it, and managed to get a second finger forced up to join with the other one. After that it was a non-stop litany of swearing and obscene imprecations, the goal of which seemed to be to try to motivate me to attempt impossible feats of fornication with her. What she was asking for, pleading for was impossible for one man to give to her. She must have thought I was some kind of a double dicked goat or something, judging by what she was begging me to do to her. Joyce had turned back to look at us, as soon as Shirley started yelling. I saw her finger strumming back and forth across her own clitty, as she arched her hips upward. When all three of the babies started crying, Joyce stopped her masturbation and got up out of bed. A few seconds later, Brenda and Emily came walking into our bedroom. It was soon a surreal sight, with three women standing a few feet from the bed, each soothing and rocking a child in their arms, while watching Shirley riding my pole. It became even more bizarre when Brenda and Emily started laughing and commenting about some of the things Shirley was yelling at me. Well, maybe not actually at me. It was more like a very loud profane prayer, or a wish list she was broadcasting to the North Pole, for Santa's immediate attention. Shirley had always had a facile way with words, and this night was no exception. When I started feeling like she was beginning to get too tired to continue, I rolled her over, and pushed it into high gear, pounding into her in the good old male superior position. When I finally did cum, it was almost painful in its intensity. I don't know how big a load it was, but it was all I had built up, since doing Brenda, right after lunch. When I rolled off of her, she was staring over at the other three X's. I'm not sure when she first became aware they were there in the room with us, at least Brenda and Emily. It was Joyce who first spoke. "Shirley, I can't believe that Clay couldn't make you cum, not after just watching and listening to you. Kenny, how come you don't make me cum like you just made her?" "Bunny's sleeping again. What a good baby he is." Brenda continued softly rocking him, but she started moving him back to his little bassinet. Joyce managed to get Little Bertie back to sleep a minute or so after, and put her in her bassinet too. Derek had quieted down again, and he was almost asleep after another five minutes. When all the babies were back asleep, and in their beds, Brenda informed us that she had baked two berry pies. She asked if anyone was hungry. I was tired, but eating had been a fairly unreliable occurrence for the last couple of days, and I didn't want to miss out on any of the getting, not while the getting was good. Since everyone had already seen me naked at least twice that day, I just got up, and didn't even bother with putting anything on to wear. When I sat down in the kitchen, Joyce decided to come over and perch on my lap. I played with her tits while Brenda got out the pies and five plates. Emily got the glasses, and poured out the milk for all of us. Shirley had joined us again, after a couple minutes, but she had on sweat pants and a tee shirt now. She sat as far away from Joyce and I, as she could manage, with that small kitchen table, all of about four feet. Emily and Brenda looked like they were waiting on some kind of an explanation. Joyce and I were trying to eat our pie, without Joyce slipping around enough to go sliding off of my lap. Shirley had a piece of pie in front of her, but she wasn't eating it. She did take sips of her milk though. We all sat there, eating our pie, drinking our milk, and waiting to see who would be the first to start asking questions. It was Emily that broke the silence. "Are you guys done for the night? I'd like to get some sleep before we have to get up in a few hours." "I'm done." I thought I'd make that announcement, because Joyce was squirming around on my lap, trying to bring my dick to life again. So far she hadn't met with even the tiniest hint of success. It seemed a shame to me that she wasn't getting any reward for all that effort. Her frustrated squirming on my lap, let me know that she agreed with me. "Are you planning on just leaving me frustrated like this, Kenny?" Joyce made it seem like I was responsible for her condition. Responsible or not, I was too worn out to be of any use to her. "Afraid so, sweetie. You loaned me out too much today. Nothing left to give. I'll be recharged by tomorrow though, so Brenda, you and Emily don't have anything to worry about." I tried to stand up, but Joyce was holding on to my neck. I finally managed to lift myself up, with her in my arms, and started walking back to our bedroom. Shirley went ahead and got Derek, bassinet and all, and took him back to her room. When we got back into bed, Joyce spent ten minutes sucking my dick, but finally had to admit that nothing was working. She seemed to enjoy Shirley's taste on my dick though. "Thank you for helping her, Kenny. She was feeling a little bit lost." "I'm surprised she would do anything, with you right here in the room. What did you say to her?" "I told her she'd sleep better if you gave her some loving. When she asked me if I minded, I told her I didn't, but that I wanted to watch. She hesitated at first, but then I told her how busy you were going to be for the rest of the week. I guess she didn't want to miss out on her chance." "I told her I wasn't going to do anything with her anymore. Did she mention that to you?" "She said something about that, but I told her you only meant if the two of you were alone. It's going to take awhile, but she'll get used to me being there. Next time, I'll hog you all to myself. Maybe she'll decide to share with both of us after that." "You've got it all planned out, I'll bet. You've tasted all the X's now, who has the tastiest pussy?" "I think I do." She smiled at me. I would have said Brenda, but the taste of Joyce's pussy was right up there with hers. I started kissing my way down to her pussy, and then I gave her a good fifteen minute licking. She came several times, and one was a really good one, judging by the way she tightened her thighs around my head. After, I looked up and nodded my head. "I think you're right, Joyce. Good night hon." ------- Tuesday, except for half an hour at lunchtime, I stayed well clear of Joyce and the other X's at the office. Dad and I were working on refining my spin off idea. Frank had sent me a list of questions, and a warning about the difficulties we'd have with something called unrelated business income, in the charitable trusts. We were trying to figure out a way to work around the problem. Dad didn't really want to give up that part of the business either, but he did admit it wasn't nearly as good a place, as the vending business, for us to have our capital invested. Once our geographical expansion was completed for both types of businesses, our rate of growth with the bread and cereal bakeries would slow way down again. This wasn't true with the vending company, it was a business with a lot of growth potential still left in it. We were sitting in Dad's office, doodling around with some gross sales and net income figures for each of the three cereal companies. Our net income was less than two percent of the gross sales, but the gross was a very high number, when compared to our actual capital investment. The vending company sales produced over two and a half times the percentage of net profits. I was remembering Kathleen Ulliott's comment about the bakeries being three grain hogs. I hadn't thought of them like that before, and I made an offhand comment to my dad about what Kathleen had called them. "She's right. The people who sell us the grain make more from us, than we make for ourselves. Look at how much you've made, just from trading in some of the grains we buy and use." We both looked at each other, both having gotten the same idea, in the exact same instant. "You don't suppose we could?" "Why not? In fact, we should get some of the other, larger, independent's to come in with us on it, like a co-op. I could do all the trading for it. We'd make more from trading our grains than we ever did by processing and baking them." "Is it legal? Can we do that?" "Why wouldn't it be? We know how much we need, and we have a good idea about what price we can afford to pay for it. There isn't any reason why we can't trade against the edges. All we'd need would be a contract where they agree to accept delivery of some grain, if the need ever arises. We could charge them twenty percent of profits as our commission, and still make them some very good money. We'd probably end up lowering their grain cost, like we did ours. Best of all, we'd be trading their entire bakery production, without having to put up our own capital to control it." How many big, independent bakers do you know well enough to bring them together and ask them?" "I know most of them, but that doesn't mean I want to do business with all of them. Off the top of my head, I can count five I'd like to have you talk to about this idea. I think we should just handle their grain brokerage for them though. You can easily deliver at the net spot price, right? What regular broker can promise them that? You trade on their production limits, and then you use part of the profits to pay for their grain delivery charges. You'd soon be the premier grain broker, offering them fills at those prices." "How much would their combined grain needs increase what we're already doing ourselves? Is it enough to make it worthwhile?" "If we got all five of the ones I'm thinking about, it would more than triple it. That would give you a lot more range to trade from. If you did as well as you're doing with what we now have, that would be a nice annual profit. Very nice." "It would all be tax free, to our trusts. We'd end up making more this way, than if we gave them all three baking companies outright." I left my Dad's office, going to an empty office to call Frank Clooney. I told him the basics of the idea. He told me we would have to set up three separate companies. One to broker the grain sales, one to do the actual trading for the trusts, and a third to consult with the trust trading company, and the grain brokerage company, and to guarantee to underwrite any trading losses to the trusts, or to the grain trading company. The charitable trusts would loan the money to the trading account company, for a fixed rate of return. Any overage's in earnings would accumulate in the consulting company's contingency reserve account, to avoid income taxes, until needed, or, if not needed, to be released back to the charitable trusts, as a return of overpaid premium. The consulting company was, in effect, an insurance company, and would have many of the same tax advantages, for the risks they were underwriting. I went back to tell my Dad to contact his baker friends to see how much interest they had in letting us broker their grain needs. On the drive home, Dad was telling me how enthusiastic the reception had been for his proposal. Delivery costs and broker fees included, most big grain users paid at least a three cent a unit surcharge to daily spot pricing. In effect, by making them this deal, we were offering to increase their profits by at least twenty percent, strictly by cutting their costs for grains. With the deal we already had in place with the railroad, all these extra carloads of grain would move us into a whole different category, as far as our shipping rates were concerned. This, in turn, would lower all our current shipping, storage and delivery costs for each of our companies. Dad didn't have the final numbers worked out yet, but he thought it might be as much as an additional five percent discount for us. I had seldom seen him so excited. He told me he'd be penciling in numbers for the rest of the week, and have his end of the baker's agreements signed and delivered to me by the end of the following week. I called Frank at his home that night, and told him he needed to get to work to set up those three companies for us. He said he had already completed preliminary work on the contracts necessary for each company and trust, to enable them to all interact together with each other, in precisely the way we had earlier discussed. At nine o'clock, I went to bed with Emily and Brenda. I had worried that I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about the new business idea. I shouldn't have worried. The first half of our session together was spent with Brenda and I ravishing a passively accepting Emily. I got my first real glimpse of how their sexual relationship had been altered with the passage of time. Brenda had become more assertive of her needs, and Emily took pleasure in fulfilling whatever whim Brenda had expressed a desire for. Mostly, at least that first night, this included letting Brenda observe her being treated roughly by me. Brenda clearly had no idea how rough Emily liked it. What she thought of as rough, was barely equivalent to the tamest lovemaking sessions that Emily and I usually enjoyed. In the second half, I took over, ordering Brenda around, in a manner similar to what she had earlier subjected Emily to. When I fucked Brenda from behind, I made a half hearted effort to take her anally, just to see how she'd react to it. The whole time I was rubbing my dick on her butt, I was shoving her forward so her face was always in hard, direct, contact with Emily's pussy. After a few minutes, I put my cock in her pussy and started giving her a good doggy style fucking. This is what she had wanted, and what she had expected. Soon, Emily started acting very pleased with the effect my efforts with Brenda's pussy were having on Brenda's efforts with hers. We all shared a three way, simultaneous, cum. I left Brenda and Emily sleeping together, firmly entwined in each other's arms. It had been much different than I thought it would be. More satisfying, because I had seen it as my role to make sure each shared equally in the pain and the pleasure of our joint encounter. I had a feeling that Brenda was going to enjoy me being more dominant with her when we were together with Emily. It allowed her to do things she might not normally have wanted to have Emily see her doing. She could use me as her excuse for having to do them. It was about midnight before I returned to my bedroom. Joyce woke up when I came to bed, and she immediately went down on me, cleaning off the combined juices of the girls. I rewarded her efforts by getting an erection, and she and I enjoyed a lively little fuck session too. A perfect end to an exciting day. I went to sleep, dreaming about all the extra profits I'd make trading for all those new grain hogs. I had been investigating other markets besides Chicago's, and had come up with a wide range of other ingredients that I could start trading. One drawback was how thin some of these trading markets were. Our advantage, because of actually having a need for all of these trading commodities, was far greater than any disadvantage we got from the insufficient liquidity of a smaller trading market. To protect myself from losses, I needed to set myself a trading price ceiling for each of these commodities, and just not trade when it got above a certain price level. We weren't trading for them now, so we'd be no worse off if I stopped trading, after they reached a certain price. Wednesday, it was Brenda, Joyce and I together. I treated both girls roughly, but they treated each other more roughly than I had treated either of them. Brenda was surprising me by how she reacted to Joyce's using me to help her overpower her. She really got into letting Joyce run roughshod over her. On Thursday, Brenda delivered Emily to us, giving her strict instructions to obey us in everything. At the very beginning, we had to take what we wanted from her. She didn't resist, but she wasn't encouraging either of us in any way. I finally got tired of this too passive Emily, and started really treating her roughly from behind. I had both her arms twisted behind her back, and was holding her pinned like that, while I forced my dick into her butt again. When I did that, she really tried to resist me. I think she didn't want Joyce to see me fucking her in the ass. Joyce watched, fascinated by the ferocious nature of Emily's fighting against my restraining force. Before I realized what Joyce was going to do, she reached up with both her hands, putting them in Emily's hair, and quickly yanked her face down to her waiting pussy. Emily bit her, and then Joyce did something I never would have expected. She punched Emily on the side of her head, and it wasn't a light blow either. After that, she grabbed at her hair again, and pulled her face back into her pussy. I guess, Emily had learned her lesson, because she went right to work, lapping at that pussy with a seemingly hungry need. She also starting pushing back at my dick, giving every indication of being as turned on as I'd ever seen her. I came hard in her ass, and pulled back out of her. I released her arms, but was prepared to grab and restrain her if necessary. It wasn't. Joyce was bucking underneath Emily, like she was the one who needed to be restrained. I got up from the bed, going into the bathroom to clean up, and to bring back some damp towels for when they were finished. When I got back, not more than five minutes later, Emily had somehow turned the tables on Joyce, and had her flat on her back, while she rubbed her cum filled ass, and sopping wet pussy all over Joyce's face. Based on what I could see of her, and the way her body was moving, Joyce looked like she was loving it. The girls fooled around together like that for another half hour. When they finally came up for air, I handed each a damp towel and moved over to my side of the bed, to get myself some sleep. I woke up at four, when Little Bertie started crying, wanting to be changed and fed. Emily was still there in bed with us, sitting up on one elbow, watching Joyce breast feeding. It didn't surprise me at all to see Emily putting her mouth to Joyce's other breast, and nursing for just a short time. On Friday, Shirley moved Derek's bassinet into our room again. Nothing much different happened this time, although they both took turns sucking me in the beginning. Joyce insisted on me fucking her first, but she allowed Shirley to fuck me after. Shirley was more inhibited this time, and wasn't able to manage any cums that I could tell. Joyce had at least three. Saturday morning, Shirley and I went to play golf with my parents. We all shot fairly well. I managed to win a hundred dollars from Mama and three hundred from my Dad. She took back two hundred from him, even after she had upped the strokes she was giving him to three a side. After golf, we all went over to Mama's house to eat our lunch. By all, this was including Joyce and the other X's who waited for us to call before coming over. Gerta made us all a nice late lunch, cooking several different main courses of fish, beef and pork. While we were eating, Dad had me help him explain what we were going to do with the new grain trading program. I noticed that Mama seemed distracted. She kept looking over at Brenda. This was the first time I'd seen her not paying attention to a discussion about business. I wanted to let her know things were on schedule, and to get her mind back on the important business we were discussing. "We've already started, Mama, but it still might take us some time." She turned to face me and sent me a wide smile. She knew immediately what I was talking about. "That's wonderful dear. Brenda's going to make such a beautiful mother. I can't wait to see what your children look like." "What children? Are you saying Kenny has gotten Brenda pregnant?" My father looked like he was going to faint. I guess he was still not in the loop. Other than Brenda's parents, the rest of the people I hung around with seemed to all know that I'd promised Mama a special relationship with Brenda's first baby. "That's just Mama, counting her chickens before they're hatched. As far as we know, Brenda isn't pregnant. When she gets pregnant though, I hope you'll be the one to break it to Walt and Richard." I tried to picture that conversation too. I had a hard time keeping myself from grinning at such a ludicrous thought. "Speaking of that, what will our new program do to people like Walt? We can't very well discontinue doing business with all our grain brokers. Some have been with us for years. They depend on us for their livelihoods. We have some sort of an obligation to them." "This program doesn't really have to affect our grain brokers. I'm not guaranteeing you the same price as the other bakery owners. We'll keep to our same deal. That will make it that much harder for some people to start to realize just what it is we're doing. The fewer people who know about it, the better this will work for us." ------- On Sunday, we all piled into two cars, and went to visit all the group homes. I was pleased to see that all the X's were well known at each stop we made. I hadn't been out to visit the group homes in a long while. I didn't know a lot of the boys, and none of the girls. Our co-educational group home, with six younger kids in it, was a big success. We had seven different extensions now, with four more in the planning or development stage. With over one hundred sixty children in placement with us, we were the largest single, long term placement provider in the state. On paper, we were losing over a million dollars a year. Fortunately, all of our shortfall to cover expenses was being easily met by the trading profits in the charitable trusts. I had begun a pilot program implementing part of the Meals on Wheels strategy in our neighboring communities. Instead of limiting the recipients to needy seniors, I had contacted all of the schools in the area and offered free breakfasts to any student they thought in need of adequate morning nutrition. Instead of hiring a lot of people to go around checking on who really qualified, I spent a little bit more on food, and a lot less on having people spending time and effort in qualifying the recipients who showed up for their free breakfasts. When you buy eggs by the hundred dozens, and pancake mix by the rail car load, the ingredients for a good breakfast aren't very expensive. We also had more cereals that we bought at cost from our own bakeries. Bacon, sausage, or ham is relatively expensive, but again, in quantity, the cost seems more reasonable. Butter and syrup are pretty much the same. We qualified for Federal surplus butter in the first month, along with a lot of surplus cheese and milk. This was mostly due to Joyce's efforts, and her work for us using the telephones. We used volunteers for the meal preparation and distribution, although we did reimburse about half of them, for the mileage they put on their cars. The plan had begun right before school was to let out for the summer. We had put up notices that we would continue serving meals at various parks in each community. We had anticipated a fall off in meals served, but we ended up having a slight increase. Many of the students had younger brothers and sisters that they brought with them. Some of these were children who were too young to attend school yet. After a week of serving meals in the parks, we started also serving breakfasts to any of the parents who brought their children. These park breakfast outings became like morning picnics for some of these families. After eating, they would usually stay around, kids playing with other children, while some of the parents stayed and socialized with each other. That's what gave the X's the idea for what to do for my nineteenth birthday party. They threw me a birthday picnic at the biggest park in town, opening it up to anyone who wanted to attend. There was free drinks, food, and even a band for dancing. The people who ate at any of the parks in the morning breakfast program, were all invited to attend my birthday party. In addition to them, the X's invited all the group home families, and anyone else they could think of, including all our company employees in Bolling. No one had the slightest idea about how many people might actually show up. Joyce had enough food and portable cooking units to feed at least five thousand people. Less than half that many showed up, but it was still a lot of people. At four, when people started to leave, the X's started passing out five pound bags of hamburger patties and three pound boxes of sausages and hot dogs. By five o'clock they had given away all the uncooked food and condiments. "Kenny, that was just so much fun. Did you see those little kids carrying those big jars of mayonnaise, catsup, pickles, and mustard? They must be hungry to think about carrying something like that all the way back home." Joyce had been busy all day, feeding people, and making all the families feel welcome to our party. I could see how much work she had done, but she was still as energetic and excited as I'd ever seen her. It had to be all those hungry children she'd fed. I had been starting to encounter a good problem with the charitable trusts. They were earning more than we were needing to distribute for the current group home financial demands. There was the necessity to disburse all earnings, in the year earned, in order to maintain all the tax exempt advantages the trusts gave to us. With the four new extensions we were building, this problem would be lessened, but with the new trading program, for all those other bakeries production outputs, I was expecting our trading income to more than triple itself. It was an embarrassment of riches. Like I said though, it was a good problem, and one easily fixed. I was also faced with another problem, and that was with my Aunt Clara. Gerta told me that Aunt Clara had stopped by the house three or four times in the past year. With each visit, she'd end up borrowing some money from Mama. It wasn't that much money, usually a thousand dollars or so, but it was impossible to believe she'd even ask, unless she was truly desperate. I still remembered too many years when the orphans at St. Cecilia's had gone without gifts at Christmas time because Sister Clara had been either unable, or unwilling, to go out and ask people to make donations to us. The night of my birthday, after we all had returned back home, I got Joyce and the twins ready, and we went over to the Coulter's so that I could introduce my real family to Mildred and Aunt Clara. When we arrived at the house, I noticed that the yard had been left neglected for some time. The house still looked good from the outside though. I got out of the car and retrieved Little Bertie from the back seat. Joyce had started getting Bunny out of his car seat as well. The four of us walked up to the front door. When I knocked, it was Mildred Coulter who answered the door. She appeared sober to me, which was a relief. I hadn't kept in touch with Mildred, or with Aunt Clara, since before I flew Anne out to California. I had kept in touch with Anne, at least since I had come back from Florida. She was still with the Webb's, and still happy to be settled and living in their home. "Kenny! Who are these other people?" Mildred seemed happy enough to see me, but she looked uncertain about Joyce and the babies. "Mildred, this is my wife, Joyce, and our two babies, Bunny and Little Bertie. I thought it was a good time to bring them over to meet you. Where's Aunt Clara?" "She's Aunt Clara, but I'm only Mildred? What kind of a name is Bunny? Is that some kind of a nickname?" I explained to her that Bunny's real name was Malcolm, but we were all calling him Bunny. Mildred looked at both children, after she had invited us all in. She said they didn't take after her side of the family. I smiled at that. Inside, the house looked like someone was keeping it up. For the next fifteen minutes, we all listened to a litany of complaints she had about Clara, Anne, her life in general, and the unfairness of her having an ungrateful grandson. I told her I hadn't forgotten her, and that I'd mentioned her in my will. Joyce snorted when I said that, and Mildred shot her a nasty look. She told us that Anne sent her small amounts of money whenever she could, usually twenty dollars or so. She looked right at me, probably hoping I'd make her some promise of sending something also. If I did want to give her money though, I'd do it through Aunt Clara, not directly. I found out that Aunt Clara was working from four to ten, as a cashier at the new fast food burger place that had recently opened at the Ridgeline exit out on the new highway. She worked thirty hours or less a week, so they wouldn't have to pay her any benefits. She was making minimum wage, but had been promised another quarter an hour, after her ninety day probation period was through. At around eight fifty, we took our leave of Mildred. I was planning on driving straight home, but Joyce wanted to drive over to the McDonald's, so we could see Aunt Clara too. Joyce loved showing off the twins. Joyce had met Aunt Clara several times, but not since she and I had been back together as a couple. I would have preferred going home, to wait for another day, but Joyce was insistent that we go out to the highway to see her. I spotted Aunt Clara right away. She was standing behind the cash register, wearing her McDonald's uniform, including the little hat with the golden arches on it. It bothered me, seeing her dressed like that, trying to see if she could sell people an extra order of fries, or a milk shake or fruit pie to go with their order. I was still angry about the way she'd treated Anne when they were younger, but she had been nice to me at the orphanage. I would have bet she was regretting, right about then, her decision about leaving her life as a nun. Living with Mildred had to be considered a penance all by itself. Joyce found a booth for all of us, and I went up to order the Strawberry milk shake she had asked for. Aunt Clara looked up at my face only when I made it to the head of the line. "Welcome to Mc... Kenny! What are you doing here? How did you find me?" "Hi, Aunt Clara. Joyce and I brought the twins over to show them off to Mildred and you, but you were here working, so we brought them over here instead." "I knew she was pregnant from the last time I visited your adopted parents. Those are your children? Mrs. Parsons didn't tell me that girl was carrying your child." "Her name is Joyce, and she isn't that girl, she's my wife. How do you like working here? Oh, we need a large strawberry shake, and I'll have a cup of coffee, make it a large one too." She rang up my order and I paid her. "Can you take a short break and come look at the twins? Joyce and I want you to meet them." "I can get off early, since its pretty slow tonight. Let me ask the manager, and then I'll need to punch out. It won't take five minutes." I went back over to the table Joyce had gotten for us. The twins were in their little travel carriers that clicked into their car seats. Both were still asleep. I slipped in on the side where Bunny was sleeping, since Joyce had Bertie placed on the side she was on. I told Joyce that Aunt Clara was clocking out, and would be over to say hello, and to meet the twins in a few minutes. She showed up in another minute or so, carrying a tray with our order. I got up and let her slide in the booth next to Bunny. I took a seat in a chair next to our booth, so we could all talk together. We got caught up on old times. Anne wrote to them three or four times a year, always including a ten or twenty dollar bill for Mildred. She said she was happy in California, but didn't really write much about what her living conditions were like. Mildred had stopped drinking, but it hadn't improved her disposition any, not according to what Aunt Clara told us. Money had been tight she said, before she got her new job. She told us that she had been lucky to get her job at McDonald's. She said they hired her because she didn't have to go back to school, after the summer break. She started telling us about the career path they offered her to a management position. I could tell her enthusiasm was forced, and she wasn't really looking forward to spending the next twenty years or so, climbing up the McDonald's corporate ladder. "Joyce is looking for someone to help her with a food distribution program she wants to get started. Mostly for families with young kids who could use a little help with their groceries. We need someone to run it for us. I thought you might like doing something like that." "I better stay here. The last time I agreed to help you with something, you abandoned my mother and me, without any notice or anything." Aunt Clara said it just like she really believed that was what had happened. I didn't remember Uncle Bunny making any promises to her about any of us continuing to pay all of their living expenses for the rest of their lives. It had been all completely voluntary on our part, not some obligation or commitment we had or made. "Suit yourself, Aunt Clara. The job would pay thirty thousand a year, with full immediate medical benefits, but you wouldn't get to wear a neat uniform like you do here, and we don't supply you with those nice paper hats either. I think I'll have to hire one of those Protestants to pass out the food. I'm sure they could find a hundred deserving families to help." "A hundred families? There aren't a hundred truly needy families in all of Ridgeline." "I didn't say they needed to live in Ridgeline, or be truly needy, only that they had to have young kids, and be able to use some help in providing those children with groceries. We were thinking a couple bags of groceries each week. Maybe thirty or forty dollars worth, per family. Enough to help them out a little." "You're talking about giving away three or four thousand dollars every week?" "Joyce's idea, not mine. She gave some food away today, and she liked it. I try to keep her happy. Speaking of happy, have you heard anything from Bea? I asked Gerta and Hans, but they haven't heard from her at all." "Bea is in California, up near San Francisco. She called me a few weeks ago, looking for more money. I believe she's on some sort of drugs. I've borrowed money for her before, from Mrs. Parsons, but I'm afraid she'll just use it to become more dependent on those pills she takes." It troubled me that Bea was using drugs. Given some of her lifestyle choices, it wasn't that surprising to me. I really liked Bea, and I was worried about her, after hearing that from Aunt Clara. "Give me her address, and I'll send Hans and Gerta to see her. They'll try to bring her back here so we can get her some help." "I can't, Kenny. I promised her I wouldn't. She doesn't want to be helped." I looked at my aunt. I knew how much Bea meant to her. For her to borrow money from Mama, it had to be for something she really needed, or else very important to her in some other way. She was too used to a life of self denial, to go asking for money for herself. "This could help to save her life, Aunt Clara. Isn't that more important than a promise?" "This was a sacred promise. I can't break it, I'm sorry." "How about you going out to see her, and bringing her back? Did you promise you wouldn't do that?" "No. I can't though. I have mother to look after, and I have my job here. No, it would be impossible. If she did come here, she couldn't live with me anyway. Mother wouldn't allow it." "This is why you never get anything accomplished. You always have a hundred reasons why it can't be done. This isn't the Christmas fund raiser, Aunt Clara. This is Bea's life we're talking about. Disappointing a lot of kids is one thing, but you can't stand by and let Bea die, just because you couldn't bring yourself to take some kind of action." "I told Mother Superior not to put me in charge of Christmas fund raising. She said I needed to shoulder uncomfortable burdens. Don't you think I saw all your disappointment? I couldn't do what she asked of me." Aunt Clara was disturbed by what I'd said. Somehow, she accepted her unwillingness to act, absolving herself of the consequences this failure had caused. I dropped the subject, because it was just upsetting her, and she had obviously made up her mind not to tell me how to contact Bea. I was feeling a little angry at Aunt Clara. We got up and started for our car with the twins. Joyce had allowed Aunt Clara to carry Bunny, in his carrier, to the car, and told her how to snap the carrier into the car seat frame. We all said our goodbye's, with Joyce telling Aunt Clara to think about coming to work for us, and helping her with the food distribution program. She said she'd think about it. When I got home, I was taking Bunny out of his car seat, when an envelope tucked into his carrier fell out on the floor of the car. I picked it up and looked at it in the light given off by the dome lights of the Lincoln. It was a letter to Aunt Clara, from Bea. Her return address was written on the envelope. So much for sacred vows. My opinion of Aunt Clara had risen, by several notches. ------- Chapter 13 I spoke with Joyce about the letter and envelope Aunt Clara had left for me in Bunny's carrier seat, saying that it had surprised me that she'd be willing to break her promise to Bea. "She didn't break her promise. I'm sure she never promised not to leave Bea's letters where someone might find them. She never told you where Bea was." Joyce and I both knew that what Aunt Clara had done, violated, at the very least, the spirit of her promise to Bea. In spite of that, I was very happy to have Bea's address. It was too late to call Gerta when we got back home, but I did phone her at six o'clock the next morning. I gave her Bea's address, then told her what Aunt Clara had told me about Bea using prescription pills, and about how all the money Aunt Clara had borrowed from Mama, had been sent to Bea. I asked her if she and Hans could fly out to California, to try to get Bea to either come back with them, or else agree to check into a clinic somewhere, to cure her addiction at least. Gerta said she'd speak with Hans, and let me know what they'd decided later in the day. Dad and I were busy that day at work, so I had put Bea's situation out of my mind. I really wanted to get the new grain trading program up, and operating well, before we needed to leave for Lawrence. Joyce had assured me that she and the X's were taking care of all the arrangements for our move there. She told me I was free to concentrate on business all summer with Dad. We had decided to begin grain deliveries on October the first, for the five other bakeries on our new client list. Each had signed contracts with our new brokerage company, and provided all the shipment quantity and delivery date information for their grain requirements, just as we had requested. Bank accounts had been set up to allow immediate electronic fund transfers, from them to us, to cover the purchases we made on their behalf. All that was really left to do was for me to begin trading against these new needs. I had decided to spend a week at the house, in my home office, initiating the beginning stages of the program. I was nervous, because, unlike before, I now faced the real possibility of losing money. We had committed to delivering a whole lot of grain to these companies, at a price that was fixed to the spot grain closing price, three days prior to delivery. I traded for as little as a quarter cent per bushel profit. In order to make up the two or three cent per bushel shipping and insurance charges, I would have to complete many profitable trades to pay for each actual delivery I made. I would begin trading two to three months in advance of the settlement date on each grain contract, hoping to generate sufficient trading profits to offset these costs I'd agreed to assume. I had profited much more than that in the past, trading on my Dad's grain requirements, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to continue doing so. The reason I wanted to work from home, was that I didn't want to have any distractions when I first began trying this new trading program. I had worked out a formula for trying to lessen the risk of losses. I allowed myself greater trading latitude in the early weeks of trading a new contract, then constricted the amount I'd trade, at several points along the way. By the time the settlement date was close, I'd be trading for far fewer contracts with each grain. With settlement dates more than two months in the future, I'd allow myself to trade up to 150% of my delivery requirements. At two months, I'd bring it down to 100%, and at a month, drop it to 75%. Within two weeks of settlement, I'd trade on no more than 50% of my delivery needs. I felt confident that this limitation on my trading would still allow me to generate sufficient amounts of trading profits. Confidence was all well and good, but seeing the plan in actual operation would soon tell me if my confidence had been deserved, or was misplaced. I had also worked out a compromise with Joyce and the X's, as far as the sexual marathon they had me running. We agreed to cut back to one day per week with each of the X's, with Joyce also having one day where she could choose what she wanted with me. The other three days were mine. Of course, I had already told Joyce that I'd be spending them in my own bed, with my own wife, and that was it. To get this, I had to agree to allow each girl to dictate how she wanted her day to be structured. I did specify that no more than two girls be included in any of these sessions. Joyce had insisted that Shirley had to spend her day with both her and me, if there was going to be any sex. Until then, no one had brought in the idea that I'd be getting together with any of them, in the evenings, for something other than sex. Joyce's exception for Shirley, to allow her to spend some time with just me, opened a whole new dimension to our group dynamic. With the exception of Brenda, all the other girls took advantage of the no sex clause, claiming their right to "date" me some times, and fuck me other times. Brenda apparently wasn't into regular dating. She seemed always ready for some fucking from me. This wasn't something I held against her either. The first full week of the new trading program went well. I spent all day at it, trading more actively than I normally would, with some excellent results. I also found a better way to profit on ingredients, better than trading ingredients on the smaller exchanges. I began calling all of our new clients, inquiring about the price they were paying for things like sugar, syrups and artificial flavorings. I already had a long list, prepared by my father, detailing his own quantity needs for each ingredient, and the historic price paid over the past five years. There is a forty gallon drum price, and there is a railroad tank car price. The difference in those two prices is considerable. A jobber buys by the tank car and fills his own drums for resale. If a baker is large enough, and has sufficient need, he can job his own ingredient needs. I had cheap storage available to me, for rail and tanker cars, and tremendous buying leverage, with my new client list. This meant I could strike my own purchasing deals, directly with producers. I started making some calls to them, as soon as I had a firm handle on the cumulative needs we had for certain baking ingredients. The first day I made a deal for seven tank cars of cinnamon. This represented over two hundred percent of our annual needs at my Dad's companies. The deal was too good for me to pass up though. By the end of the week, I'd sold off the full amount, a tank car at a time, for a net profit of thirty nine thousand dollars. I quickly phoned the producer back and made an offer on his remaining surplus inventory. When I'd first contacted him, he'd been concerned that his production had been greater than the demand he currently had. He'd been anxious to unload the surplus, hence the excellent price. He gave me the final twelve tankers, at the same price for the first seven, and thanked me for doing him a big favor. This time, I only sold off what my Dad wasn't going to need for the coming year. My father knew just about every one of the big owners in the baking business. Whenever I'd get a line on a bulk purchase of a common ingredient, he'd give me the contact information for people who he knew could use a large quantity of it. Almost to a man, these other bakers trusted each other more than they trusted ingredient suppliers. Everyone remembered being held up because of some jobber induced, artificially created, shortages. When I called them, and offered them a great deal on a bulk purchase, they were only too happy to deal with me. I always made certain to quote a price below anything they could hope to get from their current supply sources. I could afford to, because I never called them unless I'd gotten a really great deal myself. ------- My first "date" with Shirley was right after that second session we had where Shirley hadn't managed to cum. She requested that I take both her and Derek to a park for a picnic, and some relaxing, non-sexual, conversation. We did that, leaving from the house at around five thirty in the afternoon. Shirley had help preparing for her "date". Brenda had fixed up a nice picnic supper at work that day, and Joyce had gathered together a big blanket, Mama's large picnic basket, and a big thermos for the drink Shirley had chosen for us, wine spritzers. This was a white wine with 7-Up, all mixed in equal parts, then added into the thermos with lots of finely crushed ice. Shirley really liked the drink for a summer afternoon. We stayed out at the park, eating, playing with Derek, and talking about how each of us saw the future unfolding. One thing quickly became obvious to me, and this was that Shirley was concerned about how I would treat Derek. She wanted me to be his father figure. I had no objections. I'd always enjoyed little kids. I felt connected to Shirley, so, naturally, I felt somewhat connected with Derek already. We also discussed Shirley's ambitions for her schooling. She wanted to excel in something. She wasn't sure what that something was, but she knew she'd settle on it sometime, while she was still in college. She had received good grades in high school, but hadn't needed to apply herself too much to get them. We spoke about her having the money and the time to be able to devote herself to thoroughly learning a skill in school. I told her that money wouldn't ever be a problem for her, or for Derek, that she could always count on that. We discussed the other X's, and I told her I felt the same way about all of them, that money shouldn't be anything they needed to be concerned about. "Joyce told me she'd talk to you about working things out, so I could have orgasms with you. I didn't have any last week. I can't let myself go if she's there, not if you didn't already get me hot, like that first time." "She talked to me about that last night, Shirley, but she and I don't agree. She said it would be all right with her, if you and I went to bed a little earlier than she did. She told me she'd come in after you and I had gotten things started good for you. I told her I didn't want to do that." "Why not? That's the way it works best." "It works best for you, not for Joyce and me. Joyce is bending over backwards trying to make things easier for you to stay with us, to be a part of the group. I want you to stay too, you and Derek, but not like you and Joyce are trying to do it. I want you stay with us, but not the way we're doing things now. We can't keep making all these exceptions for you. You want to only be with me, but that doesn't work well with what we're trying to do. I wish there was a way we could all be together, but it doesn't look like there is." "I wish there was too, Kenny. I can't stand the idea of you having sex with everyone but me, and I can't make myself want to have sex with any of the girls. I don't know what we can do." "Joyce obviously thought the non-sexual "Dating" sessions would help you in some way. I think it just might make it worse." "If Joyce is okay with you and I having sex together, and Emily and Brenda don't object, why isn't it all right with you? We always had great sex together. I know you liked it." "This whole group idea isn't mine anymore. I told you that. I could be perfectly happy just having sex with Joyce. I'm pretty sure that Emily and Brenda could get along just with each other too. Joyce gets excited about all the other possibilities, a lot more than I do. She likes to watch, and she likes to participate too. Brenda has made Emily participate with Joyce. If I had the same kind of control over you, I'd ask you to participate with her too. Brenda didn't really have to force Emily, and I couldn't ever force you. Brenda likes being made to do things, and that's where you and she are different. I'd only want to be with you again, if you wanted to be with all the others too." "I just can't want to." "Me either, Shirley. That's what you and Joyce can't seem to understand. For me, there has to be a reason, and you aren't willing to provide that reason for me." "You can't expect me to give up having sex, when none of the rest of them are, I can't do that anymore, not just so I can be close to you." "You don't have to. You can still live with us, without being part of the group, as far as sex goes. You'd still be a part of it, as far as living and working with us. You could date whoever you wanted to then." "This isn't what Joyce wants, Kenny. She wants me to be part of the group. She's told me that, almost from the beginning. She told me we'd be able to work it out." "I know what Joyce wants, just like you do. I'm just like you, Shirley, I can't give her what she wants." "I'll have to move out then." "We'll all be sorry to see you leave, but you have to decide what's best for you." "That's it then? You won't change your mind?" "Shirley, I don't think you understand something. This is Joyce's group, not mine. I'm in the same boat as Brenda and Emily. I've decided, for myself, not to go along anymore with her playing favorites with you. I only agreed to go along with this as long as everyone else went along. You don't want to go along. Only Joyce has changed in how we said we'd do things, not me. She thought you just needed some time. You and I both know that isn't what you need. You want to keep Joyce hoping. She hopes you'll change, so you'll use that for as long as you can. You made it seem like you might change, but only as long as that meant you and I could still have sex." "I might have changed. I did things with Joyce. We both sucked you. We both fucked you." "Shirley, I was there. I saw what happened. Tomorrow is Brenda's turn. She's going to ask that you and I sleep with her. That will be her way of objecting to you having special treatment. You either have to be a part of the group, or not be a part. I'm a part of the group, and you aren't. We can't keep going outside the group. Brenda is going to make it clear that you aren't part of it." "What about Ellen?" "She's an exception." "I want to be an exception too." "You were, but now you aren't anymore." "I want to go home and talk to Joyce. None of this is like she told me it was supposed to be." I stood up and started folding things, and packing up the remains of our picnic. I had known that Brenda was planning to force Joyce's hand with Shirley. I had hoped the situation would be resolved before Brenda made her move. I knew Brenda might back down, if I asked her to, but that she wouldn't be willing to for Joyce's sake. Emily could be depended on to side with Brenda, in all things affecting the group. When we got back home, Joyce and the girls were waiting for us in the living room. Shirley wasted no time in running over and sitting next to Joyce. I didn't want to participate in their discussion, believing it would be better to let Emily and Brenda represent my feelings and beliefs about Shirley's status among us. It was almost two hours later when Brenda and Joyce brought the twins into the bedroom. Brenda gave me a smug look, so I had a pretty good idea of how the discussion had gone. After the babies were in their bassinets, Brenda said good night and left. Joyce got into bed, but left her shirt on. I knew that was a bad sign, but didn't make any comment. We were in bed together, but there was a big ocean of separation between us. Fifteen minutes went by and neither of us had spoken one word, not even saying good night to each other. "Did it make you happy to do that?" "It was either me tonight, or Brenda tomorrow night. I thought it would be easier for you if it was me instead of her." "Shirley would have refused, and I would have supported her right to refuse. We always said we wouldn't force ourselves on another member of the group." "Shirley isn't a member of the group. She isn't going to be." "That's what you believe. She was definitely making progress towards doing what we asked of her." "When she gets to where she's ready to be with all of us, I'll be ready to change my mind about her." "Now it has to be all of us?" "It was always that way. Only you have said it wasn't necessary. I went along with you, because I wanted you to see for yourself that Shirley wasn't going to change her mind. Brenda and Emily resent Shirley getting special treatment. Emily didn't get to choose." "Shirley is leaving. Is that what all of you wanted?" "I told her she could stay. I told her she could date whoever she wants to. She's moving out to try to pressure us to let her do what she wants." "You could get Brenda to not make a fuss. She'll do whatever you ask her to do. Emily will do what Brenda says. We don't have to have the situation become a big problem for all of us." "It isn't a big problem for me, Joyce. Shirley's problem is yours and the X's. I was already getting anything I wanted from her. You girls were the ones with the problem. You said all the X's would do whatever I wanted. Shirley didn't. She didn't want to give up anything to belong to our group. The rest of us did give things up." "What did you or Brenda give up, Kenny?" "Brenda has to share Emily now. I have to share myself with all your X's." "Poor baby. What a terrible sacrifice you're making." "I'm sharing you with them too." "Kenny, don't pretend. None of this is a hardship for you. You love having all of us wanting you like this. This is the harem you've always wanted." "Maybe it's more the harem that you've always wanted. I'm not saying its hard for me to fuck any of them. I enjoy fucking them with you too. The difference is, I wouldn't go to all the trouble you have gone through, just to keep this group together. I still say I don't need anyone but you. I know I don't need Shirley." "Suppose I said Shirley can go, but Emily has to go too?" "Fine with me. Brenda might rebel, but I wouldn't complain." "I hate it when you get like this, Kenny. You knew I wanted Shirley to stay, and be a part of all of this. You should have supported me. You could have forced her, the same way you did that time with Brenda." "Is that what you really want, Joyce? You want me to bring her in here and start fucking her, then make her lick your pussy?" Joyce had been facing me, but when I asked her the last question, she rolled over, presenting only her back to me. I stayed right where I was, thinking about everything that had gone on in the past few weeks. I'd done all I could, consistent with my beliefs, to help Joyce get what I believed she wanted. For her to be mad, because her plan for Shirley was meeting a lot of resistance, was just unfair. Shirley wasn't as important to me as Joyce was. Not by a long ways. I knew I could get Shirley to do what Joyce wanted her to do. I could do it just by talking to her. Over the time we'd gone together, I knew that Shirley's greatest fantasy was to be fucked by two guys at once. Anybody who'd ever heard her cumming with a screwdriver, or a finger or two in her ass, knew she had this thing about being fucked in the ass and pussy at the same time. She and I had even talked about it sometimes, usually when I was trying to get her hot enough to cum. When I had really loved her before, I could have never gone through with it. If it wasn't someone you loved, and were possessive of though, it might be something interesting to try one time. I was thinking of Gary, Emily's brother. I'd first have to check with all the others, to make sure they wouldn't get too upset if I promised her that we'd try it once. "Are you still awake, Joyce?" I waited, but she didn't answer me. "I know how to talk Shirley into coming in here and fucking both of us." She turned over to look at me, but she didn't speak. "I could get her to do Emily and Brenda too, but I'd need to give her something she wants more than she'd dislike eating all your pussies, or letting you eat hers." "What would you need to give her?" Joyce was clearly very interested. I've told you about how tenacious she could be. She hated to give up before getting whatever she was after. This was a valuable quality to have in business, but something of a pain in the ass in our personal lives. "You heard her that one night when she was cumming with my fingers in her butt. What do you think she wants more than anything? Her number one fantasy?" "Two guys at once? In her pussy and butt holes? We don't have two guys." "I was thinking of asking Gary." "Gary? Emily's brother, Gary?" "Sure. I know he has a thing for tall girls. Shirley is very tall. I think he'd do it. If he didn't, then I'd have to find someone else who would." "I'd have to get to watch it. We all would, except for maybe Emily. Brenda and I would want to watch for sure. I've never seen something like that. Suppose Brenda wanted to try it too? Would you let her?" I looked at her. I knew her next question, if I said yes. I hadn't needed to face my possessiveness problems, but I knew I had them, had always had them. I could share girls with other girls, and it wasn't a problem. This was a lot different. "In her ass, with a condom, but not in her pussy. Only I can fuck her pussy." "I want to watch that too, if it happens." That's all she said. I wondered if she didn't want to, or if she didn't want to say anything because she wanted me to get Shirley to agree to eating her and the other girls first. "Do you still want me to go see Shirley, and make her the offer?" "Yes. Tell her she has to do me first. If she quits halfway through, I don't want to be the one who didn't get to try her." "If we go through with this, that's it. She gets no more special exemptions after this is over. We give her what she wants, only after she does all the other X's, and they do her. After, she has to decide if she'll continue doing it with all of us, or else not be a part of any more sex with any of us." "Yes. Go to her room and talk to her. Remember to tell her I'm first." I noticed Joyce's fingers moving under the sheet. I guess she wanted to be all ready in case Shirley came running in, and attacked her. I went out in the hallway and made my way down to Shirley's room. Her door was closed, but I could hear her weeping inside her room. I almost turned around and went back to my bedroom. What I was contemplating doing was pretty ruthless. It was me saying the ends justified the means. If Shirley hadn't been consciously working Joyce and I, over her supposed indecision about doing girl things with us, I might have relented, and turned back to my room. She had used Joyce's weakness against her, for her own purposes. I was convinced of that. I knew she had her own fantasy, but it was one she probably wouldn't have indulged now, not without a big push from someone else. Most people never acted on their wildest fantasies. I knocked softly on her bedroom door, calling out her name. "Shirley, it's Kenny, can I come in?" Her weeping ceased, and then I heard her telling me to come in. I walked over to her bed, and sat on the edge. I was sitting at about her waist area. "Joyce told me the discussion didn't go well. I just came in to make sure you're okay." "I'm not okay. This is the hardest thing for me. I'm going to lose you all over again, Kenny. I don't know what I'm going to do now, about school, or anything. All my plans need to be changed." "I told you that nothing had to change except the group and the sex part. You don't have to move. Once Brenda and Emily know you've opted out of the group, they won't have any problems with you being with us or living here." "Brenda yelled at me. She called me a tease." "Well, I know you aren't a tease. At least not with me. Do you want to talk some more, or are you ready to go to sleep?" "I want to talk. Why don't you lay on the bed with me? We can talk quieter then." I didn't argue with her. I'd been waiting for her to suggest it. She moved over to the middle of the bed, and I got in and moved over next to her. I was on my side, facing her, and she was on her back. I let my dick bump against her hip when I slid over. Even with my underpants on, she could feel my dick pressing into her hip. She quickly turned on her side, so my dick was pressed against her ass. She giggled and settled in close to me. I reached over and put a hand on her breast, squeezing it in a friendly way. She arched a little, pressing her chest into my hand, and her butt against my cock. "It's a good thing I'm wearing underpants, or else my cock might slide into your ass, by accident." "I wouldn't mind. I've been thinking about you a lot today. I'm going to miss you so much." I pulled my pants down and off, and began rubbing my dick into the crease of her ass. From her movements, I could see she had been thinking about something sexual. "I was thinking about this problem you have with doing things with the other girls. Its like if someone asked me to do things with another guy. I couldn't do that either. I mean do things directly with one. Maybe, I could do things to a girl, while he did things with her too. I don't know. It would be tough for me to even try something like that." "You were thinking about that?" "Yes. I was trying to put myself in your place. I wanted to figure what I'd do in your position. I think I'd decide just like you did. It wouldn't be so bad fucking a girl with another guy, as long as there wasn't any touching each other. I guess that's different than what we're asking you to do. It would be more like when you and Joyce took turns sucking my dick. That wasn't so bad for you. I was sorry when you didn't cum later though." I had been rubbing the head of my cock all through her pussy and pressing the knob against her little pucker. She was pressing back and trying to relax her ass so the head would go in. "That feels good, Kenny. I'm glad you were thinking about my problem with doing girl things. It would be hard to do if you weren't attracted to girls. I'm not attracted. I don't understand why the other X's are." "We all have different things that excite us. You have screwdrivers, Emily likes to be treated mean. Joyce likes to be treated rough, and thrown all around, like a rag doll. Brenda likes to treat Emily mean. We all have different things." "The screwdrivers aren't the same as doing things with other girls." "No, you're right." I had the head inside her butt hole, and she was squeezing and releasing it. I was just holding still, allowing her to take it further in, at her own pace. "This is a lot bigger than my little screwdriver. It feels good, but it hurts too. Don't move yet, okay?" "Okay. It fits easily in your pussy, but it's so tight in your ass like this. You're lucky I don't have two dicks. You'd have a real tough time with one in each hole." As soon as I whispered that to her, she started pressing harder back against my dick, and another inch penetrated her. I felt her hand reach back to the rear of my thigh and try to pull me in closer. She was already groaning when I pinched her nipple hard. She had to be really hot before she'd let me pinch her nipples hard without complaining. "If they were both as thick as yours is, I would. I might be able to get used to it, even if they were both like yours. It might feel good enough I wouldn't mind a little pain from it." She was moving up and back on my dick now, with only another inch or two that wasn't going in. "It's feeling good now, Kenny. I like doing it like this sometimes. We didn't do this as much before. I wouldn't have minded." "I like fucking pussies a lot better than asses. Some guys like asses better though, because they're tighter. You like it both ways. I remember how hot you'd get when we used to talk about you being fucked by two guys at once." "I only think like that when I'm really, really, hot. It isn't something you'd want to do, not unless you were super hot." She had managed to get all of me inside her ass. She'd never managed that before, and I was bigger now than when we used to go together. I still wasn't doing anything, other than staying where I was and playing with her one breast. She was moving a lot quicker now, and my pole was well lubed and sliding in and out easily. It was still tight, but not as restrictive. "Are you okay, Shirley? Do you want to stop?" "No! Don't stop. I'm almost there. It doesn't hurt at all now. It just feels good." "Are you hot enough that you wish your pussy was getting fucked too?" She clamped down on my dick and I heard and felt her first orgasm. "Ow, damn, you squeeze down hard when you cum with a cock in your ass. I think I already know the answer to my other question. If I had another dick, I'd be fucking your little pussy too." She had stopped cumming, but when I said that to her, she started moving hard against me again, on her way up to another strong orgasm. "I bet you wouldn't mind licking pussies, if you had two cocks in you right now. Do you think you'd lick all the X's pussies if I told you I'd get another guy, and we'd both fuck you together some time?" The next ten minutes woke anyone who was sleeping, including the three babies. She yelled out a lot of stuff, as she slammed her ass back continuously, on my cock. The sum of all of it was that she promised to do anything, if I'd fuck her with another guy. When I finally came, she felt every spasm of my balls. She welcomed each squirt too. I allowed my shrinking cock to slip out of her ass on its own. I knew she was way up there as far as being aroused. She had quit yelling, and Derek had just fallen back to sleep on his own. "God, Kenny. I can't believe you had me talking to you about that." "I meant it too, Shirley, but you have to go in our bedroom and eat Joyce's pussy, if you really meant what you said. Tonight, you do her, and when you've done all three of the girls, and they've done you, I'm going to bring a guy over here, and we're going to fuck you so good, you'll never forget it." "What about Derek?" "I'll bring him over, as soon as I've cleaned myself up. When I get there, you better have that cute face of yours buried in Joyce's pussy. No excuses this time. I'm giving you what you always wanted, so you have to give us what we want. If you don't eat pussy tonight, then we have no deal." "I think I'm hot enough to do it tonight, but how will I get hot enough to do those other two?" "I guess you'll get hot enough by thinking about how you're going to feel with two big dicks buried in your two holes, after you finish doing what you promised." Shirley got up and left the room. I went in and cleaned off my dick, and my pubic and thigh areas. Ass fucking could get messy, but that was going to be Gary's job, not mine. I wondered how hard it would be to talk him into it. I knew it wouldn't be at all hard to get him to come over and eat dinner with us. He'd been over three or four times since Emily had moved in. Brenda was a better cook than Kitty, and our dinners didn't have any parents sitting around bad mouthing either Gary or Emily. When I was cleaned, to my satisfaction, I picked up Derek, and the whole bassinet, and carried him over to our bedroom. Shirley was on her back, and Joyce was riding her face. I looked over in the corner, as I was putting Derek's bassinet down, and was surprised to see Brenda standing there, holding Bunny, who was now asleep. She must have been in the room when Shirley came in, helping Joyce with the twins. I guess Shirley either hadn't noticed her, or else hadn't cared. I walked over and took Bunny from her. "Go over and start licking Shirley's pussy, Brenda. She's pretty hot right now, so she probably will welcome it. She might just think it's me." Brenda hesitated, but I gave her a stern look, and she went and did what I told her to. I guess Brenda understood that she still had to do what I told her to. After I put Bunny down, I walked over and watched the three of them. Shirley seemed to like having her pussy licked. Brenda seemed pretty enthusiastic too, after she managed to get her whole face wet. After a few minutes, I could hear Shirley trying to yell again, but it came out pretty muffled by Joyce's pussy. I went over, two or three times, to check on all the babies, but they were sleeping peacefully. My dick had gotten hard again, and Brenda's ass was always a very tempting sight as she wiggled it with her pussy munching motions. I went over and planted my bone up all the way inside her. This turned out to be a good thing for all the girls, spurring Brenda to a greater effort, which helped Shirley to get an even stronger reaction out of Joyce. When Joyce turned her head, and saw me fucking Brenda, she started really washing Shirley's face with her flying mop of curly black pussy hair. I managed to have another great cum, but I was behind all the rest of them. I know for a fact that Brenda had cum at least three times while I was fucking her. I decided to let the three of them work out anything else that needed working out. I'd done all I could to get Shirley playing the same tune as the rest of us. I went over to my side of the bed and hopped in. Five minutes later I was sound asleep. Every time I looked at Shirley the next day, she'd blush and look away from me. We were watching television at about eight thirty, and Brenda got up and went over to Shirley and whispered something in her ear. Again, Shirley blushed deeply, but she got up and went with Brenda, back to the bedroom Brenda and Emily shared. I looked around and Emily had disappeared too. Joyce was missing as well, but I found her in our bedroom nursing Little Bertie. "Brenda just came to get Shirley. Is tonight the night Emily gets to get all nasty with Shirley?" "Brenda and Emily both. Shirley asked Brenda to be there with them. Said that way is easier for her. She didn't ask you to help her out tonight?" "No. She hasn't talked to me at all. She didn't eat breakfast this morning, and since you guys came home this afternoon, she's been avoiding doing any talking to me too. She blushes whenever I make eye contact with her. I guess she's embarrassed or something." "I told you she'd come around." "If I hadn't gone into her room and promised her the moon, none of this would have happened. Which reminds me. You need to call Gary and invite him over for lunch or supper, sometime this weekend." "Why do I have to invite him? Wouldn't it be more natural coming from his sister?" "Emily doesn't want to call home. She's still upset with her parents. Use your little girl voice. They'll think it's one of those young school girls that are basketball fanatics. Gary gets calls all the time from them." "Did you tell Shirley that we want to watch her fucking two guys at once?" "You know what? It never came up in our little conversation. If I were you, I'd wait until it's already happening, then just come waltzing in if you want to. What's she going to do? She probably won't even know you're there watching it. If we do it right, she won't even care anyway." "Brenda told me that Gary has a really skinny pecker. She said it was long though." "Has she seen it recently?" "She said he was twelve the last time she saw it." "Well he's sixteen now, so it's probably changed from then." "Brenda doesn't want to fuck the two of you like that. I asked her. She wants to watch though, and so does Emily." "And so do you." Joyce blushed a little, but didn't make any comment. "We could go watch Emily and Brenda with Shirley, Kenny." "We could stay here and do our own fucking, instead of just watching." "We could do both. I could go back and watch for a few minutes, while you watch the babies. When I come back, you could go watch too." "I'll pass. You go watch if you want to. You better hurry back though, because we aren't going to have that much time before the twins wake up again." "We'll have enough. When Shirley comes back here to pick up Derek, are we going to do anything with her?" "Only is she asks us. I don't want you asking her. If she does Emily, that completes her part of the deal. Instead of going off and peeping at the X's, you should be calling Gary and inviting him over here. We need to plan how we're going to bring this whole thing up with him. I don't want him thinking I'm coming on to him, or anything like that. How am I supposed to ask him?" "I don't know. This was your idea, not ours. I thought all guys liked any kind of fucking they could get?" "We do, but this is a little weird, both of us at once. It might be better if Shirley explained it to him." "Kenny, you have to ask him. Shirley would be too embarrassed to ask him something like that. You need to get it all arranged with him, and then, after the two of you have gotten it all straight, you bring her into it." "The things I get myself into for you, Joyce." "I'm going to go take a peek. Watch the babies. Come get me if they start crying. If one of them wakes up, pick him up before he starts crying, and wakes up the other two." Joyce left, and was gone for a long time. I was thinking about going looking for her, but she came back, and Shirley was with her. Joyce was carrying her clothes under one arm. I started laughing. "Get a good look?" Joyce blushed and threw one of her tennis shoes at me. Shirley smiled at me shyly. Both girls kept walking to my bed. "We want you to fuck us now, Kenny. All that girl stuff made us horny. Shirley has finished doing things with all of us now. We really gave Emily a workout." We had an enjoyable hour together. I was only involved in the first twenty minutes of it, but that seemed to be enough to satisfy both girls. When they were done, Shirley took Derek back to her room. Joyce looked pretty smug and satisfied with herself. "Shirley licked all three of us in Brenda's room. It was her idea to line us up and taste each of us like that. She isn't as good at it as Emily, but she's already better than Brenda. Brenda is too self-centered to be any good at eating pussy, unless she really gets herself excited. With just girls, she's only luke warm." "Did you call Gary yet?" "When did I have time to call him? I just got done telling you what I was doing." "I just thought of something, Joyce, you're getting more pussy than I am now." "Not more, except maybe for tonight. I still liked what we did in here, with you, a lot more than what we all did in Brenda and Emily's room. You make all the girls better in bed when you're here with us. We all feel like that, except possibly for Emily, sometimes." After the twins woke up, and Joyce got them changed and fed, we both went to sleep. The next morning, a Friday, Shirley and Derek wanted to stay home with me. Derek was teething again, and Shirley said she didn't feel like inflicting him on the other girls. All the other girls agreed. I had a lot of work to get done, and this was my last free day away from the office, to work on finding a good rhythm for trading and procuring. I knew I'd be busy all day long. I felt like I had to try to be reasonable though, not be totally selfish about getting things my way. Gerta and Mama were on their way to California, in the company plane, to get Bea, or else see about helping her. I shouldn't have been surprised at this development. Gerta had more faith in Mama than she did in Hans. Mama also had a way to get people to follow her orders. Hans didn't, and Gerta didn't either, except with Hans. They were planning on flying out on Friday, taking part of the weekend to find Bea, trying to talk some sense to her, then flying back home, sometime Sunday afternoon. Dad was going to spend the weekend at the apartment in Bolling, and was going to be eating his meals at Gracarie's Cocina. I told him he was welcome to spend the weekend with us, but he just groaned and said he'd feel more comfortable at the apartment. My dad was funny about all the X's. He thought we were involved in all sorts of lewd behavior. I tried telling him it wasn't really like that, but he wouldn't let me finish telling him. I did get in touch with Gary, on Friday morning. I asked him to plan on coming over for dinner on both Saturday and Sunday nights. He had hinted around, several times in the past, that he'd like a job for the summer. Now that he had a driver's license, we could put him to work over at the company. I was thinking about having Emily give him her old Cadillac, and I'd give her mine and then I'd take Joyce's. I had worked out a deal to get Joyce a different new Lincoln. The one she had gotten from the lease guy hadn't been new, and I was worried about Joyce and the twins driving around in a used car. I didn't want to have to keep supporting all these extra cars we seemed to be accumulating. I stopped for awhile at noon, to eat the lunch that Brenda had made for me. Shirley had left me alone all morning, allowing me to concentrate on my work things. At lunch, she approached me. "Kenny, is it okay if I ask you a few questions?" "Sure, Shirley. Ask away. I'll try my best to answer them for you." "Its about that thing we talked about a few nights ago." "You moving out?" "No, that other thing, when you came into my bedroom." "You mean about me bringing a guy over so the two of us could fuck you at the same time?" I watched her face turning scarlet. One minute she was fairly normal in her complexion, and the next, she was turning into a beet. I sat there, waiting for her to reply. She seemed to be at a loss for words. Finally, she regained her composure, and so she started in again. "I wanted to talk to you about how you were going to do it. I can't just go into a bedroom with two guys." "You tell me how you think it would be best, Shirley. This is your fantasy, after all." "I've given it some thought. First, it should be really dark in the room, and you should get me going like you did that other time. Fucking me, and playing in my butt, with your fingers. You should talk to me like you did in my room that night, about whether I'd like someone else to be fucking my ass while you fuck my pussy. When I'm hot enough, I'll tell you I would, then he can come from wherever he's hiding, and I'll be ready for it. I don't even want to know who it is." "That sounds kind of complicated. If it's really dark, how will he be able to see what hole he's supposed to be fucking? I don't want any slip ups. How about a blindfold, so only you can't see? The only other problem I have is that you might not get hot enough to want to be fucked by the two of us." The effect on Shirley, when I said she might not be hot enough, was to make her start flushing all over again. Her whole upper chest and neck were flushed then. "I don't think you have to worry about that. I've been thinking about it ever since you first talked to me about it. Can we possibly go somewhere else to do it though? Maybe a hotel or motel room? I'm worried that the other girls might try to see us doing it if we're here." "This is getting too complicated, Shirley. I can see some of your points about how you want to do this. I can't see making a big production out of it. The simpler we make it, the fewer things there are that could go wrong. You should let me handle it. I'll set it up, and I won't even tell you when it's going to happen. From now on, I'll make you wear a blindfold whenever we're going to be fucking. You won't know when it's going to happen, not until you feel someone trying to put his cock in your ass." "Oh, maybe that's the best way, Kenny. You aren't going to keep me waiting for a long time though?" I looked at my watch. It was twelve thirty. I had finished my lunch. I had another half hour I could afford to kill. Derek had just been put down a half hour before. "Shirley go to your room and get undressed. I'm going to make a quick phone call, and then I'm going to get Uncle Bunny's old nighttime sleeping mask. I better get some petroleum jelly for your butt too. I'll come get you when it's all ready. When you put the blindfold on, no peeking. If you try to peek, you might ruin it. Hurry up!" She took off for her room. I went to get the mask and the lubricant. I got undressed, and went to her room, opening her door. She was shivering from the anticipation, when I slipped the sleeping mask over her head. We walked back to my bedroom, with me leading her, cautioning her not to say a word. I told her she could nod when I asked her if she was ready or not. Once in my bedroom, I started playing with her, and nibbling on her neck and breasts before I moved down to eat her out a little. She was already beyond regular hot by the time I got a tongue between her wet pussy petals. I spent about four or five minutes before I got on my back and helped her turn around and mount me from on top. I slid easily into her steaming hot quim. She was bucking and screaming with her first orgasm, not two minutes after my dick first went into her. I let her ride to another quick orgasm before I stuck some jelly on my fingers and started rubbing around her little brown rose bud. She started helping me right away, relaxing so that two of my fingers found easy entry into her back passage. She was really yelling now, and I heard Derek crying too. "Are you ready to have someone fucking your ass too, Shirley? You want us to both fuck you silly?" She was cumming, screaming and nodding her head up and down with an anxious and willing fervor. I pulled both my fingers out of her ass, and she fainted. One minute we were fucking, and the next she was unconscious. I rolled her over, and went to Shirley's room to check on a loudly screaming Derek. I hadn't cum at all, but she had at least five cums that I was sure of. When I left her, she was still deeply flushed, from her forehead to her navel. When I got back, with a quieted down Derek, Shirley was still out. Derek was starting to nod off again, now that his mother had grown quiet, so I rocked him a little, until he was asleep again, then put him down on the bed, next to Shirley. I put pillows down on both sides, to prevent him from rolling off the bed, then I got dressed and went back to my home office. I looked at my watch and it was five after one. At two fifteen, Shirley came over and knocked on my office door for my attention. The door was opened, so I could listen in case Derek had started crying again. Shirley had Derek in her arms, and she was dressed in some kind of bathrobe. "Is he gone?" I almost couldn't believe my ears when she asked that. I looked over and nodded to her that he was. "Was he disappointed?" "Are you kidding? He said you were the wildest woman he'd ever fucked. I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself the way you reacted to him. Is your ass sore?" I saw her move her legs a little, and then she winced. "Just a little. Was he really big?" "Not that fat, but pretty long. Don't you remember what you said? You seemed pretty excited when he was fucking you. You woke up Derek with all that screaming." "I remember him starting to cry, but I couldn't stop. I'm embarrassed now, Kenny. Please don't tell the others how I was acting. You know I get carried away sometimes. I wanted to ask you one more favor. Could you possibly watch Derek for ten minutes while I take a shower. I feel like I should try to get clean again before everyone comes home. I'm glad we did it, but I wouldn't want to do that again anytime soon. I went so crazy, I'm not sure what I really remember about it. How long did we all do it?" I looked at my watch, then I grinned at her. "He left at two, and it took him fifteen minutes to shower and get dressed. I think maybe forty five minutes. I know he had to change rubbers two more times after the first one. I'm kind of surprised that you feel like you don't want to do it again. I kind of told him that we'd do it again, sometime next week. He's going to be disappointed. What about what you said to him about bringing some of his friends next time?" Shirley's free hand flew to her mouth when I told her that. I was really having fun with this. I just watched her face to see what she would say. "Didn't you tell him I don't mean those things I say. Why would I say something like that?" "I don't know, Shirley. You're the one that said those things. You didn't mean it about wanting another guy to suck while he and I fucked you?" "I might have meant it then, but not now. I've thought of that too, but not like this. See, this is why I shouldn't do those things with the girls. Once I do them, I let myself do all sorts of other things. Derek didn't see this other man did he?" "When he went and brought him to the bedroom, but Derek seemed to like him all right. He stopped crying. Look, forget about it for now. What's done is done. Go take a quick shower, and make sure your butt isn't ripped or anything. I'll watch Derek, but you need to hurry. I'll call the guy later and tell him you want to cool it for awhile." "Thank you, Kenny. You aren't going to tell the others, right?" "I've got to tell Joyce, but I'll just tell her we did it, and you didn't like it that much. You can tell her the truth later, if you decide to. She doesn't need to know we both fucked you so good that you passed out from all your cums." Shirley handed me Derek and thanked me, before heading off for a quick shower. It took her half an hour for that quick shower, but she explained that her butt hole was sore and she needed to put some salve on it. I told her I understood. I couldn't wait for Joyce to get home, so I could tell her what really happened. ------- Chapter 14 I found out that Mama's trip to California with Gerta hadn't been fruitful at all. Bea had been evicted from her tiny efficiency apartment, over a month before, and the landlord claimed he had no forwarding address for her. Mama had hired a detective agency to search for her. By the time Joyce and the rest of the gang got home, I had changed my mind about telling her about what happened. I knew Joyce, and she would have insisted that I had promised that she could watch. I was starting to believe, if I played my cards right, I could get out of my commitment to Shirley, without having had to deliver what had been promised. She thought I'd fulfilled her fantasy, and that was close enough for me. At dinner, Shirley had again gotten very shy around me, blushing whenever I chanced to look in her direction. It was obvious to me that Shirley hadn't been comfortable revealing her fantasy, or in having me with her when it had been realized. It made me feel better that we hadn't actually gone through with it. Emily wasn't being shy with me though, announcing that Saturday was her turn with me, and that she wanted us to go into Bolling, for a nice dinner and a movie. She even had the movie all picked out. "Moonstruck", starring Cher, and Nicholas Cage. When she told me which movie she had picked, I almost decided to protest that it was too cruel for her to expect me sit through that particular kind of movie. The look Joyce was giving me prevented my doing that. The movie was a lot better than I had thought it would be, and the Thai place Emily found had very good shrimp fried rice and a tasty spicy soup dish. Emily had wanted to have me to herself so she could talk about enlisting my help in changing the current arrangement our group had that resulted in so much switching of sex partners. I listened to her complaints, then I told her that I was leaving all of that sort of thing up to Joyce. If she wanted to change the way things were done, she needed to discuss it at a time when all of us would be present together, like at the nightly dinners. "I've been wanting to do that, but Brenda told me I couldn't. Since we've been back, she's been being even bossier than she was before. She acts like she owns me now. Whatever I say, she tells me I can't do that. She wants to make all my decisions now." "Emily, no one is forcing you to obey her. I keep saying you have to stand up to her. This other role you play with her, when the two of you are together in bed, I can understand why you might want to do that. Joyce likes me to treat her a certain way in bed too, but she wouldn't like it if I tried doing it that way for any of the other parts of our relationship. You should stand up to her more, especially when it concerns something that really matters to you." "I promised I'd obey her." Emily had her resigned, martyr voice, when she said that to me. "Tell me, specifically, what you want to have happen in order to change things." "I don't like doing any of the all girl things, except alone, with Brenda. I understand about how I agreed that I'd be doing things with Joyce or Shirley, but that was supposed to be with you there with us too, not just doing it with the girls." I thought about what she was saying. To me, her request sounded very reasonable. I told her I'd talk it over with Joyce, and if she agreed with me, we'd both tell Brenda not to make Emily participate with just her and other girls. "I'll need to speak with Joyce, but I can't see why you have to do something you don't like, as long as you're willing to do the minimum that the group requires. If Joyce agrees too, we'll all have a discussion, you'll get to talk to Brenda and Shirley about it. Was there anything else that was bothering you about what the group is doing?" "Not with the whole group, but I think Brenda and I should each have our own separate bedrooms. Things have started changing between the two of us. We seem to fight a lot more, now that we all have this whole group thing going. She takes me for granted, but then she still expects me to cater to her slightest whim." I tried not to smile. This was vintage Emily. Her pendulum with Brenda, was beginning to swing back the other way, just as it had so many times with me. She and I had fought most of the time, and usually over things that she had changed her mind about. I wondered how Brenda was going to react to this development in the way Emily reacted. I wondered also whether them being at odds would polarize the group. It was difficult to find any one way of doing things, to satisfy so many different people. We didn't all want the same things from the group, and didn't even agree on what our primary focus should be. "Are things really changing, Emily, or are you just reacting to Brenda now having more sex partners than she's had before?" "Both. Look who she picked for her last two times with you, Shirley and Joyce. She does that partly because she knows it hurts me." "She picked Shirley, just to make a point. She didn't even go through with it, not until I made her lick her. You already knew she liked having sex with Joyce and me. Things will settle down after all the newness is finished." "She told me she's going to pick Joyce and Shirley, instead of you or me, her next time to pick." That information really surprised me. It was obvious that Brenda must have a reason for doing that, but I couldn't really see what it might be. From everything I'd been able to personally observe, Brenda preferred guys for sex. Joyce had commented, several times, that Brenda was much more animated in bed when I was there with her. I didn't even know if what Brenda was planning was allowed. It would be very interesting if Brenda really did what Emily claimed she planned on doing. I tried to remember how we had originally set up the rules for these days where the girls got to pick what they wanted. I thought it was that each girl would have one day with me, and could pick up to one other person to join with us for sex. I'd have to ask Joyce it that had been her understanding too. Brenda had to be trying to make some point about the sexual politics of our group, but I was at a loss to understand what that point could be. On the drive back home, I asked Emily if she thought she might like to give her Cadillac to Gary and have mine instead. She surprised me by saying she wanted to keep hers. When I asked her why she didn't want the newer car, she said hers ran just fine, and she liked having a convertible. I told her I'd give mine to Gary then, and she smiled, and said that would be a very nice thing for me to do. Sunday morning, Brenda announced her picks for her day. I had only had a minute to discuss, with Joyce, Emily's requests to have her own room, and to not be required to have sex with other girls, without my needing to be present. I hadn't remembered to speak to her about what Emily had said Brenda's picks would be. We were all having breakfast together when Brenda announced that she wanted Joyce and Shirley to be her partners for her day. I expected Joyce to say something, but she just sat there smiling. She sure didn't act surprised at Brenda's picks. I knew right away that I had a full scale mutiny on my hands. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Shirley was looking at me, obviously waiting for me to speak up. She didn't look at all happy about Brenda's announcement. I sat there, saying nothing, enjoying my breakfast of blueberry crepes and fruit cocktail. I had said all along, even to myself, that this was Joyce's group. If I didn't defer to her, I'd be assuming a responsibility I neither wanted or needed. After a few minutes, all the X's were starting to look puzzled. "Aren't you going to say anything, Kenny?" Joyce broke the silence. "Wonderful breakfast, Brenda. I really missed your cooking while you were gone." "What about what Brenda just said? About her picking Shirley and me for tonight?" "What about it? Its up to you and Shirley. I think this pick does raise an important question though, and that's whether members of the group have the right to opt out of participating, if they choose to. I think they should have that right, but I've only got one vote." "You don't care that you were left out as a pick?" Brenda looked at me like she couldn't believe I wasn't reacting to her announcement with more excitement than I was. She looked disappointed. She must have expected I'd make a big fuss about it. I was happy to disappoint her. I was glad that Emily had warned me first. If I'd been totally surprised, I might have reacted differently. I started wondering to myself, if Brenda coming up with something like this, might not mean she was a lot more aware of things, other than herself. If she was, than I'd never given her proper credit for being that aware. This wasn't something that Joyce would have spearheaded. This had to be all Brenda's idea. Soon, I knew, we'd find out why. "I wasn't left out. I just wasn't one of the ones you picked today. It's your day, you should pick whoever you want to have. The only problem I see is that some of the members of our group might not want to participate with certain combinations of people. Other members might also start to feel slighted, for not being picked. It's definitely going to change things around here, but that might be a good thing too. We should get all these sorts of things worked out before we head up to Lawrence." "So, I can pick whoever I want? It doesn't have to include you?" Brenda was looking at Joyce while she was speaking to me. "Anyone in the group, as long as they want to participate. As far as I'm concerned, everyone that's in the group has slept with everyone else, at least once. I think all sex should be strictly voluntary from now on." Shirley was now smiling, and so was Emily. Joyce wasn't smiling. Brenda looked confused. "By the way, Brenda, Emily wants her bedroom all to herself now. I want you to pick another bedroom for you to live in." I was hoping this last piece of information would get Brenda thinking about the big picture. She had always had problems with understanding that her actions had consequences. Brenda needed to make more of an effort to make Emily content with being part of the group. What she was doing wasn't having that effect. "Kenny, we haven't finished discussing any of this yet. We all need to stay here and discuss these things." Joyce was looking more upset now. I think she had looked on Brenda's pick as being something that freed up the group, making it more open for interesting combinations. For the first time, there would have been a pick for a threesome that hadn't included me. All I could figure was that Joyce thought it would be better if I weren't always thought to be a necessary part of the group. I wasn't against that occurring, but I wasn't optimistic that it would appeal to more than just Joyce and Brenda. The appeal it had to them was probably for reasons that were entirely different for each of them. "What do you mean, Joyce? I don't see what needs discussing. Emily wants her own room. I know Brenda has been living in the room with her, but things change. Emily has a right to more privacy, if that's what she needs. Isn't this whole discussion we're having now about rights? Members of the group don't give up their rights, just because they join, do they?" The discussion broke down a little after that, mostly because Shirley stood up, saying she didn't want to participate with Brenda and Joyce for Brenda's day, then left with her glass, silverware, and dish for the kitchen. Emily stood up and left for her room, without speaking at all. This left only Joyce, Brenda, and me. "Kenny, this isn't good. You just put things back to the way they used to be, before we got Emily and Shirley settled into doing what we wanted. Now what's going to happen?" "Now we're all free to live the way we want to, Joyce. You have your day, just like the other girls. You're free to pick whoever you choose, just like Brenda did. All of us are free to say we don't want to be included, if we don't. Isn't this what you wanted, Brenda?" "I didn't want Emily to be so mad at me, but, yes, I'm happy with all the rest of it. You can take Shirley's place tonight." "Thank you, but I think I need a day off. Perhaps we'll do it another time? Let me know if you need any help moving your things out of Emily's room." I got up and went to my home office, shutting the door behind me. Joyce waited more than a minute before joining me. "Kenny, you can't do this." Joyce seemed a lot more upset than she had been when we were discussing it with the others. "I already did it, Joyce. I can't believe you allowed Brenda to put such a slick one over on you. Didn't you stop to think what it was she was trying to get changed? She didn't like you or Shirley being with Emily. I think she's going to end up very disappointed by what happens from this though. She won the battle, but it's going to cost her the whole war. Wait until Emily announces her picks on her next day." "I want you to put it back to how we had it before. If you don't, Shirley and Emily are going to go right back to how they were before. You can change it back if you just tell them you changed your mind." "Want whatever, Joyce, I'm not going to change it back. I still think this way will be better for all of us. I love you, but I'm not going to let you use me to force the others to keep your harem intact. You're welcome to try to change it back yourself, but I think you'd be a lot better off waiting to see what's really going to happen now. I've got a feeling it's going to turn out better for you than you think. I've still got my three days when I get to pick, you should remember that. I know what I like, and I'm sure you'll be getting some of what you like too." I slept alone Sunday night. Joyce and Brenda were together in Brenda's new room. On Monday night, one of my three nights, I went over to Shirley in the nursery at work, and told her I wanted to have her come to bed with Joyce and I. I promised I'd make sure she would have some good cums, if she agreed to do it. She didn't even hesitate in accepting. She wasn't disappointed, and neither was Joyce. Shirley had apparently overcome her reticence about doing things with Joyce. A good time was had by all. On Tuesday, it was Shirley's turn, and we ended up with the two of us going out for a drive with Derek. It was a "Date", and I didn't have sex on "Date" nights. We had a good time together. Shirley was much more relaxed about things, now that she knew she could refuse anything, if she wanted to. She told me it was as much the coercion factor she had feared as it was having sex with a girl. As far as wanting to do anything else, she still maintained she thought she needed to get revved up, before she would be happy to participate in any girl things. Other than with Emily, that seemed to be a common theme. Brenda's relationship with Emily was as much about her having power and control, as it was about sex. She loved having someone willing to do her bidding. The sex had always been just another extra for her. Wednesday was another one of my days. I invited Emily to come to bed with Joyce and me. She and Brenda were barely speaking to each other at that point. There was a lot of tension. Emily hesitated, at first, when I asked her, but then she accepted, after I told her we'd be treating her even worse than usual. Joyce and I both gave her the punishment she wanted, and the love that she needed. She seemed in better spirits when I helped her find her way back to her room. Her legs were so weak after all her orgasms, and the physical strain of being kept on the edge for so long. Joyce was a master at delaying Emily's gratification. She seemed to take some perverse thrill from bringing her right to the brink, but denying her the release. I thought it was maddeningly cruel, but Emily swore she enjoyed it best, just like that. Thursday was Brenda's day. She asked for Joyce and me. We took her to our bed and we treated her just like we'd treated Emily. Of course, we were a lot less rough with her. In the end, I spent more than half an hour, making the sweetest, most gentle, tender kind of love to her that I possibly could. Joyce and I could both tell how much she was missing Emily. Friday, I rested. On Saturday, Emily announced first, that she wanted me, and then she looked around the breakfast table, making a big show about trying to figure out who else to pick. When she picked Brenda, both girls started crying. Emily had found a way to get some power for herself with Brenda. That had to be a good thing for our group. We were starting to jell better as a group, now that we had found some equilibrium in our sex practices. For a long time I had been afraid that the sex was always going to overshadow the other parts of our relationships. It was starting to look like we had gotten past that point. Sex was still a major component, but now there was room for love and friendship as well. Joyce wasn't perfectly happy, but even she had to admit that the situation was now more relaxed than it had been before we adjusted the rules, to give each member a greater say in who they had sex with. The closer we got to our move to Lawrence, the better I started liking our chances to be able to live together in some kind of harmony. ------- Chapter 15 Gary had started working with us. Joyce and I were using him mostly as a 'gofer' to go fetch things that we needed. The other X's used him too, to fill in for them when they needed to do something, or to help them with what they were doing. Brenda used him a lot in the kitchen, for scullery work. Brenda didn't like the mundane tasks of cleaning up after meals. Gary didn't mind, since he was still sailing on cloud nine after getting my old Cadillac, and a two hundred dollar a week summer job. We forgot about Gary being around on the day that Joyce informed me that Ellen had fulfilled her requirements as a tutor. Gary had been gone all morning, doing something for my father, and I'd just forgotten about him. I wasn't that used to him being around yet, He walked into the bedroom, on his way to the kitchen, and caught Ellen riding on my dick. I spotted him right away, but I couldn't think of anything to do. To say Gary looked surprised at seeing us, doesn't do it justice. He hurried right through to the kitchen, after about a two or three second pause. I don't think Ellen even knew he had walked in on us. She had turned out to be an interesting sex partner. She liked to get started, then she'd just stop. After stopping for awhile, she'd just start back up again. She wasn't cumming any of those times she stopped. It was like she was trying to conserve her energy or something. I wanted to ask her what she was doing, but I didn't. It didn't bother me, but it did keep her from establishing any kind of good rhythm. I wondered if she'd ever cum. We had been fucking for about twenty minutes when she suddenly went from full stop, directly into overdrive. This time, there wasn't going to be any stopping. She kept going all the way through four or five quick cums. The last two were very strong, squeezing my cock so tightly that it finally ended up making me cum into the rubber I was using. It was quite a feat making me cum when she was on top, and I had a rubber on. Only Bea had ever succeeded in doing that before, and I was very young, and inexperienced, when she had managed that. "I've been waiting for three years to do that with you, Kenny." Ellen was breathing hard and perspiring through every pore in her body. She looked like she'd been running for hours. Her hair was soaked. "I hope it lived up to your expectations?" I was amused that those were the first words she'd spoken since I told her to get undressed. "Shirley said you were sensational in bed. The other three guys I've been with, they've all said they were great in the sack too. I feel like going out and finding them, then slapping them, for lying to me like they did. Is this going to be the only time I get to do this with you?" "No. This is part of our new employee incentive program. Joyce has chosen me to be your performance reward. When we're ready to leave, in three weeks, if Joyce tells me she thinks you're ready to take over on this end, we'll go out on a date, and get ourselves a room at a hotel, for later. I'll be spending the night with you then." "I already am ready, Kenny. You can ask her. I've been practicing sending her whatever she asks for, to her computer from ours upstairs. We have a whole list now of everything she wants, and I can send it to her in about an hour." This was the first I'd heard about Joyce's plan for porting all the data to our house in Lawrence. It had been our intention, Dad's and mine, to have Ellen able to fill in completely for Joyce. From what Ellen had told me, this didn't sound at all like what Joyce had been actually training her for. "Can you do everything that Joyce does, figure out what product needs to be sent where?" "No. She isn't teaching me that. She's showing me how to do what she said she wanted. I can do that now. It isn't even that hard for me." I got up and went to shower. Ellen came with me. From her actions in the shower, she was obviously hoping I had some more immediate designs on her body. I didn't have any right then, but I did enjoy myself for awhile, helping to get several parts of her clean. Now that she'd cum a few times, she reminded me of Shirley. In the shower it amazed me the way she seemed so responsive to any touch from me. She seemed disappointed when I got out of the shower and started towelling myself dry. As soon as I was dressed again, I set off looking for Joyce. I found her sitting in my Dad's office, fifteen minutes later. They were having some kind of a meeting together. Joyce had a lot of papers sitting in her lap. "Joyce, what's going on? How come you aren't training Ellen to do your job?" I had just walked in and interrupted whatever discussion they were having. I noticed my Dad's concerned reaction before I saw Joyce react. She was too busy thinking, to show any reaction. "Is this right, Joyce? I thought we'd all agreed that we needed to have a back up for you. Isn't Ellen capable of being that back up?" My Dad's tone was anxious, and bewildered. Joyce had been telling all of us that Ellen was learning what she needed to learn. We had three weeks before we had to leave. Joyce couldn't teach Ellen everything, not in the time remaining for us. "She's able to do what I needed her to do. She can pick up anything else as we go along. A lot of it is hard to teach, because I just do it. I just know how to do it, but not how to teach it." "That isn't acceptable, Joyce. It isn't good business to leave something as important as this in one person's hands. Whatever you're doing to manage the schedule has to have reasons and justifications for it. You need to show Ellen how you arrive at these decisions you make. You can't just leave, without first giving us the means to operate in your absence." Joyce then told us about the system she had come up with, where she could handle all our shipping and storage from Lawrence, while allowing each of the hub points to take over actual product distributions in their area. The distribution wasn't a problem, not as long as the product all arrived where it was supposed to be, on time, and in the amounts required. Dad and I weren't at all satisfied. Both of us communicated this to Joyce. This was the first time we'd ever had to be upset with her over a business situation. It bothered me, and I could see that it troubled Dad as well. Joyce told us she'd try to figure out a way to do what we wanted. When we left my father's office, Joyce changed her attitude, as soon as we were alone, and walking down the corridor, towards the stairs. She accused me of having deliberately made her look bad in front of my father. I let her continue on in that vein, until we got back to her office. "You listen to me, Joyce. You have no right to endanger our business, just because you're afraid that someone else might learn how to do your job. Are you afraid you won't be so valuable to us if that happens? What if everybody else was worried about that? If you can't get Ellen up to speed, before school starts, we're not leaving here. We aren't going anywhere until she knows how to do everything having to do with shipping, scheduling, and storage. This is too big a business to have everybody's job depending on the whim of one insecure woman. I can't believe you'd pull such a selfish stunt on all of us." "It wasn't like that. You don't know how complicated what I do is. I don't even understand how I do it myself, half the time. I just seem to have this ability to keep it all straight in my head. I know where things all fit in, and then I just schedule product shipments where I know they'll be needed." Joyce was upset that I thought she had failed to train Ellen, for purely selfish reasons. I had accused her of that because it was the only thing I could thing of as a reason for her doing that. I needed to think about what she was saying. I had watched her doing these things, and I couldn't keep up with a third of what she was juggling in her head. I'd tried. She had a mind like a computer. Every detail was in there, and she could call it up at will, anytime, just like Ellen could call things up on Joyce's computer. Of course, thinking of it that way, the light bulb finally went off in my own head. I picked up the phone and called my father. I asked him to send up our computer guy. He came up about fifteen minutes later. I'd seen this guy around a lot, but he wasn't much of a small talk kind of a guy. He ate, slept, and breathed computers. It was all he was interested in. His name was Aaron, and he was about twenty five years old. I knew we had spent an awful lot of money on computer things, at his direction, and that we were now getting several of our departments set up to be doing things with computers. He was also doing things with the automation of our new plant up in Omaha. "We have a problem. We need to find out how my wife does what she does with the company's shipping and delivery schedules. She does it, but she isn't sure about how she makes all her choices. "Decision tree. Simple to set it up." I looked at him. I wasn't sure how much we were paying him, but if it was by the word, it was way too much. "Set it up then." "Which one is your wife?" I pointed at Joyce. He seemed relieved it was her. I knew Joyce had used his expertise to set up her own modem thing on her computer. Aaron sat down at Joyce's desk and started typing things into Joyce's computer. It took him about a minute, but then he had something up on the screen that I'd never seen before. He started asking Joyce questions about what she needed to make decisions about. When she said shipping, he hit some keystrokes and a bunch of lines came up with numbers and letters on them. I went over to get Ellen from her office so she could watch. I was already lost as soon as he started talking about setting up a "gooey". I was glad when Joyce asked him what it was, but when he said it was a graphical user interface and mentioned something called windows 101, I left Joyce's office. Back at Dad's office I told him that Aaron and Joyce were trying to set something up on her computer, something that would show Ellen how to do things. When he complained about Aaron being too valuable to be wasting his time like that, I reminded him of what happened when Joyce was having the twins. He stopped worrying about Aaron's value, or what it was costing the company, but his reaction had given me a new idea. I went back to Joyce's office and waited until Aaron was finished explaining something to Joyce and Ellen. "Hey, Aaron, do you have anyone else that can come help you do stuff like this? Someone not as expensive as you, but who knows what he's talking about?" "I know some people. How much were you thinking about paying them?" "Maybe half as much as we pay you. How much do we pay you?" "I get forty an hour, with twenty hours guaranteed per week. I've been averaging about fifty to sixty hours here every week. I can get a lot of people, good people, for twenty an hour." "How many good people can you get for ten an hour?" He laughed and shook his head. "Nobody any good will do consulting work for ten bucks an hour. Not unless he's desperate. Fifteen is about as low as you can go to get anybody even halfway decent." "If we hired two guys at twenty an hour, would that cut back on the hours you're billing us for?" "For sure. I was going to suggest something like that soon anyway. All this work I've been doing for you is starting to be a big hassle for me with my other clients. If you wanted me to do it, I could sub-contract some work with a couple of guys I know, at twenty bucks an hour. There are a lot of time consuming things I'm doing for you now, that either of them could handle just as well as me. I could then concentrate on doing the things they couldn't do, and it probably will end up costing you a lot less for the three of us, than it does for just me." "Good. Do it. I want you working on this decision tree thing with Joyce and Ellen, until they have something they both agree they can work with. How long until you can get something like that?" "We've got most of it now. Your wife thinks just like a computer." I'm sure he thought that was a compliment. Joyce seemed to think it was too. She was beaming at all of us. That afternoon, Ellen rode home with Joyce and the twins. Shirley and Derek caught a lift from Emily and Brenda. I drove home alone, after trying to explain to my Dad about how we'd be saving money by having two extra computer guys running around doing stuff for us. He was skeptical. I told him that Joyce and Ellen both thought that Ellen would be fully trained and capable of doing Joyce's job, in a couple more weeks. He remained somewhat unconvinced by my words. At home, I mentioned to Joyce, in our bedroom, that Gary had walked in on us when Ellen and I were fucking. She laughed, and then she asked me how I was coming with my plan to get Gary to help me double team Shirley. I told her it had been done already, glad that Ellen was visiting, and her presence would prevent Joyce from pursuing my answer further. I think she thought I meant I'd talked Gary into doing it sometime in the future. I didn't do anything to stop her from believing that. At dinner, Joyce started asking Ellen questions about how she had enjoyed her prize. All the X's knew I'd fucked Ellen. No one had raised any objection when Joyce had brought it up a few days before. Brenda mentioned that I should wear a rubber, but that was the only thing mentioned by any of them about it. I think Shirley was actually excited for her friend. I would never understand the way women thought. Sunday was normally supposed to be Joyce's day, but she had been trading days with all the X's so that I wasn't able to keep up with it. This was a Thursday, Brenda's day. I had wondered what Joyce was up to, when she invited Ellen home with us. Since they came home in Joyce's car, I had to assume that Ellen was planning on spending the night with us. "Tonight's my night, Kenny. I traded Brenda for it. I pick you and Ellen." Joyce was smiling at me. She must have arranged with the X's so no one would object that Ellen was an outsider. I waited, just in case. Nothing. "Did Joyce tell you what was going to happen, Ellen?" I looked at her, and she smiled and nodded that Joyce had. "You don't have any problem with doing things with Joyce?" Again Ellen nodded, this time side to side to say she didn't have any problem with it. "Have you ever done things with girls before?" "Some things, when I was younger. Joyce said it was mostly going to be you doing it with me." "Joyce says that, but when you aren't looking, she's going to grab you by the hair, and shove your face into her horny pussy. She's done that to all these other girls too. You can't trust Joyce when she's naked in a bed. She gets excited, and the next thing you know, you've got a bunch of curly hairs stuck in your teeth." Ellen looked over at Joyce. Joyce was trying to laugh it off, but she looked a little miffed with me too. "You still want to chance it, Ellen?" She nodded that she did, but she looked a little less certain when she did it this time. In bed that night, we had a good time. We were well started, and it had gone like I'd predicted. I was fucking Ellen doggy style, and Joyce had grabbed her, just like I'd predicted. Ellen didn't look like any rank beginner when it came to eating pussy, not from where I was watching her go at it. I noticed all the other X's coming into our bedroom. They were all watching Ellen eating Joyce's pussy. Emily and Brenda being there, didn't surprise me, but Shirley being there, did. They were just standing there watching us. Brenda did lean in closer to make sure I'd remembered to wear a rubber. "We decided she has to eat all of us, Kenny." Emily spoke for the X's. "You all decided that?" I was looking at Shirley. She returned my gaze and nodded her assent. I pulled Ellen back with me, taking her face out of Joyce's pussy when I did it. "Joyce, the girls think they should get to have Ellen lick their pussies too." I had expected to get an argument from Joyce, but she got right up and Shirley slid into the vacancy created. Shirley was so tall, that we had to back up more to give her room. When she was settled, Ellen went right to it, not seeming to care at all that this was happening. I started trying to pace myself. It surprised me when Shirley started moving around and making noises like she was going to cum soon. I'd never seen her cum before, not without either me fucking her, or her doing things with the screwdrivers first. After she came, yes, she could cum from almost any other stimulation. I wondered if she hadn't given herself a little workout before coming into our bedroom. When Shirley got up, Brenda took her place, but Joyce and Shirley started consoling each other on the floor, in an unlikely looking sixty nine, that left Shirley on top, looking like a contortionist. Ellen had already had several good orgasms, and I was getting pretty close. I pulled out of her and rested for a moment, trying to delay the inevitable. Even when I quit fucking her, Ellen never slowed down in her licking of Brenda. I took off the rubber and grabbed Emily, forcing her down on the rug, next to Joyce and Shirley. I put her on her back and pinned her hands down at her sides. Soon, the two of us were fucking like two crazy people. I slammed into her hard, and she fought me just as hard as she could manage. Within just a few minutes, she was cumming too. I could feel all my cum as it pumped steadily into her. I was hitting against her cervix, with each forward thrust. Finally, fully spent, I released her hands, rolling off, onto my back. It took her several minutes, but Emily finally stood up and went to our bed to take the place that Brenda was vacating. I turned to watch as Ellen began licking my cum out of Emily's pussy. Things broke up as soon as the twins woke up and started crying to be changed and fed. Ellen spent the night with us, sleeping in the middle, between Joyce and me. We were all back at work by eight the next morning. I stayed away from the offices where they all were, trying to make some sense out of what had happened the night before. I didn't know how much had been prearranged by Joyce, Ellen, and the X's. It seemed obvious to me that things were once again changing, and I wasn't the focus of those changes. Friday, I spent three hours in the morning, working out where I stood with all my open positions in my trading portfolio. Later, when I totalled up how my week had gone, after what had been yet another good day, I was well satisfied with the new program. The market had been very active, and trading sideways all week, with a lot of very choppy, small price movements. It was almost an ideal market for me to make money in. Friday night, at dinner, we all discussed our feelings about how things were working now within the group. Emily reported that she and Brenda were getting along much better, now that they had agreed that they each needed to treat the other one differently, outside of a bedroom. Joyce said she was worried because there weren't enough rules about how the group would act now. She said she was afraid people would start making up their own rules, and the group would fall apart, because it would be suffering from a lack of coherent direction. Emily asked her for a specific example of what she thought might happen to make the group fall apart. "It could be lots of things. Any of you might decide that having the right to decide about not having to sleep with another member of the group meant that you also had the right to sleep with someone outside the group." "Like Ellen? Is that what you mean?" Emily definitely didn't want to go back to how things used to be. I thought her bringing up Ellen was a mistake, because it did open the door to Joyce's argument. We had already done something with Ellen. The precedent was set. "Like Ellen, or if one of us meets someone else in school, someone that we'd like to take to bed. What's to prevent this, if we're all making our own rules?" Joyce had a good point. Once we went off to school, all of us were going to be exposed to a lot more temptation than we now were faced with. Good point or not though, I didn't want to expand on this topic, because I didn't want us to make a decision before a specific incident actually came up in the group. "Joyce, this isn't a problem right now. It might change later, but if it does, we can all sit down and deal with it." I thought that was a reasonable way for us to treat the potential threats we might someday face. "It's a lot more likely to happen if we don't already have rules against it in place, Kenny. Right now, we're almost telling everyone in the group that there aren't any rules they have to obey." Joyce seemed determined to try to get us all to agree on some rules. I wanted to find out what rules she was trying to have us pass. "Do you have any rule you think we need to adopt?" "No sex outside the group, unless all of us approve it in advance." "Is that the only one?" Emily beat me to asking that question. "No, I think we need to have a rule about no outside dating too." "What kind of rule? If we said no outside dating, does that mean you couldn't go to lunch with someone in one of your classes, to discuss school related things? What would make it a date, and what would be okay to do?" I thought Joyce was trying to set up controls where none were necessary. If one of the X's wanted to date someone, or screw them, they were probably ready to leave the group on their own already. There could never be a rule against leaving the group. Anyone was free to leave, and this seemed to be what Joyce was really worried about. "Does anyone here in the group think they'll be having sex, or dating outside the group? I don't think I will." Shirley was approaching it from a different direction. "If I wanted to have sex with someone not in the group, I'd probably just leave the group first." Emily spoke up about her intentions. Brenda nodded her head that she thought the same way as Emily. "That just leaves you and me, Joyce. I'm not planning on dating, or having sex with anyone outside our group. How about you?" "No, I never would do that. If we all agree we aren't going to do that, why not have a rule against doing both." "Because we're all adults, we all care about each other, and none of us suspects that any of the other members will violate the trust we've placed in each other. If we're wrong in that trust, we'll be able to deal with it when it happens." "Why does Kenny get to pick three days, and the rest of us only have one?" Brenda had mentioned the unfairness of that in the past. "I started out having seven days of picks, but I wanted each of you to have a day you could decide what you wanted. I'd be willing to give up all picking if you think that would be better, Brenda. I thought it was kind of a fun thing we do now. If you have a better way, I'd like to hear about it." "We should all get picks every fifth day." Brenda thought that was simple and fair. I didn't object, but I did want to make a point to her. "Brenda, today's one of my days. Instead of picking Joyce and Shirley like I'd planned, I'm going to give you my pick. Who do you pick?" Brenda smiled, happy to have an extra pick for herself. "I pick you and Emily." "Sorry, I can't tonight, I want to sleep with Joyce and Shirley." "You can't do that." "Why not? You invited me, but I declined. Maybe you should invite Joyce or Shirley now?" "They'll just say no." "They might, but they might prefer to sleep with you and Emily instead of with me. The way it is now, is so you each have a day when I usually set aside my own plans to let you have what you prefer. I'm trying to be more fair to the rest of you who wouldn't have any picks if I didn't do it this way." "So, you really have your pick every day?" Brenda didn't like the way that sounded. Instead of gaining, she figured she was now losing. "We all have our pick everyday, because you can opt in, or opt out. If you don't get picked, you can still find someone who might choose to do something with you. Are you going to deny Emily the pleasure of licking your sweet pussy tonight, just because I didn't pick either of you?" Brenda finally giggled, looking over at Emily. "The one who should be complaining is Shirley. She spends more nights alone in her bed, than any of the rest of us. But she won't be alone tonight, because at nine o'clock, Joyce and I are going to come to her room and blindfold her. Tonight, something special might happen." Shirley reacted instantly, when I mentioned a blindfold. Even Joyce looked at me questioningly. I had found something interesting in Bolling that day, before I drove home. It had given me and idea, but I hadn't had a chance to decide if I wanted to ask Joyce to do this with me or not. I'd speak to her about it before nine, and then decide about doing anything with Shirley. In the meantime, from the flush suffusing Shirley's face and neck, my mentioning of the blindfold had already started her thoughts heading in a certain direction. We were both in our bedroom at around eight, I was helping Joyce manage the twins diaper changing, right before she fed them and put them down for the evening. "You have a blindfold, Kenny? I didn't know that." "There's several things you don't know Joyce. I said that to Shirley, because I told her before that I'd put a blindfold on her every time I fucked her, in case I might have another guy here to fuck her too. It makes her get more excited, thinking this might be the time I'd actually do it to her with another guy." "I get to watch if you do. Is Gary coming here tonight? I told Brenda and Emily they could watch when you do it too. No wonder she was blushing." "Tonight isn't the night. It just makes her hotter because she thinks it might be. I did this same thing before to her, and she fainted when I asked her if she was ready to be fucked by two cocks. She was out for over an hour. She thinks two of us did fuck her that day, but she says she was so excited she doesn't remember too much about it, only that her ass hurt her after she woke up again." "Tonight could be the night. Call Gary. I really want to see you do that to her." Joyce was feeding Little Bertie first. She had undone her nursing shirt, and had Bertie planted on her right breast. I waited by her side, holding a freshly changed Bunny in my arms. Joyce lifted her arm and I lowered Bunny into position on her left breast and side. Bunny seemed to like being draped over her like that. Bertie didn't. She preferred lying on her side, and suckling in comfort. After both twins were settled on Joyce, I went and fetched the package from under our bed. I'd first seen one advertised inside one of the men's sex magazines that all the Johns kept down in the maintenance department. That afternoon, after taking off from work to run an errand at one of our banks, I passed by an adult book store. I stopped, taking the time to go inside to take a look around. I had seen it displayed behind the counter right away, and had bought one for fifty three dollars. It was a strap on contraption, with a dildo made out of some kind of rubbery feeling latex. There were several sizes of dildos that could go with the belt part, but I'd gotten the smallest one. I had figured that Joyce might want to put it on and help me with Shirley. "Is that what I think it is, Kenny? It's one of those fake dicks that lesbians use on each other. Remember that movie we watched in your room that time?" I hadn't remembered, but as soon as Joyce mentioned it, I did. I had borrowed two video cassettes from a kid at school, and brought them home to watch. They hadn't been very good quality videos, and one of them was about an hour of different five or ten minute smaller movies that were put together to make one longer video. In one of them, two women took turns doing each other with fake dicks held on with a belt with a metal ring in front, where the fake dick went. It hadn't looked that exciting, because both women were kind of old looking, and not in very good physical shape. They weren't sexy looking at all. Joyce had come in and asked me what I was doing, so I had showed her part of that video. What I was mostly worried about was whether the belt would even fit on Joyce's small frame. If it did fit, I wondered if it would fool Shirley, if we put a rubber on the dildo part. I thought it might be something that all of us would enjoy playing with, especially Shirley. Shirley played with screwdrivers, so a piece of latex wouldn't bother her. ------- Chapter 16 At nine o'clock, Joyce and I went to get Shirley. She seemed nervous when she saw Joyce accompanying me. We fitted the sleep mask over her eyes, and it was Joyce who led her back to our bedroom. I picked up a sleeping Derek from his new crib, and carried him over to the third crib we had installed in our room, for occasions such as this. Shirley was on the bed alone when I got there, and I started kissing her and touching her body. I kept up a running commentary, whispering in her ear that it was time for her to enjoy something special again. I could feel, from the way her body was responding, that this was a very good day for Shirley. I felt the heat and wetness coming from her crotch, and the way her skin seemed to jump out at each soft caress. She must have been thinking of almost nothing else, since I'd made my announcement at dinner. "Kenny, is Joyce going to be here? I don't want to do anything like we did before, if she's going to be here watching." I had Shirley straddling my hips and I was kissing her breasts, admiring the flush, running from her neck, down past her chest, almost to her navel. She had started making little whimpering noises, and hunching forward with her hips against my dick. "Don't worry about Joyce. Think about what you want. We'll have the same rules as last time, Shirley. I'm not going to let someone else fuck your ass until you tell me yourself that you want it to happen. If you don't want it, or if Joyce being here bothers you, all you have to do is not tell me that you want it." I was rubbing all over her butt, with both my hands, when I said it to her. At the bottom of our bed, Joyce was trying to tighten all the straps while she adjusted the harness holding the dildo. She looked like she almost had it fitting properly. I lifted Shirley up on her knees and used a hand to swipe my cock back and forth between her pussy lips, picking up a lot of her moisture. When I had my cock poised in place, Shirley sat straight down on it, groaning aloud as she took it deep inside her. After I had moved my hand out of the way, she started galloping on me. There was no question now that she was already very turned on. I let her ride like that, to her first orgasm, before I started back in with running my hands all over her butt. All I did was rub her buttocks though. I made no attempt to play with her pucker. Shirley had started back moving her hips up and back, using a slower motion this time. After a moment or two of this, she sped up a little, then she reached behind her and took one of my hands, moving my fingers over to her crevice of her buttocks, until one of my fingers was touching her sensitive little rosebud. When she released my hand, I moved it back to where I'd been playing with her butt cheeks before she'd moved me. I could tell this was frustrating to her. She was already speeding up some more though, getting so close to another cum that she centered all her concentration on achieving that next orgasm. "I'm cumming, Kenny. Touch me back there with your fingers. Put a finger in my butt hole." Shirley was trying to keep her voice lowered, perhaps inhibited by knowing there was an audience to hear what she told me to do. This orgasm was a stronger one, and she was pressing into me with both her knees, pushing down on the root of my cock. I reached over and started lightly fingering around her tightened sphincter, probing to see if I could gain entry. Trying to put anything in her butt when a girl is in the process of cumming is difficult to do, but I did manage to penetrate her just a little bit. I wiggled the tip of my finger around, helping her grind down more on my groin as she came. "What do you want to do now, Shirley? He's waiting, but Joyce is here too, and she's watching us. If you don't want to do anything, that's all right, but we better tell him so now." Shirley was trying to squeeze my dick with her pussy walls, doing it as hard as she could. This went on for a few seconds, as she fought to wring as much as she could from the orgasm she had enjoyed. I felt her whole body start to relax, then I managed to penetrate her ass deeper with the one finger, moving it around and opening her up a little back there. I could see Joyce was excited, her eyes had that deep glazed look, and she was holding her dildo in her hand, pointing it at us. I added another finger, and started moving beneath her, shoving my dick in and out of her pussy, while I moved my fingers in her ass. We had been doing that for about two minutes, when Shirley collapsed her upper body down against my chest. She had her face right beside mine, with the top of her head pressed against my pillow. She wasn't moving, or saying anything in reply to my question. "Shirley, you need to go ahead and make your decision soon. Do you want us both to fuck you now, or do you want me to tell him to leave?" I whispered it in her ear, but I removed my fingers from her ass and used both hands to spread her cheeks as widely as I could. I knew that Joyce had an almost perfect target to aim for. She had put a rubber on the dildo, and had added plenty of KY Gel to it also. "Lift up on your knees, and tell him you want him to fuck you too, Shirley, or else tell me to send him away." She lifted up on her knees right away, but she buried her head against my shoulder, not saying anything. "You have to say it yourself, Shirley. I'm not going to let him fuck you unless you tell me that's what you want." "Kenny, I wish she wasn't here to see me doing this. Oh God, I love it when you do that to me. I can't stand too much more of this. I want it, Kenny. Tell him I want him to fuck me too" As soon as she said this, Shirley slammed down on my cock, taking it as deeply as it would go. She spread her legs as wide as she could, and Joyce moved up on the bed, as she started trying to fit the head of her dildo into Shirley's ass. It took her several tries to get it in, and then she needed to hold the harness in place with one hand because it started slipping off her hips. Shirley was beyond noticing anything, other than the fact that she had a dick in both her holes. She started screaming again, pushing back against Joyce and grunting as I pushed my hips up, keeping her impaled on my cock too. I heard either Emily or Brenda trying to turn the door handle, but I'd locked it when I brought Derek to our room. Shirley didn't last very long this time either, but it was long enough for her to definitely know her ass was being fucked ferociously by somebody. I felt her cumming hard, before she again passed out, dropping straight down on my chest again. Her entire body just went limp. I had to push Joyce away from Shirley to get her to quit. When she was forced back so suddenly, the dildo came squirting out of Shirley's ass, and Joyce let go of the harness to try to keep from falling. The contraption slid off Joyce's hips and fell down to the floor. While this was going on, I was rolling Shirley over on her back. Bunny had woken up, but the other two had slept through the whole thing. They must have grown used to Shirley's yelling or something. I was going to get up and go try to get Bunny back to sleep, when Joyce threw herself on top of me. In only two or three seconds, she had managed to get my cock planted deep inside her pussy, and she was grinding herself up and back against me. I cupped her ass in my hands just like I'd done with Shirley, and put one of the fingers of my other hand on her butt hole. She pushed back then, and started cumming almost immediately. "Go get that dildo thing, Joyce. We'll see how you like it moving deep in your ass." She didn't move off of me right away, so I didn't know if she'd heard me or not. I shook her, asking her again to go get the dildo. "Kenny, please, I don't want to do that. Just do this with me, that's all I want." She then lifted off of me and started kissing me all over my face and neck, attacking me with a startling ferver. She rode me for a long time after that, much longer than she usually managed. She finally tired herself out, and rolled her tiny body off of me. I rolled over on top of her, managing to finally get a good cum for myself. When I was finished, I got up out of bed, taking the harness and the dildo into the bathroom with me. I washed the dildo off with hot, soapy, water, before using a warm damp cloth to clean the straps on the harness off. I looked at the way Joyce had buckled everything, seeing where one strap had been attached incorrectly. It was no wonder she was having troubles keeping it in place after it had come loose. I went back to the bedroom and put everything back in the bag, before putting it on a high shelf, behind two shoe boxes. I had it hidden all the way in the very back part of my closet. After I checked on the three children, I climbed in bed, getting in on my side, and moving a still sleeping Shirley closer to the middle of the bed. She turned over on her side so her back was to me, and then put an arm over Joyce's waist. I spooned in behind her and went to sleep. In the morning, I woke up because three babies were moving around on the bed, being changed by the two moms. I saw the look that Shirley gave me, and I knew right away that Joyce had spilled the beans about the strap on dildo. "That was a dirty trick you played on me last night." Her facial expression contained both anger and hurt. I knew I'd hurt her pride. "Didn't Joyce tell you it was all her idea?" I jumped out of bed before Joyce could explain what a liar I was. I went to Shirley and kissed her, whispering that I just couldn't stand the thought of sharing her with another man. It must have been a good thing to say, because she almost melted there in my arms. I stuck my tongue out at Joyce, and went in to take my shower. I was only in the shower for a couple of minutes, before Joyce joined me. "Don't be mad at me. I had to tell her, Kenny. She was really upset and crying when I woke up. She started right away apologizing to me, and calling herself terrible names. After I told her what you'd done, both times, she stopped being as embarrassed, but then, she got real mad at you. Whatever you told her, when you got out of bed, really seemed to work though. What did you say to her?" "I just told her I really didn't want to have to share her with another man." I was soaping Joyce's breasts and had bent over to work on her crotch area and butt. She moved in closer to me, holding on to me tightly. "That was the perfect thing to tell her. She'll feel special all day now. She's been feeling bad about that other time. Worried that you wouldn't like her anymore, because you know she thinks about doing stuff like that. I told her she didn't have to worry, because I'm worse about thinking things like that than she is, and you still love me." "I do love you, Joyce. I wouldn't ever want to share you with another guy either." "You don't have to worry about that. How come, if you're so jealous, you don't mind any of us doing things with other girls?" "I don't know. I guess it isn't threatening to me like other guys would be. Seeing you with a girl is exciting. If it was with a guy, I don't think I could take it. I'd be so jealous, it would make me sick. That goes for all the X's too. I don't know how any of you can put up with me fooling around with other girls." Joyce just looked up at me, standing on her tip toes, kissing both my nipples, and hugging me closer to her. It wasn't really an answer, not with words, but I think she meant it was because she loved me. As the group progressed, I felt us all coming closer together. I don't mean there wasn't still friction, but, underneath all that, there was a solid feeling of being connected. I started understanding that Joyce had been right about each of the girls loving me. I loved all of them too. The love I felt for them might not have had the same intensity I had once felt for them. I was in love with Joyce, while I just loved the X's. It was a romantic love, but with a distinct difference in intensity from that which I felt for Joyce. It was a warm, comforting love, whereas my love for Joyce was much hotter, more filled with passion and life. It had greater energy. I was much more likely to make changes to accomodate Joyce's needs. I might not come out and admit it to anyone else, but I made a lot of decisions by only thinking about what Joyce wanted, instead of what I might want. The whole group thing was more for Joyce's happiness than for my own. She took great pains to convince everyone that sharing me was a sacrifice she was willing to make, to see me happier. In truth, I think she recognized that her needs were more complex than what I could completely fill. She wanted to surround herself with opportunity, in order to keep herself content and satisfied with what was acceptable to me. Her rape as a child had deeply affected her, changed the way she got her sexual gratification. Just like she was able to keep all those shipping and delivery needs in her head, figuring out when and what to send to each of our hubs, Joyce understood her own inner drives, and found a way to satisfy them, without venturing into any territory that would jeopardize what we shared. Rather than resent her needs, I admired the way she had assembled what she needed. She was protecting me from her possible excesses, so in that sense, the group really was for my benefit. I was the only one who really understood the tremendous sexual pleasure and erotic stimulation she got from engaging in certain sexual acts, with both me and the other X's. She got excited from having sex with me, but when it was with her, me, and another of the X's, and especially when she and I were both sharing the other girl between us, her sexual temperature rose to a point where it was nearly off the charts. She refused to speak to me about it, often downplaying the effect it had on her, but I could see the difference in her reactions when another girl was involved with us. Joyce enjoyed most playing the role of predator. My size and strength gave her the chance to be that predator. The next three weeks passed by in a whirlwind. So much happened, and all of it seemed to come at us in a rush. Joyce and Ellen, with Aaron's help, were able to codify things to the extent that nearly all shipping and scheduling decisions were reasonably easy to make. I spent time with both of them at the computer, and, for the first time, was able to understand how Joyce kept everything moving smoothly for us. My Dad was really impressed with the way the new scheduling system was available for him to call up and look at on his computer monitor. Ellen and I had our date in Bolling. Instead of taking her to a motel, after a nice dinner at the best restaurant in town, I drove her home to our house, and Joyce and I both made love with her. Ellen had requested that the three of us get together like that. On the Thursday before we were all supposed to leave for Lawrence, Emily found out that she was pregnant. I probably shouldn't have been surprised by this news, but I was. What was even more surprising was Emily's reaction. She seemed really pleased to be pregnant. She called her mother to tell her the news, and this was the first time they'd spoken to each other in more than two months. Joyce and Shirley seemed to share in Emily's happiness too, but Brenda was upset, because now she was going to be the only one without a baby of her own. Since it was Brenda's day anyway, Joyce urged me to spend the night alone with her, to see if I could get her pregnant too. We didn't know it at the time, but Brenda was already pregnant by the time we found out about Emily. Another big piece of news came up when the detective agency, Mama had hired, located Bea. She had been arrested in a small city in central California, and charged with soliciting for the purpose of prostitution. She had pled guilty and was serving sixty days in the county honor farm for women. By the time the agency located her, she had finished about half her sentence. Mama hired some local lawyer to petition her judge for a reduction in her sentence to time served, in return for Bea's being removed from the state, and her original unpaid fine being paid in full. Four days after Bea had been located, Hans and Gerta brought her back home, using the company plane. Mama insisted that Bea undergo a complete physical examination, with special emphasis placed on determining if she suffered from any STD's, including Aids. Surprisingly, Bea's tests all came back negative, which seemed to be a big relief for Mama. There was immediate conflict between Bea and Mama when the subject of Bea seeking treatment for her dependence on pills came up. Bea said she had kicked the habit in the month she'd been in custody, but Mama insisted that there was more to drug dependence than the simple physical craving for drugs. In the end, miraculously, they arrived at a compromise. Bea would submit to two days per week of psychiatric counseling, for a period of six months. At the end of that time, if Bea hadn't suffered any relapse, she could quit going to any further appointments. Mama and Gerta found a nice little place for Bea to live, close to where Aunt Clara and Mildred lived. Gerta and I both went to see Aunt Clara, without telling Bea we were going to. We explained about Bea's being back in town, assuring her that Bea wasn't taking pills anymore. I told Aunt Clara that my offer to her to head up our food distribution program was still open. She told me again that she needed to keep the job she had, making it a point to remind me that her current job was more dependable than working for me would be. Her saying that to me really pissed me off. "Fine then, Aunt Clara, you go ahead and keep working for them. I'll give Bea the job, instead. The only problem I have with that is that Bea will probably start using the program's money to buy herself more pills." "Bea shouldn't be put in a position like that, Kenny. She doesn't have the training, or the self control. It would be a disaster, for both her, and for the program." "I know that. That's why I would have preferred you. Bea still needs to have something to do, to keep her busy and her mind off her own problems. I don't think she'd like McDonald's as much as you apparently do. Part of your job would have been to watch out for her, to help keep her out of trouble." "If I could be sure you weren't going to suddenly change your mind like you did the last time." "I didn't suddenly change my mind. I found out that you, your parents, and your other sister, used to all terrorize Anne when she was little. When I found that out, I was angry. I decided that I only wanted to help Anne from then on." "You've changed your mind about that now?" "No. I haven't changed my mind about it. It's just that I have a job you'd be good at. Even if I'm still upset and disappointed in how you behaved with Anne, years ago, you're still my aunt, and you did treat me pretty well when I was at the orphanage. You weren't ever able to raise any money, but this job is giving it away. I'm sure you could handle doing that. Plus, since you were a nun, you might find it harder than most people, to steal the money you'd have access to. I've been worried about you, and I hate to worry about things like this. Now I've got this other problem with Bea, which you could help me with too." "I tried to help Anne. You weren't there, so you can't begin to say you understand what we all went through with her." "I don't care what you went through with her. She was your little sister, and you shouldn't have helped to make her crazy. She's doing well now, and we can't undo what's already been done. You would be making a big mistake to turn me down again, Aunt Clara, because this is the last time I'm offering this job to you. If you want, I'll have my lawyer draw up one of those employment contracts for five years or something, so you can sue me if I decide to fire you. Thirty thousand a year, and the chance to help a lot of children who could use a little bit of help. Did I mention that Bea has her own apartment now, and that she doesn't have a mother looking over her shoulder, checking to see what she does with her guests?" "I want to help you, if I can, but, not if you still blame me for what happened to Anne." "Normally, I'd just throw up my hands, right now, and give up. Usually, I'd walk away from having any more of this kind of discussion with you. You are such an aggravating person, Aunt Clara. I can't afford to allow myself the luxury of just walking away from these kinds of problems anymore though. Let's just look at it as a practical business decision. You're making about ten thousand a year, probably a little less than that right now, and with zero health care benefits. You're standing on your feet for hours at a time, selling burgers and fries to a bunch of total strangers. I'm offering you three times the money, full medical benefits, and a chance to really make a difference in a lot of people's lives, including Bea's. If you don't take this job, you're crazy. Forget Anne, forget blame, and forget about who might be mad at you. If you don't take this job, you have no one but yourself to blame for what's going to happen when I give it to Bea instead. Last chance, do you want it or not?" "Are you apologizing?" I just stared at her. With every ounce of will power I possessed, I held my temper in tight rein. Now she wanted me to apologize to her? I'm practically begging her to take a job that any other cashier at McDonald's would grab at, like it was a life preserver offered to a drowning person. Instead of accepting it, like any sane person would, she has the nerve to ask me for an apology before giving me her answer. "I'm sorry for hurting your feelings, Aunt Clara. Maybe I was wrong in thinking you had mistreated Anne when she was young. Maybe her memory about her childhood treatment was confused." "Very well, Kenny. I accept your apology. If you want me to administer this food program for you, you'll need to provide me with detailed guidelines for how you wish me to proceed." "Okay, that part is easy. Are you ready?" She looked at me and nodded. "Go see Frank Clooney. He has Uncle Bunny's old law practice, in the same building as before. He'll have your contract ready to sign. He'll have a bank account opened, and a signature card for you to sign. He'll also give you a set of keys, to the office we've set up for the other food program we operate. Your job is to go out in the community and look for families that have children that could use some help with food. That's it, simple. Find people who need it and give it to them." "How do I find families that need this help?" I thought that was a fairly stupid question coming from an ex nun. How did she get to be as old as she was without having noticed that there were a lot of poor people all around her? I was beginning to understand why Mother Superior had enjoyed giving Aunt Clara all the shit jobs to do. I knew Aunt Clara was smart, but she used her intelligence to create problems where none existed. Here she was, literally fucking up a free lunch. "If I were you, I think I'd go to the parks where we have our breakfast programs operating. You should talk to some of the mothers there, and meet their children. Ask them if they'd like to get thirty to forty dollars a week in free groceries. The ones who tell you they would, get their names and addresses, and then start buying and delivering two bags of groceries to them every week. If you make deliveries in their neighborhood, you'll see other children whose parents might like some help too." "What food do we buy? Do they give us a grocery list?" "You and Bea need to figure out the best way to spend the money on food things. Milk has a high priority. Coffee, beer, wine, cigarettes, stuff like that, we won't buy, only food. Meat and vegetables and other kinds of nutritious food is what we want to offer. Let them buy their own toiletries too. We'll bring them the food, right to their door step, but it has to be only food." "Not all people like to eat the same things." I was beginning to see how Aunt Clara operated. It was no wonder she was so bogged down in her life. She couldn't not complicate something as simple as giving people free food. "Basic foods can be cooked differently. Hamburger and chicken, pork and lamb, potatos and rice. We're talking buying some staples, things that everyone prepares." "Who decides which type of food, which cuts of meat, that sort of thing?" "You do. Change it up every week. Listen to what these people are asking for. Bring them food they can use. We don't want any of it wasted. When you have a hundred families you're helping, then you can stop looking for new ones. I think you and Bea should share responsibities, Aunt Clara. Maybe she should be in charge of finding new families, and you should just handle the money and make sure everything we buy is actually getting to families that can use the help." I didn't think Bea would get bogged down in any part of the process. I almost wished I didn't feel the need to do something for Aunt Clara. I could see a lot of headaches in my future. I'd have to have a talk with Frank about assigning someone to nursemaid Aunt Clara. After we got done with Aunt Clara, I went over to see Bea. She looked like she'd lost a few pounds since the last time I'd seen her. She looked less healthy though, like her energy level was a lot lower. "Kenny, I'll bet you came here to give me my welcome home boinking, right?" "I'm a married man, Bea. I actually came to find out if you wanted a job working with Aunt Clara. We're giving people free food, and she's worried she won't be able to find families to take it." "Clara. How's she doing? Is she still living with her mom?" "Still there. I'm serious. Joyce, my wife, has this program where we want to try to help families with children. People who might want some free food to help feed their kids. You'd be perfect for it. She handles the money, and you drum up the deserving clientele." "This sounds like something you made up, just to give you an excuse to pay us some money." "I'm serious about this program, and we need people to run it. You should go see the breakfast program we have set up and running already." "Is it some kind of scam you're running?" Same old Bea. Everybody had a scam they were running. No one ever did anything just because it helped other people. I could waste my breath explaining the truth to her, or else I could let her think it was a scam, and she'd be content. Bea loved being in on something where someone was being hustled. "In a way, it is a scam. We have these trusts, but the government won't let us get all our write offs, unless we give a certain portion of the money away to charity. Right now, we need to find a way to give away another three or four thousand a week. It has to go to something like this food program, so the government knows we really are giving it away." "So that's where Clara and I come in? We set this up, so that if they come out to check on you, all they'll see is this nun passing out food to people? That's good, but how do you make out in this deal, Kenny?" "That's the sweet part, Bea. I get to invest all the money, and this way the trusts can earn millions, and then pay absolutely no taxes whatsoever." "What's our cut, Clara's and mine?" "Thirty thousand a year each, with good hospitalization and other benefits. You have to go out there and make your part look good though. We need receipts, and a bunch of happy families that will say they get their food every single week. Gerta will be our cut out man for this. You need to run everything through her, so it looks like we're not directly involved. She can help you get good prices on the food. You tell her what you need, and she'll order it delivered to you over at the office. You and Clara put the stuff in some grocery bags, and then deliver it." "Thirty thousand each isn't that much, not if you're making millions, Kenny." "Well Bea, that's as much as the job pays. If we paid you more, they'd get suspicious. Maybe you can save it up and start your own scam later. If you set up your own scam, you can pay yourself as much as you like. Right now though, this seems like a pretty easy way to make some decent money, without taking any risks. You know Aunt Clara will mess this whole thing up, if someone who understands what's really happening doesn't take care of making sure this whole thing does what it's supposed to do. I'm counting on you being that someone, Bea." "Sure, I'll do it. You want Clara handling the actual money, but I'm supposed to set it all up? What about helping people I know over in Salina and Abilene? If we're going to be giving this food away anyway, I know plenty of families in those places that could use some free food." "Bea, I'll leave those details in your hands. Tho only thing I will tell you is that we need to be helping a hundred families with children, every week. Real families, with real children. I don't care if it's a sister of yours, if she has children, and she could use free groceries every week." "What about Clara? Does she know its all part of this tax scam you're running?" "No, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention any of that to her. Treat this as a legitimate charitable program. That's what it really is, at least from your end. You handle your part of it, and let me handle mine. Bea, you have to stay clean for this. You're no good to me, fronting this thing, if you aren't staying absolutely clean." "Kenny, I never do any of that stuff unless I'm really depressed. I'm over that other thing. I won't let you down." On the way back to Mama's house, Gerta told me she'd be watching Bea and Aunt Clara closely for me. Gerta loved the food giveaway programs. Food and children were two things that were always close to her heart. If it had been only Bea and Aunt Clara, I'd have been worried. With Hans and Gerta involved, I didn't worry anymore. Right before we left, Emily asked me to go home with her so she could get some things she wanted to take with her to Lawrence. When we got to her house, she took my arm in hers, possessively, then I understood what it was she had really wanted. Apparently, being one of my three extramarital girlfriends, was preferable to her being Brenda's lesbian lover, at least in her parent's eyes. Being pregnant, in addition, was further proof to them that she wasn't only gay. Things were tense and uncomfortable between Emily, her parents, and me. Mr. Carstairs was openly hostile towards me. Emily left with Gary to go get the things she wanted to take with her to school. "What about this baby, young man? Would you care to explain to us how something like that could have happened?" Pretty oddball beginning. I was sure he knew exactly how it happened. "Emily stopped taking her birth control pills. Nobody stays lucky forever. It was bound to happen as often as we've been going at it." "This is your child then? You're willing to assume responsibility for it?" "Yes and yes. If you were worried about Emily's education, this shouldn't affect it too much. She said she isn't due until March.We'll have someone to take care of the baby when she's in classes. She'll have the very best of pre-natal care." "What about her future? Do you have some plan to provide for her, and for your child, in the event this relationship terminates?" Emily was coming out of her bedroom, carrying a large box of things. Gary was right behind her, carrying an even larger box for her. "How much did your new book earn for you so far, Mr. Carstairs?" "What does that have to do with my earlier question?" "Nothing really. I just thought I'd set up a trust fund for Emily and the baby. I wanted to be sure it was for a sum that you'd consider substantial." "I'm not taking any money from you, Kenny." Emily stopped by my side, putting her box down in front of me. Once again, she took my arm in both of hers. "Actually, I'd like to know how much your royalties came to. I could deposit that amount into the trust every time I get her pregnant. She could have a tidy little nest egg built up, by the time we stopped popping out new kids." "Are you amusing yourself by this type of response, Ken? As parents, we are concerned for Emily's future. This was a legitimate question I asked you." "Yes. I gave you a legitimate answer too. I know you've done well with your book. I assume you'd consider those royalties to be a substantial sum. I wanted you to stop worrying about me leaving Emily in some dire financial lurch, if we ever decided to split up and go our separate ways. My offer was a serious one." "I've earned slightly less than seven hundred thousand to date, but that sum will grow, possibly to more than a million dollars." "Good. Let's call it a million dollars even then. I'll have my lawyer set it up for me before we leave for Lawrence. If you'd like, I'll have him send you and your wife a copy of the trust agreement. Each additional child born will get exactly the same amount. Does that satisfy your concern?" "What about the way this child will be reared? Kitty and I are both concerned with how that will be managed." "I have twins from my wife, Joyce. Shirley has a little boy, one she had with another man as the father. So far, we've all helped to provide for them. Emily watches them at times, althought Brenda and Joyce watch the twins most of the time, and Shirley watches out for Derek. The main thing is that they get plenty of love and attention from all of us. Our children are healthy and happy, and we love them." "What about your lifestyle? How will that affect these children when they get old enough to understand the sorts of perversions you tolerate and encourage in your home?" "We limit most of our perversions to the times when the kids are sleeping. I'm sure you and Mrs. Carstairs practice yours in pretty much the same way. Sometimes, the kids wake up when we're right in the middle of one perversion or another, but there's usually at least one of us that can break away from the pile, and go see to whatever needs doing. As a matter of fact, that someone is often our little Emily here, because she prefers being on top." I could see that Emily was embarrassed, but she tried her hardest to keep a smile plastered on her face. "Do you object to the term perversion, Ken?" Jerry was really getting on my nerves with his insistence on insulting not only me, but my entire family as well. "I think my main objection is because it's often only a matter of personal definition as to what constitutes perversion for anyone. What I might call perversion, you would probably describe as merely some intense personal tutoring after school." I watched as his face turned red, and he bunched his hands into fists. "Whatever name you call it, in the end, someone's daughter usually winds up fucked and pregnant. This time, it looks like it was your daughter." I'll give him this much, he had excellent self control. He didn't explode, although it was easy enough to see that he wanted to. I had hit him with a cheap shot, but he deserved it, at least I thought he did. I watched as he finally managed to resist whatever mayhem he wanted to commit. I looked over at Gary, and he was standing there, holding the box and looking confused. Kitty stood there, looking calm and relaxed. I wondered whose side she took in this little dust up we were having? "I think we should end our discussion. I can think of nothing productive that might emerge from further discourse." "Emi, go kiss your daddy goodbye. We're leaving. Kitty, it was nice seeing you again. I'm sorry Mr. Carstairs and I got our asses up in the air, and we couldn't manage a civil farewell for Emily's sake. Gary, thanks for all your help. I want you to call Emi or me, if there's ever anything you need." To my surprise, Emily did go over to her father and give him a hug. He returned it with much more emotion than I would have thought he had in him. Seeing him holding Emily like that, I could almost forgive him his earlier rudeness. He must have felt pretty helpless, watching, but being unable to change anything, or to protect her from what were his worst fears. Gary followed us out to my Caddy, and put the big box in my trunk. I had picked up the other one, and put it in the back seat. At home that night, Emily and Brenda stayed to themselves in Emily's bedroom. I worried that I had ruined Emily's leavetaking from her family. In bed with Joyce, I related the conversation I'd had with Em's father. As usual, Joyce was able to give me some perspective, telling me not to feel so bad. "Even if you were being a jerk, Kenny, he was being an even bigger one." With support like hers, how could I ever go wrong? Still, I went to sleep worrying about Emily. We had hired a moving company to move a lot of our personal things over to Lawrence. I felt a little sad to be leaving our house. Mama and my Dad came over with Hans and Gerta to see us all off. We drove away in five separate cars. I was the last to leave, but there was something nagging at me. Even before I had made it out of town, I turned around and drove over to the Carstairs house. I got out and walked past Brownie, and rang the door bell. Kitty answered the door, and I asked her if her husband was there. She led me through the living room to the library and knocked on the door. "Jerry, its Kenny." She opened the door and stood back so I could enter first. I walked in and stopped about five feet inside his room. As he looked at me, I could see he was bracing himself, expecting me to continue in the same vein as our previous discussion. I'd had one of Frank's people hand deliver a copy of the trust I'd had created for Emily, along with a copy of the check for one million dollars that I'd written out to fund the trust with. That wasn't why I was there though. "Mr. Carstairs we're leaving now. I didn't want to leave here without letting you know that I love your daughter, and I'll try to take good care of her. We all love her, and she's going to be all right with us. We'll be back home most weekends. Maybe you should all come over for dinner sometime, so you can see the way we live, and how we treat each other?" ------- Chapter 17 Our house in Lawrence was large, set back from the road with a driveway lined on both sides by trees. It was right off Iowa Street, near Centennial Park. Tucked away like it was, we'd have plenty of privacy. Mama had purchased the house from the estate of a railroad magnate who had valued his privacy. Situated in an area where houses were not large, or grandiose, this one was both, having nine bathrooms and seven large bedrooms. The master bedroom suite was almost fifteen hundred square feet, not including the three connecting rooms that were an office, family room and a den. It was the den that we immediately turned into our nursery. We all loved the house right from the very beginning. There was a large, common living area, downstairs, but, each of us had our own separate, personal living wing, upstairs, as well. Joyce and I had the master suite, in the northwest corner; Shirley and Derek took the rooms on the south west corner; Brenda took the southeast corner for herself, leaving Emily with the northeast. There was a staff of three hired to perform cleaning and maintenance duties. Karen and Phil Plante, were a long married couple that had been hired to serve as our live in staff. They were in their mid fifties, and recently retired from Phil's job with the power company, located right there in town. They had been interviewed and hired by Hans and Gerta, over the summer. Christine Howard was an outside employee who was hired to help Karen with the house keeping, and had been assigned to also helping Brenda with the kitchen. Christine was somewhere in her late twenties, a solidly built, homely woman, with a pronounced stutter when she spoke. At first, I thought it was just nervousness, because she was very shy around all of us, but it soon became obvious that it was a speech impediment that was a permanent part of her oral skill pattern. She was a very nice woman, and all three of the children took to her immediately. She liked to hold the babies, and hum to them while she carried them around. When she hummed, there was no noticeable break in the sounds coming forth from her, unlike what there was when she spoke. Phil was pretty outgoing, and really the handiest of people when it came to any type of repairs that needed to be performed. He was a whiz with all machinery, from cars to garbage disposals. He could fix a stuck window, replace a faulty toilet, and repair a storm drain, all in the same morning. Karen was much quieter, and it was pretty obvious that she was uncomfortable in her new role. Phil and Karen had three children, all grown, and three young grandchildren, two boys and a girl, that they both absolutely doted on. Right from the beginning, we had worked it out that the house would be left empty on the weekends, and all the staff would be off duty, free to do whatever they pleased, from two o'clock Friday afternoons, until seven o'clock Monday mornings. Karen and Phil could stay, of course, but they said they'd mostly be taking off in their large Winnebago motor home, on weekend trips, to visit their children and grandchildren. Hans and Gerta had already discussed the nature of our group living arrangement with the staff, even before making the final hiring decisions. Of the three of them, Karen was the only one who seemed at all uncomfortable with the way the five of us interacted together. We had all decided that we wouldn't be comfortable trying to hide the way we lived, or the true nature of our relationships with each other. Phil seemed fascinated by it, and I could often see him looking at one or the other of the women before looking over at me, and smiling. The day we all learned that Brenda was pregnant also, Phil couldn't resist making a comment to me that I was now his hero. I thought it a very strange remark for him to make, but I really liked having him around, in case anything needed fixing, and to help keep his wife tending to her duties, rather than sitting around watching television all day long. I won't say Karen was lazy, but she wasn't used to having to get things done on any set schedule. She had never done any professional housekeeping, and seemed to think that we would all make do with whatever she and Phil were comfortable with doing. I preferred clean sheets and towels daily, because that's how it was always done at Mama's. I liked the feeling of going to sleep between fresh smelling sheets each night, and with always using a clean towel after my shower. I also like the rooms vacuumed daily, and aired out, on days when doing so wasn't a problem, due to the weather. I communicated my wishes about these things to Karen, but she continued to do things in whatever way she was comfortable with. I spoke to Phil, telling him that Karen needed to comply with my wishes, and not do things to her own satisfaction. He told me that he'd speak with her. None of these problems were big issues, by themselves, but taken all together, they began to trouble me. I had been raised in an orphanage, and I could have put up with dirty linen without any real hardship, but that wasn't the point. I was the employer, and I had a right to have things done to meet my expectations, not to have to make do with what Karen decided was good enough. The whole thing came to a head at the end of the second week. It was Friday, and we were just about to head out for home, when I saw Christine making my bed, using the same sheets as the night before. "Didn't Karen tell you we change linens everyday, Christine?" "NNNNoo SSSir, MMMRR. Ppppppaaarsssssooooones. SSShhhheee ssssaaiidddd tttoo uuuuuussse tttthhheee oooold oooonesss." "I don't like sleeping in dirty sheets, Christine. I want clean sheets on all the beds, every day. Go get some clean ones, and I'll have a talk with Karen." I went downstairs looking for Karen. She and Phil were in the kitchen, eating some lunch. "Karen, I just caught Christine making up my bed with dirty linen again. She said you told her it was all right to use the dirty ones." Phil frowned when he looked at his wife, and she just looked angry. Angry at Phil, and at me. "Did you tell her that?" I wasn't in any mood to have a long drawn out contest of wills with this woman. She would either do things the way I preferred, or else go find another place to work and live. "What difference does it make? You aren't sleeping here tonight anyway." "Were you planning on changing the sheets on Monday, before we went to bed?" That was ridiculous, but I had to ask the question anyway. "You don't need clean sheets every day. I have enough to do without having two extra loads of wash to do every day. Twice a week is plenty." I wasn't born rich, and I don't think I'd gotten too spoiled by having money. I didn't think it was unreasonable to want what I preferred. I was paying for the privilege. Part of the reason we had hired help was so that we could have things done the way we wanted them done. "You're fired, Karen. You worked for me, and your job was to do things the way you were told to do them. If you didn't want to do that, you shouldn't have agreed to take this job." "I never wanted to take this job. That was all Phil's doing. I'm not anybody's servant. I spent thirty years picking up after my own family, and that was enough. I wanted to retire, just like Phil did, and just take it easy, for once in my life, but he thought this would be a good way for us to supplement our retirement. Looking after a bunch of spoiled rich kids isn't my idea of taking it easy. Firing us isn't going to bother me one bit. We'll be happy to be out of here before you get back on Sunday." "Kenny, can I speak to you for a minute? Alone?" Phil had stood up and was coming around the table towards me. He didn't look menacing, so I nodded and led him out towards the entry way, in the front. We stopped, and I turned back to face him. "Listen, I know this is going to sound pretty strange, but I really like working here. Karen was only speaking for herself back there, not for both of us. Is there any chance that you could just fire her? I've been thinking about firing her too, but I just never seemed to get up the nerve to face doing it, until now." "Phil, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. We hired the two of you as a live in pair. Are you saying you want to continue working, as the maintenance and caretaker person? Where would you live?" "There's someone else that I think would be a great replacement for Karen. A friend of mine and Karen's, a friend for many years. Her husband passed away a few years ago, and, well, the thing is, she and I have gotten to be more than friends, in the time since Eddie died. Eddie was my best friend, from back when the two of us were kids. I'm not sure if she would do it or not, but if she was willing, you wouldn't ever have any trouble from her, like what Karen has been giving you." I couldn't help myself, I had to smile. This was truly a bizarre turn of events. I had to admit that I really liked Phil. He was extremely competent, a hard and willing worker, and his personality made all of us feel comfortable. I wasn't sure exactly how he was going to manage things. I was intrigued though. It was an interesting thing to be happening. As long as it meant that Karen would be history, I figured I had nothing to lose by giving him some time to see if he could put things together, to make it all work out. I needed to phrase it to him carefully though, because I didn't want our home, and our private business, to become part of a nasty public divorce battle. "Phil. as of right now, you and Karen are terminated. When we get back here on Sunday, I'm going to be looking to hire another live in couple. I like you, and all of us are comfortable with you, and with your work here. If you bring someone with you to apply for the vacancy, I'm pretty sure, subject to our being confident that whoever you bring would be willing to follow what we expect, and not how she wants things done, that you'd get the job. We don't want to get caught in the middle of any domestic squabbles you'll be having with Karen. She needs to leave here before we return. I don't want to have to deal with your marital problems." Phil's face lit up in a grin, and he reached out and took my hand, shaking it vigorously. "Kenny, you won't be sorry. You're going to love Claire, everybody does. She'll light up this house with her smiles. All I've got to do now is tell Karen. I warned her already that I didn't want to lose this job. She won't cause you any problems though. All she wants is to be left alone, to sit on her lazy ass, and watch the idiot box all day. I'll get her a place over by Annette's, that's our oldest girl, and the two of them can sit around watching TV, while Clyde's off driving his truck. Those two are like pea's from the same pod. They just want to lay around and have someone else take care of them." "Well, I'm counting on you to get it all taken care of, Phil. If it takes a few more days to get it done, go ahead and take them. I won't fill the position before next Friday, unless it's with you and Claire." Joyce and I talked about the Phil and Karen situation for most of the drive back home. The twins slept like little angels for the two hour long journey. Joyce thought it was the most romantic thing she'd ever heard. She practically ordered me to keep the positions open for as long as it took Phil to convince Claire to take the job with him. Brenda was the only one who didn't have any classes to take. She would sit at dinner with us, listening to all of us talking about our classes, seeing all of us take off, after dinner, to do our reading, or to prepare ourselves for the next day's classes. She was doing what she wanted, cooking and watching the children. Christine helped her with both chores, and the two women were becoming good friends. Brenda found out, for sure, that she was pregnant, only a couple of days before the blow up with Karen. She was so excited at the news. She had suspected that she might be pregnant, about the time that Emily's pregnancy was confirmed, but she had wanted to wait, to make certain of it, before telling any of us. As soon as we got back to Ridgeline, I called Frank and told him to set up another trust, this one for Brenda, and our unborn child. Brenda had money of her own, but I couldn't do it for Emily, and not do the same thing for Brenda. At a million a clip, I was going to have to start thinking about either cutting back, or else going to my Dad and asking him for a distribution from my main trust. After hanging up with Frank, I started thinking about Joyce, and about the twins. I hadn't done anything, financially speaking, when the twins were born. I called Frank back and asked him to draw up a will for me, leaving everything of mine to Joyce. I knew that Joyce would take good care of any of the X's, if a need ever arose to do so. The X's all thought the situation with Phil and Karen was incredibly funny. Everyone was pleased that Karen was leaving, but no one wanted to lose Phil. At dinner, we discussed how long we should delay looking for another live in pair, in case Phil wasn't able to convince Claire to join him. Consensus was, that we would hire one or two temporary people, for as long as it looked like Phil might still have a chance to talk Claire into it. Brenda called her parents, as soon as we got home, giving them the news of her pregnancy. Georgia was pleased, but Walt didn't share those sentiments. I hadn't expected anything different from him, but I was glad that Georgia was supportive. We both went together to tell Mama our happy news. We found her in the kitchen, having some tea, and talking to Gerta, who was busy preparing dinner. When we walked through the swinging door way, Mama jumped up., almost spilling her tea, to run over and give us both hugs. Gerta had prepared some shrimp cocktails for that evening's dinner, but seeing me, she went to get one of the servings out of the refrigerator, setting it down in front of me. I had hugged her right after Mama let me go, and while we hugged, I whispered that Brenda had some good news for Mama. Gerta's eyes got big, then they started tearing up, so she had to turn away so Mama wouldn't notice them. I turned to Brenda and nodded to her that it was time to tell Mama our news. Mama had sat back down again, and was firing off questions faster than we could answer her. She wanted to know where Joyce and the twins were, and how our school classes were doing. We had spoken four or five times on the phone, in the two weeks we'd been gone, but, listening to Mama, you'd think we hadn't seen or heard from each other in years. "Joyce is coming over with the twins in a few minutes. She needed to feed them, and unpack some of their things first. She wanted Kenny and I to be alone together when we told you our news." Mama stood up, yelling something unintelligible to me, and then she stood right in front of Brenda. "I'm pregnant, Kenny and I are going to have a baby!" I'm not sure what I expected. I mean I expected her to be pleased, and excited, at hearing the news. She knew we had been trying to make a baby, all summer practically, so it shouldn't have been any kind of surprise that we had succeeded. Mama was overcome with the emotion she felt though. I had to grab her, and help her down into my chair. She had almost fainted at the news. Gerta moved me out of the way, understanding much more than I ever could, how much this news would affect Mama. The two women hugged for a long time, with Mama weeping softly, as Gerta lovingly patted her back, like you would do, to comfort an injured or upset child. It only took a few minutes for Mama to recover and get her emotions back under control again. "Are you certain, Brenda? You've seen a doctor?" "Yes, I'm going to have the baby in the beginning of April. Emily will have hers in late March. It's going to be so perfect, because we'll both be pregnant together. I hope its a boy." "We'll love it no matter if its a boy or a girl, Brenda. We just want it to be born healthy and that's all we care about." I was looking at Mama, waiting for her to ask us questions about the logistics of where the baby would be born. I had assumed that Brenda would move back to Ridgeline, sometime in March, to have our baby there. That wouldn't be a practical thing for Emily to do, because of her school work, but Brenda could certainly do that. "Have you picked out any names yet?" We hadn't even thought about names. Names were something you came up with right before the birth. That seemed a strange question, coming from Mama. I looked at her and then at Brenda. "I have names already picked out for this baby." I stopped looking at Brenda, and looked straight at Mama. I could see she was serious. She really had picked out names already. "What names?" I couldn't keep the suspicion from my voice when I asked this question. "If it is a boy, like Brenda hopes, we can name him Dwight Richard Parsons. Dwight for President Eisenhower, and Richard for President Nixon. If its a girl, I've always been partial to Rose Elaine. My mother's middle name was Rose, and Elaine is a very pretty name." Mama had looked right at me when she said the boy's name. The look on her face was one of those 'I will brook no argument about this' looks. She was testing me to see how well I was planning to keep my promise to her. Since I knew that Dwight Richard Nunes was the name of Brenda's late birth father, I wasn't buying any of her talk about naming the baby after two Republican presidents. "They sound like perfect names to me, Mama. How about you Brenda?" I didn't want her doubting, not for a second, my commitment to following all the way through with my earlier promise to her. I expected possible difficulty with Brenda about this though. Brenda looked at the two of us, confused. She knew something was going on, but not exactly what it was. She had agreed immediately, when I told her that Mama would have a very special relationship with any child we had, especially the first one. So immediately, that I hadn't taken any time, or felt the need to discuss what I had meant by it. I hoped that wasn't going to cause us any problems, now that she was pregnant. Brenda smiled at us. "Whatever Mama wants, Kenny. That's what we agreed, right? This baby is going to have two mommy's." She went over and shared another hug with Mama, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. She had understood me. Both women were sharing the moment together, communicating that perfect understanding that only two women can ever really have. Brenda had trained her whole life for this moment. Somehow, she had known, this baby was the key to fulfilling all of her hopes and ambitions in life. She was determined to pay her entry fee, if it meant she was going to get what she both wanted and needed. I couldn't fault her for that, because I had been willing to do so as well. In that moment, the deal that all three of us had struck, was ratified and approved unanimously. Any reservations I might have had, or any residual guilt I might have felt, over this decision, was simply melted away by this conversation the three of us were having. All three of us understood, and we all agreed, this was to be Mama's baby, in everything but name. We were finally going to set to rights a situation that had occurred more than thirty five years in the past, We'd be serving as the surrogates for Mama and Dwight. Mama would finally be allowed to keep her baby, to hold this tiny he or she in her arms, and to lavish all her pent up motherhood hopes on that one special child. We were all together at dinner that night. Dad had greeted Brenda's and Emily's announcements with a fairly neutral and cautious acceptance. He was happy to hear that Georgia was pleased and excited, and unsurprised to learn that Walt was upset by this news. Emily's pregnancy he'd already known of, from Mama. Things at work had been proceeding well in our absence. Ellen was handling things, although I was pretty sure my Dad didn't know how much time the two girls were spending on the telephone together. Joyce admitted it probably wasn't all necessary, but she did tell me that she had come up with an idea that added considerably to improving on an already good system. She had come up with this whole new routing and storage idea that was going to save us many thousands of dollars in shipping costs, effectively creating a master hub where product could be shipped and stored for free, while they determined which of the other eight hubs needed the merchandise. Product arrived fresher, by up to three days, and we were better able to take advantage of the delay in continued transit, without having to pay storage fees to park the railcars. I had Joyce explain the whole thing to Dad after dinner, in his study, while the rest of us were in the library, talking about Emily and Brenda's pregnancy's. I figured Mama would hear it later, from Dad, and the two of them would both enjoy him telling her about it. Mama loved hearing about new ways of doing things, especially things that resulted in her making more money. To her, it was an aphrodisiac. To him, it was one way of validating his value to her. Mama gave him full credit for bringing Joyce and me into the business. Whatever the two of us accomplished, some of the credit from her always got reflected back his way. I was worried about how Dad would react to Brenda's baby, to the way Mama would seem to be so much more involved with it, after Brenda gave birth. I knew there was a lot about her past life that she'd never shared with him, including my true relationship to both her and Uncle Bunny. I had started giving him little hints, some time ago, after Uncle Bunny had died. I thought it might help if some of Mama's reactions to things were put into a different perspective for him to look at, and to think about. I was glad to be back home again, and to have Mama be so pleased by the news of our rapidly expanding family. I felt like part of my earlier dream was being fulfilled. All it would take would be for Joyce to be pregnant too. I still didn't have a clue why Shirley was present in my life, because she hadn't been a part of my dream. It struck me that it would be almost perfect, if Joyce, and all the X's, could be pregnant at the same time. I was halfway there already. ------- We got back to our house in Lawrence, at around five on Sunday afternoon. The first thing I noticed, as I pulled up in the driveway, in Joyce's Lincoln, was that my Caddy, and Emily's Caddy, were in the front of the house instead of in the garage out in the back where we'd left them. Brenda had driven Emily, Shirley and Derek back to Lawrence in her Buick. We stopped in front of the two cars and everyone piled out, heading for the closest bathrooms. The front door opened before Joyce and Emily could get to it, and Phil was standing there with a woman none of us had ever seen before. Of course, it turned out to be his lady friend, Claire. Phil had a wide smile on his face, and his arm protectively across Claire's shoulder. She was smiling also, but it wasn't as comfortable a smile as Phil was showing to all of us. He looked like someone who had won the Irish Sweepstakes. He made the introductions to us as we trooped past him, two of the girls not pausing, since they had been holding it in, ever since we passed through Topeka. I stopped and visited with Phil and Claire, explaining about Joyce and Brenda's rush to get to a bathroom. I had Bunny in my arms, and Emily was carrying Little Bertie. Shirley was still trying to get Derek out of the Buick without waking him, "Can I hold the baby?" Claire had her arms out towards me, and not even knowing her, I handed my son right over. She inspired that kind of instant confidence in people. Phil nodded to me, beaming, as if to say he had told me so about her. I moved aside to let Emily take Bertie past to change her. Claire followed close behind her, having had enough of greeting people at the door. Shirley finally made it in the house too, and she disappeared upstairs as well. "Did you get everything worked out with her, Phil?" I was as curious to know as I could be. I really hadn't expected to see him back anytime soon. I knew he and Karen had been married for over thirty years. Surely, it took more than a day or two to work out the details of dissolving such a long and complicated relationship? Yet, there was no denying that he was here, and with Karen's replacement presumptive in tow. I remembered he had referred to her as having become more than just a friend. "I set Karen up in a nice apartment over near Annette. I told her I was staying here, and that I wanted her to think about giving me a divorce. She's going to take every penny she can get her hands on, but it will be worth it, believe me. Our kids are all going to be upset with me, especially Annette, but, that just can't be helped. They'll either get over it, or they won't. Jason, my son, he won't hold this against me, least ways, I don't expect him to. He was the youngest, so he had a chance to see more the way she's been acting for the past ten years or so. She just stopped caring, about me, herself, or anybody else. I took it for as long as I could stand it." "So, tell me more about Claire. She seems a lot different than Karen. Did you two come to some understanding, about the job, or about more than just the job?" Phil's face colored, and he nodded to me that they had. "We've been keeping each other company, for a couple years now. Since about a year after Eddie passed. I'm not ashamed of it either. I like doing things, fixing broken stuff and making things better. Always have, and after Eddie died, Claire needed someone to take care of those sorts of problems. Of course, I volunteered, and we'd talk about things while I worked on her wiring, or replaced some fencing that needed tending to. We got to know each other better, to be more comfortable together, since Eddie's passing had left a big hole in both our lives. We found out that we both liked a lot of the same things. I found I looked forward to seeing her, in ways I hadn't looked forward to being with Karen, not for a long time at least. It just seemed natural that we'd get to be even closer, after some time had passed, and Eddie's dying wasn't so fresh in either of our thoughts." "So, is she going to move in and work with you here, or not?" I was happy for him and all, but I wanted him to get around to discussing the part that most concerned me. "She's moved in already. We moved her on Saturday, right after Karen got settled in her new place. It's a done deal, Kenny. We're your new housekeeper and handyman. If you'll have us?" "Glad to hear it, Phil. Did you tell her about the sheets and the towels yet?" "Yes, she changed everything before we climbed into bed Saturday night. This woman knows how to work, Kenny. You'll see, this was a good trade we made." Phil hadn't stopped smiling since we'd gotten back. He had been a pleasant man before, but now, he's already spent more time looking happy, than I'd noticed in the prior two weeks we'd been around each other. "Did you have a chance yet to explain to her about the unusual living situation she'll find here? I don't want that becoming a problem for us either." "No, I told her, and it won't be a problem. That brings up one more thing I need to talk to you about. Ask you, I guess, is more like it. See, the truth of it is, Claire has a sister, another widow woman, named Thelma, and, her and me, we've become friends too, if you understand what I'm saying? Anyways, since we're already talking about your domestic situation, I thought this might be a good chance for me to ask you a question about what you might think if Thelma was to sort of join us here too. She lives with Claire now, and she'll be all alone, if Claire was to come live here permanently, with me. This is the only rub in the whole deal now, the one thing that none of us could figure out any other way to fix it. You wouldn't need to pay her nothing, and she's a good worker too. Just her board is all. She'd sleep in there with us. She wouldn't be a problem for you at all." "Let me see if I've got everything straight, Phil. You and Claire will work for us, just like you and Karen did. Claire has a sister though, and you and she are good friends too, like you and Claire are?" Phil nodded, smiling at my recital of the facts. "So, the three of you want to all work and live here together, and not expect any raise in pay from us?" Again he smiled and nodded that I was still right on track. "Does this Thelma like children? Little babies like the ones we have here? If she does, and she can get along with Brenda, then I've got just the job for her. We'd have to insist on paying her though, and that job would come with a room of her own, and board too. We're going to be needing a lot more help with the children soon, because Emily and Brenda are both expecting babies of their own in the Spring. Thelma would have her own room, downstairs like you, but where she chooses to sleep, that would be her own business, just as long as she shows up to do her work, on time, every day." "If it's that empty room off the kitchen, that would be perfect for her to put her things. I was meaning to ask you about the loft area, over the garage too. Claire and I both need some space to store a few extra things we have. If it wouldn't be too much of a bother to you?" "That loft area is supposed to be part of your work area, Phil. If you don't need it for maintenance or storage, you can use it in any way you'd like. When would Thelma be able to come out and start working?" "I'd just need to have Claire call her, and tell her the good news. They've both been a mite upset about the prospect of being separated again. They're twins." "Twins? Fraternal or identical?" This was just getting better all the time. "They're supposed to be identical, but I can tell them apart pretty easily, and so can most other people. They have gotten easier to tell apart, since they both put different colored hair dye on now. Claire had her appendix out too, so that's another way to tell." "You better go get Claire and have her call Thelma then. The girls would skin me if I ever let you three get away from us. What are you, Phil, about fifty five or so?" "I'm fifty eight, just turned it last month. Why?" "You're my hero now. I just hope I'm able to satisfy three women when I'm fifty eight." "I only was ever able to satisfy two, Kenny. Karen never did enjoy that part of our marriage." "Well, maybe she'll enjoy her retirement instead." "Maybe. I wouldn't want to bet on it though." I went upstairs and found Claire in our room with Joyce, making a big fuss over the twins, as Joyce tried to fit them both on her comfortably. The bigger they got, the harder it was to feed them both at the same time, plus they were a lot more active in their movements now. "Joyce, did Claire tell you that she's a twin too?" "She was telling me. She said her sister might be coming to stay with us too." "Thats' what Phil and I were just discussing. It's all set, assuming she likes babies." "She does, we both do. Neither of us ever had any children. I don't understand how God could let that happen to both of us like He did." "Well, maybe He wanted to make it easier for you to come here and live with us. We're going to be having a whole houseful of children here by this coming Spring." Claire was smiling at the thought. I wondered why it was that people always seemed to yearn for what they didn't have. I thought Mama was going to like Claire and Thelma. The three of them seemed to have a few things in common. "I can call Thelma and have her drive over so you can interview us?" "No, I already told Phil that she could move in here. We'll give this whole thing a try, and find out how it all works out. Welcome to our home, Claire. I hope we'll all live here happily together." Over the next two weeks, the change in the atmosphere, in and around the house was amazing. Thelma looked just like Claire, except for her hair coloring, and a small pock mark on the side of her nose, from a childhood illness. Happiest of all of us was Phil. According to Brenda, both Claire and Thelma were excellent cooks. It helped that both women were early risers, so there was always fresh coffee ready when we got up, and we got used to being able to ask for any breakfast we wanted. With Brenda, she made one thing for breakfast each morning, and you either ate it or you didn't. Thelma and Joyce would fix anything you asked for in the mornings. I would just tell them the night before what I wanted, and it would appear, all cooked, and ready to eat, as soon as I came in and poured my morning coffee. Brenda was having some problems with morning sickness, and the last thing she wanted was to have to prepare breakfast when she was already feeling nauseous. In that regard alone, Thelma and Claire were a Godsend for us. Joyce had quizzed both sisters on their sex practices with Phil. She was a nosy little bugger, and nothing turned her on more than hearing about things like that. Thelma and Claire were fifty-four years old. I'm not sure where Joyce got the nerve to ask some of the questions she did. Every night, she'd give me a full report on anything she'd discovered. When she learned that the sisters both had sex with Phil at the same time, she told me there was no way that could be happening without something also happening between the sisters too. I didn't even want to think about that. All three of them were older than my parents. I knew my parents were still screwing, but I didn't want to be privy to any of the details. Joyce wanted to know everything. What she didn't know, she tried to come up with plausible scenarios for. After we'd all been together for more than a month, Joyce started planning for Phil and his women to come home with us for the Thanksgiving recess. We had been planning on a huge dinner over at Mama's. They had room for about twenty people in the dining room alone. We had extra bedrooms in both houses, so that didn't present any problem for us either. I pretty much stayed on the sidelines with all this planning. I was busy, with school, the group home expansion, and my trading program. On top of that, I was trying to spend more time with the twins and Derek, and to keep up with my husbandly duties with Joyce and the X's. Emily and Brenda both seemed to want and need more attention from me, reassurance that I loved them, and was happy that they were both having my baby. As least one night a week, I'd sleep with both girls, just holding and hugging them. They didn't want sex as much as the feeling that they were important to me, and that I was sharing in the development of their pregnancy. One night, Joyce, Emily, Brenda and I all slept in our bed, Joyce's and mine, and on that night, there was quite a bit of wild sex going on. I couldn't keep track of what everyone else was doing. It was fun, but exhausting. The next morning, all three girls were in a lot worse shape than I was. They said it was because I quit before they did. I reminded them that I hadn't quit until I knew each of them had cum at least four times. "I only remember cumming once with you Kenny." This was Brenda. "Once with me, but you came at least twice with Emily while I was fucking Joyce, and then Joyce made you cum at least twice more, when I was fucking Emily." "You can't count times I cum when you aren't doing anything to me." "I can count it if I want to. I didn't say I made you cum four times, just that you had. Each of you did, and since I only came three times, you were all ahead of me. You can't make me feel guilty either, because I did my best." Joyce came over and kissed me. "Kenny, you were wonderful. Even if you didn't make any of us cum that often, our excitement was a lot higher, just because you were there with us. Brenda, you better quit teasing Kenny like that. You know how sensitive he is about not having much stamina." "I'm not sensitive. Besides, I have plenty of stamina. Where did you get that about me not having stamina?" "See? That's why you shouldn't tease him. Tonight he's going to keep me awake an extra five minutes, just proving he has a lot of stamina." None of this would have been so bad, if Claire and Thelma hadn't been right there in the kitchen with us, listening to every word we said. They didn't know the girls were only teasing me. I'm pretty sure they were just teasing. Joyce was wrong about an extra five minutes though. I kept her up long enough to have her beg me to let her get some sleep. I thought I'd made my point with her, refuting her comment about my supposed lack of stamina. "Girls, you should have seen him last night. He's like one of Pavlov's dogs. I ring the bell and he starts to salivate. I told you he'd put on a big performance if we questioned his stamina." Most of it was just plain kidding. We were all getting along well together. I think it was the first time we'd really gone for a long time without any of us having a major problem or argument. "Kenny, I'm almost sure I'm pregnant. I just got done throwing up." We all turned around to look at Shirley as she walked into the kitchen with Derek balanced on her hip. She did look a little pale to me. All the girls crowded around her, asking questions. I was done with my breakfast anyway, so I went to get showered, and ready for my first class of the day. Not five minutes later, Joyce joined me in the shower and demanded that I fuck her good. She bent over and had me do her from behind. She was so short, I needed to squat way down to accomplish it. Later, she told me that Shirley had told her that this was how we had been doing it the night she thought I'd made her pregnant. In spite of all her worry and concern, Joyce was eight weeks pregnant by the time Christmas came around. She was probably already a couple weeks along by the time she tried to throw my back out in the shower. It was January before we were sure that Joyce was carrying yet another set of twins. I had accomplished a goal, all four of them were pregnant at the same time. Mama had given Georgia her three million, but it was set up in some kind of spendthrift trust. Georgia got the interest earned, after a sum was held out to pay taxes, every quarter. The very first thing Georgia did with her money, was to sue Walt for a divorce. He didn't contest it. The second thing she did was hire a lawyer to see if she could get all the money released to her, without any restrictions placed on it. For some reason, Georgia's actions with the lawyer amused Mama. As the trust creator, Mama hadn't wanted to serve as the trustee. Instead, she had appointed Frank Clooney to serve in that capacity. She had Frank resign the trusteeship, and appointed Walt Connor as the new trustee. There was a provision that the trustee could bill the trust for up to seven percent of the trust assets per year, as his or her compensation. Frank only billed at his hourly rate, which was around fifty or sixty dollars an hour. Walt began billing at the limit. In addition, Walt had absolutely no training or experience with managing or investing that kind of money. Mama kept us all in stitches, by telling us some of the phone conversations she had with Georgia. Only my father wasn't amused. He didn't feel bad for Georgia, it was the money that had his concern and sympathy. To him, Walt depleting the trust, at the rate of fifteen thousand dollars a month, was no laughing matter. Georgia agreed with his assessment, withdrawing her legal petition, hoping to get Mama to reappoint Frank. By the time Mama finally did that, Georgia's trust had suffered capital account losses of more than three hundred thousand dollars, owing to Walt's belief that he could trade grain futures as well as anyone else. Money has a powerful attraction for people. Walt Connor fell under its heady influence, soon after being released from his trusteeship. Any grain broker, even the most successful, is only as good as his word. If your reputation is good, people will trust you with millions of dollars of their product, based on your giving your verbal assurance that they will be paid for their grain. Walt continued trading, for his own account, long after he had ceased to be in control of Georgia's trust. In a matter of months, he had destroyed a reputation that he'd taken years to build up. In addition, he'd managed to bury himself with another two hundred seventy thousand dollars in trading losses. Rather than allow him to be arrested, and charged with misrepresentation and fraud, my Dad stepped in, and made good all of his losses. Walt expressed his appreciation by writing himself a pay order for a large quantity of undelivered grain to our company, and presenting it for immediate payment with our bank. The only thing that prevented this deceit from working, was an alert teller who had heard rumors about Walt's financial difficulties, and called the company to check on the pay order's validity. This final act of Walt's, showing his total disregard for all those years of preferential treatment he'd received from our family, caused my father to close out Walt's relationship with us. Within a day, everyone in the business knew that Walt Connor had no further association with our company. It was a sad day for both our families. It was a day long threatened, but not one that any of us had wanted, or ever expected to see arrive. ------- Chapter 18 Brenda had been upset with both her parents since the previous summer. She was mad at her mother for initiating the divorce proceeding. She was very angry with her father for his actions while he was her mother's trustee of the trust Mama had created, and for his later behavior playing the futures markets with money he didn't have. Somehow, she believed that what they were both doing was being reflected back on her. We all told her that this wasn't the case, but as things worsened, Brenda became more determined in her beliefs concerning this. By the time Walt brought the bogus pay order to our bank for payment, Brenda was becoming sick with her worry, and seemed determined that she too had to share in their guilt. This was such un-Brenda like behavior, that it confused all of us at first. We didn't really take what she was saying seriously enough in the beginning. When Brenda finally came to me, asking that I use her money to repay the company for the funds my Dad had used to make good on Walt's defaults, I knew we had a serious situation. I went to Joyce and asked her what she thought we should do. Her advice was to wait and do nothing, and this was what I did. I told Brenda that I'd look into it, and let her know later what needed to be done. I did nothing, hoping she'd get over these unwarranted feelings of guilt. Georgia wasn't helping things at all. She was constantly trying to incite Brenda against both Walt and Richard. While she blamed Mama for costing her ten percent of her money by appointing Walt to be the trustee of her spendthrift trust, she blamed Walt even more, suspecting that he had incurred the trading losses just to spite her. There was certainly a valid reason for her to be angry. Mama had appointed Walt in retribution, angry at Georgia for going out and hiring a lawyer to attempt to remove the spendthrift provisions contained in the trust. Not being in any position to further alienate Mama, Georgia turned the brunt of her anger against Walt. Since Richard had chosen to let his father live with him, Georgia included him in her wrath. Brenda had always been close to Georgia, but she couldn't bring herself to turn on her father and brother. Walt and Richard, using Richard's remaining inheritance from Uncle Bunny, continued trading grain futures. In the beginning, they even had a few nice gains. Enough gains to convince Richard that his father knew what he was talking about. Two months later, Richard too was broke, and began selling off the purchases he'd made when he first came into his money. The big truck, with those grossly oversized tires, was the last to go. In the divorce, Georgia had gotten the house, paying cash for Walt's share of their equity. Walt moved out of the house, and went to live in Richard's apartment. All of these events had taken place between late spring and Christmas, starting from the time that Mama set up the trust to give Georgia the three million dollars. The last thing I wanted was to have Brenda upset like she was, in the early stages of her pregnancy. Brenda came to me again, while we were staying in Ridgeline, very upset at the way things were progressing with her family. Her brother had called, asking her for a loan, and her mother had somehow gotten wind of it, spending over an hour with Brenda, telling her not to help either Richard or her father. Brenda wanted my advice. What complicated things even more, was that Brenda's money had grown rapidly through the trading program I was using. Even after accounting for taxes on the gain, she was still up over sixty percent on the money I'd originally given her. She could afford to be generous with her family, if she chose to be. If she helped her father or brother though, Georgia was going to be very angry with her. "How much did Richard ask to borrow?" I couldn't imagine him asking for that much, given the relationship he'd had with his sister for the past three or four years. "He asked me for ten thousand, but he said he'd understand if I only lent him a couple of thousand. He's looking for work, and so is my dad. They've stopped trading grains now. Richard needs a car to get back and forth from whatever work he finds. They are behind on their rent. I'm going to let him have some money, at least enough to get caught up with his rent, and for him to buy a used car. My mother is going to be screaming at me some more, but he's still my brother." "Look, you don't need to get in the middle of all this. It would be easier with your mother, if it was either me or Mama that decided to help him. I'll hire him to help out Aunt Clara and Bea with their deliveries. I'll buy him another truck if he agrees to do it. We'll take the payments out of his pay every month. This way, your mother will just be mad at me. I'll loan him whatever he needs to get caught up with things, and he can start paying me back from when he gets his first pay day. I don't want you worrying while you're pregnant, and I'll have Mama talk to your mother about upsetting you again." She'll know you're only doing it for me. She'll still blame me. She just wants to hurt both of them." "Brenda, she'll be right if she thinks that, because that's the only reason why I would do it. I love you, and I don't like seeing you upset by this thing between your parents. I don't like your brother, but I don't need to like him to do this for you. Bea will keep him in line, and we really do need to get them some help with all their deliveries." Brenda was moved by me telling her I loved her and that I was doing it for her. She seemed more concerned with how I felt about her, now that she was carrying my child. She was unsure about her place in my affections, even though I'd done what I could to reassure her on that score. "I'm still worried about what my father is going to do. Richard says he's really depressed now, drinking everyday, and not even trying that hard to find work for himself. I think he's given up." "I'll find something for him to do too. If he still likes to fish, we can get him a little bait and tackle shop over at one of the lakes. They don't cost that much. He knows a lot about fishing, according to what everyone says. It might do him good to get away from here for awhile. His pride has taken a big hit these last seven or eight months. Maybe he should go somewhere new and start over." Mostly, I was just winging it. I really didn't have any reason to believe that Walt would even give me a chance to help him. We hadn't gotten along well, almost since the beginning. If he wanted to be too proud to accept my help, perhaps I could take care of it through Richard. I had no doubt at all that Richard would grab at any life preserver thrown his way. This conversation with Brenda had gotten me thinking about things. Joyce and I were being remarried in our big church wedding. All the X's were bridesmaids, and, as it got closer, I began to notice that they all started acting different around both Joyce and me. We didn't know that Joyce was pregnant again yet, but we had found out about Shirley, Brenda and Emily already. I already felt a little funny about having gotten all the X's pregnant. It wasn't really an accident, especially in Brenda's case, but it hadn't been something I'd thought through enough as to how it would complicate all of our relationships. What I was seeing, as the date for the wedding approached, was three girls who felt bad because they wanted to be the bride and not just the bridesmaids. What I was feeling for them, as each one turned up pregnant, was more than it had been when they were just a group of my ex-girl friends. That night I spoke to Joyce about Brenda's problems, and then about my feelings about the changing attitudes of all the X's. I told her I was getting worried, because it was a much greater commitment after you had fathered a child with a woman. I was feeling a much stronger bond with each of them already. I thought Joyce would be angry with me, or, at least upset, and a little bit afraid that this would somehow weaken our relationship. She surprised me. "Kenny, that's what I wanted. The only way to make this work well for all of us, is if we're all equals. Having these babies will do this for us. We should find some way to bring all of us together, like you and I are right now. Maybe not a regular marriage, but some sort of ceremony with all of us. I've always thought of the X's as your other wives." "You can only have one wife, Joyce. You're the one that's stuck with being it. We can all sit down and talk about other things. I'm not opposed to having a ceremony of some sort, but I don't think we should refer to it as a marriage." "They can still be treated like they are your wives, without you needing to be married to them. You need to spend time alone with each of them, and let them know that you consider each of them to be your wives too." "Joyce, I don't see how that would help the situation. A lot of the problem is with them wanting what you already have. It's probably the worst for Shirley, because this is her second time for having a baby without having a husband. Emily's parents are pretty upset about her being pregnant too." "Kenny, I talk to all of them everyday. Don't you think we've talked about this? The X's all wanted to have babies with you. They knew we were married. You love them, and they already knew they loved you. None of this was an accident, they all made their own choices. They want to live with us, to be our family. In a way, we're all married already. I don't expect anymore from you than what you can give to each of them. I'm not jealous of any of them anymore." I still went to sleep that night troubled. I was beginning to understand just how complex things were when you had four women you loved. Even when everyone was getting along well together, there were constant ripples in the pond we were all trying to swim together in. ------- Bea and Aunt Clara were doing a great job giving away groceries. I made it a point not to meet with them both at the same time. I met with Aunt Clara first, telling her I was hiring Richard to make the deliveries for them, so they could concentrate on getting better deals on the food they were buying. I later told Bea that Richard would need to be watched, to make sure he delivered the food to the right people, and that he didn't try to extract any payment from any of the recipients. I also told her that I was expecting an audit soon, and she had to make sure all the paperwork was in perfect order, in case they came by to check on it. Aunt Clara and Bea had resumed their personal relationship, and were meeting every evening over at Bea's apartment. Bea was telling me what a pain in the ass Mildred was being about everything, and that she seemed determined to make Aunt Clara's life miserable because of her spending time with Bea. I told her I'd try to find a way to put a stop to that. I went to see Richard at his apartment. It was a pretty nice place, fancier than Bea's was. When he opened the door and saw me, he was immediately on his guard. "Relax, Richard. I spoke with Brenda, and I came over and see if you might be interested in doing some work for me." I had stood back when I spoke to him. Given our past history, I couldn't quite bring myself to feel confident that he wouldn't try to attack me. "Did she send any money? She said she'd help me. The rent is due again in less than a week, and I still haven't paid for last month. She didn't send any, did she?" Already, Richard was turning sullen and defeated. "I have enough on me to help get the rent caught up. Brenda said you needed another truck or a car to get to work. This job I have, you'd need a truck, because you'd be making food deliveries to people." "I sold my truck in November. My dad still has his car. He lets me use it if he isn't using it himself." "I'd get you a truck, Richard. You could make payments out of your pay." "What kind of food deliveries? Not pizza?" He looked worried about having to deliver pizzas to his friends. "How much would it pay?" His expression wasn't too optimistic. I actually felt a little bit sorry for him. He had gone broke trying to help his father. He had sold off all his possessions trying to keep things going until they both landed some work. In a sense, he showed a lot more loyalty to his father than I would have thought him capable of. "It is a charitable foundation, and we donate groceries to people with children. All you need to do is make about twenty deliveries a day, with a couple bags of groceries being dropped off at each stop you make. I'll pay you fifteen hundred dollars a month, and give you mileage for the use of your truck." I knew fifteen hundred was a lot more than Richard was hoping to earn with the kinds of jobs he'd been looking for. "We also offer full medical and dental coverage, and two weeks off, with pay, a year." "Really? Is there a retirement plan?" Richard was smiling. I hadn't seen him smiling since the time he'd kicked me in the forehead. "There isn't yet, but I guess it's something for me to consider. You'll be working for my Aunt Clara and Bea. You remember Bea, right?" "Sure, I remember her. Weren't you and Mr. Parsons both doing her? That's what my mother said." "Either one will have the option of firing you, Richard. Those are the kinds of stupid questions that might lead to that happening, too. Bea was my mother's companion. She's a family friend. I don't think it would be a good way for you to start out what would be a very short career, by asking her those kinds of questions." "I was asking you, and I didn't mean anything bad by it. You take everything I say to you and turn it into some kind of an insult." "Richard, let's not play the poor, misunderstood, victim. I came here today to help you. For Brenda's sake. I figured if I did it, instead of her, your mother might not make such a fuss with her. Same thing goes for your father. I was thinking of becoming a silent partner, with him, in a bait and tackle shop over by the Delaware River, or Perry Lake." "He'd rather have a small boat rental concession over on the Republican River. There's this guy he knows who was selling the last twelve years of his concession, and all his boats and rafts. My dad said that would be an easy way to make a living, if he just had the money." "How much did the guy want for it?" "About fifteen thousand for the lease, and another twenty five or so for the boats and rafts. He only has eight to fourteen foot skiffs, but he's really busy in the summer. Dad said he could fix those boats up with some caulk and paint, and make them look decent again." "Why didn't the two of you buy it when you had the money?" "Because we didn't need to look for a way to make a living when we had money. I guess we didn't plan ahead too good." Richard's voice tapered off when he said that to me. I could tell he'd been giving things like that a lot of thought, now that he was broke again. I wasn't interested in making him feel worse. I just wanted to get the situation taken care of, then move on to the next one. "So, do you want that delivery job?" "Would I have to kiss your ass if I took it?" That sentence, in a nutshell, described the relationship Richard and I had developed with each other. As badly as he needed help, he still had to come out and say something like that. I had no doubt that he'd refuse my offer if I told him something equally smart ass. A year before, I would have, and that would have closed off the easiest avenue to getting this problem solved for Brenda. "No. I love your sister, and she's worried about you and your father, because she loves you both. All I'm doing is trying to get her to quit worrying about you two. I don't want to have more problems with you Richard. We're both too old to keep on with all that. Take the job until you find something else you'd rather be doing. At the very least, it will give you time to look around for something better, without worrying about being evicted or anything." "Man, how can you say you love her? You're fucking four girls at the same time. Brenda's just being a slut, letting you knock her up like she did. She must not have any pride left." I really would have liked to knock him on his ass, and then jump up and down on his face. He had said other things like that to Brenda, over the years, trying to make her feel like she was less than him, because of her decisions. He really was an ass hole. Unfortunately, nothing I was going to say or do was going to change that. He was what he was, and I just had to live with that fact. I didn't have to like him, or even associate with him. This was for Brenda, and for my baby. I was learning to swallow distasteful things, while remembering what it was I was trying to accomplish. "You know, Richard, you saying things like that, makes it harder for me to want to help you. Brenda loves you, and still you say things like that about her. How can you come to her for help if you think about her like that?" "She's got money. It wouldn't be anything at all for her to let me borrow ten thousand dollars. Instead, she sends you over here to make me mad. She knew I was going to end up saying something to keep you from giving me that job." "She doesn't even know I'm here talking to you. She wanted to lend you the money, even knowing that your mother would get really mad at her for doing it. I just thought it might be better to get your life squared away again. A loan wouldn't do it, but a job might." "I can find my own damn job. I don't need you, and neither does my dad. You tell Brenda that we're expecting her to come through for us." With that, he stepped back inside his apartment door and slammed it. Since I hadn't solved anything, I started wishing I had kicked his ass. It takes a real moron to bite the hand he hopes will feed him, especially while he's still hungry. I turned around and went back to my car. The next day, Walt Connor called me and asked me if I'd be willing to give him the job that Richard hadn't wanted. His call surprised me. I recovered quickly though, telling him I would be willing, but then I told him he'd need a pick up truck in order to make the deliveries. He said he knew where he could trade his nearly new Oldsmobile for a GMC truck. I gave him Bea's phone number and told him to call her that evening, and arrange for when he'd be starting. "Kenny, thanks. I know this wasn't something you wanted to do for us. Are you sure Tommy is going to be okay with you doing this for me?" I hadn't really thought about that part of it. My Dad was still pretty upset with Walt. "Mr. Connor, I don't think he's mad at you. If anything, he's sad about what happened. You guys go back a long ways together." "We do, for a fact. That's why I'm so ashamed of what I tried to do. Tommy always treated me good, and that was a lousy way that I repaid him for it. Tell him I'm really sorry." Walt sounded sincere to me. Of course, in his position, I'd probably be sincere also. He'd burned a lot of bridges over the past six months. At his age, living something like he'd done down, well, it wasn't going to be easy. He had to be at least fifty, and second chances were pretty hard to come by at that age, especially with his background. I drove back over to find Bea. She and Aunt Clara were together when I got to Bea's apartment. Aunt Clara seemed embarrassed for me to see her there. Bea just laughed about it. "This could be interesting. Would you care to join us, Kenny?" Bea was opening her robe up so I could see one of her breasts. She looked around to see if anyone was watching before stepping out from behind the door, flashing her pussy at me. I'd forgotten how hairy it was. I don't know what my expression showed, but she laughed, delighted by it. Bea had always been very direct about anything having to do with sex. I admit I took a longer look than I probably should have, before shaking my head about not wanting to join them. Bea just kept smiling, making no effort to hide her crotch from my view. "Walt Connor is going to be taking that delivery job. I told him to contact you. I'd appreciate it if you'd make an effort to help him get a good start with this job. There has been a lot of trouble between our two families recently, and this might help us to patch some things up." "What do you mean by good start? Did you want me to be his special friend?" Bea was leering at me. Her hand had slipped down, and she was running her fingers through the tangled black mop of curls above and between her legs. Bea loved doing this to me. She liked that I was reacting. I wondered how much Aunt Clara could tell from where she was, inside the apartment. Probably not too much. I hoped that, at least. "Bea, it won't be very damned funny if you end up screwing this whole program up for me by trying to kid around about something that's damn serious. If you can't separate business from fooling around, maybe I need to have this conversation with Aunt Clara. "Lighten up, kid. I was just pulling your chain a little. I'll get him squared away. He's going to do all the deliveries? I've got ten or so people, over in Salina, that I kind of want to keep delivering to myself. Sisters, cousins, and some girls I grew up with. They really appreciate this help from you. All with kids though, and all on the up and up. I'm not doing any diddling with the deliveries, Kenny, honest." Bea looked concerned that her people would lose out if Walt started making the deliveries. I didn't want to upset anything, but I did think it would be better to separate Bea from actually delivering the groceries. I hadn't heard anything bad about her deliveries, but I knew she had a larcenous streak that was pretty wide. She thought this was just another scam. I had told her as much, and I was afraid it would later come back as a problem for me. "Bea, Walt is going to be working for you and Aunt Clara. You tell him where to deliver. As far as the deliveries in Salina, you're more than welcome to make them. I want Walt delivering to one hundred families each week though, so you'll have to add more families to your schedule." "Do we cut back on what we're spending for each family?" "No. Spend the same as before. We'll just give away an extra ten percent. I'll set it up with Frank. I want Walt to go over to Frank's office, to set up the paperwork, and to get on the payroll." "You never did answer my question about him being a special friend. Sometimes, I get tired of always eating at the "Y". Again, this was Bea at her worst. She was letting me know that I wasn't able to change her, or the way she did things. Aunt Clara was behind her, and I knew Bea was sending her a message as well. "Bea, far be it from me to ever want to tell you what you can or can't do during your off duty time. I'm sure Walt would appreciate your friendship, the same way the rest of us always have. I need to talk to Aunt Clara for a minute, if you're done showing your pussy to the world." Bea laughed again and stepped back inside her door. A few seconds later, Aunt Clara stuck her head outside. "You needed to talk to me, Kenny?" She seemed very worried. I think she believed I was going to say something to her about fraternizing with Bea. "Yes, Aunt Clara. I wanted to ask you if you and Bea wanted to come to Mama's for Christmas dinner? You can bring Mildred too, if you want to." "Thank you, Kenny. I'm afraid that Bea and my mother don't get along well at all. Would it be all right if it were just Bea and me?" "That would be fine. Come at two if you can. We usually have a few drinks before dinner anyway, and it might not be a good idea for Mildred to see that." Aunt Clara nodded. I said goodbye, then drove over to see Mildred myself. I needed to talk to her about Aunt Clara and Bea. I drove over to Mildred's house, parking in her driveway. I knocked on her door and waited. "Kenny. Are you home from that college now?" "Hi, Mildred. Yes, we're all home until after the New Year. How've you been?" "The same. Clara's taken up with her whore again, and I have to fend for myself if I want anything at all to eat around here. Ever since you gave her that job, all she's done is spend all her time with her precious Bea. For all either one of them cares, I could be dead." "I spoke to Anne the other day. She was asking about you. I thought it might be a good idea to fly you out to California for a week, so you could have a nice visit with her. This was before I learned that you were being mean to Aunt Clara and Bea." "Annie asked about me?" "Of course. Kids are funny that way. They always love their mothers. She's very happy where she's at. She says you'd like it in California, especially in the winter." "She's sleeping with that man she lives with. Did she tell you that?" Mildred just loved to ruin anyone's day. I hadn't even thought of the possibility that Mr. Webb and Anne might have developed that kind or relationship. If true, it was bound to present problems for me down the road. Before I allowed this to derail me, I stopped myself by deciding that I'd call Anne at a later time and speak with her about it. If it turned out that Mildred was telling the truth, I'd have to find some way to minimize the upheaval in Anne's life. "Mildred, why did you tell me that?" I was really curious. Mildred and I didn't have the type of relationship where we shared confidences like that. On the face of it, it seemed disloyal to Anne for her to have told me. "You brought up her name. I was trying to decide if I should tell you or not. I don't want anything bad to happen to Annie. Her having an affair with that man is bound to cause problems for her." "Did she actually tell you she was sleeping with Captain Webb?" "She didn't go into any lurid details, but a mother always knows. She always writes about him, in every letter. They do things together every day. Golf in the mornings, then they usually go out somewhere to eat. I've saved her letters. You want to see them?" "No. I want you to stop trying to make things worse for Anne and Clara. If Anne is happy, and she sure sounded that way to me when we spoke, let her be happy. If something bad is going to happen, it can happen without you trying to help it along. Same thing with Bea and Clara. Clara goes over there because that's what she wants. She isn't being forced to do anything. Maybe you should go out and get a boyfriend or a girlfriend of your own, Mildred. You have too much time on your hands. Get your own life working, and maybe then you can let others lead theirs." "Like that's going to happen. I'm fifty eight years old. Who would want an old bag like me?" I looked at her. I thought she was older. Anne was thirty five years old, and she was the youngest. Aunt Clara had to be close to forty, although she didn't look that old. "I'll bet my mother could take you to a beauty parlor she knows, and they could make you look better. You just need your hair dyed, a new styling, and some more flattering clothes to wear. You'd look okay with a little bit of help from these people Mama knows. That's what I'll buy you for Christmas. After, I'll send you and Aunt Clara out to California, for the New Years, so you can visit Anne. That will be my Christmas present to Anne and Aunt Clara." "You shouldn't waste your money. It's a hopeless cause with me." Something in the way she said that told me that she wanted me to argue that it wasn't hopeless. I really didn't think it was anyway. She didn't have to turn into a Hollywood beauty. There were plenty of old guys around whose wives had either died or thrown them out. I'd have to ask Mama to do it for me. If it could be done. Mama could do it. "Here's the deal, Mildred. I want you to stop being such a wet blanket to Clara. Let her do what she wants without you making her feel bad about it all the time. If you do that, I'll see to it that your own life gets better. We'll get you fixed up a little, and then dangle you in front of some old guys out looking for some excitement." "Old guys? You sure don't do much to spare a woman's feelings, Kenny." "You still haven't told me that you heard and agreed to my conditions, Mildred. I don't want Clara or Anne being made to feel bad. I want you to leave them alone, and start worrying about your own love life." "I don't think I could. I mean, it's been so long. Do you really think they could fix me up enough so someone might be interested in me?" "Probably. We'll never know until we give it a try. What I do know is that you aren't going to get too many other offers as good as this one. Let Clara and Anne do what they want to, and just worry about taking care of your own business." "They are my business. I'm their mother." "Have it your way, then, Mildred. I don't see where the payoff is so great that you'd want to keep doing it, especially when you could be leading a life of your own." "I didn't say I wouldn't try it your way. It might take me awhile to get used to not saying things to her though. I'll try. When can you get me an appointment to see someone about my hair, and about getting some new clothes?" Mildred was definitely hooked on the possibilities. I'd succeeded in finding something she was willing to trade for. "You have to really try hard. If I hear you keep slipping back to your old ways, I'll send Bea out there instead of you. You know Clara would like that a whole lot better, right? I'll have my mother call you tomorrow. She'll probably have appointments set up for you all next week. Christmas is Friday. Plan to leave for California the following Monday. I didn't tell Clara yet, so you can tell her about it later." ------- As I expected, Mama was upset with me for bringing her together with Mildred. I was careful not to refer to Mildred as my grandmother. I just called her Mildred, and Aunt Clara's mother. I knew she knew who Mildred was, but she didn't mention that relationship either. In the end, she couldn't resist her own curiosity. I told her that Mildred had a long history of alcohol abuse, and that she was a fifty eight year old widow who had let herself go as far as personal grooming went. By five o'clock that evening, Mama had scheduled several appointments. I told her that Mildred had false teeth that would need tending to, and that her hair really needed work done to it. Joyce and I were being married on Saturday, the twenty sixth. Everything was all arranged. Mama had hired teams of professionals, telling them what she wanted. Joyce had already done everything she needed to do. We were going to the rehearsal on Christmas eve. I wondered how Mama had arranged for that, but I didn't ask her. She could be very persuasive when she chose to be. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the church we were being married in would have some serious renovations being made to it in the near future. The church itself was an off brand one. I think it was Unitarian, or something like that. I know it was able to hold over two hundred people though. I was a nominal Catholic. Joyce was a Protestant. My Dad and Mama both worshipped nothing, unless there was a Church of Money and Business. Hans and Gerta were lapsed Lutherans. Church wasn't something that was important to any of us at that time. Aunt Clara being the one exception. I knew she'd been invited, but I didn't know if she'd be attending the ceremony. Joyce and I were both less excited about this wedding than Mama was. We had agreed to it, because it was what she had asked for. In the midst of all this, I still had to call Frank to have him set up another trust for Shirley, and our unborn child. I had just gotten off the phone with him when Joyce informed me that she was pregnant again too. I had already gotten Frank to prepare a will for me, so I didn't need to make any changes in it for that. I was excited at having them all pregnant at the same time. I was worried that I was committing to more than I could ever deliver with these four women. ------- Chapter 19 The wedding was three days away when Richard decided he'd waited long enough for Brenda to bring him his money. We had Phil, Claire, and Thelma staying with us over the Christmas holidays. It was Phil who answered the front door, after Richard's loud banging interrupted a small family meeting we were having. Not knowing who he was, Phil led Richard into our living room. That's when all the fireworks got started. Richard started right in, yelling at Brenda for her failure to bring him the money he needed to borrow. Joyce got up and tried to get him to calm down, but Richard began shouting at her and calling her names too. I had been sitting on the end of one of the sofas when Richard came in, and stood up as soon as he started haranguing Brenda. I think I shouted at him to stop yelling at Brenda, but as soon as he called Joyce an "Ugly bitch", I started for him. The only thing that prevented me from attacking him was that Phil got to him before I did. It took only about a second before he'd taken Richard down to the carpet, and had him in some kind of submission hold, with his wrist bent back at what looked like a very uncomfortable angle. "You better chill out in a big damn hurry, pal. You can't come barging into people's homes and start acting like some kind of a nut case." Phil was applying pressure to Richard's elbow as he spoke, and Richard was already pleading with him to ease up on it, grimacing from the pain he was feeling. "Oow! Let me go! Brenda, tell this clown to let my arm go before he breaks it." I watched as Phil increased the pressure and the angle of the bent wrist. Richard started howling even louder when he did. Phil looked at me, making it clear that he wanted me to tell him what I wanted done with Richard. "If he hasn't apologized to Brenda and Joyce in thirty seconds, break his wrist and elbow, Phil. I've warned him before about speaking to people like that." I said it loud enough to be heard over Richard's loud complaints. As soon as I said it, Richard started apologizing to them both. Joyce acted as if she couldn't care less about what he'd said to her, but Brenda was crying, and seemed visibly shaken up by the occurrences of the past few minutes. I didn't know if Phil would follow my instructions or not. The way I was feeling, I would probably do it myself, if he didn't want to. Richard made it unnecessary, by immediately launching into apologies to them both. When he was done apologizing, Phil released his hold on him and stepped back just enough to let Richard think he was again free. "I just came for my money, Brenda. You said you'd lend it to me." Richard was rubbing his wrist and grimacing as he spoke. I noticed he wasn't using a threatening tone with her now though. I spoke to him then. "I told you I had enough money to let you get caught up on your rent, Richard, but you slammed the door in my face. Why should Brenda loan you money after you called her all those names?" "This isn't any of your business, Kenny. Brenda's my sister. She knows I was just upset. She knows I didn't mean anything by it." I saw Phil's arm raise up, and come down, opened, against the side of Richard's jaw. He dropped liked he'd been pole axed. I think he was more dazed and surprised by it than anything else. He didn't appear too hurt by it. "What the Fuck was that for?" Richard had turned his head and was staring right at Phil when he said that. "Sorry, kid. I was just upset. I didn't mean anything by it." Phil offered Richard a hand up, but Richard stayed where he was. He looked like he was ready to cry. Phil just smiled, and stepped back again. I was already impressed with him before this, but it made me feel better knowing he could handle himself. Everyone stared at Richard, sitting on the floor and looking over at Phil. I was reaching in my pocket, and counting out a thousand dollars. I moved over to Richard and offered him the money. He turned and looked at it before scrambling to his feet, and grabbing it out of my hand. "That's a thousand dollars, Richard. Consider it a Christmas present from Brenda and me. I want you out of my house now, and don't come back here again. If I ever hear you speak to any of my wives like you did today, you're going to wish you'd never been born. Now get the hell out of my house!" He moved gingerly around Phil, making his way quickly to the front door, and letting himself out. The tension in the room lessened as soon as the door closed behind him. "How many wives do you have, Kenny?" I knew Joyce was going to say something about what I'd said to Richard. It had just come out of my mouth, unbidden. Joyce and I had spoken about the relationship I had to each of the X's. We had discussed doing something to let all the X's know they were more than just girl friends to me. I looked over at her, noticing as I did so that all the X's had their eyes and attention focused on me, anxious to hear what my answer would be. Even Phil had stayed to hear my answer. I thought I detected a look of something close to pity in his eyes. "How many? Let's see. You, Emily, Brenda and Shirley. How many is that? Four?" "So, we're all your wives?" Joyce wanted it clearly spelled out, so there were no misunderstandings in any of the X's minds. "That's what I believe. What else would you call them? If it were legal, I'd marry all four of you on Saturday. Since it isn't, I'll try to let you all know then that I'm thinking about you on Saturday. There were four smiling faces, not counting the grin on Phil's face as he turned away to allow the five of us our privacy together. I was swarmed and kissed warmly by all of the girls. I didn't know what I could do, but I wanted to do something, to acknowledge all of them to all the people in my small circle of the world. On Saturday, right at two o'clock, as scheduled, I saw my father leading Joyce down the aisle of the church. She looked happy and radiant as she walked beside him. I thought she'd never looked better than she did right at that first moment as I saw her smiling at me, her arm tightly wrapped around my Dad's. I looked over at Mama and Gerta, each of them holding one of the twins in their laps. Derek was sitting in his maternal grandmother's lap as well. I had spotted each of the X's parents sitting in the church, as well as Joyce's mother, father, and brother. Walt and Georgia were sitting in separate parts of the church. Richard hadn't come to our wedding. The wedding itself proceeded calmly through the point where the minister said I could kiss the bride. I bent down and kissed Joyce for a moment, whispering to her that I loved her and was happy that we were going to spend our lives together. Instead of turning to allow the minister to introduce us as husband and wife to the gathered family and friends, I walked over to Emily, standing on the end of the three bridesmaids. Taking both her hands in mine, I leaned in and kissed her, just like I had done it with Joyce. "I do." Emily looked at me, surprised at what I'd done and said in front of two hundred people. "I love you, Emily." I reached in my pocket and pulled out a simple gold band, which I slipped on the ring finger of her left hand. I moved over then to Brenda. She was already crying, overcome at what I was doing. I leaned down and kissed her too. "I do. I love you, Brenda." I took her ring out, and put it on her finger too. I looked back at Emily. She was staring at the wedding band on her finger. I was seeing that she now understood what I was doing with all the X's. I moved over to Shirley, but she grabbed me and kissed me with such a passionate intensity, that I just knew she was having a very good day. "I do. I love you, Shirley." I put her ring on her finger, thankful that I'd had the good sense to buy rings for all of them, even before I knew how they would be delivered to each girl. When I looked back, Joyce had come down to Emily, and the two women were hugging each other, crying and laughing about something. Soon, Brenda and Shirley joined them. All through the church, people were murmuring and talking to each other. There seemed to be a few people. mostly those who didn't really know any of us, friends of my parents, who seemed shocked and either angry or upset by what I'd done. This wasn't true though with any of the X's parents. Georgia, Kitty, and Shirley's mom were all crying and smiling at the five of us. Walt Connor, Jerry Carstairs, and Ron Jones seemed more confused than anything else. Mama was beaming at me, and so was Gerta. I caught my father's eye, and he was smiling at me too. I had known, since early that morning, what I wanted to do. While not in any sense a legal commitment, I knew that announcing my love for all of them, in front of all my family and friends, was as close as I could get to marrying all of them. In some societies, a public announcement in your community or village, was all it took to be married. In my mind, they were now my wives. According to Joyce, all of the X's wanted to be my wives as well Kitty Carstairs was the first of the X's mothers to reach me. She wrapped me up in a warm hug, and then she thanked me. I thought it both strange and comforting that she would thank me. Georgia was next. She kissed me on the cheek, perfunctorily, before making straight for Brenda. Shirley's mom was the last of the X's mothers to come greet me. When she hugged me to her, she also welcomed me to her family. I knew she had been very worried about Shirley's decision to come live with us. There had been tension between her and Shirley, and Ron had tried to remain on the sidelines, probably concerned for his job. I also knew that Shirley had called her mother, right after I created the trust fund for her, Derek, and the unborn baby. Part of Mrs. Jones concern had obviously been financial worry for Shirley and Derek. Back at home that night, all five of us were in the big bedroom, sitting on the bed, discussing our impressions of the day, and conversations we'd either had or heard at the church or the reception. Joyce's parents had thrown a minor fit with Joyce at the reception, telling her that I had shamed and mocked her at her wedding. In spite of this, Joyce seemed the happiest and most content of all of us. I'm not exactly sure how it all got started, but one minute we were all laughing and talking on the bed, and the next minute, the honeymoon had begun. I think Emily started it by kissing Brenda, or else Shirley started it, by pressing her crotch against my leg when she was pretending to reach past me, to try to turn the alarm clock around, so she could tell what time it was. Whatever it was that got it started, it was the first time all of us wound up together, naked, and in the same bed, at the same time. Mama had invited Mildred over for Christmas dinner, wanting to show off her new look. She didn't know about the problems Bea and Aunt Clara were having with Mildred. I was shocked at the difference new clothes and some hair styling had made in Mildred's appearance. Her new teeth were a lot nicer looking than her old ones had been, and they didn't make any clicking noises when she spoke either. Aunt Clara seemed surprised at seeing Mildred at Mama's house, and even more surprised when Mildred stayed close to Mama's side, and didn't make any snide remarks to her or Bea. I gave Mildred and Aunt Clara their airplane tickets, and an itinerary, showing the hotel they'd be staying at, and the reservation for their rental car. I gave Aunt Clara and additional five hundred dollars in spending money for the trip. I gave Bea a thousand dollars for Christmas, telling her to take the next week off. In the final delivery of the year, each recipient family was given a Christmas card with a check for one hundred dollars in it and a notice that grocery deliveries would resume on their regular day of the week, after the New Year. The five of us spent the rest of our vacation over at the house, just sitting around, relaxing with each other, and getting almost nothing accomplished. We had attended so many parties prior to Christmas, at the company, the group homes, over at Gracarie's Cocina, that we were worn out from all the celebrations. Staying at home, with each other, and with the children, was all we felt like doing. It was a very happy Christmas season for all of us. Somehow, we were able to put aside a lot of our differences, and unite as never before. It wasn't sex, it was coalescing into a close family unit. ------- When we returned to Lawrence, we were all feeling positive and hopeful about our group relationship. This feeling lasted for several weeks. It lasted right up until the afternoon that Joyce came home with Sue Ellen Barkin in tow. Next to Brenda, Sue Ellen was the most gorgeous woman I'd ever set my eyes on. She had honey colored blonde hair, with eyes a very pale blue color. She was only five three, but her figure was healthy and robust. She reminded me of Bea, when she was younger, the time we first met over at Mama's. She looked like she was ready to pop out of every button on her clothes. I watched Joyce's mannerisms as she introduced Sue Ellen to the rest of us. It appeared to me that Joyce was having to use all her will power to stop herself from touching Sue Ellen. She seemed almost giddy as she made the introductions, like she'd been drinking something strong for a while. I didn't put everything together all at once, but I knew right away that something important was happening. I could see Joyce's obvious attraction to Sue Ellen. I felt an attraction to her also. Brenda and Emily both seemed wary of her, but later, Shirley seemed comfortable with her from the very first. "Sue Ellen is new in town, Kenny. I met her at the doctor's office, when I went for my ultrasound. She had fainted outside, and they brought her in to see what was wrong. We got to talking, and I took her out to get something to eat. It turned out that she was just hungry." It was unusual for Joyce to act so nervous like that. She didn't usually babble like she was doing. Little alarms started going off in my head, putting me on the alert. "I told her she could stay with us, until she gets a job, and has a chance to get settled in an apartment. We can put her in that room that Thelma never uses. I've got her two suitcases in the trunk of my car. Sue Ellen, I need to pee, and to look in on the twins. Make yourself comfortable, and get to know everybody. I'll send out Shirley after I get a chance to go to the bathroom." We all watched Joyce disappearing up the stairs. I didn't know what to say to her, so I just smiled and looked at her. Brenda was the first of our group to speak. "Where are you from, Sue Ellen?" "I'm from Little Rock, originally, but I've been moving around a lot the last few years. Is this whole house yours?" She sounded young when she spoke. She was looking at the large staircase where Joyce had gone. "Is it going to be all right if I stay here a few days? Joyce said it would be. She's nice. She told me a lot about all of you. I'm not sure how serious she was about some of the things she told me." I couldn't resist, so I asked her. "How old are you, Sue Ellen?" I saw the fear registering on her face when I asked her that. When I first saw her, I'd have guessed her age at between seventeen and twenty. After listening to her speak, I began revising it downward, to maybe fifteen or sixteen. Seeing the fearful expression on her face, I lowered my age estimate even more. She wasn't answering, so I decided not to press her. A minute or so later, Shirley came downstairs with Derek in her arms, and I made the introductions. Emily was moving closer to Sue Ellen, inviting her to sit down on the sofa while we waited for Joyce to return. Brenda excused herself, to go help Joyce with the twins. I had been going over some of my tax returns for the various trusts when Joyce had first come in. I excused myself from the living room, telling all assembled there that I needed to get the returns signed, and to make sure they were ready for Phil to take them down and mail them that afternoon. In my little office, I kept being distracted by the nagging questions I knew I'd be needing answers for. I hoped that this was just Joyce, out trying to rescue another stray. In my gut, I feared that it was much more than that. If Sue Ellen had been older, I might very well have welcomed that prospect. She was certainly attractive enough to me. I stayed hidden in my office until Joyce came to get me for dinner. "How old is that girl, Joyce?" I asked her this straight out. I wanted to know, to get it right out there in the open. "She's almost fourteen, Kenny. It isn't what you're thinking. She's a runaway. She's been on her own for about three months. I just want to help her, to get her off the streets, and away from some dangerous people. You need to listen to what she's been through." "She's too young, Joyce. You can't be thinking what I'm afraid you're thinking." "I'm not thinking that, Kenny. Honest. Maybe I was at first, until I found out how young she was, and the kind of problems she's been having. You've seen her. She looks a lot older at first." "She's only a child. You're acting like a moth drawn to a flame. Find out where she lives, we'll send her back there. This isn't something we should take any chances with." "Her stepfather molested her, Kenny. She can't go back there. She really has no safe place to go." "You can send her to Mama then. We can't keep her with us. Something is bound to happen. You should see the way you look at her." "I know. I can't help how I look. I wouldn't do anything to hurt her. She came on to me at lunch this afternoon. She has more experience with both guys and girls than any of us do. She told me what she's done. You wouldn't believe it all." "I don't even want to know. That just makes her more dangerous. She's one of those Lolita's. You can keep her here for a day or two, but after that, she either goes to Mama's, or else she leaves. Joyce, I mean it, and you can't touch her in any way. You hear me?" I saw Joyce swallow nervously. My stomach lurched, and I almost lost my lunch. I knew that something had already happened between them. "You better just come out and tell me, Joyce. What happened?" "It wasn't that much. We were in the car, and she was telling me about what her life has been like. She showed me the scar where her stepfather ripped her open, when she was eleven." "A scar? You mean on her pussy? A thirteen year old girl showed you her pussy?" Joyce nodded. She looked like she had sometimes looked in the first two weeks that I'd known her, miserable, and afraid she'd do something wrong. Only this time, she'd already done something wrong. "What else?" I hated to ask that question, afraid of what her answer would be. It didn't seem to me that Joyce was even nearly done with her confession. "We used our fingers on each other in the car. I'm sorry, Kenny. It just happened, before I had a chance to think about it. I brought her straight home right after that." "Go get her, Joyce, and bring her in here." My mind was racing. I needed to work out all the possible things we could do to minimize the danger Joyce had brought home with her. My wife had finger banged a thirteen year old girl. Aside from the legal problems, this was a major violation of our group compact. Again, if she'd been older, I'd have been willing to overlook it as a temporary lapse in judgment on Joyce's part. I'd still have been upset, but not like I was right then. I was more afraid than upset. The next forty five minutes was really an eye opening learning experience for me. After five minutes, I recognized it for what it was, a variation on the badger game that Bea had told me about several years before. After the first ten minutes, I'd already heard enough. I picked up the telephone, and called Bea at her apartment. "Bea, I've got a girl in my office who claims she's only thirteen years old. She says she would like us to give her enough money so she can travel out to California and look for her aunt. Have you ever heard of anyone pulling this type of con before?" "What does she look like?" Bea seemed alert and interested. I wondered if it was just professional curiosity. "She's about five three. Everything she's wearing looks like it is three sizes too small for her. She has blonde hair, kind of straw colored and it comes almost down to her butt. She's built almost like you were when I first met you." "What name is she using?" "Sue Ellen Barkin." Bea started laughing. I waited a few seconds for her to get done with it. "Did she show you that big scar on her poonie?" Bea was still laughing when she asked me that. I didn't reply. "Her name is Gina Glynn. She's at least my age, Kenny. The guy she usually works with is named Byron or Brian. He's a mean bastard too. You don't want to mess with him. Ask her how Agnes is. That's her sister's name." "My friend wants to know how your sister is? I think she said her name was Agnes. Joyce, go get Phil. Tell him to bring his pistol." Sue Ellen's eyes got bigger when I said this. "Bea, do you want to talk to her?" "Sure. Put her on." For the next ten minutes, Bea and Gina talked. It was mostly Bea doing the talking, with Gina replying, every once in a while, with either a yes or no answer. After ten minutes, Gina handed the phone back to me. Joyce had come back with an unarmed Phil, about three minutes after leaving the room. "Gina, before I get off the phone with Bea, and call the police, is there anything else you want to tell us?" She just sat there, seeing the office door being blocked by Phil. Finally, she shook her head, indicating there was nothing further she wanted to say to any of us. I spoke for another minute or two with Bea, before hanging up the phone. I then had Phil leave, and explained everything Bea had told me to Joyce. Gina/Sue Ellen just sat there, a little slouched down in her chair, looking like she wasn't paying any attention to our conversation. "Why would she go to all that trouble, Kenny? How did she know I'd fall for her tricks?" "She does this all the time, Joyce. She's a professional con artist. She noticed you looking at her, and she's learned to recognize the signs when someone is interested in her that way. Bea says she's been working this same con since she was about thirteen years old. She told me that scar came from when she slipped on the side of a diaper bucket when she was about two or three. She cut her pussy open really bad. Bea worked the street with her sister a few years ago." "Sue Ellen, how can you go around treating people like that? Do you have any idea what this could do to my relationship with Kenny, or with the other girls?" Gina looked up, a bored expression on her face, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. She really didn't care, that's what she was trying to communicate to us. I had Phil drive her back downtown, in Joyce's car, dropping her off where Joyce had first seen her. Joyce and I sat there after they were gone. She looked so sad and miserable. I really didn't know what to say to her. I knew, once we started talking about it again, that it would turn out better than it was right then. I just wasn't sure about the best way to begin. "Are you going to tell the X's, Kenny?" "No, Joyce, you are. I don't think they'll be too upset with you. They all met her. I saw Emily giving her the eye too. She was a sexy little thing. Still though, you really shouldn't have diddled her. If I remember it correctly, I think it was you who made that particular rule." "It was like she hypnotized me. I didn't realize, at first, that she meant the scar was between her legs. When she showed me, she took my hand and rubbed my finger along her scar. It just kind of escalated after that. When she started rubbing me, I didn't know what to say to her. Then, after a few minutes, I started cumming." Joyce seemed in wonder at what had happened. I felt sorry for her, and disappointed in her too. Again, because it was a girl, or a woman, I didn't feel any jealousy. I was worried about how all the X's were going to react. It took another half hour before Joyce was ready to face all the girls. She asked me if I'd mind if she spoke to them without my being present. Since I still had a lot of paper work left to do, I told her I'd wait in my office until she came to get me after she was done. For the next hour, all I heard was excited shouts and giggling, then screams of laughter coming from my living room. I guess the girls handled it all better than I had expected. ------- Chapter 20 In spite of all the laughing and kidding around about what Joyce had done with Sue Ellen Barkin, it created a distinct change in the atmosphere around the house. There was a slight pulling away, from Emily and Brenda, and Shirley became a closer confidante to Joyce. That night, in bed, Joyce and I spoke about my feelings. I tried to be honest with her, explaining that I wasn't jealous, but that I still felt like she had let all of us down by what she had done. She listened closely to what I was telling her, and I could tell it was making her feel bad. "None of the X's were upset, Kenny. I asked all of them." "They all love you, Joyce. They didn't want you to feel bad. Remember when we talked about things like this happening? It was you who said it could destroy the group. They are all hoping that it doesn't. I'm hoping that too, but it eventually could. If you could do what you did, and nothing happens to you, what's to stop one of them from doing the same sort of thing? Maybe with a guy this time." "I didn't plan for it to happen." "You aren't a five year old, Joyce. You can't use a five year old's excuse. We're all adults here, and we're responsible for our actions. What you allowed to happen today, has put our whole group arrangement at risk. You're going to see changes occurring because of this." We didn't have any sex that night, but I held her close to me, until her tears stopped, and she was able to get to sleep. Over the next day or two, I noticed that Joyce was spending much more time by herself, or with the twins. It was her choice to do this. None of the X's were trying to avoid her, and neither was I. Somehow, in all the excitement of her bringing Sue Ellen home, Joyce had neglected to inform us that she was carrying twins again. We were at dinner that weekend, when Shirley remembered to ask her if the ultrasound had been able to tell if it was going to be a girl or a boy this time. "Boys. I'm having twins again, and they're both boys." I think we were as upset about her forgetting to tell us this news, as we'd been about the Sue Ellen incident. Emily and Brenda had both gone in for ultrasound's earlier, but both had asked not to be told about the sex of their baby. Shirley and Joyce both wanted to know. Shirley had found out that she was having a girl, and this worried her, because she was afraid the child would end up as tall as her mother. After Joyce gave us the news about the twins, we were all talking to her at once. For half an hour, it seemed like old times again at the dinner table. ------- Brenda got hit on and asked out a lot. It was just a natural consequence of the way she looked. She'd be waiting in line at the grocery store, and someone would start talking to her, obviously trying to see if she would be interested in them or not. Men and women both, although the women weren't as obvious about it. It was about a week after the Sue Ellen incident when Brenda came to me to complain about one of the clerks at the grocery store we were using. She said he had just been friendly and helpful in the beginning, but, lately, some of his comments had become too forward for her comfort. He had made a couple of recent comments about her body, and on the effect that seeing her walking always had on him. "You're a beautiful woman, Brenda. Next time he gets out of line though, complain to the store manager. If you want, I'll come with you tomorrow, and we'll both make a complaint." "He's going to claim I flirted with him if we do that." "Flirted how?" "I didn't mean I did flirt with him. He was always so helpful when I asked if they had whatever they were out of on their shelves. He'd go into the back and try to find some for me. I wasn't flirting, but I would say hello whenever I saw him, and sometimes, if I wasn't in a hurry, I'd stop and talk to him. When he started getting fresh though, I stopped doing that." "Look, it doesn't sound like you did anything wrong, and you shouldn't have to put up with him making unwelcome comments and advances to you. We'll go down there and get him straightened out." Later that day, we did go there, and Brenda and I spoke to the manager about it. Fred, the employee in question, wasn't on duty that day. We didn't make a big deal about it, but I did say that I wanted it to stop right away, or else I would make it a big deal. The manager apologized to us, and told us he'd have a strong talk with Fred. He assured us there wouldn't be a further problem. That would have been the end of it, if Brenda hadn't made a comment about how Joyce would have probably handled the same situation. I didn't know if she was trying to make a joke or what, but it was a pretty cruel thing to say or suggest about Joyce. I looked at Brenda, but didn't comment on what she'd said. Later, when I'd thought about it some more, I wished I had said something, to let her know I didn't think she was being fair to Joyce. I started paying more attention to what each of the X's were saying, about Joyce, or to her. I began noticing that Emily and Brenda were both acting less friendly towards her. I felt bad about it, but I also understood how they felt. Joyce had done something that had to be construed as a betrayal of all of us. I had decided to forgive her, and Shirley seemed to have done so as well. It was becoming obvious that Emily and Brenda still harbored some resentment. I didn't know whether I wanted to make an issue of it, to try to get us all back to how we'd been before the incident, or just wait and let it sort itself out. At dinner a few nights later, Emily was talking about some girl in her creative writing class, and about a story the girl wrote, and had read to the class as part of her assignment. Apparently, writing about sex was allowed by the professor, and the girl had gotten a high grade by writing about an incident that had happened to her in high school, while she and her boyfriend were parked at a make out spot with another couple. In this girl's story, all the action was centered on the other couple, not with her and her boy friend. "I was thinking of writing about you and Sue Ellen, Joyce." Joyce gasped, and Brenda snickered. Shirley and I remained silent, but I was hoping that Joyce would speak up for herself. In my mind, Emily was way out of line with saying that. "Is this what you want to do, Emily? Go ahead, if that's really how you feel about me." Joyce stood up and left the dining area. A few seconds later, Shirley got up and went after her. I stayed there, waiting for Emily to say even one more word. Emily saw my expression, and it wasn't what she must have hoped to see. I was angry at her. I knew I was glaring her way, but I couldn't stop myself. I didn't even try. "I was making a joke, Kenny. I'm not going to write about that." Emily was trying to create some wiggle room, after her remarks had backfired, with everyone else but Brenda. "It wasn't funny. You knew you'd embarrass and hurt her by telling us that. The same thing goes for you, Brenda, with that nasty comment you made about Joyce fucking that clerk first, and then coming to me, after, to complain about him. I already warned Joyce that her actions had opened the door for our group to be destroyed. This is how it starts. However this ends up, Joyce and I will still be together. Any of the rest of you are free to leave whenever you choose to. I'm more disappointed in the two of you than I am in Joyce. She didn't set out with the intent to hurt anyone, while both of you did." "She broke the rules, and nothing bad happened to her. If we'd done it, you'd have raised a big stink." Brenda was reacting to my including her in my indictment. To her, Joyce had been given a privilege that was specifically denied to her. That's why she was upset. She was trying to force me to take some action against Joyce. "Joyce isn't like you, Brenda. When she does wrong, she knows it, and she already feels bad about it. She doesn't need you to point the finger at her, or try to make her feel even worse." "You aren't going to do anything to punish her for what she did with Sue Ellen?" Emily had that angry, confrontational expression on her face again. It had been absent for a long while, but there it was, back again. "What do you suggest I do? I already told her I was disappointed with her. She did it, and it can't be undone. We either have to live with it, or else make the situation even worse. Is that what you want?" "If she can do it and nothing happens to her, why do we even have rules?" Emily was digging in the wrong garden with this line of argument. Did she want me to rescind all the rules we'd agreed to? If she did want that, would she enjoy the consequences that would inevitably follow the rescission? "It isn't the rules, it's the behavior. Whether we have the rules or not, certain actions will result in people having to leave the group. The rules are like reminders to all of us. What happened with Joyce and Sue Ellen didn't bother me enough to make me want to force any action through against her. I guess you two feel different about it. You have the same rights as the rest of us. Tell Joyce what you've decided. You should know that Joyce is the group, not me. Whatever you decide, I'm going to stay with Joyce. I'll be very sad to lose you and Brenda. Shirley too, if it comes to that, but Joyce didn't do anything that would make me even consider leaving her and the twins." "What would happen if Brenda and I did the same thing she did?" "I don't know. I guess you'll just have to go out and do whatever you want to do, and then we'll find out. Right now, the only thing I'm certain of, is that Joyce didn't get me that upset, and the way you and Brenda are treating her has me very worried that our group is about to come apart." "What about our babies? We're having your babies too." Brenda had started crying when she asked me that, and Emily was looking over at her, annoyed that she had suddenly changed the subject. "I'll still love the babies, Brenda. No matter what happens with us, I'll always love my children. This wasn't ever about the children. You two resent what you see as greater freedom I'm giving Joyce. I didn't give it to her, she took it. I'd much rather she hadn't, but she did. It affects all of us, but I can only decide for me. Whatever you do, I'll still have to decide only for me. You both can take this as far as you want to. You know me, you know how I react. I don't want either of you denying yourselves anything you really want to do. There are things I can tolerate, and things I can't. I've already told you about the things I won't tolerate." "If Joyce fucked another guy, would you leave her?" I looked over at Emily. She'd just asked me the million dollar question. She knew my history with that, from back when Brenda had fucked Gary and Darryl. Sometimes, Emily fought just like she fucked, and she really needed to be restrained before she hurt someone. If I said yes, and Joyce had already fucked someone, Emily would have me boxed in. I knew I probably wouldn't leave Joyce for that, although I couldn't be totally sure of it. What I was sure of, was Emily was going to keep pushing me, until she had her answer. She deserved an answer, but I was trying to figure out a way I could give her one that wouldn't commit me, just in case Joyce had already fucked someone else. "I already told all of you that I wouldn't tolerate any of you fucking other guys, and then still being part of the group. This applies to Joyce, the same as the rest of you." There was silence from both girls. They looked at each other, but neither of them spoke. Joyce and Shirley came back to the dining room a few seconds after I stopped speaking. Both of them had been crying too. I was upset that everyone seemed determined to use things that happened, as some sort of lever, to open up the possibility of them doing whatever they wanted, or to try to improve their position within the group. Emily was a strong personality, and if she decided to work to undermine our group, it was doomed to fail. Joyce either couldn't, or wouldn't, take her on, to neutralize her destructive potential, within the group. It was being left up to me to do that, and I wasn't sure I wanted to make it into some kind of a contest with her. "Joyce, Emily wants to know what I'd do if I found out you'd fucked another guy." "I haven't, and I wouldn't. Why would I do that? You already said you'd make any of us leave if we did that. I wouldn't want to anyway. I love you." "Are you satisfied with her answer Emily? Anything you want to tell me, now that she's said she hasn't, and she wouldn't?" "What about Shirley? Is she a special case?" Emily looked right at Shirley when she asked me that. "No, she isn't a special case either. Shirley, is there something I should know about you and another guy?" "No, Kenny. Just you and Clay, and I haven't seen Clay since I sent him home when I was pregnant with Derek." "Does that satisfy you, Emily, or is there something you want to tell me?" "What about that time in your room with Gary? You, Shirley, and Gary. Joyce was in there with you too. That time when you locked the bedroom door." "Oh, you mean that time when we locked the door? I forgot about that time. Well, since I was right there, and participating with all of them, I can't very well raise any objections to it, can I?" "If they can do that, why can't we?" "You can. You just let me know when you're ready, and I'll set it up to do that with you too. Joyce doesn't mind, do you, Joyce? She likes to watch though." "I don't want to do that, especially not with Gary. I meant if you forced me or something, would I get kicked out then?" "No, you wouldn't get kicked out if I forced you to do it. What about you, Brenda? Would you like to try being fucked by two dicks at once?" "Not me. I don't want anyone else but you. Guys I mean. It isn't fair though, that you make special allowances for some people, and not for others." "That's a good point. You have to let me know what it is you do want me to allow, and I'll tell you if I can, or not." Brenda looked at me, then over at Emily. She licked her lips, unconsciously, but she didn't speak at once. "If you ever do force Emily, I want to watch you do it too." "You know what? After some of the things Emily's said today, she might just need to be punished that way. I promise you, if I ever decide to force her to do that, I'll let you watch it happen. We shouldn't make her do that when she's pregnant though. We don't want anything to hurt the baby. I won't forget this though." Emily's face was flushed, and she had a very worried expression on her face. She knew me well enough to believe that I might force her to do that, as a punishment. She was sure I'd double teamed Shirley with Gary. Emily still had this very strong desire to be treated roughly. To her, sex with punishment, was what it took to ring all her chimes at once I left the girls alone, after Emily and Brenda went over and started hugging Joyce, apologizing for their earlier actions and comments. That night, I was scheduled to be in with Brenda and Emily. I knew it was going to be one of those nights when Emily was going to fight and resist with far greater intensity than usual for her. She never made it easy, but sometimes, when she thought she was in need of a lot of discipline, she would fight like a tigress. Brenda and I always were left wrung out and exhausted on those nights. The next morning, I had a lot of difficulty getting up for school. There was a new series of scratches on my chest and arm, from where my sweating hand had temporarily lost its grip on Emily's wrists. Both girls were in their sixth months of pregnancy by then, and had swollen belly's that made it difficult to be very active in bed. Still, where there is a will. Brenda and I managed to carefully manhandle Emily to the point where she finally had to beg us to let her loose, so she could get some sleep. I fell asleep while Brenda was untying Emily's wrists from the headboard. When I went back to my bedroom to shower, and to get ready for my eight o'clock class, I found Shirley and Joyce sleeping together in each other's arms. Later, in the shower, I was joined by Joyce. She was already planning what she and I would do to Emily, after the baby was born. She managed to coax a small amount of cum out of me, by using her talented mouth. She had gotten her final braces put on, but these had no elaborate rubber bands on them. I missed the feeling of all those rubber bands, but the blow jobs were still spectacular. If they hadn't been, she never would have managed to even get my dick hard that morning, much less get me to cum. I had to admit that I was damn lucky to have four such interesting women around me all the time. Sometimes though, I found myself wishing for a simpler, less complicated, existence. Usually, about the time I'd start wishing for simpler, something new would present itself, and I too would get caught up in the excitement of the possibilities. Emily had been the ringleader of the insurrection against Joyce. I had to wonder though, if all of it hadn't happened, just because she wanted some of the same kind of attention she thought Shirley had gotten from Gary and me. While it had been Shirley's fantasy, for Emily, it would be the near ultimate in humiliation. I wasn't forgetting Brenda either. I had no doubt that she wanted more than just to see Emily treated like that. All of my thinking about this was causing me to question whether I was being too repressive with the X's. I did have these strong feelings of jealousy, connected to just the thought of any of them doing anything with another guy. Here I was, enjoying the attentions of four different women, but unable to deal with even the thought of any of them enjoying more than just one man. Somewhere, as my thoughts were focused on this line of reasoning, it came to me that Joyce and the X's might be responsible for trying to turn my thoughts that way. Maybe Mama had been right, years before, when she accused me of being paranoid. I wanted all the girls to be happy, but I still couldn't reconcile myself to the idea that their happiness required more than the attentions of one man, me. A lot of men wouldn't have allowed the girls as much sexual freedom as I did. I didn't try to discourage any of them from doing whatever they wanted to do with each other. In that sense, I considered myself to be very open minded and accepting. I didn't know anyone else, except, possibly, Phil, who had ever been faced with such a situation. There was no one I could turn to for advice. If Uncle Bunny had still been alive, I'd have gone straight to him. I wasn't sure why I felt I needed to make some changes. In some circular way, I reasoned that Joyce was responsible, because of what she'd done with Sue Ellen. Like a thousand other thoughts I had dealt with over the years, this one might have come to nothing, except for the fact that, while I was having them, I just happened to strike up an acquaintanceship with Don Grestwick. Don was in my eight o'clock Spanish lab. Mostly, in lab, you sat alone in a little audio cubicle, with headsets on, and listened to the program pronouncing new words and sentences to you. It was a boring way to learn a language, but it must have been effective too, because they'd been using it to teach students for at least thirty years. Don was older than most freshman, having put three years in the Army before coming home to go to college. I first became aware of him the previous week, when he came over and asked to borrow a few sheets of my notebook binder paper. We met again, right after lab that Monday morning, when he came over to return the three sheets I'd lent him. At first, he thanked me for loaning him the paper, then he asked me if I was having any trouble learning Spanish. I told him I'd had Spanish in high school, so I felt pretty confident I wouldn't have any trouble with learning it at the college level. I found out that he was trying to drum up some work as a tutor. Don was my height, about six three, but he was lighter than I was. Not slightly built, but thin, in a kind of rangy way. He looked like a swimmer, while I was built more like a tight end or a full back. We started talking about money, and about how hard it was to find part time work that didn't interfere with a full class schedule. Mostly, he talked, and I listened. He was getting some money, from the Army, for his school expenses, but the job he thought he'd been promised, hadn't come through. Like a lot of local freshman, he lived at home, but in his case, home was with his sister, her husband, and their three small children. He slept in with his five year old nephew. He complained that he couldn't leave anything laying around, for fear that his nephew would get into it. I took a liking to him, right away. He seemed open and friendly, and, in spite of the nature of the problems he was facing, it sounded like he remained very optimistic. He communicated this optimism in every sentence he spoke. On a whim, but partly because of my earlier thoughts about my possessiveness towards Joyce and all the X's, I invited him over to our house for dinner that evening. I was curious to see how everyone would react to my bringing home a male acquaintance. We both got out of our final class at one o'clock, so I offered to give him a lift over to his sister's house, after school. I described my car, and told him where I was parked, and we agreed to meet there, right after our last class. I ran into Joyce and Shirley soon after that, and told them that I'd invited one of my classmates home for dinner. Joyce said she'd call Brenda and let her know there should be another place set at the dinner table. They both asked me about Don, but I told them I'd just met him myself, and that we really hadn't had much of a chance to get acquainted. "Is this the current year's model, Kenny?" Don was getting into my Cadillac, obviously impressed with it. "No, I got it last year. My wife has a new Lincoln though." "I guess you're rich then?" I laughed, and kind of nodded too. I knew I was rich, but you don't really think that much about being labeled that way. Walt Connor always drove nice new cars, but he hadn't ever been rich. Uncle Bunny's cars weren't new, but he had been really wealthy. I thought he was going to see our house soon anyway, so there wasn't any sense in pretending that we weren't well off. I drove over to his sister's house, and it wasn't very big for six people to be living there together. "I'll swing by at five to give you a ride over to our place, Don." As I drove off, I wondered if I was doing the smart thing. Don was a good looking guy. I wondered if I wasn't just asking for trouble by bringing him home, and seeing how Joyce and the X's reacted to him. I'd already decided that I wanted to test myself a little, and, it looked like I wanted to test the girls too. What Emily and Brenda had said bothered me some. I had always prided myself on my basic sense of fairness. Perhaps my jealousy was more a fear of the unknown? I'd reacted with Brenda's statement about Joyce. I had always had this worry about Brenda and other guys. Not so much with any of the others, that was just me, worrying about competition. I drove home, and Brenda made me a nice snack to hold me until dinner. She asked me a lot of questions about Don, but other than describing his size and looks, I told her the same thing I'd told Joyce and Shirley, that I barely knew him. "Brenda, he's just a guy I met in my Spanish lab. I invited him home for some dinner." "Is he for Emily? Is that why you're bringing him home?" I wasn't sure why I didn't just tell her no, but I didn't tell her that. "He might be. I have to see first whether or not she likes him." Even when I said it, I knew it was going to change the whole tenor and tone of the evening. I knew nothing was going to happen, but I also knew that Emily and all the other girls were going to be thinking that it might. In a way, introducing that possibility, might help me to clarify my own thoughts about being possessive of the X's. I could see that Brenda was a little excited about my answer already. By the time I was ready to go pick Don up, everyone else was at home, and Brenda had definitely told them everything she'd been able to find out. Strangely, none of the women approached me. I was sure that Emily would come into my office to ask me some questions. I went up to Don's sister's house and knocked on the door. The woman who answered had a close family resemblance to Don. She looked about thirty years old, and introduced herself to me. "Hi, I'm Needra, Don's sister. He and Clark took the kids to the park to play. They were supposed to be back here by now. Clark's my husband. Don says you're in his Spanish class? He's real good with languages. Did he tell you he was in Army Intelligence?" "Hi, Needra, I'm Kenny. We're only in Spanish lab together. He takes Spanish at a different time than I do. How far away is this park? Maybe I could go meet them, and give them a ride back?" "No. You don't want my kids in that nice car of yours. They get all dirty when they're playing." She looked past my shoulder and then started waving her hands at someone behind me. I turned to look and it was Don, carrying a small sleeping child, along with another man, presumably Clark, his brother in law, carrying an awake, slightly bigger child. There was the five year old nephew, taking off and starting to run to his house, when he saw his mother waving. He ran right by me and threw himself against his mother's legs, giving her a hug, and telling her about his adventures at the park. Apparently, there was a big dog that let him pet it. "Kenny, sorry I'm late. Can you wait a few seconds while I put Lannie in her crib? I'll wash up a little and be right with you." I nodded at him, then it was Clark's turn to wave at me, as he carried the other little girl into the house. She looked to be about three years old, and she smelled like she'd had an accident in her pants. In the car, a few minutes later, Don was telling me all about why he and Clark had taken the children off to the park. Apparently, Needra had been in desperate need of a break from all of them. "Todd is the worst. He just missed getting into kindergarten this fall, because his birthday is in November. A day with him, is no picnic. He gets into everything, and sometimes, he likes to hide his little sisters in the closet, or under beds. He is a real handful. This morning, he decided the dog didn't smell good, so he put Needie's perfume on him, to make him smell better. Clark paid like forty five dollars for this little bottle, and Todd used over half of it on the pooch before Needie caught him. "I thought she said her name was Needra?" "It is. Needie is my own nickname for her. She used to hate it, but after I told her that was the only way I could pronounce her name, back when I was little, she lets me call her that. Clark calls her "Squid", but I don't know the story behind that." "Before we get over to my house, I need to tell you a little bit about my living arrangements too. Joyce, my wife, she and I come from Ridgeline, and we have these three close friends, girls, we all used to hang around together, back home. We call them the X's, because, at one time or another, they were all girl friends of mine. So now, we decided to all go to college together, except for Brenda, who stays at home, cooking for us, and taking care of our babies while we're in class. Joyce and I have twins, a boy and a girl, and Shirley, one of the X's, she has a little boy from another relationship." "I guess your place is crowded like ours then?" "Not too crowded yet, but my wife is pregnant, with twins again, and the X's are all pregnant too. By July, we'll have five new babies. Then, we'll be pretty crowded." "All those girls got pregnant at the same time?" "Not at the same time. First Emily, then Brenda. It was another while before Shirley and Joyce turned up pregnant again." "Are these other girls married too?" "Well, in a way, see, these are all my babies they're having. That's kind of why I explained all of this to you, so you'd know not to step in it when talking to them. We have this kind of a group understanding, like marriage, but different too." "You're pulling my chain, right? You don't really expect me to believe this?" "We're almost home. Wait until after you've had a chance to meet them before you decide if I'm kidding you or not. I usually don't bring people home, Don, because we're all a little afraid that people might think we're some kind of a freak show. We think of ourselves as a family. A little unconventional, but still a regular, loving family." Don just looked at me. I could tell he was more than halfway convinced I was just pulling his leg. I'll bet he wondered what he was getting himself into, by accepting my invitation to dinner. I pulled into the driveway and drove back to my house. It was a pretty impressive sight, because it was a very large house. "This is your house?" "Yes, my mother bought it for me, because she knew there was no way we could all live together on campus. She wasn't sure if we'd need so much room, but she doesn't like to take any chances. We have another house in Ridgeline, but it isn't as big as this one. It holds all of us just fine though, and there is room for the new children when they come." I saw one of the drapes pulled aside, and I knew all of them inside were peeking out trying to get a chance to get their first look at Don. We parked, and got out of the car. By the time I opened my front door, everyone had gone back in the house, either to the living room or the kitchen. Right before we got out of the car, I asked Don to go along with this joke I was going to be playing on Emily. I told him to just nod his head and to agree with me after I finished introducing him to Emily. Inside, I found Shirley and Joyce in the living room. I introduced them both to Don. "Where's Emily?" Joyce looked excited when I asked her the question. I knew for sure that Brenda had gotten everyone up on their toes, by relaying what I'd told her. "I think she's in the kitchen with Brenda, helping her." I waved to Don and told him to follow me into the kitchen. Once we got in there, we found Emily sitting at the small kitchen table, while Brenda was running around, checking on everything. I introduced both girls to Don. I waited just a few seconds before turning to speak to Don again. "Emily's very strong, Don, but I don't think we'll have much of a problem holding on to her." "No, I don't think so either." Don delivered his lines perfectly, looking Emily up and down, as if he was taking her measure before responding to me. The look on Emily's face was all that I could have hoped for. Don and I left the kitchen soon after that. He looked like he expected some explanation, but I wasn't offering him any. Dinner was a lot of fun, for me at least. Brenda had cooked shrimp scampi for us, and she had prepared several side dishes that complemented the meal perfectly. Don had a beer, but the rest of us had either water, milk or soda. I'm certain that Emily didn't speak five words all during dinner. She listened closely to everything being said though, especially if it was either Don or I speaking. It was after dinner, and we were all in the living room, talking about school, after the girls had just finished telling Don about our church wedding at Christmas. I turned to where Brenda was sitting. She was in the easy chair, and she had Bunny in her lap. He was looking all around the room, but mostly at Don and me sitting on one couch. Of course, Brenda kind of had him aimed at us, because she was facing towards us too. Shirley and Joyce were sitting on the other couch with the other two children, and Emily was sitting between them, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. "Brenda, have you changed your mind about what we talked about before? About watching?" As I asked Brenda that, I looked over at the other couch, to see how Emily was reacting to my question. She sat even further back on the sofa, trying to be as invisible as she could manage. "I'm not sure, Kenny. You don't mean right now, do you?" I sat there, trying to appear to be thinking about Brenda's question. "No, you're right. Tomorrow's a school day. This would be better if we had a whole weekend for it." We spent the next hour, discussing politics, basketball, Army life in Germany, where Don had been stationed, and the difficulties of coming and going on weekend visits to Ridgeline. We never once spoke about any personal subjects, and certainly no mention was ever made of sex. In spite of that, I noticed, Joyce, Shirley and Brenda starting to squirm around on their cushions. Strangely, Emily seemed the least affected of the four of them. At nine thirty, I drove Don home. "What was that thing tonight with Emily, Kenny? Did something happen to make her mad at me?" "No, that's just the way she is around strangers, shy. She'll get used to you soon. How are you in math? Emily's taking a course in math, Math 115, and she has problems with logarithmic functions and antiderivatives and applications. Do you tutor math too?" "No, only languages. She seems very quiet. Brenda is beautiful. How tall is Shirley? She looks as tall as us." "No question that Brenda's beautiful. She knows it too. Shirley is six two and a half, but she's a little self conscious about being so tall. Her whole family is as tall as her or taller. Emily seems quiet at first, but she really isn't. She loves to argue with people. Sometimes, she needs a spanking to get her to be quiet." "You spank them?" "Not them. Sometimes I spank Emily, but only if she deserves it. Joyce likes a good paddling too, but never as hard as Emily does. I'm telling you this because you were such a good sport in the kitchen. I've been sort of threatening Emily, telling her that I'll give her to another man if she isn't better behaved around me. She doesn't think I'll really do it." "Would you?" Don sounded far too hopeful when he asked that question. I didn't want him thinking along those lines like that. "No, never. I just wanted the threat to seem more credible to her. Emily likes to have consequences well spelled out for her. It helps her to stay focused, and to concentrate on being a better member of our group." "I feel bad about asking you this question, Kenny, but what do you have that makes four girls willing to put up with you screwing around on them like this? Besides a lot of money, I mean." "Don't feel bad about asking. I've asked myself the same question, hundreds of times. I haven't ever come up with a good answer. I love all of them. It isn't just about sleeping with them. It isn't screwing around on them either. You met them all. Each one is special to me. I don't screw around on them." "Poor word choice on my part, sorry. What I meant, is why do they settle for sharing you? Brenda could have any guy she wanted, so could Emily. I can kind of see it with Joyce and Shirley, but what about those other two girls?" "Don, I don't know the answer to your question. If you just look at their faces and figures, without knowing them, then I can see how you'd think that way. There's a lot more to it than that. Joyce is really the key to the whole thing, for us even having a group like this. If you take one of us out of the equation, the group would probably disintegrate. Maybe Shirley or me, but not Joyce, Emily or Brenda. This isn't a group formed around me. I'm just one of the members." "I don't know any of you that well, Kenny, but I know what I saw tonight. They all hung on every word you said." "Actually, it seemed that way, because they were looking over at both of us. I almost never bring people home. Too few would understand the way we live. We're just a family, people who love each other. You have to be able to get past that other part you're all hung up about. Did it seem to you that there was anything sexual about what was going on tonight?" "They're all pregnant. You told me they are all having your kids. That's sexual, but that isn't what I meant. You might say you aren't the main focus of this group, but that isn't how it looks to an outsider." I let him off at the curb of his sister's house, and then drove back home. It had been interesting talking to someone about my situation. I knew it was going to be more interesting as soon as I returned home. To my father, what I'd done would appear to be another of my trial and error experiments. I had deliberately added something new to our lifestyle, by inviting Don over. I wanted to see a lot of things, and I thought the best way would be to introduce new elements in a controlled way. Part of it was watching how the girls reacted to another man, but part of it was seeing how well I could handle the stress of possible competition. I knew I'd be finding out, and soon too. I parked in front, but then I sat in my car for fifteen minutes, delaying the inevitable confrontation with Joyce and the X's. That was the problem with experimenting. It always upset the status quo. I had a damn good status quo, one that I was in the process of deliberately upsetting. ------- Chapter 21 I finally gathered myself together and went inside the house, ready to face the music for my earlier antics with Don. There was a war party gathered in the living room, but all their talking abruptly ended the minute I walked into their midst. "Kenny, we all decided you owe Emily an apology for what you did tonight." Joyce was sitting right next to Emily when she told me this. Brenda was on her other side, and Shirley was over on the other sofa, changing Derek's diaper for him. "An apology for what?" I was still having my fun at this point. This was probably because I didn't understand the way a woman's mind worked, or realize that, as with any pack of animals, women would band together to fight off any attacks from an outside threat. As a man, I was considered, at least in this particular situation, as an outsider. "Don't play the innocent with us, Kenny Parsons. You know you did this to her deliberately." Brenda spoke the words as if she really meant them, but I could tell she was only pretending to be angry, trying to show her solidarity with the other girls in the group. "If you're speaking about what Don and I are planning, I can't see why I need to apologize for that. I know you and Joyce both said you wanted to watch it happen if I ended up doing that to her. We all know Emily needs to be punished, for what she was trying to do to Joyce before. Emily knows that too, don't you?" Emily had her eyes cast down. She seemed content, for once, to play the role of the poor, downtrodden, martyr. It was a role that didn't suit her. She was fiery in temperament, and ready, at all times, to resist any sort of pressure. Her only weakness in her effort at maintaining this resistance, would be her need to be made to submit. When she felt any guilt, about anything, she wanted to be conquered and punished. She didn't want to prevail, because by prevailing, she would be denied the incredible release that such a delicious humiliation might offer. I watched her closely, waiting for my answer. She really didn't want my threat withdrawn, but she could never come out and admit this to Joyce, or to the other two X's. I thought Joyce and Brenda should have known and understood this by now. They had both seen, and participated, along with me, in some of Emily's sexual frenzy's. She always was at her wildest, and was most responsive, when being dominated and controlled. "You've scared her, Kenny. Look at her, she's afraid to say anything to you." Joyce had to be kidding, or else she too was playing a role. If she was though, who was she playing it for? Who was the audience? If I was sure of anything, it was that Joyce knew what was really going on. Why was she going along with Emily on this? "I'm thinking of inviting Don to come to Ridgeline this next weekend." Emily's head shot up, causing her to stare right at me. I smiled at her, and she lowered her head again. "He'll probably be sleeping in our room, Joyce. I don't want any of you other girls bothering him this weekend." As soon as I said that Don would be sleeping in our room, Joyce's face flushed, and she moved a little bit away from Emily. I wanted her to see that Emily didn't necessarily have to be the only one I thought needed punishment. After saying that, I slowly walked back to our bedroom, knowing that the girls were going to spend the next half hour trying to decide what I'd meant with this last statement. I thought it had all gone quite well. Of course, there was no way I was going to invite Don to go home with us the next weekend. I just wanted to see what effect my saying I was, would have on all of them. Joyce needed to understand that she too was capable of being held accountable for her actions. I was almost asleep by the time Emily and Joyce crawled into bed with me. It was supposed to be one of my nights to choose, and I was certain I hadn't asked Emily to join Joyce and me. I was about to ask Joyce why Emily was here in our bed, when she and Emily started attacking me. I found out, in the time it took to slide my hand between their legs, that both of them had already worked themselves up to a fever pitch. After they had used me to the point where I was absolutely finished, Emily snuggled in next to me. She and Joyce spent the last five minutes of me being awake enough to hear them, promising to be better, and telling me that they really didn't need to be punished in the way I was planning. To me, it sounded like Joyce was being sincere, but Emily sounded like Brer Rabbit trying to get Brer Fox to please not throw him into the briar patch. I finally told them both that I'd think about it, but that I couldn't make them any promises. The rest of the week was more of the same, with all the girls. Each one wanted to be certain that I wasn't planning on sharing them with Don too. The strange part of it was, each of them were more excited, due to having the uncertainty about what I might be planning for them. I believed three of them when they said they didn't want me to share them with Don. The fear that I might actually do something like that might have been pleasurable for them, but they seemed like they didn't really want to make that titillating fear into an actual reality. That's what they all said to me, more or less. Emily was the only one that kept coming back to me to keep pleading her case. She practically wore me out with the hard sex she seemed to need me to provide her. Joyce and Brenda both benefited from her increased excitement as well. Having a whole house full of turned on women, probably sounds better than it really was. I wondered how I could arrange things so that it only worked that way on one of them at a time. I had difficulty taking care of my responsibilities for the remainder of that week. I knew I only had myself to blame. Thursday, at dinner, I told them that Don wasn't going to be able to travel home with us that weekend, due to his prior commitments. All the girls looked around at each other, trying to see how each was reacting to my news. Brenda and Joyce both looked disappointed. Emily looked relieved. Shirley seemed unmoved by it. I wondered if Brenda and Joyce were disappointed because they had wanted to watch, or because they had hopes of participating too? Things settled back down to normal again. The episode with Sue Ellen was closed in all our minds. The excitement and worry about my plans for possibly sharing them with Don, had somehow drawn each of them closer together. I still hadn't discovered how they really felt about the idea of having another guy. I already was certain that I didn't want to share them that way though. One of the outcomes of this was that their new closeness ended up changing the balance of our group dynamic. Before, it had been me, and the four girls. After they had banded together, trying to talk me out of sharing them with Don, it became the four girls and me. Together now, they sensed their combined strength was greater than mine was alone. This was probably a lot healthier way for them to look at it, but it took me awhile to adjust to the subtle differences this change was bringing to us. In the past, although we'd never specifically stated it, I'd always known that I could have my way, if I just fought for it enough. Now, I knew I could be overruled. More importantly, they knew it too. ------- On March 29th, 1988, a Tuesday, my son, Anthony Dwaine Parsons was born. It had been a relatively easy birth for Emily, with only three and a half hours of real labor. We all skipped classes to be there in the hospital with her. Standing by her bed, watching as Emily held our son in her arms, I knew that we now had an unbreakable connection. I felt the closeness of our shared responsibility and joy. April 12th, another Tuesday, April Elizabeth Parsons was born to Brenda and me. April Elizabeth was the fifth or sixth name change Mama had come up with since she had first announced the names for Brenda's baby. The name, if it had been a boy, had never been changed though. Mama was with us as soon as Brenda got to the hospital, having Hans drive her to Lawrence. She hadn't done that when Emily went into labor. This was just further confirmation that this child was going to be very special to her. This had been a longer and more difficult labor than Emily had experienced, but, at ten hours, it wasn't considered a hard child birth by any of the hospital staff. Brenda herself was very upset that Emily's birthing experience had been so much easier than hers. April had Brenda's skin tone and hair coloring. Mama was almost beside herself about the two new babies, although most of her attention was centered on April. They had put a rocker in Brenda's recovery room, and, when the nurse handed April into her grandmother's arms, the look on Mama's face made me cry. I'd never seen her so contented. The frown lines on her forehead and around her eyes disappeared for a moment or two. I felt like I had given her back something for all she had given to me. As she held the baby against her bosom, the entire room full of people could see her relax around her precious cargo. I remember thinking that April was a very lucky baby. When Tony was born, everyone made a big fuss over him, but it was like nothing compared to what they made over April. Even Walt and Richard came up to see the new baby. Walt made a comment about how April's facial characteristics resembled his late mother's, and I didn't have the heart to mention the improbability since there wasn't any blood connection between Brenda and him. To him, in spite of Georgia's oft repeated claims to the contrary, Brenda was, and always would be, his daughter. I knew that Brenda felt the same way. As long as there was a love connection between the two of them, did the blood relationship really matter? I felt that way about my Dad and about Mama, although, in Mama's case, there really was a blood connection. I had been worried about Brenda and I having a child, because she was my half niece. We too shared a blood connection. I rationalized that it was about equal to being first cousins. Still, I was relieved when the nurses told me that April was a perfect little baby. Shirley and Joyce were both due in mid to late July. We had tried to get Brenda to move back to Ridgeline, to have the baby, but she had refused to go. She wanted to be with us. We had hired two new girls to help with the babies. As soon as April was born, we hired a third. These were all young girls that we hired from a public service agency that specialized in helping with the transitions of young adults, from foster home living, to an independent lifestyle. We converted three small upstairs rooms, all next to a giant nursery conversion we did in Brenda's bedroom. She spent most of her nights in with Emily or Joyce and me anyway, and there was still a smaller room in Emily's wing, with a king sized bed for her use, if she ever wanted or needed to make use of it. Joyce was put in charge of hiring, and overseeing the training and the work schedules for the new, young, helpers. A lot of her time was spent with assisting the girls in also getting all the training they would need to really be independent people. When they came to us, none of them could drive, and only Irma had successfully completed her high school education. Joyce put Helen and Connie, the other two girls into night classes to get their diplomas. Our entourage had gotten substantially bigger, with two new babies and three new live in staff. Brenda was using both Claire and Thelma to help her in the kitchen, and we hired another day worker to assist Christine with the housekeeping duties. Her name was Memphis Evans, and she was a robust black woman, with boundless energy, and an infectious smile for everyone. On her application, she gave her age as thirty nine, but we later discovered that she had lied by at least ten years. Her son, Richard, who we later hired to assist Phil with the gardening and general clean up duties, was thirty one years old. He was her third eldest child. Emily, Joyce, and Shirley were all very good planners and organizers. Brenda was organized in the kitchen, and with shopping for things we needed for the house. She was also organized about all her beauty aids. She wasn't good at getting things done on time, except for her cooking. I wasn't that well organized either, but I could be, if it became necessary. We all had plenty of discussions about the logistics of our weekend moves from one house to the other. I tried several times to volunteer to help get us ready, offering to at least help carry things that were ready to go, out to the cars, but they wouldn't let me. They chased me back into my office, telling me to stay out of their way. I found out later that Joyce had told them I usually averaged over four thousand dollars an hour in trading profits when I was trading futures. She had convinced all of them that I needed to not be distracted, by anything, in order to be able to maintain that high level of trading performance. I don't know if either statement was accurate. Trading profits didn't come by the hour, but by the trade, and I usually sat in my office, reading about past market actions, or going over previous trading results, trying to spot new trends or directions, from previous market movements. In a way, I really spent most of my time goofing off, not really doing anything very productive. Maybe Joyce was right though, because my best trading performances usually came in a short flurry of activity, when I felt like I understood what the market was trying to tell me. I had once had this experience where there were three different colored lines streaming from left to right in my head, representing the price interaction of grain contracts for three separate grains. When I closed my eyes, I could see them clearly. It was like three wavy lines that were merging and separating from each other. I traded against the extremes of those lines, by selling one and buying the other two, then reversing the trade whenever the lines started to converge back together again. It had nothing to do with the grain fundamentals, or even with the absolute price of any grain, just with the price movement I was seeing in my head. It worked so well, I started crossing all three contracts with each other, kind of like juggling three different objects. Every time one would come down, I'd buy it, and hold it until I thought it had peaked in its ascendency. Doing that resulted in my making far more trades each hour. This lasted for three full trading days, and then I got this terrible headache, and the lines in my head disappeared. I closed out all my positions, as soon as I lost the lines. A week later, I checked closely over the sum totals for all the trading activity I'd done in that single three day period. Deducting for the few losses I'd incurred, when I closed out my remaining positions, I still cleared over a million dollars from that trading flurry. It was a very substantial improvement over the results I'd been able to get trading my regular trading program, which I'd had running in the background, over the three day period, as well. Most of the time I spent alone in my office, was taken up with me trying to put my mind back in a place where I could have those colored lines streaming through my head again. I had managed one or two lines again, frequently, but still hadn't discovered how to get the three line wave back. I had hopes of someday bringing a four line stream together. If that happened, I was going to make some really serious money trading. I had discussed this with Joyce, Mama, and, to a lesser extent with Dad. I was surprised when none of them dismissed what I told them as being fanciful or imagined. I had experienced the phenomenon, and I remained somewhat skeptical about what it really was. Without those lines, I still traded my program aggressively, and was doing exceedingly well with it. I had experienced a different way of analyzing price movement, and I had spent many thousands of dollars trying to replicate it on a computer. There was software, commercially available, as well as real time data feeds for all the markets I traded. I knew what I wanted, but other than that one time, in my head, I hadn't come close to duplicating it. ------- Mama had fixed up a giant nursery upstairs in the first bedroom I'd had when I moved there from the orphanage. It was a six crib affair, with two king size beds for the staff or the mom's to sleep in. Every weekend we were home, we'd find a way to bring a few of the children over there, for her and Gerta to fuss over. In early May, Mama surprised all of us by selling off the golf learning center to a famous professional golfer who was buying up golf courses all over the country. She got a wonderful price for it, but, still, it surprised us that she would even consider selling it. At dinner a few evenings later, Joyce asked her why she had sold out. "I didn't want to miss out on spending the summers with all the babies, Joyce. You know how busy it gets for me in the summers. I couldn't do both, so I made the only choice that made sense to me. Besides, seventy million was way too much to pay for what they were buying. At that price, they'll never make a decent return on their investment." It turned out she was wrong about that, when a Japanese company came in, two years later, and paid them over a hundred and twenty million to buy out their position. In spite of that, I'm sure Mama always believed she'd gotten way the best of them when she sold out. They kept the name for the Academy, and that made it an even sweeter deal for Mama. In the first summer we were home from college, Mama took over for Joyce in guiding our three new helpers. In no time, they were all licensed drivers, with used cars of their own. Hans and Gerta really got along well with Phil, Claire, and Thelma, and the five of them spent a lot of time with each other. Both houses were full with children and laughter all summer. I played a lot of golf, mostly by myself, because Shirley couldn't swing a golf club with her belly so distended. All of us spent a lot of our time at the country club pool. It was remarked about too, by some of the other members. Some of the most vocal people were saying that our total group was far in excess of what should be allowed for any one family membership. When we'd gotten one or two restrained complaints made about this, I had Frank go to the membership committee, offering to buy us three additional memberships, to quiet the people making the complaints. This offer was refused by the membership committee. Later, after Frank had reviewed Uncle Bunny's agreement with the country club, he found that, as part of the payment that had been negotiated, for all the changes Uncle Bunny had helped them with, the country club had waived any right to impose a limitation on the number of our family members, or to restrict the number of corporate users. This was all part and parcel of the new corporate membership they had granted to him in lieu of a cash payment for his services to them. It specifically included our company, Uncle Bunny's law practice, and both our individual family's, the Chalmers and the Parsons. At the time it was negotiated, no one could have anticipated the growth our family was going to have. Effectively, according to Frank, this meant we couldn't exceed our membership privileges. In fact, since he had assumed Uncle Bunny's practice, country club membership was available for him, and for his family as well. He wouldn't even bill me for his time spent on this, due to his family's pleasure at gaining free use of the country club facilities. I didn't feel bad for the country club. Frank told me that we were spending over twenty thousand dollars per month at the club, all during the summer recess from school. We all liked to eat our lunches there, and we had a lot of guests who liked to eat there with us. It wasn't unusual for thirty five of us to all eat together in the smaller banquet room. The restaurant loved us, because we never complained, and we always tipped at least twenty percent, usually more than that. It became a good place for us to meet with any people that we needed to see. Group home people, Bea and Aunt Clara, and even my Dad started taking occasional days off, to come sit by the pool, to hold meetings with us and some of his business associates. On those days, both Joyce, Mama, and I, were involved in those business discussions as well. Usually, Mama would be holding one or another of the babies. For some reason, she had taken a particular liking to holding Derek, or spending time with him in the shallow end of the pool. Derek was the oldest, and he could do more than either of the twins. He also had a great laugh. Once, on a Spring weekend, before school let out, on the day of the twins first birthday party, we had fifty three people in attendance for the celebration. We let the club cater the party, in the pool area, including setting up a portable bar for the drinks, and we didn't hear a peep of complaint out of them. There weren't any complaints, not until our group started monopolizing the pool area, later in the summer. There was an unused grassy area off to the side of the pool, so, right after the summer season was over, they poured some concrete there and widened the fenced off area, doing this to expand the number of lounge chairs, and to put in some long needed new tables with those large umbrellas, that were stuck through a hole in the center. It couldn't have cost that much, and it effectively doubled the capacity of the pool area. On any given day, we probably had fewer than four or five people playing in the pool at any one time. Most of the time we only went in for a moment or two, to get wet, to cool ourselves off. There was also better shade in the new area, which was better for our youngsters. I did invite Don, his sister and her husband, and their three children, down to our house, for a week's stay. I got a real kick out of watching them all enjoying themselves. We all took what we enjoyed for granted. It was nice to see others enjoying our lifestyle, and appreciating it for what it offered. Clark, Needra's husband, was a three handicap, and he and I played, every day they were there with us. Mama played with us twice, taking money from us both times. She played me for three hundred a side, giving me two strokes, and beat Clark out of five dollars a side, playing him straight up. I never said one word to Emily, or to any of the other girls, about what I might be planning when I invited Don and his family to come down to stay with us. We still had three empty bedrooms at Uncle Bunny's house, and I put all the new girls over at Mama's for the week. There was the nursing convoy that regularly traveled back and forth the one mile that separated the two houses. Don's presence served to keep all the girls on their toes, which is what I had wanted to happen. At the pool, wherever Don would choose to sit, Emily made certain to move herself as far away from him as she could. It was funny, the lengths she went to, in order not to be close to him. She was the same way in the pool. After two days, I took Emily aside, and told her that she had been behaving better, so I wasn't going to force her to do anything with Don, not during that current visit. After that, she was more relaxed around him, but she still didn't get close. Joyce and Mama both decided that Uncle Bunny's house needed a second story added on to it. Not just a second story, but also a complete makeover of the existing first floor level. They got busy with an architect, wanting to get approved plans finished before we left to go back to school. Emily spent a night and two days over at her parent's house, taking Tony with her. Brenda suddenly decided she wanted to go to her mom's house, taking April along with her. This left me with Joyce and Shirley, and the other three babies. Both women were too far along to want to move around that much. We all slept together though, and we did manage to do quite a bit of sexy cuddling. Shirley and Joyce both went into labor on the same day. First Shirley, and then, later that afternoon, Joyce. Both were early, because it was only the ninth of July. Shirley was in hard labor for eleven and a half hours, and there was a lot of activity in her delivery room. At one point, all of us were told to leave, and to go back to the waiting room area. It was another tense hour before Emily and I were let back in to see her. They had her all doped up, and she was hooked up to a lot more monitors than she'd had before. She also looked paler to me, but her doctor told me that everything was back under control, and the extra equipment was simply a precaution. Joyce went into hard labor at three thirty. At five fifteen, she delivered Maxwell Albert Parsons, and at five forty one, Adam Mitchell Parsons was born. Joyce had picked out those names. Two healthy sons for us, each weighing in at five pounds, six ounces. They both were loud babies, right from the start. Joyce looked a lot better after these babies than she had been after having Bunny and Little Bertie. I had barely had a chance to say hello to my two new sons, before Shirley began delivering my new daughter, Leah Patricia Parsons. She was certainly worth waiting for. Shirley groaned when they told us Leah was measured at twenty four and a half inches, and had weighed in at nine pounds, eleven ounces. Shirley had been cut to allow for an easier delivery. She looked like she'd had a really bad day. She told me that she was going back on birth control pills as soon as she was done nursing, and that I needed to use a rubber until then. I smiled at that, certain she'd change her mind after having time to recover from her ordeal. I did start thinking that I was a one man population explosion though. I told all the girls a week or so later, that I was thinking about getting myself a vasectomy. Joyce said she was okay with it if I was sure I wanted to do it, and Shirley nodded that she was too. Emily and Brenda both said they wanted to have at least one more baby each. Brenda and I were playing the mixed doubles tennis tournaments every Sunday. We were improving steadily, because Brenda made sure to have me practice with her, for at least an hour, every single day. Often, the one hour became two, but Brenda had always been a demon for practice. By July, we were ready. All that running around had also restored Brenda to her former weight, before April was conceived. Her breasts were larger and fuller, but her waist was smaller, and her legs were as fit and toned as I'd ever seen them. We had gone out in the first or second round every time we played the tournament, all through the month of June. Both of us were out of playing shape, and we just hadn't played enough tennis to be any good. On the third of July, we finally started putting things together, and made it all the way to the finals, losing in a tight match to the Edgar's, 7-5. If my serve had only been a little bit stronger, we'd have beaten them. They had broken my serve twice. Brenda had held each of her service games, and we'd broken Mrs. Edgar's serve once. I drove to Bolling the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings, each time taking three hours of tennis lessons from the tennis pro at the Bolling Country Club. Each day, we worked on improving my serve, and my court coverage. He also changed my grip on the racket, which made it easier to switch from my forehand to the backhand. There were little tricks with my footwork that he showed me that made anticipating the return easier too. I didn't tell Brenda I was taking lessons, so she just assumed I was playing golf on those days. I wanted to surprise her with my improved serve. When we practiced together, each afternoon, I carefully hid the progress I was making. My serve was really improved by the lessons. It was much faster, and I had added a lot of controlled spin to take the ball out wide on second serves. Unlike before, I now had confidence in my service game. The day after the three babies were born, Brenda and I won our first tournament. Again, it was the Edgar's we played in the final, but this time I held each of my service games, and didn't need to stay back as much. I couldn't believe how excited Brenda got when we beat them. She didn't say anything about my vastly improved serves, or the way I now glided around the court. She wasn't into analyzing how we won, for her, it was enough that we did win. I'm not sure she even thought about any of the reasons why we won. The next week, we played Ron Taylor and his girlfriend in the finals, after defeating the Edgar's 6-3 in the semi's. Ron was sixteen or seventeen, and ranked either number four or five nationally, in the U. S. Juniors. His girlfriend played about as well as Brenda did. We managed three games, breaking Ron's girlfriend once, and I held my serve twice, blowing on ace right down the tee against Ron. We did have that one week as mixed champions though, and I honestly felt we were the second best doubles team playing in the tournaments each Sunday. The big news of the summer, other than all the new babies, was Georgia Connor falling in love. Her new man was a building contractor, ten years younger than her. A man who was desperately struggling to stay in business. Mama told us all about this blossoming affair, correctly predicting that Georgia would be after her soon to lift the restrictions placed on her trust money. Cameron, Georgia's new boyfriend, was ambitious to succeed, and more than willing to do what it took to be successful. He was always looking for new capital investors to help his business survive. Georgia wasn't his first wealthy older girlfriend. He obviously hadn't known that her wealth was somewhat restricted. Mama told Georgia that she'd let Cameron bid on the addition they were planning on Uncle Bunny's house, but she refused to even consider freeing up any of Georgia's principal to allow her to invest in her boyfriend's business. It proved to be a wise move on Mama's part, in spite of the fact that Georgia subsequently took out a new mortgage on her own house, in order to help Cameron out with his financial needs. She became an owner of an undisclosed interest in his construction company. Cameron pulled up stakes in early September, unable to pay some of his suppliers, or to finish work that he'd been given advances to perform. Mama waited until he'd been gone a month, before having Frank release sufficient funds to retire Georgia's home mortgage. The suppliers, and the people bilked out of their money, apparently didn't know about Georgia's partial ownership of Cameron's company. Right after we returned to Lawrence, in early September, my Dad received an offer to buy out our business. It wasn't a very tempting offer, but it did serve to put all of us on notice that we were no longer flying under the business radar. People knew about us now, and if they couldn't buy what we had, they would eventually create their own version of it, and try to compete with us directly. That kind of competition would result in thinner profit margins for us. Our two year, full throttle expansion, had gone well, further expansion wouldn't be as easy, and it could no longer be done so cheaply either. I wasn't worried, because it would take someone with an awful lot of money to just come in and try to replicate what we had going for us. No one part would be that challenging to duplicate, but to build it, and then be able to make it mesh together, like Dad had done, that wasn't something just anyone could accomplish. Over the past year, Joyce had become more interested in the company, while I had gravitated more to trading futures. To me, it seemed more a question of which was a better method of employing capital. I saw both ventures as being equally risky, but felt like trading offered a much more flexible platform from which I could better utilize my strengths. Running the whole company seemed to me like trying to push a heavy weight up a very steep hill. My Dad could do it, because he had that kind of a mentality. Joyce was like that too. She could stay focused on the overall picture, like she were playing a chess match. They were both much better at making and executing set plans than I was. In one way, Joyce had been encouraging me away from the business, by having me concentrate on my trading program. She could see that trading fit my personality better than day to day operations of a cumbersome business would. I liked to flit around, making small, quick decisions. I still had maintained some close contact with the overall direction the company was moving in, and was kept informed about any big changes in the operations. I participated somewhat in the planning, but I found myself more and more having nothing to do with the execution of any new projects, or with the day to day operations of the family business. It wasn't even a question that my lack of participation in the business was hurting earnings, because we were doing very well with all of it. It was a question of interest, and I was becoming more and more absorbed with the establishment of a certain rhythm in my trading. I could no longer afford to split my attention between both endeavors. I was going to have to choose one or the other. It all came to a head for us one night when Joyce and I were having dinner with my parents, over at Mama's house. My father, as usual, was talking business, but I was distracted by a problem I was having with fine tuning and integrating a new software program I had purchased and installed. It looked like everything was working fine, and I had four different colored price lines refreshing every five seconds on my screen. The problem with it was I couldn't find any correlation that would allow me to trade using any of the information. It looked great on the screen, but I wasn't able to translate any of it into actionable signals. "Kenny, have you listened to what I was telling you?" My Dad brought me out of my musing. "Sorry, Dad. I was thinking about something else. You were telling us about difficulties with big chains in California?" "I was, fifteen minutes ago. Right now Joyce and I wanted to know what you thought we should do about the way Coinmark is flooding the market with their machines, and stealing all our best vending locations." I hadn't heard any of that. In fact, I had absolutely no idea who Coinmark was. I had to assume they were a vending competitor. "Stealing the locations, or simply outbidding us for site renewals?" "It's the same thing, Kenny. They're taking over the best spots. Over a hundred in the past thirty days. At this rate, all our real growth is being halted. For every new location we open, we lose another one, and the ones we're losing are more profitable for us than the new ones." "Is Coinmark able to steal these accounts away from us, and still turn a profit with them?" "We don't know the answer to that. We don't have access to their internal operating figures. They are privately owned, just as we are." "Call their head guy up and ask him. We know what our internal costs are. How good are his machines? Maybe we can make a bigger profit from selling him ours." "We're in this for the long haul, Kenny. It makes no sense to help a direct competitor." Joyce seemed disappointed in my responses, like she had expected better from me. I didn't know what to say to her. I didn't want to disappoint Joyce or my father. I'd given them the thoughts that came to me from the information they'd given me. "How big are they? I'm sorry, but I've never heard either of you mention Coinmark to me before. Where are they located? Are they national or regional?" "I've spoken to Joyce about them for the past two months." "That may be so, but I still say I've never heard of them. Did you tell Joyce to speak to me about the problem?" "I assumed she was keeping you informed." "We don't talk much about things like that anymore. With school, and the children, Kenny does what he does, and I do what I need to do. When we do have a little time together, we like to spend it with each other, not on business." Joyce looked guilty, and was blushing at her admission. "We really are busy Dad. I'll give this problem some thought, now that I've heard about it, but, until school is finished, I don't know that I'll be much of a resource for you. There are so many things I no longer have time to attend to. I'm sorry." "Are you too busy, or is it that you're no longer interested?" I had to hand it to Dad. He was no slouch when it came to getting right at the heart of the matter. I had been asking myself similar questions, for the past few years, ever since Dad had taken me on as his intern, I'd been pointed towards the idea of someday taking over for him. I knew this was his goal for me, just like it was Mama's goal. One of the things I enjoyed most about trading futures was that it wasn't an all consuming occupation, and it was extremely portable. I wanted to have time for my family, and for pursuing my other projects and ideas. I could never do that if I took over for Dad. No one could, not even Joyce. Until recently, I'd been thinking Joyce and I might manage to do it together. It became an even bigger job as the company grew. "I'm not sure I care to invest as much of myself into it as it demands from you, Dad. I want a more balanced life for myself, and for my family. I'm not someone who can live and breathe business, without any other distractions." "That's what it takes, Kenny. It is a tremendous responsibility. It needs someone who is willing to do what it takes to keep the company moving forward. Thousands of people depend on us for their jobs, for their economic lives." "I know that. What I'm saying is this isn't how I'd choose to live my life. I don't want to be a slave to the business." "Am I a slave?" "I don't know. From the outside, it appears that you are, but I also know you really love what you do. You couldn't do what you've done if you didn't love it." "Thomas, Kenny is being honest with you. He isn't shirking his responsibilities. Few men could have done what you've accomplished with the company. I've always admired your dedication, but it came with a price. Frankly, I would have been happier if we'd been able to spend more days together, like those we enjoyed this past summer. I've been happier these past few months, than I was at any other time in our married life." All of us sat there, shocked at Mama's statement. In all the time I'd known her, she'd always seemed to encourage Dad to work harder, never complaining when he needed to stay in his study night after night, just to stay abreast of his work. Was she now changing her mind about what he should be doing? "The point we're discussing here tonight isn't what makes you happy, Bertie. The point is whether or not I can count on Kenny to continue in his role as my heir apparent, as someone planning to go on and manage the company after me?" My father was upset. To him, nothing could be more important than continuing the task of guiding his company through the future. Both he and I had known that I was the biggest part of his plan for continuing the progress of his vision for the company. I was sure that a shared responsibility, between Joyce and I, would be very acceptable to him. I was also sure that any answer I gave, that didn't include me planning to take over for him, in some way, would result in a crushing disappointment to him. I had to make a decision. I'd read Uncle Bunny's journals. I knew how important the company was to my family, and the responsibility they all felt to the thousands of employees. My family had given me all that I now enjoyed, and had made this life I led possible. I could still trade as a hobby, but no longer pursue the goal I had been searching for. "Sometimes, I forget the big picture, and get caught up in all these little distractions, Dad. As far as whether or not you can count on me, as long as I can breathe, you can count on me to help out in any way you need me." "Very well then. I was hoping you'd say that. All these other things, if you become efficient enough, and learn how to properly delegate, you can still have time to enjoy as well. Gather people to you able to handle separate pieces, to shoulder parts of your responsibility. I failed to do that enough, but I'm confident you won't be repeating my mistake. Now that we have that settled, Bertie, I have my own confession to make. I too quite enjoyed taking those days away from the office, relaxing with the family. I plan on doing more of it too, which is why I had to ask Kenny this question." On the way back to our house that night, Joyce wanted to know if I was sure of my announced decision. "I'm sure. Dad needs to know there will be continuity. He's counting on us to provide that for him. The trading program is more of a hobby than my life's work. He's right about delegating. I see that as the main focus of my leadership role. I'll need to recruit enough good people to take over the day to day operations. I was serious about not wanting to be a slave to the company." "I want to be heavily involved in planning the operations, and in executing the plans we come up with. I've been afraid there wouldn't be a real place for me once you took control. I think of business differently than I do our home life. There, I want you to be in control." "See there, the best part of my plan is working already? With another five or six go getters like you, Joyce, I can sit in my big office, and continue to pretend I'm really working. You don't have to worry about me wanting to get in your way, Joyce. I'll be more than happy to allow you to do whatever you're willing to take on. One thing you'll have to do though, is make sure you aren't the only one that knows what's going on. I want to get to a point where I'm dispensable. I'll be there, but only to make sure everything's running well. I won't be like my father." I could admit to Joyce my lack of a burning interest in the business. She knew that anyway. What I was agreeing to do with my father was to take over responsibility for running the company, to look after the employees, and to protect all those jobs. He and I would talk privately. I needed to be certain we both knew what it was I was agreeing to do. From his comments about delegating, and about enjoying taking more time off, I believed he understood my limitations. If he did, then I thought I could do what he wanted and expected of me. ------- Chapter 22 After that dinner at Mama's house, I started working on making a real plan for organizing my future. I knew that I'd been approaching the problem from the wrong direction entirely. The decision as to whether I would manage the company, after Dad, had already been made for me by the circumstances of me being their son. There really wasn't any other alternative that wouldn't result in me letting both my parents down. I owed it to them to go forward with protecting the commitments they felt for their employees. That being said, there was no reason why I couldn't set things up in a way where this got done, and I still ended up being able to lead the kind of life I wanted to lead. After reading Uncle Bunny's journals, ones that he'd started writing from about the eighth grade on, I knew he had wanted to lead a different kind of lifestyle than his father had lived. My Dad had been his first acquisition, the first step towards Uncle Bunny's attempt at implementing his own management plan. In Uncle Bunny's plan, he was going to gather to himself a group of seven or eight good minds, and then convert them into people capable of helping him run the company when the time came. He was hoping to be the part time manager of a brain trust of business talent. His recruits would be the people who were actually doing all the day to day work, thus freeing up Uncle Bunny's time for him to pursue his many other interests. I remember reading about it, and about how excited Uncle Bunny had been, when he approached, and then befriended, my Dad. His plan might have worked too, if Mama hadn't interfered, and thrown a big monkey wrench into them. She fell in love immediately with my Dad. A further complication to this was that Uncle Bunny loved Mama at the time. I'm not talking about him loving her the way a brother loves a sister either. They had been lovers. In fact, Mama and Georgia had both shared Uncle Bunny's attentions, right up until she abruptly decided that she now was in love with my father. It was Mama who had ended up changing all of Uncle Bunny's plans, finally pushing him to go off to law school, thus leaving the way open for Dad to become the heir presumptive to replacing Senior Chalmers. I had read the part in the journals that had detailed the pain and the emotional upheaval that Mama's decision had caused in Uncle Bunny. He had lost Georgia first, then Mama, and at the same time that happened, he was losing what he believed was his birthright, to be taking over for his father by running the family company someday. Uncle Bunny had always tried to please people, to do what they wanted, so that they'd like and accept him. Mama wasn't like that. If she wanted something, she went after it relentlessly, not stopping until after she had obtained it. Mama's version of what happened in the years before she got my Dad to marry her, and Uncle Bunny's version of it, were very dissimilar. In Uncle Bunny's version, getting my Dad to marry her, in return for the promise of him being the next one to run the company, was all Mama's idea. According to Uncle Bunny, Dad had resisted the idea from the very beginning, claiming that Mama wasn't really the kind of woman he would choose to marry. It had taken all of Uncle Bunny's persuasive skills, and also, some serious coaxing on the part of Senior Chalmers, before Dad had even agreed to consider their offer. Three times, before the marriage had finally taken place, Dad had gone to Uncle Bunny and tried to back out of their agreement. One of those times was when Dad had quit his job at the company, and had gone to work for a competitor. Senior simply bought up the competitor, and then made my father a much improved offer, by naming him as the senior vice president. My father was so ambitious, so anxious to make his mark in life, to overcome his humble beginnings, that he finally agreed to marry Mama. Of course, as soon as Dad did finally agree, Mama started playing hard to get. According to Uncle Bunny, it was Mama's sudden coyness that had enraged my Dad, and caused him to get stubborn as well. Some of Uncle Bunny's comments in his journal, during this period, gave me a much better insight into the minds of my parents. Here I was, thirty years later, hoping to follow the blueprint Uncle Bunny had outlined for himself in his own journals. He and I shared the same belief, that the business could run just as well with a lot of different people managing their own independent departments, all reporting to a single, coordinating authority. Uncle Bunny had planned on Dad being that reporting authority, with himself as the controlling authority over Dad. I wanted to make Joyce that reporting authority, leaving me free to pursue my other interests, but still retaining the power to step in and modify Joyce's direction for the company, if I thought it was necessary. I would be the chairman, but one with unquestioned voting control. I had already seen the advantage Dad got from having full voting authority over all the company shares. We might own the stock, but, if he could vote it, we were at his mercy, as far as where he took the company. Like Uncle Bunny, I was going to start looking for men who had tons of intelligence and ambition, but very little in the way of money or connections. Unlike Uncle Bunny, I'd be looking for women also. We would help each other, and everyone would end up benefiting from our relationship. I already had Joyce, so I'd explain everything to her, and then she and I would start recruiting at the university. I liked Don personally, but he wasn't intelligent or ambitious enough for what I was looking for. His brother in law, Clark, was what I was looking for however. The only problems I could see, were his lack of a formal education, and the fact that he might be unwilling to relocate to Bolling. I knew that Mama had been impressed with Clark, back when the three of us had played golf. She seemed surprised when I told her that Clark was only an assistant in his Uncle's hardware store. When I finally got around to discussing my ideas with Joyce, she added several refinements to them, right from the beginning. This showed me that she too had been thinking about this, probably since that night we had the dinner at Mama's. Joyce's idea was to set up a talent pool, then find out where each person's strengths best fit our company's needs. According to her, a number of people would fall by the wayside, because some people performed much poorer than you would expect, just from talking with them, after forming a good first impression. She said the opposite was also true, and the most important thing would be to have some structured way to put these recruited individuals to the test, before we got too committed to having them be part of our upper management team. She told me that she thought Emily and Shirley both had plenty of talent, intelligence, and ambition, enough to qualify them to be recruited. She said Brenda didn't have enough ambition for business, and that she would always prefer to stay at home, providing the comfortable nest for the rest of us to come back to. I thought Joyce might resent my insistence on maintaining real control by having power over all the stock, but she said that was a good idea, because it would make her be always aware that she wasn't the final authority. I thought it was funny that Joyce would be worried about herself being corrupted because of having too much power. ------- Back in Lawrence, we were all having to adjust to managing our new living conditions. Eight children, all still in diapers, required around the clock supervision. Joyce was beginning to campaign for us to add a giant play room behind the house, insisting that we would need it for later, when the children were able to get around by themselves, and be more active. She told me I wouldn't be able to hear myself think, much less concentrate, with all the children running around down stairs when I was trying to get some work done. In Ridgeline, Mama's and Joyce's plans for the remodeling of the downstairs area called for a large, well insulated (for sound) playroom, which would open out into a securely fenced off side yard. A side yard where she was having a whole playground setup put in for the children. Joyce was a real planner. Upstairs, she and Mama had borrowed liberally, from the group home housing plans, hoping to eliminate, and to make unnecessary, a lot of stair climbing, including installing a small laundry, upstairs, as well as the larger one downstairs. Because of the construction that would be taking place, in our house in Ridgeline, we were going to limit our visits home on weekends. Mama had rented us a large house, where all of our possessions from Uncle Bunny's house were being stored. It wasn't large enough to house all of us though, and we didn't want to split up our family. It was Hans who came up with the idea of all of us staying at Mama's. He put in two more king size beds in my bedroom, and added two new cribs, and a double bed to the nursery. He said Phil, Claire, and Thelma could sleep in Bea's old room, and Irma, Helen, and Connie were put in with the babies. I had four women sharing my bedroom, and having them all there together, in close proximity with each other, seemed to spur them on to some outrageous acts of wanton behavior. I was the main beneficiary. Things were pretty much under control though, until the night Joyce came out of the bathroom, with her strap on dildo harness in place, and announced that she was ready for some fun. Shirley hid her face in the pillows, but Brenda jumped out of the bed she was sharing with Emily, and insisted that Joyce had to loan it to her some night when she wasn't using it. I got up, as soon as I saw how Joyce was dressed, and went to throw the deadbolt on our bedroom door. I was looking at Shirley, who I thought was Joyce's intended victim, but instead, Joyce headed over to Brenda and Emily's bed. Brenda moved away from both of us, but not so far away that she wouldn't be able to watch us with Emily. Emily's face was flushed scarlet by the time Joyce and I got in bed, one on each side of her. When I made a move to reach over for her, she started right in, resisting me fiercely. Surprisingly, for all her seeming resistance and reluctance, it was no trouble for me, grabbing both her arms, and restraining her hands up over her head. I had rolled over on one of her legs and was hoping that Joyce had the other. When I didn't get kneed in my kidney, I started feeling more confident about things. I knew that Emily would have put up a much better fight if she really didn't want us doing this. It took only a few minutes before Emily gave up her resistance. She waited only long enough so that the other X's would understand that she wasn't strong enough to resist me. After she began to relax, she seemed to really welcome my attentions. I didn't know what Joyce was doing. I couldn't feel her doing anything. When I climbed on top of Emily, and mounted her, my dick slipped inside quite easily, making a loud squishing sound that caused Brenda to laugh. At some point, Joyce started to join in, and by then, Emily had shed most, if not all, of her earlier inhibitions. I noticed that Shirley had come up by the bed, and was watching, fascinated, as Joyce moved up behind Emily when I'd rolled us over, so that she was now on top. Emily came as soon as Joyce entered her from behind. I was really glad that I had held both her wrists tightly behind her back. While all this was going on with us, I watched as Brenda began stalking Shirley. Brenda moved over closer to Shirley and started in by asking her questions, and making little comments to her, as they both watched what Joyce and I were doing to Emily. After that, I was kind of busy myself, and I more or less lost all track of what Shirley and Brenda were doing. Fifteen minutes later, when Emily rolled off and away from me, I saw Shirley and Brenda on Shirley's bed, with Shirley busy eating out Brenda. This was the first time in a long time that those two had done anything like that together. Of all the girls, Shirley was the one least interested in doing solo girl things with the others. Joyce had gone into the bathroom before Emily and I had stopped, right after Emily told her the dildo was starting to hurt her. When she came out again, I was watching Shirley going to town on Brenda's pussy. Joyce moved in behind Shirley and put her recently cleaned dildo, straight up inside Shirley's pussy, and began a slow, steady, in and out motion. Shirley didn't bother to turn around to look at who was doing that to her. I watched for another minute before getting up and heading for a quick shower. I intended to join the other three on Shirley's bed. Emily joined me, after a minute or two, and told me that she thought Joyce was starting to get very weird about sex. I told her that she probably just got carried away by all five us being together in the same room. Emily seemed very responsive to me when I applied soap to her body, and I spent a long time shampooing and massaging her hair and scalp. Sometimes, after an intensely physical session, Emily would become very mellow. It was my favorite time to be with her. This was one of those times. She asked to go back to bed with me, and just be cuddled. I was happy to oblige her. That's what we did, passing by Shirley's bed where Joyce was busy eating out Shirley, and Brenda was trying to figure out how to readjust the straps on Joyce's dildo harness. Later that night, when Brenda tried to come to bed with us, I told her that Emily and I wanted to be alone. She didn't like it, but she did turn away and go back to the other bed, where Shirley and Joyce had reversed their positions. After that night, Joyce didn't bring the strap on into play again. I knew a large part of the reason for this restraint was the fact that she didn't like me wanting to spend the whole night alone with Emily like I had. I hadn't tried to stop her from using the strap on, but I didn't want to encourage her to be using it indiscriminately either. The next morning, we were all quieter with each other, and after breakfast, we all went our separate ways. I think some were worried that we might have taken things beyond some of the other's comfort zones. I didn't believe that, but I did think having the audience might have inhibited all the girls, except for Joyce. On Sunday, Mama, Shirley, Dad and I played a round of golf together. I suggested to the ladies that we play from the white tees, and they play from the red. Mostly, I did that so that Dad and I could ride together in the same cart. I spent most of the time we had between shots, explaining how I planned to manage the business after I took over for him. Her asked me quite a few questions, and seemed satisfied with the answers I was able to give him. Dad had always believed it was people who made a business successful. If he had a weakness in business, it was that he found it difficult to let others handle things by themselves. He had a need to oversee everything. "This sounds a lot like Bunny's old mentoring idea, Kenny. It was an idea he had from when we first got to be friends. This was before he suddenly decided he didn't want to take over the company for Senior any more. His sudden decision to not do that always puzzled me. I asked him about it a hundred times, over the years, but he would just say he didn't want to end up like Senior. They were fighting at the time, mostly about Bunny wanting to be with Georgia." "Mama asked him to step aside, so you could take over the business for her father." "No, this was Bunny's decision. He made it long before the time I first began courting Bertie." "No it wasn't. You and Uncle Bunny were still freshmen when she asked him to let you take his place. She knew then that she wanted you as her husband. Bunny wrote about that. It's in his journals." "I'm certain you have your chronology wrong, Kenny. In the first place, I hadn't even paid much attention to her at the time Bunny made his decision. Bertie and I barely knew each other. I was always involved with other girls, all through college. Bertie and I started up much later, after college." "I'm sure that was true for you, but not for her, ask Mama. I read Uncle Bunny's journals from that time period. The only reason he decided to go to law school was because Mama had asked him, years before, to step aside, to make room for you in the company. He was a freshman, and it was soon after he started giving you rides home from school. It was right before he and Georgia went back and started fooling around again. Right after that was when Senior got mad at him, after he found out that Uncle Bunny was seeing Georgia again. Walt was just starting college, but it was before he had all that trouble." "I hadn't realized that Bunny even kept a journal. Did he write much about me in it?" "All the time. He wrote that you did a much better job running the company than he would have. He had a lot of respect for your abilities, and he envied your good looks, and the easy way you had with people, especially women." "I dare say that Bunny had greater success with the ladies than I ever did. I always had the feeling that he deliberately used my ability to attract them, so that he could get the chance to get to know them, and then seduce them at a later time. He did that quite a lot." "He did. He wrote that they were instantly attracted to you, but that you never appreciated the gift you'd been given. He wrote many times that, if he'd had your advantages, his life would have been much better." "Perhaps, in some ways, but certainly not in most. Some men are willing to fritter away large increments of their time in romantic pursuits, but I wasn't one of those. Bunny's situation was much different, he was already wealthy, so he didn't need to apply himself the way I did. Every door was always opened for him. Conquests were never important enough to me that I'd wanted to spend the time he did to achieve them. Bunny would spend as much time as it took, then spend even more time after, making the girl feel like she'd made a good decision. I didn't have time for any of that nonsense, or the need for doing all that preparation and planning. If women wanted to be with me, I accepted it. My way was far more efficient than Bunny's." My Dad seemed convinced that he had done the right thing by not making much effort with his conquests. He relished the idea that he had been efficient. "Yes, but would Bea ride fifteen hundred miles on a bus, to try to make it to your funeral ceremony?" "Assuredly not, but then, I wouldn't want her to be there either. We both had our moments with the ladies. Those weren't important moments for me, except in the physical sense. We each got what we wanted from the ladies. Bunny wanted more, so he invested more of himself in it." "I'm glad we had this talk, Dad. Now, I can understand better some of the things Uncle Bunny wrote. You never did tell me what you thought of my plan, or of Uncle Bunny's old plan." "I'm optimistic about yours, Kenny, because you have the temperament, and the gift for business to make it work for you. I had the gift part, but lacked the proper temperament. Bunny's plan would never have worked for him. He was too easy going, too nice to people. He wouldn't have been able to enforce the rules necessary to prevent the corporate infighting, or the back stabbing that's bound to take place under such a plan. You have the necessary strength, and the ability to do whatever is needed to make your plan a success. Because you do have that strength, people will sense this about you, so you will probably not have to step in often to be the enforcer. You also have one other big advantage, by having Joyce able to serve as your buffer. Bunny would have never thought of using someone to fill that necessary role." "Actually, he did plan on having someone in charge of handling all the day to day problems between departments. He knew he wasn't stern enough with people. He called that position his "mad dog". My father laughed when I told him that, obviously pleased by what I'd said. A minute later, we all pulled up to the green on the ninth hole. "Bertie, do you remember what Bunny used to call me, back when we first met?" "I'm not sure. I remember he called you Tommy, and that you didn't like it. Oh, now I remember, he called you a bad dog. Tommy the bad dog." Mama smiled too. "Mad Dog, Bertie. He used to call me his mad dog." "Yes, now I remember. I thought then it was a strange thing for him to say. I remember he stopped calling you that though. I don't think I ever heard him refer to you that way after that first Christmas you visited with us." "Did you know that Bunny kept a journal, Bertie? Kenny says he wrote down all manner of things in it." "Of course I knew it. I used to read it when we were younger, before he became so secretive about it. Kenny told me that Bunny left his journals to him. I hope you haven't been reading those journals and betraying any of Bunny's secrets, Kenny?" "No, Mama. I was just telling Dad about the plans I had for when I take over managing the business, and he mentioned that it reminded him of Uncle Bunny's old mentoring plan. The only secret I told Dad was about how you had a big crush on him, and asked Uncle Bunny to step aside at the company, in order to get Dad involved." I watched Mama blush. I thought it must have been a miracle that those two ever got together. I was happy that Joyce and I didn't have those kinds of communication difficulties. We stopped for lunch at the clubhouse after the front nine holes. After lunch, my parents decided they didn't want to finish the round, so they were going to head back home early. Shirley and I both watched their hips bumping together as they walked over to Mama's car. Shirley and I finished the back nine by ourselves. After having that conversation with Dad, and receiving what I interpreted to be his approval of my plans, I put my recruiting efforts into high gear. I started spending more time on campus, meeting, and getting to know, students who might possibly fit the profile for what I was interested in. The results were disappointing. I needed to refine my search criteria. Unlike Joyce, I didn't see how Shirley and Emily would fit in with my plans. For one thing, neither seemed that interested in business. For Shirley, this was more true than it was for Emily. Besides, I wanted both of them more involved with the group homes, and with the food distribution programs. Both girls had shown a real interest in helping children. It was enough for them to be doing, and it would still leave them with a lot of free time to pursue their other interests. I was looking for more people like Joyce and myself, people who could step in and solve problems on the fly, as they occurred. I valued Joyce's determination and tenacity. It was comforting to know she would pursue a workable solution to any problem I posed for her consideration. I had also always been very comfortable working with women. My willingness to hire and promote them had always served me well. My limited experience had shown me that they were a valuable resource that had, until very recently, been unfairly held back, and grossly underused. Women, especially aggressive, ambitious women, tended to network together better than men did. I'm not talking about the 'old boy networks', but the kind where the best women kept close contact with other women who were like themselves. It had paid me two big dividends already, with Virginia referring me to Clark Sanders and Kathleen Ulliott. These were good people, but not what I was looking for with my inner circle. Virginia might be the exception though, but I'd have to wait and see. Her age worked against her. I didn't know how rare it might be to find someone like Joyce. What I did know was that I had always been able to recognize talent when I saw it. It hadn't taken me long at all to recognize Joyce's potential. I didn't think I'd just been lucky either. Smart and ambitious, with a knack for finding good solutions to difficult problems. I had to also add that the candidate needed to be able to work with others, if that was what was called for. Since putting Kathleen Ulliott in as the president of our Dover operation, my only complaint was that she was too headstrong, seeming to need to get her own way far too often. Except for this, and her age, I might have added her to my list of prospective inner circle employees. I had already decided that age was a factor I'd need to consider. I wanted a young team, one that wouldn't wear out before Joyce and I did. I was twenty, but Joyce was already twenty three. I knew that Clark, Needra's husband, was thirty two. That would probably be the far upper age range for the people I was seeking. Smart, ambitious, young, resourceful, and a team player. I was starting to build too many requirements into the positions. Maybe it would be better to devise a series of small assignments that would serve as a test for what I was looking for. I'd talk to Joyce, to see if she could think of a good way to give a test for the qualities I was searching for. That night, at dinner, I did talk with Joyce, and with the other X's, about possible ways to test for who should be recruited into my inner circle group. Joyce and the X's listened carefully as I ticked off my requirements one by one. When I was done, we all started discussing first, what each of us meant when we said smart. Before long, each of them were speaking up freely, refuting the necessity for one or more of the qualities I'd ticked off. Emily said I wasn't much of a team player, and Brenda agreed with her. Shirley didn't believe I was very ambitious either, citing things I'd told her, over the years, to make a pretty strong case for her assertion. They conceded me my youth, smartness, and resourcefulness, but that was it. That was at least something. In bed that night, Joyce was trying to lift my sunken spirits. She reminded me that we had plenty of time to put a team together. It didn't have to be finished any time soon. She agreed with me, that I'd be able to recognize the people I was looking for, if I had any real exposure to them. "The best test is to give them something you want done, and then see if they can do it. That's what you did with me in the beginning. That's what your Dad did with you, after you first showed him you were observant. What do you want done right now?" "I want someone to come up with a good way for me to find the kind of people I want for my brain trust. Not just thinkers though, they'd have to be people who could do things too. They have to be able to come up with an idea, and then see it implemented, otherwise they would be of no use to me." "Write it up as a problem, then post it over at the business school, on their bulletin board. The people who would contact you, with possible solutions, are probably the kind of people you might want to interview, or at least get to know better. Offer up some kind of prize for the best answer, and set a final date for them to submit their paper." See, that's exactly what I was looking for. It hadn't taken Joyce but a few minutes to come up with something better than the best that I'd managed to come up with after I'd been wracking my brain about it, for half a day. I could just imagine what my life was going to be like if I had seven or eight people like Joyce running around solving all my problems for me. "What do you think Dad should do about this Coinmark problem, Joyce?" What the hell, I still wasn't sleepy yet, and she wasn't doing too much right then either. She smiled at me and pushed at my arm. I lifted it up, reaching out and pulling her in, closer to me. "You must have some good ideas by now? Tell me what they are." I started rubbing on her butt. This always relaxed her when I did that to her. "If you keep doing that, I won't be able to think, Kenny. I have been thinking some, about what you said to your father. We know already what our fixed costs are. Those costs have got to be less than Coinmark's costs are. If they're underbidding us, they have to be losing money for at least the first year or so of their contracts. How much money can they afford to lose? If they're privately held, like your dad says, whoever owns them has to be bleeding money to pay for all the machines, and for the product to put in them. I don't know about contacting him or her directly, but we should find out more about who it is, and how deep their pockets are, before we make any drastic changes to counter what they're doing to us." "Do you think they might not be able to keep on undercutting us? If they really are losing money." "I don't know, because we don't know anything about them, other than they've been moving aggressively, against all our best locations that are coming off contract." "All of them? If that's true, then we've got someone inside our own company that's tipping them off, and feeding them information from our internal sales data. There is no other way of knowing who our best accounts are, or which contracts are coming up for renewal. Who has access to that kind of information?" As soon as I asked the question, I knew she was going to tell me that it was only her, Virginia, my father, and Ellen. I mentally added in the three computer whiz's. They could take anything off of our computer. "The computer guys? I don't think Ellen would do anything like that, Kenny. Virginia loves the company too. She wouldn't do anything to compromise it." "It has to be somebody. I don't think the computer guys would try something like that. They could, but if they wanted to steal, there would be other, less traceable, ways to do it. This isn't something I'd expect them to do. It almost has to be Ellen. I don't want to believe it either, but she has access to all the sales and delivery data. She has a list of every account, and all the information we have on them. That kind of information would be valuable. Someone would pay a lot to have access to it." "Ellen wouldn't do that to us. She's smart enough to know we'd eventually catch her. It can't be her, and it isn't Virginia, your father, or me. It has to be someone else." "Who else has access to all that data?" "There are people who break into computers and take information. We need to talk to Aaron about how they might be able to do something like that. We also need to hire someone to find out a lot more about this Coinmark." We went to sleep after that. I was well satisfied that I had Joyce started on working on the Coinmark problem. It was a week later that she told me she'd talked to Aaron, and he was setting up some kind of trap in our computer, that would let us know if someone was "hacking" into it. It was a month before the investigator Joyce had gotten my father to hire had gotten the information we needed about Coinmark's ownership. It was owned by a trust in the Grand Cayman Islands. The trust was controlled by a lawyer in Chicago. The lawyer was a known associate of one Frederico Conforte, also of Chicago. A gangster with heavy ties to mob connected people. My Dad sent a copy of the written report about Coinmark to Joyce. I was reading the report, and wondering what we could do, when I started reading some of the alias's used by this Frederico Conforte. I stopped and stared at the third name on a long list. Joseph Gorsen was the name. I remembered my roommate from Clement Academy, Terry Gorsen. His father had been heavily rumored to be some kind of a mobster, although Terry always claimed he owned some dry cleaning stores. I wondered if there could possibly be a connection, but dismissed it as too unlikely. That proved to be a costly mistake. ------- Chapter 23 It was almost six weeks after we learned about Coinmark's ownership, when the first incident occurred. An arson fire was started at the Lucas Company, behind the area where Rob had originally had his storage yard. Someone had drilled through the back wall and poured in a whole bunch of gasoline. Luckily, the area they drilled through was sprinklered, and fire alarmed, and the damage from the fire didn't impact too much on the baking areas, which were located more to the front of the building. There was a four day delay in getting back into production though, but Virginia just added a third shift for more oven time at the new plant, and our production remained enough to meet our current needs. Had we already been at capacity with both plants though, we'd have had serious difficulty with keeping up with demand. A week later, one of our drivers was deliberately forced off the road, and down an embankment. He didn't have any serious injuries, but the double trailer overturned, and it could have been far more serious than it was. Two days after that, a driver was shot at, with four bullets hitting his cab compartment. He wasn't wounded, but he was made afraid enough to quit his job. Right after that incident, my father started receiving phone calls. All the calls were pretty similar, advising him to sell off the vending business, if he ever got the opportunity to do so, and promising that more incidents would occur, if he didn't listen to their good advice. We were all home for the weekend when Dad told us what had been going on. We knew about the fire, and about our driver being forced off the road, but not about the shooting incident, or the phone threats Dad had gotten. Apparently, Mama hadn't known about the phone calls either, and her first reaction was to panic. She told Dad he needed to sell as soon as possible. She was mostly worried about someone coming after the family, especially the babies. We got very little accomplished that weekend, other than trying to calm Mama back down. Her reaction actually prevented us from profitably using the time we had, to think, or to come up with a strategy for trying to defend ourselves. The next week, while all of us were safely back in Lawrence, Uncle Bunny's house was burnt to the ground, and eight children's dolls were left lined up in the driveway. It was a warning that was simply unmistakeable. When Dad called me to tell me what had happened, I reacted so violently to the news that I made myself physically ill. In the past, I would have become unhinged by this happening. I would have withdrawn into my own mind. I know this, because that was what I started to do. Joyce prevented it. "Kenny, they'll kill our babies if we don't stop them." She was livid in her anger. Her face was red, and the look on it it was scary. Up until that point, fighting back hadn't even occurred to me. I didn't want any of our people hurt, let alone any members of my own family, especially my children. "Joyce, you can't fight against the kind of people who would do something like that. It's only a business. It isn't worth us dying over." "What is worth it then? If you let them take away the vending business, that won't stop them. They won't quit until they've taken everything we have. They don't respect weakness. They'll just keep pushing, until we end up giving them everything." I wasn't convinced by what she said, but I at least understood that I had too much responsibility to allow myself to withdraw. My family needed me, and my children depended on me to protect their safety. I got up and went to get a few towels to clean up the mess I'd made on the living room carpet. When I returned, Joyce, Emily, and Brenda were kneeling down cleaning things with some paper towels they had brought from the kitchen. Seeing them there like that, on their knees, cleaning up my vomit, I knew that Joyce's words made sense. We were all under attack, and the attacks wouldn't end until they got what they wanted, or ended up understanding that getting it would cost them more than they were willing to pay. I went into my home office and went to find that report on Mr. Conforte that the detective had prepared for my Dad. I wondered if I shouldn't try to contact Terry Gorsen, just to see if this was his father making all this trouble for us. Somewhere, in one of my dresser drawers at Mama's house, I had the phone number for his house in Chicago. He'd given it to me when he'd graduated, telling me to call him if I was ever going to be out his way. He promised to take me out and show me a really good time if I called. I called Gerta and described the folder I kept all that kind of information in, and asked her to look for a sheet of paper that had Terry Gorsen's name and phone number on it. I told her where I thought I'd left it, and she told me she'd look and then phone me back. "Kenny, I found the number. do you have a pencil or a pen?" "Sure, go ahead." Gerta read off the number, and then described the other information on the paper. I wrote down Terry's address as well, thanking Gerta for finding it for me. After I hung up, I sat there staring at Terry's name, address and phone number. Terry and I had always gotten along well enough. If not friends, we were at least on friendly terms. If his father was the man behind all the trouble we were now having, I didn't think there was anything Terry would do, or could do, to help me. At best, he'd be someone I could use to communicate with his father. I sat there for awhile, and then, I picked up my phone. "Hi, Terry, this is Kenny Parsons, from Clement Academy. How are you doing?" "Parsons? This is a bolt out of the blue. How did you get this number? Where you calling from?" "You gave it to me when you graduated. You told me to call you if I was ever going to be in Chicago." "That's right, I did. That was awhile ago though. Your call surprised me. Are you in town now? You want me to get you set up with someone?" "No, I'm in Lawrence, at the University here, K. U.? I'm calling to ask you if Frederico Conforte is your father, Terry?" There was a long pause on the other end of the line. For a moment, I was afraid Terry had disconnected from me. "My father's name is Joseph, Kenny, Joseph Gorsen. He doesn't use any other name now. Why were you asking me about that name?" "There's a company named Coinmark, and he's connected with that." "We all are. That's the company I work for now. What's the matter, Kenny, you don't like a little competition?" "I don't mind competition, Terry. Competition is good. It keeps everyone on their toes. What I don't like is people burning down my house, or setting fire to one of our plants. I also don't like them shooting at our drivers, or running them off the road." "And you think either me or my father, we had something to do with all of that?" Terry's voice had dropped, his tone became threatening as he asked his question. "That's why I'm calling, Terry. I wanted to first make sure that you knew the Lucas Company was one of ours." "Yeah, I knew already. So what? That doesn't mean we did any of that stuff you're talking about. I don't like people pointing fingers at me, not without them having lots of proof first, Kenny." "My wife and kids could have been in that house, Terry." "That don't mean nothing to me, Parsons. I told you it wasn't a problem I know anything about. Don't start accusing me of stuff, especially if you can't back it up with some proof." "Okay, Terry. I'm just glad to find out this wasn't just a coincidental mistake on your part, that you really did set out with the intention to do me and my family harm. I might have felt bad if I'd had any doubts about it." "Are you threatening me, Parsons? If you are, it's a big mistake. I don't respond well to being threatened. You have no idea who it is you're threatening either." "I think I have a pretty good idea, Terry. If even one more little incident happens, to my family, or any of our property, I'll know who to come looking for. This is something personal now, Terry." "Parsons, you always were a stupid guy. Threatening me is worse than stupid. Do you think I'm like Jerry or Nigel? You can't go around telling me what you think I better do. Even if I haven't done anything to you yet, I would have to do something now, just to show you what a huge mistake you just made." I could hear the disdain in his voice, the contempt he had for anyone he thought weaker than him. Perhaps, in his world, the threat was enough to deter others from opposing his will. It might have been enough in our world too, if we had only had to worry about ourselves, and our own interests. We had thousands of employees, most of them with families to support. We had an obligation to them, enough of one that we couldn't just cut and run. While he hadn't admitted anything, other than identifying his father for me, and confirming the Coinmark connection, Terry had shown, by his whole attitude, that he and his family were capable of stooping to those kind of tactics currently being used against us. I phoned my father at the plant, telling him of the connection between Terry and I, and the connection between Terry's family and Coinmark. My father had me tell him all I knew about Terry and his family. I didn't know much, just the same rumors I'd heard when I first started at the Academy, and some of the stories Terry told about his weekends away from school with women his father had arranged for him. "Kenny, it might have been a mistake to provoke him like you did. People of his ilk find it difficult to not take up anything they perceive as a challenge. If he feels threatened, he'll only take further action to attempt to make us back away, to concede the business to him. It is the only leverage he has. They know they can't compete in an honest business climate." "I wanted to see if I could stop him before someone ends up getting killed." "That is their arena, Kenny. You never contest with an opponent on their terms. Threats and violence are their stock in trade. Intimidation and fear are the weapons they prefer. They would never be made afraid, or to retreat, because of any threat we might make. We will take the information we've developed, and put it into the hands of the legal authorities. Let them handle it from there." I didn't protest much, but that wasn't because I thought he was correct. I knew he would do what he thought was best, but I had little confidence that it would work. Mama had been on the telephone all morning I later found out. She wasn't like me, acting in fear and anger, and she wasn't like my Dad, believing that the legal system stood ready and able to protect us from people like Terry and his father. Mama was a hard realist. She was on the phone speaking with politicians and their aides. She was stirring up a different kind of trouble for Frederico Conforte, although she had no idea, at the time, that this was the name of the person causing all the trouble. Organized crime was already under a deep scrutiny, and the Justice Department was making great progress in breaking down the cohesiveness of the so called crime families. Using the leverage they held on criminals they had already caught, they were offering deals, including immunity from prosecution, in return for cooperation, and information against the higher ups within the crime syndicates. Political pressure on the part of various State and Federal officials had resulted in attacks, over a wide front, on all the leadership of organized crime. Mama knew who to call, and it helped a lot that Bob Dole was one of the senators from our state. He, in turn, knew who he had to call to get immediate action initiated to begin solving Mama's problem. Mama called her friends too, enlisting their help in keeping the politicos from ever losing their newfound fervor to get to the bottom of the crimes being committed against us. No one wanted to make their constituents unhappy, especially their wealthiest constituents. These people were the ones who supplied the great majority of the grease that kept the political wheels turning, the money for running re-election campaigns. Within twenty four hours, a criminal task force was being put together, and people began descending on Ridgeline and Chicago, as my father kept feeding the authorities information that we had developed pertaining to the connection of Coinmark and Frederico Conforte, and the sudden appearance of competitive knowledge that was too comprehensive to be anything other than criminal theft, or industrial espionage. Because there was a multi state pattern of criminal acts against us, the FBI was called in to handle the investigation into the arsons and the two truck incidents. It was three weeks after Mama first began phoning politicians, that Frederico Conforte was gunned down and murdered, in the back office of a Chicago restaurant he frequented almost daily. Blame for this shooting was placed on a competing criminal organization. My father was told that the shooting had been ordered by higher ups in the criminal heirarchy, hoping to remove what they believed was the primary cause of this latest politically inspired crackdown on their criminal operations. A month later, my father was contacted, on Terry's behalf, by the same Chicago attorney named in the earlier Coinmark report. The attorney, Franklin Longello, wanted to know if my father was interested in purchasing Coinmark and its assets. My Dad hung up on him. After my father told me about the attorney contacting him, I asked him why he hadn't at least listened to what they were asking for the company. My father's only answer was that he wanted any future competitor to realize that he wouldn't be able to count on selling off the assets, in the event their attempt to compete didn't pan out for them. I asked my father if he'd mind if I called Terry, to find out how much he expected. Mama put in a good word for me, saying she thought it would be harder for the next competitor if we owned all those machines these competitor's might have been able to purchase from Terry's father's estate. I called Terry again, and this time his whole attitude had changed. He was afraid for his own safety, somehow believing that our family had been involved in having his father killed. I assured him it hadn't been anything that we had encouraged or anticipated. I told him what the FBI had told my father, about it being other criminals who had ordered his father's death, hoping to thus get the Federal pressure off of themselves and their activities. "Mr. Longello called my Dad, Terry, wanting to sell us Coinmark and its assets. My Dad decided he wasn't interested. If you have him call me, I'll set up an appointment and we can discuss a possible sale, if the price is right." "We have forty million sunk in that company, Parsons. We aren't going to just hand it over to you for peanuts. We control a lot of accounts, good accounts." "I know. We have the FBI investigating how Coinmark got the information that allowed them to steal our accounts. I think they'll keep on stirring things up until they find out how you got into our computer and took our client information. I doubt your father's associates will be happy knowing you could have closed the investigation down, but didn't." "What do you mean? I can't stop them from investigating. It doesn't have anything to do with me." "You can't, but we can get them to stop. All it would take would be a single phone call to Washington. I think your father's friends know we'd be willing to make that phone call. They'll probably come looking for you or Mr. Longello soon, to convince you that it would be better for everyone if we made that call." "All my father's money is tied up in that damn company. How much would you pay me?" "One million, and I'll let you live. If you sell to anyone else, no matter how much you get, you'll never live long enough to spend it." "Twenty million. I can't let you steal it for any less than that." "I'll buy it from your estate then. I'm sure Mr. Longello will value his life more than you seem to value yours. I was only willing to help you out because we were once roommates. I'd hate to hear that you ended up just like your father did. Goodbye Terry, and good luck with enjoying whatever time you have left." "Parsons, I'm not going to come down from twenty million. That's half price, and that's low enough." After we got off the phone, I called Mr. Longello, and identified myself to him. I told him pretty much the same thing I'd told Terry earlier. I told him to call me, if he was still alive after Terry's dad's friends got through trying to close out this problem their way. I mentioned to him that this would be the only other time I was willing to make any kind of a deal for Coinmark's assets. "Mr. Parsons, I am simply acting on my client's behalf. I have no pecuniary interest in the company, none whatsoever." "Mr. Longello, I believe you. However, there is the fact that you are the sole trustee of the trust that holds all of Coinmark's ownership. Even though you hold this trust for someone else's benefit, some people might decide that, if you were eliminated, the problem itself might disappear as well." "My client would respond favorably to a fair offer for the asset value. Twenty million is not an unfair price, Mr. Parsons." "Perhaps, if this were simply a business dealing. I lost a home, one that had considerable monetary worth, as well as sentimental value. The lives of my children were overtly threatened. There has to be a payment made to me for all of that. Were the situation reversed, Terry would feel as I do. I didn't put this attack into motion, Terry and his late father did that. I can help to stop it, but I won't, not unless I'm made whole for my losses. If your associates decide to take matters into their own hands again, I will feel that a sufficient price has been paid. If you wish me and my family to intercede before things come to that point, my interests, as well as those of my associates and employees, will need to be addressed first." "Won't selling the company to another buyer accomplish the same thing for us?" "It certainly would if they were in a position to call the right people, and to withdraw the original complaint that initiated this investigation. Off the top of my head, I can think of no prospective buyers who might be able to accomplish that task for you." "I have a fiduciary responsibility to my client." Mr. Longello sounded as though he were simply going through the motions with his statement. He knew that the promise to intercede with the Federal authorities was the main payment being made for Coinmark. He also must have felt that his own life was at risk if he failed to complete a satisfactory transaction with me when it was on offer. "I am about to make another phone call Mr. Longello. I was given a number to call, and told to make the call as soon as I had concluded a satisfactory transaction, or had assured myself it wasn't going to be possible to make such a purchase, from either you or Terry. That is now my reluctant conclusion." I stopped talking, waiting for him to give me a response. There was silence on the other end. "Allow me fifteen minutes to confer with my client, Mr. Parsons. I'll phone you as soon as we've concluded our talk, and I'll present you with our best offer." "I'll make it easier for you, Mr. Longello. I'm no longer interested in purchasing Coinmark, or any of its accounts or other assets. You'll need to find your own way to survive the consequences of your failure to appease me. I will convey this information to your associates." Three months later, we purchased Coinmark, out of receivership, for two point seven million dollars. We were the sole bidders. By then, Terry and his attorney had both disappeared. Mama and Joyce were both happy with the money we received for the insurance settlement on the fire. In some ways, the fire allowed them to make improvements to the new plans for the house. There was a delay in construction, while the new plans were submitted and improved. It took almost four months before the exterior construction was completed, and the house was granted an occupancy permit. We were all comfortable, coming home to Mama's on weekends. The babies were all healthy and growing. The five of us were getting along together quite well, and our families had seemingly reconciled themselves to the idea that we were happy in our living arrangements. All of us had done well in our sophomore year in school. ------- As well as things had been going for all of us, there was always this feeling, in the back of my mind, that it wasn't always going to be like that. You always hope that the good times will go on forever, but, at the same time, you know this is only wishful thinking on your part. Life isn't like that. On July second, Mildred Coulter, my birth grandmother, had a massive stroke and never regained consciousness. I took care of arranging for her burial, including paying the expenses, but the only people attending her burial services were myself, Aunt Clara, and Bea. The Webb's sent a floral wreath, and I had a long phone conversation with Anne about her mother's death. At the end of it, we both concluded it wasn't necessary for her to come back to Kansas to pay her last respects. I didn't discuss the nature of her relationship with Mr. Webb. ------- Chapter 24 The summer after our sophomore year at KU, both Emily and Brenda got pregnant again. We had been expecting that it might happen after they both stopped nursing their babies. Their pediatrician had advised them that baby formula was just as healthy for the children, and that their chance of getting pregnant increased, if they weren't nursing at the time. I had serious doubts about some of that, but I knew they both wanted another baby right away. Shirley had gone back on the pill after she had stopped nursing Leah. Something had happened to her milk, and she needed to stop nursing her. Joyce kept on nursing both sets of twins. We still hadn't gotten completely settled back into our new home in Ridgeline. Half our belongings were in the new house, and the other half were in the rental house that Mama had gotten for us to store our things. All the women wanted to buy new furniture and home decorations. I left all those decisions up to them, but I did lead by example, by returning my old office furniture back to my newly rebuilt office, as soon as it was ready to be re-occupied. Bea and Aunt Clara had moved back into Mildred's house, right after the funeral took place. While they seemed to get along well enough, it was readily apparent that Bea didn't have the same emotional feelings for Aunt Clara that Aunt Clara had for her. In August, Bea started having an affair with a married man who lived and worked in Bolling. I heard about it right away, because Aunt Clara came to me, asking me to intercede, to force Bea to end that relationship. I told her I'd have a talk with Bea. My original plan had been to simply tell Bea that it was up to her to not have her personal life interfere with the operation of the food distribution program. I wasn't going to take any position, pro or con, about the way she chose to conduct her personal life. Aunt Clara was quite a few years older than Bea, and the new boyfriend was in his mid twenties. Before I had a chance to speak with Bea, she and her boyfriend moved into an apartment in Ridgeline together. He left his wife and a young son back in Bolling. Two weeks after that, Aunt Clara told me that Bea and her new love interest were both using drugs. We were less than three weeks away from needing to return to Lawrence, to begin our junior year. I felt bad for Aunt Clara, but, Bea was a fully grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. If Bea really was using drugs again, I knew it was only a matter of time before this would have an impact on the food distribution program. I went over to the warehouse, the day after Aunt Clara told me that Bea was using drugs again. I asked Bea if it was true that she was using drugs. She denied it, saying that Aunt Clara was simply jealous, and trying to get me to force her to go back to live with her again. "Bea, I already warned you that I couldn't use you for this program if you went back to doing drugs. I want to just accept your word that you aren't using, but I can't. This program is too important for me to do that. I want you to submit to giving a urine sample at my doctor's office." "Okay, but I'm pretty busy right now. We're right in the middle of moving things in, and Ted still needs to work some things out with his ex. Can I wait, and then do it next week?" I thought, at the time, that Bea was going to try to get cleaned up again, and wanted a slight delay, enough to allow the drugs time to leave her system. I agreed to postpone the drug test, but only for up to one week. Two days later, Bea forged Aunt Clara's signature on a $4,000.00 check, drawn on the distribution account. When Aunt Clara learned of the check forgery, she went over to Bea's apartment to confront her, but Bea and her boyfriend had pulled up stakes and moved. I replaced the money in the account, and told Aunt Clara to forget about it. Bea was already in enough trouble, with her recent decisions, and she certainly didn't need any more from us. Walt Connor took over the little bit of work that Bea still needed to do, helping Aunt Clara with the purchasing, and keeping track of who was on the waiting list for food deliveries. Once a week, he drove over to Salina, to make the deliveries that Bea used to make herself. He told me that none of Bea's friends or family had heard from her, and all of them seemed more concerned with Walt assuring them that her leaving wasn't going to affect their free food deliveries. It was my first weekend home from school in September, when Walt showed up at my house, with a reluctant Richard firmly in tow. "Kenny, I wondered if we could speak to you for a minute about having Richard come to work with me? I know there's some bad blood at work here, but, I was going to be needing some help with the deliveries anyway, and Richard is just sitting around our place, not doing anything productive right now. I'd assume full responsibility for him. He wouldn't ever cause you any problems." This wasn't a surprise to me. Brenda had already gotten a phone call from her father, questioning her about whether she might try to get me open to the idea of hiring Richard. She told me that her father was growing concerned about Richard's attitude over having thrown away his million dollar inheritance. According to her, Richard was very depressed about losing everything. He mostly stayed at home, eating, and watching mind numbing soap operas, and children's cartoons on the television all day. I didn't like Richard. I didn't trust him, and I didn't feel motivated much to help him. I'd offered in the past, and he'd spurned my offers. "Walt, I was really hoping that you and Richard were going to find something having to do with fishing that the two of you could run together. Richard told me about that boat rental concession your friend wants to sell, over on the Republican River. That sounded to me like something the two of you could go together on, with Richard working there, during the week, and you going there for weekends." "That was only for the summer, and we don't have the money necessary to buy him out anyway." "I told Richard I could help you out with that." "The truth is, Kenny, I kind of like the job you've already got me doing. I think Richard needs some work to do all day too. He needs to get himself started at doing something, instead of spending all his time worrying about all that money that's gone." "Do you want to come to work helping your dad with the grocery deliveries, Richard?" I asked him the question, and then watched him standing there, staring back at me. He liked me even less than I liked him. I watched Walt give him an elbow to the arm, attempting to prompt him into answering my question. "I'm supposed to act all polite around you, Parsons. Kiss your ass like a good dog, and maybe hope you'll throw me that job as a reward for my good behavior or something. I told my father I wasn't going to be able to do it, but he insisted I come over here with him anyway." Richard had integrity of a sort. I knew he was being forced to come to me, and that he'd rather have done almost anything but that. "Would you rather be a driver for one of our companies, Richard? We could send you to school to learn how to drive the big rigs. The money is pretty good, and it's a trade that has a future. A class one driver can always find new work. You could save up and buy your own rig too, if you didn't want to work for one company." The next thing he said really surprised me. "I'd rather learn how to be a cook, or a chef. I can already cook as good as Brenda can. Before, when I had my money, I was planning on opening my own restaurant. Not right away, because I knew I had to learn how to run a business first." If ever there was someone I'd have picked as being least likely to want to be a cook, it had to be Richard. Brenda's cooking had really surprised me, but not nearly as much as Richard was doing right then. Coincidentally, Grace was agonizing over needing to be with Jane when she went off to KU to continue with a nursing program that would lead to her becoming a Registered Nurse. She took her responsibilities at Gracerie's very seriously, and knew she couldn't go to Lawrence, and still continue to manage the restaurant. The restaurant was now producing a steady profit, with a large, repeat business, clientele. The catering business that Marie and her sister had gotten started was growing steadily as well. I knew that Marie would take Richard on as an assistant if I asked her to. He could pick up some of the knowledge he'd need watching and learning from Grace, or from whoever Grace hired to serve as her replacement, if she decided to go to Lawrence with Jane. "Would you be willing to work at our restaurant in Bolling, Richard? You could take business management classes at the college there. Marie is a great cook, and you could learn quite a bit from her. You could also find out how a restaurant needs to be run, in order to make any money." "I don't want to work for anybody else." There was something in his voice that told me he was looking for a way to get something from me, but that something wasn't a job. I'd wondered how Walt had convinced him to come over to my house like he had. "Tell me what you do want to do, and how you're hoping to do it." He looked at me, wetting his lips, uncertain if he might be exposing himself to ridicule, and ultimately, to the disappointment of being turned down. Finally deciding that it was worth taking that chance, he began speaking. "There's this school out in Monterey, California. They have small classes, five or six students at a time. They teach you everything, in a two year program. This kid I went to school with, at Army-Navy, his aunt and uncle own the school. It costs twenty five thousand dollars a year, including room and board, but they have two restaurants you work at, while you're learning. When you graduate, you know everything you need to know about owning and running a restaurant. A lot of their graduates get backing to open their first restaurants." "You want me to give you the tuition money?" "Loan us half of it. My mom said she'd kick in the other half, if my dad came up with his half first. He said if I came here and took a job with you, he'd ask you if he could borrow his half from you." Richard rushed through his explanation. I looked at Walt, and he nodded to confirm that was what he'd told Richard. "When do classes start for this program?" "They take one new student every quarter. Cody, that's my friend from the Academy, he said his uncle would take me first, after I come up with the tuition for it." Along with his natural pessimism, I noted that Richard had started allowing himself to hope, now that he'd managed to tell me what his preferred choice would be. I had very little faith that Georgia would follow through with her promise. In the past, she'd made statements to Brenda, but hadn't backed them up with any money or action, when the time for it came. "I'll loan you the whole thing, Richard, and back you in your first restaurant, after you graduate. You can pay me back out of the profits we make." "Why would you do that for me?" "I don't know. I guess because, in a way, we're family. Brenda and I are having another baby. Part of it is because of that, and part of it is because I can do it, and it won't make any difference in my standard of living, but it might make a huge difference in yours." I could tell that Richard was trying to process this information. He had what he'd hoped for, but it came with a price. It made it harder for him to hate me when I went out of my way to help him out. Walt didn't have any problem with it though. He must have shared my concerns about Georgia's ultimate willingness to follow through with her promises. "How soon can you loan me the money?" "Go see Frank Clooney at his office tomorrow. I'll call him, and he'll send a check out to California. I'll have him make some inquiries, just to make sure the school is legitimate, but, if it is, the tuition will be paid. After that, it will be up to you as to whether or not you make a go of it." "I'll make a go of it. You'll get your money back too, with interest. Whatever reason you've decided to help me like this, I do appreciate it. I know that's a lot of money to spend, but I'm going to succeed, you'll see." After they left, I called Frank, telling him to investigate the school, and to pay the tuition if it was on the level. I told him to set up an account out in California that Richard could use for any extras that might come up that needed taking care of. I knew Uncle Bunny would have done the same for Richard, if asked, and I couldn't not do something since he wasn't around to do it himself. Frank was going to pay the tuition and allowance money as a scholarship anyway, so it would come out of income that was already tax free to me. Brenda came into my office right after I got off the phone with Frank. She had spoken on the phone with Richard and her father, while I was busy with Frank. It wouldn't have mattered how much it cost me, not after she told me how much my doing that for Richard had meant to her. A week later, Grace decided to stay in Bolling when Jane went off to nursing school in Lawrence. It wasn't even that long of a drive from Bolling to Lawrence, less than two hours each way. Jane was going to be staying with us there, so she would be coming home on weekends anyway. It was Grace that we would have worried about. We were all glad that she'd be at the restaurant, too busy to get herself involved in any mischief. Emily's family took the news of her new pregnancy in stride. Jerry Carstairs was out in California, involved in trying to adapt his last book into a screenplay for a projected movie script. He'd been paid fifty thousand dollars to make the attempt, as part of the movie rights that he'd sold to one of the movie studios out in Los Angeles. Kitty and Gary were going to join him in living out there, as soon as their house in Ridgeline sold. After a month of having the house on the market, with no serious offers being made for it, Mama made an offer for her group home charitable trust to buy it. She wanted to turn it into a group home for very young girls. For some reason, one that was always very unclear to me, Emily's family decided to leave their dog, Brownie, with us. I didn't trust Brownie around any of our children at first, because, he'd always been an outside dog, tethered on a leash, out in the Carstairs front yard. I came back from playing a round of golf with Shirley though, and found Derek holding Brownie's tail, and being dragged across the kitchen's tiled floor. If Brownie could take that in his stride, I figured he'd be pretty safe around the rest of our children. Gary had graduated from high school that summer, and was offered a full basketball scholarship to Loyola Marymount. His grades came in pretty low for the second semester of his senior year, owing mostly to his increasingly improving, basketball inspired, social standing, but he still managed to keep them just high enough not to lose his athletic eligibility. It seemed like we were getting a lot of our family relocating out to California, with Anne, Richard, and the Carstairs' family all planning on living out there. I had been pursuing my pilot's license, and once I had it, I immediately started in obtaining enough flying hours and advanced training to qualify myself for multi engine and passenger carrying qualification. I was somewhat hesitant about carrying passengers when I flew. I really didn't want that much responsibility. The more time I had flying though, the more I started becoming a nervous passenger when anyone else was at the controls. The other pilots all laughed at me, but they all also admitted that they felt exactly the same way. All through that second summer home from college, I began taking two or three passengers at a time with me whenever I went flying. None of my family seemed at all nervous about trusting me to fly them around. All the children came along too, one or two at a time. I'd been renting and qualifying in various aircraft as I progressed in my flying knowledge. In early July, I was told of a Jetstream 31 turbo prop that was being sold off at a bankruptcy proceeding. It was part of the holdings of a savings and loan in Texas, one that had gone under. It held up to nineteen passengers, according to the specs on it. It had a very low number of hours on the engines, and we were able to outbid the only other serious bidder, a small commuter airline based in Waco, Texas. With this plane, we could easily fly our whole family back and forth from Lawrence to Bolling. It wasn't that we'd manage to save any time on the flight, and it was certainly a more expensive option than driving. What it would do, was give us a much larger range for traveling on some of these weekends. Joyce wanted us to get out and do more things together. At first, we thought about buying a large bus type vehicle, but that still limited the number of miles we could cover in a weekend trip. With this plane, we could easily fly out to California and back, or over to Florida and back in a weekend's amount of travel time. Depending on the passenger and freight load carried, it had a range of from about six hundred to over a thousand nautical miles, allowing us one or two stops for refueling to either destination. It was almost the perfect aircraft for a family of our size, especially since all the children were very small, and thus, light. Our current maintenance facility in Bolling had agreed to provide system maintenance for us on the aircraft, along with hanger space and all pre-flight readiness and preventive maintenance. They also had two pilot's checked out and certified to fly the aircraft. I had to sign the necessary waivers of responsibility, whenever I decided to fly the plane myself. On August first of 1989, we loaded up the eight children, Joyce and the X's, and the three nursery helpers, and took off for Orlando, Florida. As a precaution, I also took along one of the pilots from our maintenance facility to sit in the right hand seat. We had gotten car seats installed with bolts on the left side of the plane, along with a changing table that folded down from the fuselage, capable of holding two babies needing changing at the same time. We had four two baby strollers packed in with all our travel luggage, and this allowed us quite a bit of mobility at the theme park, as well as on the trips we took to the beach. It came in very handy when we went cruising along the shopping lanes of downtown Orlando. Disney World was a big hit with Joyce, the X's, and the girls who helped them, but I really think, with the possible exception of Derek, that the rest were just too young to appreciate the amusement park aspect of the trip. They all loved the warm water of the ocean though, and we spent a lot of time dipping them in the ocean and slathering on copious amounts of sun screen lotion. Watching eight babies scooting along on a sandy beach was a lot of fun. Cleaning them up, and giving them baths afterwards, that might not have been quite as amusing. We were back in Bolling four days after we left. We all agreed that the plane would allow us to get out more together. Emily told me she wanted to get her flight training just as soon as she recovered from having the baby she was carrying. This wasn't the first time she'd expressed an interest in learning to fly. After Richard and the Carstairs family left for California, Brenda and Emily both began lobbying for a trip in our plane out there for us for Christmas. Mama said she and my Dad would like to be included as well, so she and the girls took over the planning for it. We hadn't gone another week from the beginning of our planning, before the list of people we needed to take had grown well beyond the plane's capacity to carry all of us. Mama negotiated for a large corporate meeting lodge nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, for our two week stay. At first, we were going to use the company plane and our plane, but then my Dad chartered a plane large enough for all of us. Surprisingly, chartering the larger plane saved us substantially over taking two planes of our own out there and having them wait for us to come back. With all the extra room we had at the lodge, Mama started inviting more people to come visit us for either a part or all of the time we were to be in California. This included all the members of both our households, Marie, Grace, Jane, Marie's husband, and her sister. Aunt Clara and Walt Connor were also included. My Dad started worrying that the charter wouldn't be large enough to hold all of us. It was decided that Phil, Claire, Thelma, Gerta, and Hans would leave three days before us, traveling on a commercial flight, to make certain that everything was ready for us when we arrived. The sheer logistics of this trip started taking on a life of its own. I didn't worry about any of it though, because everyone made it very clear to me that they had matters under control. Dad was busy integrating the assets of Coinmark with the Lucas Company holdings. We had to do a lot of fence mending with Coinmark's old accounts too. There had been a two month interval where no one was coming around providing service or fresh product for their machines. In addition to the machines for bakery products, we learned that Coinmark had owned two thousand can dispensing machines for soft drinks. After taking inventory of all the assets Coinmark had placed out in service, we began to realize what a fine bargain we had made in buying them up so cheaply. It took him all of the remaining summer, and a good part of the fall, before he was satisfied that things were progressing well enough for us to resume our full tilt expansion policy once more. This period of integration and consolidation had finally allowed our vending manufacturing capacity to get caught up with the existing demand. Having a shorter wait time for installing the machines for new accounts made it much easier for our sales force to open those new accounts. Most importantly, with Coinmark absorbed, our profit margins were restored to what they had been before we started losing business to them. This made further expansion easier, because we could pay for it out of current profits from our existing business. The money kept coming in, faster every month. ------- I continued my trading. My father had added three new accounts to the five he had initially gotten signed up to allow me to trade on their grain requirements. This was only a twenty five per cent increase for me as far as the total grain to be supplied, but it allowed me to trade much more aggressively in the early part of the contract trading periods. This was where I made my greatest profits, since I was trading for up to two hundred per cent of my needs. My computer program, the one where I hoped to be able to simulate the four lines of price data I envisioned, was still not producing any tradeable data for me. What it was doing was giving me ideas about how I needed to be thinking in order to get back to that state of mind I once had for that three day period. At times, after a few hours spent watching the multicolored data, crossing together from left to right on my screen, I felt like I was getting so close to having the answer. Each time, it seemed to just slip away from me, before I could harness it to my uses. I wasn't getting discouraged, probably because my trading results were still well above my earliest hopes and expectations. The actual order fulfillment I was brokering for these baking companies was great enough to earn me access to some very valuable information. This information, put together with what I already knew, allowed me to trade much freer those times when I was in tune with the so called expert market sentiment. I became more cautious when trading against that sentiment. I had my next breakthrough in my office, early on a Tuesday morning in July. Brenda was up early, preparing to make us all a nice breakfast, and had come in to bring me my first cup of coffee of the day. Somehow, we had started talking, and then Brenda sat down on my lap in my swivel chair. One thing naturally led to another, and before too long, she was straddling my waist in the chair, and riding astride my very hard cock. It was while she was doing this that I happened to turn in the chair in a way that allowed my eyes to catch the data streaming across the monitor of my computer. Instead of seeing four lines of data, I started seeing merging and converging colors. There was a secondary and tertiary linkage between all four of these grains. At times, two or more seemed to trade in lockstep with the other, then they would diverge, and a new pattern would begin with them paralleling another grain, or else diverting up or down and following their own separate path. I'd noticed something similar before, usually when weather had a large effect on current crops. Some weather hurt one growth while assisting another. I'd noticed it, but had never seen a way to either predict it, or to take much advantage from it. For some reason, as I stared at the screen, I began watching not the lines themselves, but the merging and converging pattern as they interacted with each other. All the while, Brenda is wrapping her arms around my head and bucking back and forth with wild abandon. Normally, I'd be right there with her, trying to think of another position we could get into that would allow me to cum too. This time though, my mind was totally concentrated on the computer monitor, watching the lines dancing back and forth. More than anything, I wanted to pick up my telephone and begin placing buy and sell orders. More than anything that is, except for my own physical well being. I knew that Brenda would not welcome any interruption to our frenzied sexual coupling. I threw my arms around her shoulders and began assisting her efforts as much as I could. I knew I'd stumbled onto something really big, and I had a pretty good idea of what I needed to do to make these signals more easily discernible to me. I too got myself all caught up in the feeling that the friction of my dick in Brenda's pussy was producing. For the next little while, I was able to forget the grain futures market, to give my total concentration to the more immediate task I had at hand. I stood up, placing both my hands on Brenda's glorious ass, and began forcing her down on me. Harder and deeper, with significantly increased speed. I mashed her pussy into me as I moved around in my office, willing the both of us on to even more sensation and pleasure. I had taken Brenda to great sexual heights in the past, many times, causing her to squirt out her juices in waves of pulsating abandon. This time, I could feel her fluids desperately shooting out from the sides of my dick, under pressure from the confined space they were trying to exit through. Her spend was dripping down my legs, and collecting in the trousers still around my ankles. It was glorious, and I could feel myself getting to the point where I too would be discharging my cum into her very quickly. I was almost there, when my legs suddenly weakened, and I kind of knelt, kind of collapsed, down towards the carpet on the floor. I managed to bring us down for a relatively soft landing, but we still didn't quit our fucking motions. By now, she was on her back, and I was driving into her from above. No ejaculation had ever felt as strong to me. I kept moving through it, and Brenda could definitely feel how strong I was cumming in her, which caused her to increase her own movements, hoping for yet another cum of her own. We both kept at it, holding on with our movement until we just couldn't do anymore. Finally spent, I collapsed on her, and felt her kisses all along my neck. She was breathing with an effort, and seemed to be crying as well, her nerves all on edge, and her emotions brought totally to the surface. I didn't do anything to try to comfort or reassure her. I had all I could manage just to try to support enough of my own weight not to crush her. Already, my mind was back concentrating on what I'd seen on my computer screen. I know it sounds gauche, but I really wanted Brenda to leave, so I could spend some time making sure I really had been able to make use of and understand what it was I had seen earlier. Brenda though, she didn't seem in the least bit inclined to make her exit. She still rained down kisses on my cheek and neck, gushing to me about how moved she'd been by our lovemaking. Had it been Joyce, I'd have just told her I had a valuable idea, and that I needed some time to work on it, before I lost the new concept. With Brenda, I knew better than to do that to her. She was enjoying this afterglow, on so many separate levels. It was unusual for her to be so moved, so sensitive throughout every pore of her body. Her shuddering alone was enough to let me know how turned on her body was then. I didn't really need to shoo her away from me right then. I leaned up a little and began kissing her face too. Soon, we were locked in a tight embrace and had our tongues intertwining with each other. My mind might not have been totally concentrated on this kissing, but my whole body was. Brenda wasn't alone in being so turned on. I too was feeling my body's hyper sensitivity to any type of physical stimulation. Five minutes later, Brenda told me she needed to get up and get back to the kitchen to finish preparing everyone's breakfast. I watched her leave the room with mixed emotions. Brenda still had this effect on me. There were times, like right then, where somehow, I lost all my ability to have an objective opinion about her. She made me vulnerable to her, in a way no one else ever had. I took a few minutes to regain my emotional composure, before returning to my computer to try to investigate my breakthrough. I was still sitting there half an hour later, unable to regain that earlier insight. It was frustrating, but at least I understood now what would be needed to make those four price movement lines give up some meaningful data, data which I could use to make a lot of money in my trading. At breakfast, I discussed some of what had happened with Joyce and the X's. They were all convinced that my breakthrough had more to do with the fucking, than with those squiggly lines they'd all seen traveling across my screen. I had plenty of volunteers to help me regain the earlier mood, the one they all agreed would be necessary for me to reenact the previous breakthrough. I knew that someday I'd be able to tweak the system by myself, to get it to yield what I needed. On the other hand, I'd be stupid to even think about trying to exclude any of them from their kind offers of assistance. If the new program yielded even half of what I was hoping it would, we'd need to go out and hire some new women, just to spend all the money I thought I'd be making. It was almost ridiculous, the confidence I felt that I was really on the cusp of making a tremendous trading breakthrough. Other than that one, three day, trading period, I really had nothing I could point to and say it was going to make any difference in my trading results. I felt it though, felt it strongly, and that was good enough for me. By this point, I'd probably spent close to fifty thousand dollars on computers, software and information feeds for my office, and hadn't realized one penny of profit from any of it. I knew what I knew though, and, to my mind at least, it was money well spent. ------- Chapter 25 Sometime in October my Dad contacted me, by phone, late in the evening. He had been at home, going over some of the Coinmark files that we had taken from their Chicago office, after buying up their assets. "I think I've found out where our account information leak to Coinmark was coming from. It was Biddy Walters." "Really? How did she get the information?" "She handled all the account reconciliations. She had access to all the necessary information, including when contracts were expiring. She sold us out for a five thousand dollar payment. She's been with the company for over twenty years. I need someone else to interview her. I wouldn't trust myself to speak to her. We need to find out if there was anything else she did that might come back to cause us problems. Do you think Joyce could come up some afternoon to speak with her?" The way my Dad was speaking, I could tell how distasteful all of this was for him. He took it personally, that one of his own people would turn against the company like Biddy had. "We'll both come over on Friday. We get out of our last class at one, but Shirley won't be home until three. We'll leave early, and should be at the company by three, at the latest. Do you have any reason to suspect she did more than we already know about?" "Only that it doesn't make any sense for her to have done it for that little bit of money. She stands to lose a lot more than that by forfeiting her pension rights. In three more years, she'd have been fully vested under our plan. By dismissing her for cause now, she'll lose any retirement benefits she would have otherwise been entitled to. If she wasn't doing it just for the money, there's no telling what she might have done with Coinmark, or with some of our other competitors." "Do you want Joyce and I to terminate her?" "No. I'm going to have our attorneys do that. You have to be very careful with these types of situations. Biddy still knows an awful lot about our internal operations. She could cause us a number of problems, if she were so inclined. We need to make certain she won't be any future problem to us." "Do we have enough proof to prosecute?" "We have a canceled check with her signature on the back, and nine pages of printouts of information, covering forty six of our best accounts. We could probably prove they were printed on her office printer. I had Aaron remove her computer, and replace it with a new upgrade. He's having a friend of his search for any stored information on it, anything that might help us prove her guilty of doing this. I'm more than satisfied that she's the source of our leaks to Coinmark." "I was afraid it might have been Ellen." "I thought of her as well. That's one of the worst consequences of a betrayal like this one. You stop trusting people. I even worried about Myra. Even when you do learn the actual culprit, there is a guilty sadness that remains from having mistrusted loyal employees." After I got off the telephone, I went and told Joyce about my father's phone call. I expected her to be upset with Biddy, but relieved it hadn't been someone we were closer to, like Ellen. Joyce's reaction was anger, bordering on rage. The way she thought, none of the problems would have occurred if it hadn't been for Biddy's betrayal. Like me, Joyce couldn't get the image of those eight plastic dolls placed side by side in the driveway, on the night arsonists burned Uncle Bunny's house down. "Dad wants the two of us to go talk to her, to find out if there was anything else that she did that we don't already know about. Someone from the company has to interview her, before Dad sends in the lawyers to terminate her." "Can you do it alone, Kenny? I don't trust myself to be in her presence now. She could have been responsible for something bad happening to our babies." I told Joyce that I'd handle it. For the next two days, I was able to think of little else. I didn't know Biddy that well, but, it was a surprise to me that she would do anything like that against the company. I had taken her loyalty for granted. Everything I'd ever seen from her had made me think she could be trusted by us. I wasn't looking forward to conducting that exit interview. On Friday, I drove to Bolling after my final class, arriving at the company just before a quarter 'til three. I went up to my old office and saw Ellen. I don't know how these things happen in a company, but Ellen already knew that something was up, and that it somehow concerned Biddy Walters. It was one of the first comments she made to me after we had exchanged hellos. "What's happening with Biddy?" Ellen tried to sound casual when she asked, but it was pretty easy to see that she was deeply interested in hearing my response. "Biddy Walters? What made you ask about her?" "Just rumors all over the place. That's all. One of the guys from maintenance told me that she was probably going to get the axe today. Myra told Sylvia Reynolds that Biddy was going to be fired. They took all her personnel files and pay records into your dad's office yesterday. Someone from the company lawyer's office came by to pick them up later that afternoon. The guy in maintenance told me it had something to do with you, and here you are, when no one even knew you'd be coming here today." "Well, I don't know how all these rumors get started, but this is a pretty wild one, especially with so little actual information for all of you to go on. Maybe we're thinking about promoting Biddy to be our new corporate treasurer? You've got me curious though, so I think I'll go down the hall now and find out what's really going on. Would you like to join me for that?" "Not me. You know how much my mother hates Biddy. If I went with you, and it was a promotion, my mom would blame me for it. You aren't really going to promote her though, are you?" "Ellen, I didn't know anything about any of this, until I came up here and spoke with you. I didn't even stop off to say hello to my Dad yet. I'm going to go see Biddy and find out if she's heard any of these rumors yet. Maybe she can tell me what it's all about." I walked out into the hallway and moved the four or five doors down to Biddy's office. I was already uncomfortable with the task I had before me. Talking to Ellen hadn't helped to settle my nerves. I knocked on Biddy's door, opening it as soon as I heard her ask who it was. As soon as she saw me, her facial expression fell, and her composure disappeared. I guess Biddy had heard some of the rumors as well. "Can I please explain, Kenny?" Her words came out choked with the emotional stress she was obviously under. I could see that she was nearly panicked already, and I had yet to say a single word to her. I closed the door behind me and moved over to a chair set beside her desk. "Hi, Miss Walters. My Dad asked me to come see you about this problem we've uncovered. I want you to explain to me what happened, and why. Tell me everything, and when you're done, we'll see what we can do to make the best of a bad situation." I tried hard to keep my voice neutral, to not add any of my emotion to the highly charged situation we found ourselves in already. My heart was already beating faster than I would have liked. One of the first things I'd noticed when I saw Biddy again, was the way she'd aged a lot since I'd last seen her. It was apparent that she no longer took care of her appearance like she used to do before. She was made up like she'd been in a big hurry, not at all like the meticulous grooming I'd come to expect from her. "Am I going to be sent to prison?" She sounded afraid that she might be. I didn't think that was a very real possibility for her. Crimes such as the ones we knew she had committed, they weren't usually punished with prison time, especially if the perpetrator was a woman. "You should just tell me what you know, Biddy. After you do that, we can talk about what the most appropriate action for us to take would be. Right now, I need to understand what really happened." When I stopped talking, she began. It all came rushing out from her. The words tumbled from her lips, telling a pretty sordid tale of a lonely woman, seduced and betrayed, by a much younger lover. That the whole thing had been a set up, orchestrated by either Terry or his father, I had no doubts about. The five thousand dollars hadn't been Biddy's idea, it had come about because of her boyfriend's greed. She said she turned all of the money over to him. There were pictures taken of Biddy in compromising, intimate, poses with her too young lover. She showed me an envelope containing the pictures she'd been sent. I wasn't shocked to learn that Terry was the young man with her in those pictures. It didn't surprise me that he would take an opportunity to steal that extra five thousand dollars from his own father either. All told, I ended up spending an hour with Biddy Walters. I found out that we already were aware of everything she had handed over to Coinmark to suppress the publication of those pictures among her friends and family. When we were all done with our interview, I told her that I would speak with my father. I told her to keep working on what she was currently doing, and we'd let her know what had been decided. I left her in her office, going over to my Dad's office to speak with him. "Hi, Dad. I just got finished speaking to Biddy Walters. I found out what happened, and why it happened." I had taken the pictures with me, explaining to Biddy that I needed them to explain things to my father, but promising to return them to her before I left the building that evening. "The boy in those pictures is Terry Gorsen. It looks like he set this whole thing up by himself. You should see Biddy. This whole thing has been really hard on her. She looks like she's aged fifteen years in the past year." "What she did was unforgivable." "Who says? Aren't we the ones who get to decide that? You said yourself that she's a valuable employee who does a great job. I prefer to think she was a victim of a very cruel attack. She was used, and she knows it. She was given a choice between two bad options. The way I'm seeing it, she's already been punished enough. It isn't very likely that anything like this would ever happen again. Why don't we forgive her? It would be in our interest too. Who else are we going to get that can work in the kind of isolation Biddy does? This thing has already cost us enough, why make it worse for ourselves?" "You can't be serious, Kenny? They stole our accounts, burned down your house, threatened your children, attacked us at the plant in Omaha, and nearly killed two of our drivers. She was responsible for a lot of that." "They did it, not Biddy. They took a lonely, middle aged, woman, and played to her weakness, to get what they wanted. I could see punishing her, if she were a willing conspirator with Terry, but she wasn't. If she was willing, then I guess I was too, because I'm the one who discussed our vending operation with Terry in the first place. He got his whole idea for doing this from me. I'm at least as guilty as she is in this." "That's ridiculous. You had no way of anticipating he'd do something like he did. Biddy has been around this business for many years. She understood what giving them this account information would mean. She owed us better loyalty than she gave. I can't forgive this." "Dad, we owe her better loyalty than you're prepared to give. Twenty one years she's given us. Offset that service against this one terrible breach. A breach that came not because she wanted to commit it, but because she found herself looking at an alternative that was even less welcome to her. If I leave here today, and we end up having our lawyers terminate her employment, who is going to gain? No one. On the other hand, if we decide to accept this moment of weakness from her, and to weigh it against all those years of loyal service, Biddy will come out of this better off, right away, and we'll end up the winner in the long run, because she will know that we stood up for her when most employers wouldn't have. We'll have earned the loyalty that I'm sure she will do her utmost to show us." "I don't see it that way." "I understand. It's your decision, but if it were up to me, that's what I'd do. We can't change what already happened. Giving her a break this time won't expose us to any risk, other than not getting the revenge we might otherwise feel entitled to." "Kenny, you have to think ahead. If this ever gets out, that we let her get away with something like this, what effect will it have on the other employees? Will they decide to stay loyal?" "I don't know. How many employees has Biddy kept honest over the past years she's been auditing accounts? How much money has she saved us? Even with Coinmark, if you consider how we ended up making out on the deal in the end, we made out pretty well overall. If you need to punish her to make her an example for the other employees, then there is something wrong with the way we're operating the company. I think most of our employees are already loyal to us." My father placed the pictures back inside the envelope, handing it back to me. I took it from him, and then waited for him to tell me what he'd decided to do. I could see he was troubled about the decision. I had pretty much talked myself into my decision while I was talking to him. I hadn't started out feeling that way. After presenting the case for it though, I believed it was probably the best course of action for us to take. "You make a good point, Kenny, but it doesn't sit well with me to allow her to get off without any punishment at all. This wasn't some minor mistake she made." "Come take a look at her with me, Dad. After you do that, I won't object to any punishment you decide she needs. She's already suffered. What she needs is another chance." "I don't want to see her." I could see my Dad was nearing a final decision. His face was concentrated, and he had his brow and forehead furrowed in a way I'd seen before when he was trying to decide something difficult. "Very well. I'll accept your conclusion here. When you tell her though, I want you to be careful to explain that it was her many years of loyal service that we are honoring by this second chance. If it hadn't been for that argument, I'd never have been swayed to accepting this outcome." "I think you're making a good decision, Dad." "I wish I shared your ability to empathize, Kenny. This isn't how I'd have handled things at all. Now though, after the decision has been made, I feel comfortable with it. I guess that means you've persuaded me." "I don't think so. I think it means I helped to show you a choice you hadn't considered yourself, but one that makes good business sense for us, and helps someone else at the same time." I stood up and left. I was as surprised as my father about the way our meeting had ended. I too felt good when I retraced my steps to Biddy's office. If I'd had any doubts about whether we were making a good decision in giving Biddy a pass for her conduct, they were immediately dispelled by her reaction to my telling her of our decision. I did as my father requested, telling her as directly as I knew how that it was her twenty plus years of sterling service that tipped the scales in her favor. It was after five thirty when I left the building and walked out to my car. The easy part was done. The hard part was still in front of me. I had to find a way to explain what we'd done, to Joyce, and to Mama. ------- Anne Coulter phoned me from San Diego, asking me to allow her to return home. As I'd feared, from the time that Mildred told me that Anne and Captain Webb were having an affair, something was going to happen to make it necessary for me to have to assist Anne in securing a different living situation for herself. The next morning, I received a telephone call from Captain Webb, inquiring about whether I'd managed to make other arrangements for Anne. I found out that his wife had finally tumbled to the fact that more than golf and lunch was going on between her husband and Anne. I told him that I was making immediate plans to fly Anne back to Kansas, and that her sister would be coming out to assist her with all the details of making the journey. Aunt Clara wasn't that excited at the prospect of being reunited with Anne, but I reminded her that half the house belonged to Anne, and that it would only be for long enough for me to arrange a different living situation for her. In the end, Aunt Clara flew out to California and got her sister back to Ridgeline, without too much difficulty. Anne's looks had improved in the time she'd been living in California. She wasn't as jumpy, for one thing, and her face didn't look as pinched as it had been. She'd put on a little weight, and it looked good on her. She had a healthier look to her. It was a lot easier to see the family resemblance between her and her sister now. Her hair had been allowed to grow out, and it was now one of her best features. I wasn't the only one who thought she had gotten better looking. Walt Connor started finding all sorts of reasons to go over to Aunt Clara's house in the evenings. After about two weeks of being back in Kansas, Walt and Anne decided to go out to dinner together. I didn't think too much about it. For one thing, I stopped getting daily phone calls from Anne, asking me when I was going to find her a better place to live. Walt and Aunt Clara had been working extremely well together. From what I'd been able to see, Walt was a tireless worker. He didn't have that much else going on in his life, so he spent a lot of what should have been his off time, going around and making deliveries, or putting things in grocery bags back at the warehouse. What had started out as creating a job as a family accommodation, had ended up being a brilliant hire on my part. The developing situation with Anne and Walt was jeopardizing that good working relationship that had previously existed. Now that Emily and Brenda were both starting to show in their pregnancies, Joyce started agitating for larger space for our two nursery's. I didn't see the problem, especially at the Ridgeline house, since we had two good sized spare rooms next to the nursery, and Derek, Bunny, and Little Bertie were old enough now to sleep in regular bedrooms. We only needed two new cribs, and there were already three that would soon be vacated. Joyce insisted that we needed to plan for the future. That's when I found out that she was again expecting too. Whenever Joyce got pregnant, she became more territorial. By that, I mean she wanted more room for herself, and for her growing family. She considered all of us to be part of her growing family. She was always worried that things were becoming too crowded. "Kenny, you don't know how crowded it gets in those nursery's. It isn't just the children you know? All of us are in there, plus the girls. We definitely need to have more space. A lot more space." By girls, she meant Irma, Helen, and Connie. I hadn't thought about all the adults being in the nursery too. If you looked at it that way, I could see where it might seem crowded. "What is it you want to do, Joyce? I know you want more space, but do you already have a plan, or is it an idea you just came up with?" "Of course I have a plan. I have two plans. We need a whole new wing built on to both houses." "A wing? We already have four wings now, in both our houses. Where would we put another wing? The houses are pretty much square, so there is only room for four wings per house." "We're going to extend the nursery wings. Mama and I already made allowances, in case we ever needed to do it. We will just need to take out all the back walls, upstairs and downstairs, from the nursery and from the wall below it. All the new back part will be bedrooms upstairs, and playrooms downstairs." By now, I already knew that Joyce was going to end up getting her way. I didn't mind expanding the houses again, or even the expense of doing it. What bothered me was having to be uprooted while the building was going on. Joyce knew me so well. "I guess you know what you need, Joyce, but we only have another year and a few months for the Lawrence house. Couldn't we just kind of make do with that one until then?" "We could if we were sure we were going to sell it, but we aren't sure. I'm pretty sure we'll be using that house even after we're finished with school. It's already paid for, so it isn't like it was a big expense for us to keep it going. We like Lawrence. It's closer in for other things than Ridgeline is." "What about telling me where we'll all live when the contractor is adding these new wings on?" "That's the best part. Because we planned ahead, and everything has already been measured, they can start building on the Ridgeline house now. By the time we need the extra room, that house will be ready. They don't even need to knock out the back walls until they get almost all of the new wing built. On weekends, they'll already be finished working for the week, by the time we get back home. They'll be adding the new wing here over the summer, and it will be already finished, and ready for us, by the time we come back from summer vacation." "How big are these new wings going to be? Will it be enough so we don't need to add anything more?" Joyce laughed, but she didn't answer my questions right away. "We'll be adding ten new bedrooms upstairs, with each new wing. That should be enough, as long as we don't have a lot of new children, and you don't start adding on to your harem." "After these children, I'm going in and getting myself clipped. This batch will be it. I really mean it this time." "Shirley decided she wants to have just one more. After that, you can clip away." "That isn't what Shirley told me. She said two was enough." I thought I was walking on some pretty firm ground telling her that. Shirley had seemed pretty sure of herself when she told me no more. She'd been on birth control pills for many months, by the time Joyce and I had this particular conversation. "She changed her mind. You'll need to speak to Brenda too. I'm pretty sure she wants another one after this one. Emily hasn't said much, but I think she'll want to keep up with Brenda." "If you don't have twins again, we'll already have eleven when you deliver. Five just from you." Shirley wants another, and so does Brenda. What difference does it make to you? I thought you liked children?" "I do. I'm thinking about how we might like to do something else with our lives, besides sitting around all the time, having babies, or else taking care of them. Eleven is already more than I planned on having." "Ten, unless you're counting Derek." "I count him. Why wouldn't I count him?" "I told Shirley you counted him too. I think that's one of the things that made her want to have another one with you. We need to all sit down together and discuss this. I'm ready to call it quits after this baby, or babies. I want to get back into doing those other things you mentioned. You should talk to Mama too though. I'm not so sure she thinks any number is enough." I left Joyce planning her new, additional, baby wings, and retreated to my office. I didn't know of any reason I could give to Shirley for not having another baby, not if she really wanted one. Joyce and Mama were making sure there was room enough. ------- I had gotten a new computer program to merge the four grain price signals in a way that adjusted for the difference in their price ranges. It took into account the historical seasonal differences between grain prices, and automatically switched colors once a grain entered either the bottom third, middle third, or upper third of its trading range. To make this work, I needed to use twenty different colors, assigning five colors to each grain. The fourth and fifth colors would be my trading signals, and they were set up to come on whenever there was a difference of two relative price levels between any two of the grains. I already had a program that would generate automatic buy and sell signals to the floor traders I was then using. Because I now traded for so many different accounts, I found the best way to trade was to split my custom up among eight to ten brokers, when trading futures contracts, and three brokers, when buying or selling on the spot markets. Since the signal went out automatically, I had to keep a dedicated land line from each floor trader to record buy and sell confirmations. I had another program that compared the fill prices I got from each trader. If my fills became a problem with one trader, I shifted a greater percentage of my business to another one. With all of my floor traders knowing this, I tended to get better fills than I might otherwise have expected. This difference alone was more than enough to offset all of my accumulated computer and phone line expenses. All the traders also assumed a portion of my associated trading costs. Even with having my business spread around like that, I still generated enough commission income for each trader that they didn't want to risk doing anything to lose their share of my business. It was right after speaking with Joyce that all of my hard work and experimenting with charting price movements began to pay off for me in a meaningful way. I had always felt that all of the research I put into finding a workable computer price model had paid off in making me a better trader than I would have been without the study. I believed it, and my trading results seemed to support it. There were plenty of other futures traders who did better than I did, or, at least as well, without ever using a computer for any of their trading decisions. I could only point to what I believed was happening, as my trading profits kept increasing nearly every month. This particular time, I was sitting in front of my screen, shortly after the bell rung to begin trading for the day. My new view panel was installed, and I was receiving all of the new signals. Colors were changing every few seconds, and it all looked like I had hoped it would. Suddenly, I got four trading signals, one a buy signal, and three for selling. Without giving it any further thought, I began feeding the signals straight through to four of my main floor traders. I had set up a price stagger, so that a buy signal would only be acted on once at a given price, mostly in eighth cent increments. If I missed on an eighth going down, the next signal would be for twice as many contracts as normal. My screen kept lighting up all morning with different signals. So many, that I couldn't have kept track of all of them, not without using my automated trading signal program hooked directly into the dedicated phone lines. What I could do though was track all the confirmations being returned from these four floor traders. There were a lot of them, but my machine recorded each one as it was received. I stopped all my new trading at one o'clock, keeping only those signals, initiated earlier, for unwinding all my open positions. By the time the markets closed, I still had open positions on several thousand grain contracts. A much higher than normal carryover for me. Over the following four hours, I carefully reconstructed all my trading activity for the day. The first thing I noticed was that I'd violated my own trading parameters by a very wide margin. I would need to make adjustments so that I didn't give myself too much risk exposure in the future. The second thing I noticed was that I'd increased my profit margins on each completed trade by slightly more than forty percent. I was staying with winning trades longer, and still getting out quicker when a trade signal came for me to reverse my position. The only negative news was that all my open positions had a low combined net loss at the close. This combined loss was equal to about twelve percent of the gain I'd made in my completed trades. The most important figure, the bottom line figure, told me that my net trading profits, for the day, were a little more than four hundred thousand dollars. I'd managed to make a little more than one hundred thousand dollars an hour. I also worked it out so that once I was able to install some trading governors, my total dollar exposure would be back to where I wanted it. I didn't want to take on too much risk at any one time. My profit, if I had already enacted these changes, would have only been cut back to two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. This was an acceptable loss of profits, in return for the increased safety I was wanting to have. ------- I kept my breakthrough quiet for the next month, unwilling to discuss it with the family until I was really sure that it was working well, and that it wasn't just a case of being lucky for a few trading days in a row. By mid November, I was forced to say something. All of the charitable trusts were stuffed full of trading profits that needed to be distributed before year's end. Several million dollars worth of trading profits. Frank Clooney and I had a meeting to discuss this potential problem, and he suggested that I pick out some charities, ones whose work I admired, or, at the very least, wanted to support, and make them all monetary gifts that would be distributed from the various charitable trusts. Joyce and I had met some people involved in trying to provide shelter and counseling services to battered women with children. There were three main ladies involved, with a whole host of women having somewhat lesser involvement. Most of these women had one room available in their homes to provide emergency shelter, to women and their children, until some, more permanent, option could be found. One weakness of this system was that there had been several violent incidents where the abusing spouse showed up at the shelter home and caused considerable trouble. Violet Hennessay, a women in her late sixties, was the most vocal and outspoken of the trio of ladies trying to spearhead this battered women's shelter project. Joyce had first met her when she came to speak to a group at the school, a year or so before. Twice in the past, we'd had her and her two main helpers over to the house, for dinner, and then to listen to their pleas for an emergency donation of funds. Always, it was money they absolutely had to have in order to help one or more very needy clients. We had been able to give them what they'd asked for each time. That method had been the main source of their program funding, direct contributions from a small nucleus of interested and supportive people who had the means, and the inclination, to help. They never asked anyone for too much, just enough to cover their current emergency. Joyce and I both thought they needed to organize a better, more consistent, way to raise the money they needed. Having to give away three and a half million dollars, in less than a month and a half, seemed a difficult task at first. When I first made Joyce aware of the situation, Violet Hennessay was the first name that came out of her mouth. In less than four days, all of this excess money was disposed of. Before the year was out, there were four "Malcomb "Bunny" Chalmers Homes for Battered Women". They set them up quickly, and had them functioning, right away. Two in Lawrence, and one each in Topeka, and Kansas City, Kansas. There were full time, paid, live in staff at each shelter, and several volunteers aligned with each, tasked with taking care of the physical and emotional care of these women and their children. Each home had an operating fund that Violet deemed more than sufficient to take care of their financial needs for the following year. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was a lot better for us than having to explain why we didn't distribute our earnings for these charitable trusts, or even worse, paying taxes on the money we'd earned for them. I made myself a promise that I'd be better prepared in the future. ------- Going into 1990, we had fourteen operating group home extensions, with an additional four planned for the coming year. By the end of the year, we'd have more than four hundred and fifty children in placement with us. In fact, there was a slight possibility we'd get to five hundred, if Mama didn't stop buying up individual homes to put little girls into. Emily's old house already had six little girls, aged from three to seven living there, with four adults as live in staff. Mama had taken to coming over to the house almost every evening we were in Ridgeline, and usually ended up taking April home with her for the night. She usually told us that she thought April slept better when she slept alone, citing as proof that April seemed more sensitive to noise than the other children. As long as Brenda didn't complain, I didn't either. I sometimes suspected that Mama might have had a hand in that pediatrician telling Emily and Brenda that the babies could do just as well on baby formula and milk as they did on mother's milk. Brenda was due again in February, and Emily in early March. Joyce said she expected to deliver in early April, and confirmed to me that this would be a single birth this time. So far, Shirley hadn't spoken to me about wanting another baby. She never did get around to speaking to me about it either, not until the day she told me that she was expecting again. I think something happens to women when they come into close contact with other women that are pregnant. In my house it was sure like that. When I asked Shirley about what happened, and reminded her that she told me she was on the pill, she told me that the pill caused her to feel bloated and gave her gas, so she'd quit taking it. She told me she thought I knew that, citing in support of her claim that I should have known, the fact that Joyce had known about her stopping, just as soon as she decided to do it. In any case, Shirley told me our son was due in June. I was beginning to lose track of all my children. I don't mean I couldn't remember their names, although I sometimes got them confused, but that I would forget which child belonged to which mother. This didn't apply to Derek, Bunny, or Little Bertie. Derek called me Daddy, the other children all called me either Da or Dada, if they called me anything at all. The night of the day Shirley told me she was pregnant, I called a meeting at the dinner table and announced that I was definitely getting a vasectomy. Only Brenda objected to my announced decision, and her objection wasn't really that strong. I mentioned to all of the girls that having too many children wasn't good for their health, or their figures. Twelve children was enough. The next day, I scheduled an appointment with our family doctor. He didn't make any attempt to talk me out of having the procedure done. He scheduled me for the next Saturday morning, agreeing to perform the procedure himself. ------- Chapter 26 The relationship between Anne Coulter and Walt Connor blossomed pretty quickly. Too quickly for some of us to be prepared for the fall out that it would cause. Two weeks after they first began dating, Anne moved into Walt's apartment with him. Walt was fifty three years old, and Anne was thirty seven. The one thing they both had going for them was that they each accepted the other. Sometimes, when your life has been full of disappointments and hurts, being accepted becomes enough. Aunt Clara called me to complain, arguing that Anne was deliberately going after Walt to spite her. When I asked her for clarification of what she meant, she hung up on me. That was the first inkling I had that Aunt Clara might have been romantically fond of Walt herself. Beyond question, if what I feared turned out to be true, I was going to have a big complication with the food distribution program. Aunt Clara had never shown the slightest interest in men in the past. I had just assumed she only liked girls. Walt was a big man, meaty, and more than a just a tad overweight. He looked like what he was, an ex jock who'd gone to seed. Too much good food, not nearly enough physical exercise, and a propensity for having too many drinks on an almost daily basis. For the past several months though, Walt had been getting himself back into shape. He accomplished this by spending long hours at work, delivering the food, then coming back to the warehouse, helping Aunt Clara with all the work of packaging up the groceries for the next day's delivery. There was a lot of heavy lifting to do too, and Walt was the one who insisted on doing all of it. In addition to all of this physical activity, Walt was laying off all his drinking. He was too tired at first, from all the unaccustomed physical exertion, to even stay up after dinner, watching television. That tiredness prevented him from drinking his usual four or five after dinner cocktails. After awhile, he started feeling better at the end of his workday, but he also found he didn't miss not drinking. He began deliberately taking better care of himself, wanting to feel even better than he then did. Aunt Clara and Anne Coulter weren't the only ones to notice the dramatic improvement in Walt's appearance. Georgia Connor was quick to learn of the change in Walt's domestic situation as well. It sometimes happens that you don't place much value on something, or on someone, until after you see that someone else does. That happened with Georgia. Suddenly, now that someone else had shown an interest in him, she wanted Walt back. All of this was taking place within the first two weeks of Walt and Anne's moving in with each other. It became a daily topic of conversation at our house, with Mama calling several times a day with her updates for Joyce. By the time Christmas neared, it had turned into a love quadrangle, but only as far as Aunt Clara and Georgia were concerned. Walt and Anne kept pretty much to themselves, ignoring anyone except each other. It was somewhat comical that neither Georgia nor Aunt Clara had discussed their feelings with Walt. Everyone else heard all about their plight, but not the one person who was in a position to effect some sort of resolution to it. I know that Anne knew that her sister had an attraction to Walt. I know it because she once admitted to me that this was her primary reason for saying yes to Walt when he first summoned up the courage to ask her to go out to dinner with him. She was angry at Clara's attitude, and at her, for not wanting her staying at her mother's house. Of the three women, Anne was probably, physically, the least attractive. Her appearance had improved quite a bit when she was living in California, but both Georgia and Aunt Clara were very attractive women. Even at fifty, Georgia could still turn some heads with her face and figure. Aunt Clara was in her very early forties, and she too was a fine looking woman, especially when she allowed her hair to hang free, rather than having it all tied up behind her head in a bun. The problem Aunt Clara had was her lack of experience with men. She didn't really know how to communicate her interest to Walt. Georgia's problem was the accumulated slights and hurts that she and Walt had inflicted, over the years, on each other. Anne had neither of these problems. She liked men, liked sex, had quite a lot of experience, and was able to make that fact known to Walt, almost from the very beginning. The sexual relationship she'd enjoyed with Captain Webb had given her an appreciation for having some romantic attachment in her relationships. In her youth, she had been overexposed to sex, but not to any of the trappings surrounding romantic attachment. She enjoyed those trappings, enjoyed being pursued, being appreciated as more than just an easy piece of ass. Walt was now the recipient of her favors, and quite happy to be that recipient. Who knows how long the situation would have dragged on, or how it would have all impacted the food distribution program, or our group's domestic harmony, if Mama hadn't decided to meddle with it? No one knows, and they never will, because Mama did step right in and start to meddle. The first thing she did was gather Aunt Clara and Georgia together for a lunch over at the country club. Up until then neither was aware that the other harbored any romantic interest in Walt. Mama and Georgia started right in, ordering cocktails at eleven thirty in the morning. They introduced Aunt Clara to the joys of a late morning strawberry daiquiri. By one thirty, lunch forgotten, the three of them were well advanced in inebriation, and in the throes of what was fast becoming a critical examination and dissection of all that was wrong with men in general, and Walt in particular. At three o'clock, the club manager came by to suggest that the ladies might want to take their discussion into one of the more private banquet areas. The ladies, with Georgia as their spokesperson, insisted that he "fuck off," and then told him to tell the bartender that they wanted yet another pitcher of strawberry daiquiri's. At four, Hans arrived to help the country club staff carry the three, for the most part, unconscious, ladies down to their waiting limo. Aunt Clara and Georgia both ended up sleeping it off at Mama's house. The next morning, after Gerta had gotten all of them to eat a little something to go with the Bloody Mary's that Hans had prepared, the real planning for how to lure Walt away from Anne commenced. Mama assigned to Hans and Gerta the task of doing all the buying of the groceries for the food distribution program. Gerta managed all of that from her kitchen, in a matter of a few hours, in between her lunch and dinner preparations. At eleven, the three women left for their appointment at a full service beauty parlor that Mama sometimes frequented over in Bolling. The next day, all three women went shopping for clothes, primarily for Aunt Clara, over in Springfield. Mama's plan was to find other, more suitable, men, for Aunt Clara and for Georgia. Of course, meddler that she was, she didn't tell either woman her intentions. They both thought she was helping them to take Walt back from Anne's clutches. Joyce was in on Mama's plan, right from the start, so she kept all of us informed of its progress. Brenda was rooting against Georgia getting back with Walt, knowing that the only reason her mother wanted him back was because she didn't want anyone else to have him. I wasn't rooting for anyone, or against anyone. I just hoped this could all be resolved without it necessitating any large changes to the food distribution program. On December 17th, 1989, a Sunday, all of us boarded the charter that Dad had hired and flew out to California. All of us included Georgia and Aunt Clara, but not Walt and Anne. The business meeting lodge Mama had rented was backed up to the Angeles National Forest, directly north of the town of Altadena. There was a nearby stable where you could rent horses for riding, and the lodge rental people had gone out and cut down a fifteen foot Christmas tree for us. There were eight bedrooms in the main house and twelve self contained cabins on the property. By the time we arrived, Hans, Gerta, Phil, Claire, and Thelma had a firm handle on everything. They were waiting for us with four limos and a pick up truck from the lodge, to carry us for the twenty-five mile journey to our retreat from the L.A. airport. The flight out had been quick and smooth, and, because everything had already been prepared for our arrival, it was simply a matter of being shown to our rooms. Mama insisted that our group have the main lodge as our living area, saying it would be easier on the rest of them to get their rest, if all the children were in one place, and they were all somewhere else. I noticed that it hadn't prevented her from having a crib placed in her cabin for April to sleep in. When Joyce asked her about the crib, Mama casually explained that she only had it there in case the noise of sleeping with all the other children proved too difficult for April to get her proper rest. It must have been proven to her satisfaction, because April spent all her nights sleeping in Mama's cabin As crazy about April as Mama obviously was, it was my Dad who surprised me the most during our time in California. Two weeks away from the company was going to be the longest he'd ever been away from it. He did spend two or three hours a day on the phones with Myra, and had a fax machine installed in his room, but for him, this was as close to a pure vacation as he was ever likely to have. What surprised me the most was the amount of time he spent with Derek and Bunny. Everyday, he took them out for a little stroll in one of the twin strollers. There were hiking paths and trails all around the lodge, and he would gather the two boys up right after breakfast, and they would be gone for an hour or two on their hike. When they came back, usually both boys would be asleep in their stroller. In the afternoons, on two occasions, Dad asked me to come look at some parcels of land he was interested in. There was a big land boom going on in Southern California at that time, and the prices were ridiculously high. On the second day we went looking at land, we drove all the way over to Kern County and looked at twelve small vacant parcels, in a place called Stallion Springs. The lots were on a gently sloping hillside, and were owned by the widow of a banker. He had purchased the lots back in the late sixties, as a speculative investment, but there hadn't been the growth in the area that he had hoped for, so he had kept the parcels, paying the low property taxes, year after year. His widow was attempting to convert her assets to cash as part of an estate plan she was putting together. The lady wanted to sell all twelve lots together, for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Dad liked the area, and made an offer of one hundred fifty thousand for the land. Before we left, after numerous counter offers back and forth, Dad made the purchase at one sixty five. The broker who showed us the land also had another listing for one larger, forty acre parcel, which I purchased for sixty two thousand dollars. I wasn't sure why I even wanted it, but we were out there looking at land together, and I figured I might as well buy something. It was sort of a souvenir of the time Dad and I spent together, something that would remind me of all of us taking such a nice vacation trip. It was a nice trip too, as all of the different groups of us split off to do whatever they were interested in doing. We made sure that Irma, Connie, and Helen had plenty of time off in the early evenings to go out and see some of the sights of Southern California. We all spent one day at an amusement park called Magic Mountain, going on all the adult rides and enjoying the summer like weather outdoors. We had a day at the beach, and Dad and I played a round of golf at the Riviera Country Club, as a guest of one of the baking equipment vendors that Dad did business with. We also went out for lunches and dinners, packing the whole gang up into the limos, and traveling to restaurants all around the valley that could handle a group of our size. The most amazing thing was the weather. Even on Christmas day, the temperature had to be somewhere in the seventies. Most of us were getting some tan from being out in the open like we were. Georgia, Mama, and Aunt Clara went to a hot springs close by, and enjoyed a day filled with mud baths and massages, and seemingly unlimited complimentary champagne. All of my girls were pregnant, so they contented themselves with a day spent shopping for new maternity clothes. With the three nursery girls, and four double strollers, seven women and eight babies made the trip, in two limos, to the famous Rodeo Drive, for a whole morning of shopping. Mama bought everyone Gucci handbags. I heard Helen telling Connie about watching another shopper spending twelve thousand dollars for one dress. After worrying for awhile that this had upset her, I decided not to say anything about it. What could you say? To the woman who spent the twelve thousand dollars on the one dress, twelve thousand might be less to her than twenty dollars was to Helen. We were just tourists, we weren't planning on becoming part of the Los Angeles lifestyle. When Jerry and Kitty Carstairs came over to visit us, it was easy to see that they had become part of the L.A. lifestyle. From the clothes they were wearing and the way they were speaking, it was easy to see they had both become acclimated to their new lives in Tinsel town. Gary seemed the same as he was back in Kansas though, except for his being more self assured and confident than I remembered him being before they had left. Jerry had finished his screenplay, and had been hired to write another, original screenplay, based on a story idea that he had come up with. He was being paid on a graduated basis, depending on how far along the script got. What he was currently working on was something called a treatment. If the producers liked his treatment, then they would pay him even more money to proceed to the next level of script development. Jerry told us there were many scriptwriters who always had new ideas in development, ideas that never became movies. They made a good living, he said, just from presenting their script ideas and working up different treatments, all based on a single premise of theirs. Jerry had become more relaxed, and his conversation seemed much funnier to me. Kitty told Emily that she was suspicious that Jerry was keeping a mistress on the side. We all flew back to Kansas on New Year's Day. We all enjoyed the time we spent there, but we knew that none of us were meant to be California people. We did each buy several pair of sun glasses in California at this outdoor flea market. The prices were so reasonable. I think we bought thirty six pairs for less than a hundred dollars. The first thing we found out, as soon as we got back, was that Walt and Anne had gotten married on Christmas Eve. There was a phone message left on our answering machine, from Richard, trying to get in touch with Brenda, to ask her about who Anne was. We had invited Richard to come down to the lodge to spend Christmas with us, but he declined our invitation, telling us that he needed to stay up in Monterey to work in the restaurants. Richard seemed very happy with the schooling he was getting, and had kept in touch with both his father, and with Brenda. He was using Brenda as a conduit to communicate through to his mother. Georgia was still having difficulty dealing with her son's siding with his father. Back at school, I was still trying to locate my first brain trust member. I had put up the contest terms on the bulletin boards on campus, but they had only generated three entries. Only one entry had sufficient thought put into it to warrant any follow up action taken by me. The student in question was named Paul Carter, and his idea for testing to find an ideal candidate had involved a complicated obstacle course of task challenges, culminating with a single best candidate. I liked the idea, but there was nothing contained in the way of specific detail or about how to accomplish setting up any of these challenges. I took him to lunch, and halfway through the meal, I had satisfied myself that Paul wasn't a candidate for my management program. I did loan him twenty dollars, and that was the last I ever saw of him. It was Emily that brought home my first two legitimate brain trust candidates, and it was in the first week we were back from our Christmas break. They were sisters who had just transferred over from Oklahoma State University. Dale and Edna Pipkin were their names, and Dale was a year older than her sister. Emily had found them in the student union, and had invited them both home with her. The girls had been looking at the listings for part time jobs that were posted on the bulletin board at the student union. Joyce had told all the X's to keep an eye out for two new nursery workers for us. When I came home after my last class, I came into the living room to find Joyce, Emily, Brenda, and Shirley sitting there talking to these two young black women. Joyce had grown to her full height of five foot one by then. (Five one and a half if you had asked her) Joyce was at least two inches taller than either of the sisters. Dale was twenty years old, a junior, majoring in clinical psychology. Edna, "Eddie" to her friends, was nineteen, a junior as well, majoring in whatever it was that would eventually have led her to becoming a theoretical physicist. The first things that registered with me were that they were female, short, and black. Right after that, I noticed they both had heads that seemed too large for their bodies. Next, I noticed that they both had very large breasts for their body types. Joyce saw me come through the living room entrance. She stood up. "Kenny, watch this. Stand up you guys." She used her hands to motion Dale and Eddie up, then moved over between them, demonstrating her clear height advantage. "What do you notice, Kenny?" "They both have much bigger tits than you do?" I laughed, and so did the X's and our two guests. Joyce didn't laugh. "What else? Look closely." "Neither one looks pregnant yet?" This comment didn't get any laughs from my very pregnant audience. "Height. What do you notice about their height?" I could see that Joyce wanted me to acknowledge her superior height. She stood there, barefoot, bouncing up and down on her toes, frustrated that I didn't comment on what was so plainly obvious. "They are both the same height?" I knew that this was the last comment I could make before Joyce came over and punched me. "I'm taller than both of them, Kenny. A lot taller." Joyce was smiling, happy with her accomplishment. "These girls both look a lot younger than you, Joyce. How tall were you when you were their age?" I mistakenly thought the sisters were twins. I was just having some fun with her, not realizing, at the time, that I was spoiling Joyce's big height moment. She seldom came into close contact with other adults shorter than she was, and here were two, both at the same time. "But, I'm taller than them now, and they've both stopped growing." Joyce seemed happy again, knowing that she had proved her case to me. Emily made the introductions, telling me about meeting the girls, and then saying they were both living off campus, with the large family of a cousin of theirs, and really wanted to move out to a better situation, and they both needed some kind of part time jobs too. We were all talking together when it became pretty obvious that both these girls were much smarter than the rest of us. I always thought that Joyce was one of the smartest people I ever knew. Not just from her book knowledge, because that had some wide gaps in it, but from the way she could assess a situation, then come up with a very good way to accomplish whatever was necessary. Joyce had a very functional kind of intelligence. One that translated well to applying it to real problems and solutions. Both the Pipkin sisters had the same kind of smarts, and they also had years of working together to solve their problems. They had arrived at a very workable division of labor that allowed them each to concentrate on that part of a problem that they were best suited to handle. Joyce and I did this, but to a much lesser extent. We hadn't had a lifetime of practice, or the survival needs that both those girls had. They had made working together into an art form. It was a pleasure to watch them converse in a group of people. While one was busy speaking, the other would be sitting there, marshaling a supporting argument. Those two were their own debating team. I was sitting on a sofa, mostly staying quiet, listening to them discussing racial prejudice with Emily and Shirley. The sisters had taken the position that there was very little of it in Kansas or Oklahoma, and were being argued against their point of view, by the two X's. Everyone in the room knew that the sister's position was factually weaker, but somehow, they were winning the argument. Joyce looked over at me and said: "Brain Trust." I smiled at her, and nodded my agreement. Later, at dinner, Joyce and I explained my idea for putting together a team to manage our company, after my father stepped down. I explained where Joyce and I each fit in, then started to outline what I saw as the benefits of eight or ten very competent people, working together to run a large enterprise. They wanted to take the nursery worker jobs, to move in with us right away. Dale told us that their immediate need was to get out of their cousin's house, over to some place where it was quiet and peaceful, where they both would have the time to concentrate on their studies. After dinner, Joyce took the girls upstairs to our nursery, where Helen, Connie, and Irma, assisted by Claire and Thelma, were trying to feed, bathe, dress, and then get the eight children ready for bed. Soon, the girls were told, there would be twelve children, including four infants, to take care of. Joyce showed her where the other nursery girls all slept. After they all came back downstairs, to the living room, I outlined a different proposition to them. I told them I had every confidence they could make fine nursery workers, but that I was certain they would be much happier as the first two members of our brain trust. I explained the immediate financial benefits they would receive. We would give them free room and board, and adequate spending money to live on. We would underwrite the costs for any educational training they chose to go after. In return, all they had to do was agree to share their mental abilities with us. To help us whenever we had a problem that we needed some assistance in solving. Both girls were on full academic scholarships, covering their tuition, books, and lab fees. They had applied too late for a transfer of schools to qualify for the room and board provision they would normally be given. They had both been anxious to get away from a bad personal situation at Oklahoma State, anxious enough to forego the free room and board they were losing. They didn't tell us anything about their problems in Oklahoma, only that they both needed to get away from whatever it was. Joyce and I had two rooms we used mostly for storage and office space over in our personal living wing. Joyce used part of one of the rooms as a place for her to take care of company business, and for those times she needed some quiet and solitude to get things done for her course requirements. The other room contained mostly miscellaneous stuff that we had accumulated, but hadn't wanted to take anyplace, considered more permanent, to store. We called it our junk room. Each of these rooms had their own closet space, and came equipped with a full bathroom. They would make satisfactory bedrooms for the girls. They were also far enough away from the master suite that privacy wouldn't be an issue for any of us. Joyce could set up all her office and study needs in some of the open space we had in our bedroom. After both girls accepted our offer, I had Phil accompany them with his truck, driving over to their cousin's house to get all their things. They were back in an hour's time, with a total of two suitcases, and about four cardboard boxes filled with their books and other belongings. It reminded me of myself when I first left St. Cecilia's. While the girls and Phil were gone, I had Thelma and Claire help Joyce and me to get our things moved out of their new rooms, and to go get two of our spare beds out of the garage storage area. We got them put together and set up, and had some clean linens put on them. It was all kind of a makeshift arrangement, but I was sure it would do until we were able to have a better, more permanent solution, set up for them. When they were shown to their new rooms, I could see that they agreed with my assessment. It would do. We were all gathered together, talking among ourselves, downstairs in the living room, while the girls were getting settled into their new rooms. The main topic of conversation dealt with how we were going to explain our unusual living situation to Dale and Eddie. The girls hadn't asked any questions about it, and it turned out that Emily hadn't volunteered any information about it to them either. "I think they already must suspect it has to be pretty close to what it is. They looked at every one of the babies. They were probably too polite to ask us those kinds of questions." Joyce seemed ready to just let the matter drop, feeling like it had already been handled. The consensus of opinion seemed to imply that, if the girls asked us, we would just tell them how things were. If they didn't ask, most felt it would become obvious to them soon enough, just from the way we all behaved together. Less than half an hour later, Dale and Eddie came back downstairs, to join us. "Dale, we were all wondering if either of you had any questions about our living arrangements here at the house?" I looked at both of them, wanting Eddie to feel included in my question too. They both shook their heads, indicating that they didn't have any questions. Eddie was smiling though. "Are all those babies upstairs, yours?" Eddie pointed to me when she asked. I smiled at her. "Yes." "Even that big red headed boy, Derek?" Dale asked me that. "Derek is Shirley's son. I kind of adopted him. All the rest though, they're mine the regular way." "So, you're laying the pipe to all these girls?" Now Eddie was grinning. I looked over at Dale, and she had a smile on her face as well. More contained than Eddie's, but there was amusement in her eyes as well. "Just these four. Phil has his two, and I'm not sure about any of the girls working in the nursery. If anyone is, with them, it isn't me." "But Sister Joyce, she's your real wife?" Eddie was keeping this going, enjoying herself with these questions. Playful though, not maliciously. "She's one of my wives. All these girls are my real wives. In our hearts." "All these big bellies, none of that came from your heart." Eddie looked over at Brenda, the one furthest along "No. Does any of this bother you?" "Bother us? It takes a lot more than something like that to bother either one of us. You aren't planning on creeping into our rooms at night, trying to bother either of us, are you?" Eddie tried to put a worried frown on her face when she asked that, but she didn't succeed in hiding the merriment in her brown eyes. "No. I'm usually too worn out to do any creeping." I smiled at both girls, wanting to disarm any suspicions they might be harboring about my motives for inviting them to come live with us. "Well, that's good then. If you change your mind about that, you should go to Dale's room first, 'cause she's the oldest." Eddie was back to grinning. "Which room did you take, Eddie? The one nearest the stairs, or the other one?" "The one nearest the stairs. Why're you asking me that?" "That's good then. It's the other room that has the secret passage way from the big bedroom to it. Your room is perfectly safe. The door has a lock and everything." "So you are planning on creeping up on us?" Eddie was really enjoying this conversation. Dale seemed more reserved. "Not both of you, just Dale, the pretty one." "That's where you're wrong, Boy. Everyone knows that I'm the pretty one. Ask Dale, she'll tell you that herself. Tell him, Dale." "She only thinks she's the pretty one. We let her keep thinking that, else she'll throw a big tantrum." I was pleased to see that Dale was comfortable enough to go along with the way the conversation was shaping up. "Dale, you must be one pathetic lying old hag to be so jealous of me that you'd try to tell such an obvious lie. Go on now, you tell the man which one of us it was who had the most of the boys coming around and asking after her." "The man said prettiest, not the easiest, Eddie. I could have had twice as many boys pining after me as what you had. I just didn't want to disrespect myself the way you did." Dale was laughing, and pointing right at Eddie when she said this. "She's just saying that, Kenny. I never had much use for all them boys. She'd get so jealous of me though, and that's the only reason I never shooed all of them away from my porch." "Its pretty hard to shoo boys away from the porch when you're laying down in the back seat of Big Luther's Cadillac." Now Dale was laughing, and Eddie was pretending to fume. "That never happened, and you only claim it did because of that one time I lost my earring when Brother Sims drove us both home from that church picnic. You make it sound like it was worse than it was. You know nothing ever happened between me and Big Luther. Big Luther liked you better than me anyway. He was always coming by, asking me to help him get you to go out with him." "Now, that's just another lie you're telling people, Eddie. You know big Luther wanted you to marry him. Everyone in Chickasaw, Oklahoma knows how sweet you two were on each other. That man looked at you like you were a fried chicken dinner." We found out later that the Big Luther in question was a fictional lay minister who was reputed to visit all the churches back in their home town area. A four hundred and fifty pound itinerant gospel singer, with an eye for all the pretty young girls in the choir. To the Pipkin sisters, Big Luther was their local equivalent to what the kids at the orphanage used to call "The Bogeyman." Someone to warn children about when you wanted to scare them. The nuns hated us scaring the younger kids with Bogeyman stories. Which, of course, was why we always did it. At eleven o'clock, after several hours spent laughing, goofing off, and getting better acquainted, we all headed upstairs to get some sleep. At the top of the stairs, Emily and Brenda turned left to head off to their wing, while Joyce and Shirley turned right, to go to check on Derek and the other children, before going back to our two wings in the back part of the house. This left Dale, Eddie, and I to go back towards our rooms together. "How do you all work it out about which woman you sleep with at night, Kenny?" Eddie asked her question as we were walking, trying to make it seem like she was just making some casual conversation with me. I kept walking, wanting to buy myself time to frame a good answer for her. It wasn't very complicated, but a complete answer would be too involved for me to get into, especially with the time of night it was. "It's pretty much by invitation. Each of the girls have their own night where they can choose to invite me to join them or not. Tonight is one of the nights when I get to choose." "Who did you pick tonight then?" Dale's question followed very closely behind my answer. I had expected she was going to leave that line of questioning up to her sister. Her asking it threw me off stride, but only for a second or two. "Tonight it's just Joyce and me." "What if you wake up in the night though? Can you go over to any of those other girls, and spend some time with them?" It sounded to me like Dale was asking a serious question. "If I did wake up, and, if I wanted to spend some time with someone, it would probably be Joyce. I wouldn't just get up and go looking for someone else." "But you could, right?" When Dale asked the question, I began sensing that she had an ulterior motive for doing so. It wasn't a secret, and if these girls were some kind of undercover reporters, doing some kind of a story on all of us, we were already screwed. "I could, but why would I? I sleep with all the girls, at different times. It isn't like I couldn't, but there usually has to be some order to it. Otherwise, it would get too complicated." "Do you sleep with more than one at a time?" This was Eddie asking. "At the same time, in the same bed, like with a threesome, a menage a trois?" "Why are you asking me this Eddie?" "I was just wondering. I mean, if you're already admitting that you have sex with all those girls anyway, I just wondered if you all did things together, in groups, or not?" I swear to you that I could smell the juices from both their pussies when Eddie asked me that question. I've got a sensitive nose, and I've smelled a lot of pussy juices. I could smell their excitement, and that's why I answered like I did. "Are you asking me if I've ever fucked more than one of them at the same time? The answer is no, because I only have one cock. If you want to know if three or more of us have been together doing things to each other, then yes, we have. We do that quite a bit. We all do things with each other. Does that answer your question?" "Are you going to try to do things with us?" Dale looked up at me. She was standing still, with her legs crossed one in front of the other. She was trying to squeeze her pussy with her thighs. Eddie was standing behind her, with her legs spread a little. I could smell both of them, very clearly now. "You'll have to see Joyce about that, Dale. She's the one who's in charge of making those kinds of decisions. If she spoke with you about it, she'd probably have to talk to all the X's too." Just when I finished saying that to them, Shirley and Joyce turned the corner, headed our way. By now, the scent of the girl's excitement had permeated itself throughout the narrow hallway that separated the front and the back wings. There was no mistaking what that smell was either. I watched as first Joyce's, and then Shirley's, nostrils flared open. I knew they'd recognized the smell just as well as I had. "Joyce, Dale was asking me, a minute ago, if I was going to try to do things with her and Eddie. Unless I'm badly mistaken, she was asking me this, because the idea holds some appeal, for both of them." "From the way your pants are pointing out, Kenny, I'd say the idea holds some appeal to you as well." Joyce and Shirley laughed, but Dale and Eddie just looked at the bulge in the front of my trousers. They had no expression to let me know what their reaction was to seeing this. "I'm going to bed, Joyce. Good night, everyone." I started back for our room, leaving the four women by themselves. It surprised me when I came out of our bathroom, a few minutes later, and Joyce still hadn't come to our bedroom. It was a few minutes after I finally got into bed before Joyce and Shirley both showed up in the room. They went into the bathroom together, and I heard both of them laughing and giggling. When they came out, five minutes later, they were both naked, horny, and ready for a good fucking. Luckily for them, I was every bit as naked, just as horny as they were, and I was willing and able to satisfy them both. I started right in trying to prove it to them too. Maybe it was only my imagination, but it seemed like both girls were louder in their responses than was usual. Shirley had an orgasm within five seconds of my sticking my dick into her. She had several small ones, in the first three or four minutes, and then, after a five minute period, where she didn't have any orgasms at all, she built it all the way up, and had one of her biggest ones. She was in very good form that night, yelling out lots of her nasty little wishes for things she wanted me to do to her. For some reason, I felt like I was auditioning for the Pipkin sisters. A few minutes after the three of us were settled and ready to fall off to sleep, Joyce spoke to me, quietly. "You're going to have to sleep with both those girls, Kenny. If you don't, they won't feel like they're really a part of our group. They need to know that we all accept them as our equals." I listened to what Joyce was telling me. I had already figured out that the girls were giving us some kind of test too. There was still the kind of reserve people always showed around other people they hadn't quite decided whether to trust or not. Joyce had good instincts about things like this. I really wanted these girls to stay with us, to trust us, and to become a part of the core of people we were beginning to put together. "It isn't just me, Joyce. Its like you said, they need to see we all accept them as equals. You need to ask the other X's about how they feel. We've got some time to decide. I'm not doing anything with them until after everyone decides." "I already asked Shirley. She thinks its okay, and she was the only one I was worried about. Brenda and Emily won't mind, not as long as you tell them you don't mind either." "I want them all to decide without getting any pressure from us. This is a different kind of thing from what we all agreed to. I don't want anyone pressured to go along with it. Things are really good now, with all of us, and nothing is more important to me than keeping it that way." "Could you smell them, Kenny? I think Dale made herself cum in the hallway. Brenda smells like that when she gets real excited. I wonder if those girls squirt too? Do you think they do things with each other? If they do, I'll bet they're both in the same bed right now. Do you think you can fuck me again now? I'll roll on my side, and you can do me from behind." We finally fell asleep, with my spent cock almost to the point where it was going to pop back out of her pussy. On the other side of me, Shirley was rubbing her own pussy. I was one very lucky guy, and from all appearances, I was about to get even luckier. I had some weird dreams that night. The Pipkin sisters both figured quite prominently in them. ------- Chapter 27 For some reason I woke up very early the next morning. Joyce was sleeping curled up against my front, but Shirley had left our room, sometime during the night. I vaguely remembered several dreams that involved the Pipkin sisters. In one of them, the one that stayed the sharpest for me, they had been chasing me through a dense wooded area, them the hunters, and me the hunted. I had finally fallen, unable to run further, looking up at the two of them as they slowed, and then cautiously approached me where I lay. I watched, helpless, as they smiled above me, and then eagerly started removing their clothing. That must have been what awakened me. The fact that I'd had several dreams about the sisters reinforced the earlier feeling I'd had that it was extremely important that all of us do our utmost to make Dale and Eddie feel welcome, and to make them want to be a part of whatever it was that we were forming together. One thing I'd realized, and it was very different from my previous beliefs, was that there couldn't be a successful separation of the brain trust from the personal group we had already formed. It was Brenda that first made me realize this, because of the role she played in the life of our group. We all worked in the business, except for her. We all went to college, except for her. Still, in spite of that, the contributions she made by cooking for all of us, and by caring for the children, in our absence, made whatever we were doing that much more productive. Without actually being a part of the work or the studying, Brenda managed to be included, by her support of our activities, and by the confidence we had with her being in charge of caring for our precious children. We trusted Brenda, and she trusted us to take care of her, just like she took care of all of us. There needed to be a strong bond in order to make my brain trust idea work. In the final reckoning, what I sought was a synergistic relationship, one where each of us added more to the group than any of us had to offer by him or herself. So far, I really believed we had managed that with the group that had already formed. Each of us had become an extension of all the others. Because Emily and Shirley were deeply involved in the group home operations, Joyce and I were freed to concentrate on other aspects of the entire group's interests. I could feel free to trade, Joyce to command the shipping, storage and distribution schedules, Brenda to cook, and to supervise the households and children's nurserys. We were each gravitating to the tasks we did best, and found most interesting, rewarding, and fulfilling. This didn't exclude all the other help that we had either. Things were being done, getting accomplished, that had been set in motion by one or more of us. I knew I was being made healthier, mentally, by the support and the steadfastness of all my loved ones. Part of it was due to the increased responsibility I now felt, to my wives, and to my children, but another part was from knowing I wasn't alone, that I always had back up if I needed it. That was what the brain trust idea was all about, ensuring that none of us would ever be overcome by any single problem we might encounter. We would stand together to blunt the negative power than might overwhelm any one of us standing alone. We were all support for each other. My father had managed to run the company, almost alone, for nearly twenty years. Not only run it, but grow and expand it to what it had become. He and I had spoken about the need to prepare for his replacement, but seeing him in California had brought home to me the understanding that he worked like he did, not from choice, but from necessity. He had no one else to turn to, none that he trusted anyway. I wondered if he would welcome a gradual phasing in of my brain trust management concept. Would he appreciate the luxury of passing off a meaningful part of the burden he'd shouldered alone for all those years? First, I knew I needed to attract the people necessary to form what I wanted. After that, the theory had to be tested, under real working conditions. A problem solving team was useless, unless there were real problems that needed to be solved and overcome. I knew then how we would all be spending the coming summer. It needed to be something that seemed natural and non threatening to my father. Perhaps something as simple as getting him to expand on his daily list of things he wanted me to take care of for him. The goal could be to get to the point where all Dad needed to do was sit in his office, and prepare the lists for us to work on. Once the tasks were accomplished, he could then review things and give us further comments about what it was we found out, or what we did. I had this different plan forming in my head, as things changed from the idea of it being my brain trust, to it being our brain trust. Consistent with that change was the realization that I needed to relinquish my "ownership" of all these girls. I was being selfish and parochial in my outlook. Love was love. Sex didn't convey ownership, it was a way to express a feeling of closeness. All the girls had shared me with each other. If the brain trust was to also be my family, then I too would have to learn to share, to be willing to share. I needed to give it a lot more thought, and to discuss it with Joyce and the X's. I needed to wrap my head around the idea, to find a way to eliminate from my thoughts the idea that I was losing anything by not being the sole male sex partner to these women. I'd flirted with it in the past, always pulling back from being able to embrace the reality of sharing. My mind started telling me that it had enough of thinking about the idea of creating the type of situation I was then contemplating. I got out of bed and went for a shower, hoping to make myself ready for school in time to go down and spend an hour tinkering with my trading program. ------- I had been following gold, silver, and the U. S. Dollar for the past month, on a separate screen feed in my office. There was a way to play the grains against inflation, and I could see a definite pattern showing that the movements were somewhat aligned, each controlled, in part, by the other. I wanted to trade on the difference between the four grains and the three monetary equivalents. Thus far, I'd merely observed the two different groupings on a side by side basis. Very soon, as soon as my computer guy had the program ready, I was going to merge the two on a new screen, and trade the price differentials. If I was right, they were like an accordion, separating, but then returning, to merge, and then separate again. My theory was that I was already exchanging grain for money, and money for grain, but using the value of money as a fixed constant. This other way, I could profit from the constantly changing value of money, relative to that of the other commodities. It was just a theory, but one that none of my study had thus far contradicted. I wanted to harness all that volatility for my own gains. At seven o'clock, I was sitting in my office when Joyce led Dale and Eddie in to see me. I paused from what I was doing long enough to make polite conversation, inquiring as to how they slept, and asking if there was anything they needed. "Who was that doing all that yelling and screaming last night? It was hard to get to sleep with all that noise." Eddie was smiling when she asked that. "That was Shirley. Sometimes she gets herself caught in situations where she loses her composure. When that happens, she just starts yelling about whatever's on her mind." I smiled back, and Joyce nodded her agreement with my statement. "That girl has a trashy mouth on her. How many people did you have in your room attacking her?" Dale asked the question, but she was looking right at Joyce when she asked it. "Don't look at me, Dale. All I was doing was watching them. It was only Kenny that was making her say those things." Joyce used her finger to make the 'cross my heart' sign, smiling as she did so. "It wasn't only Shirley that we heard yelling last night, Sister Joyce. Wasn't that you was making all those moaning and groaning noises before Shirley started yelling out her things?" Eddie turned her attention on Joyce too. I could see that Joyce was in for it now, with both sisters ganging up on her. "That was Kenny too. You two made him all excited last night, and he took it out on Shirley and me. You have to be careful what you say in front of him, else he'll make you yell and scream, and moan and groan too." Joyce was trying her best to turn it all back onto me. "You told us it was just you and Sister Joyce that were going to be together last night. How come you lied to us?" Eddie had taken Joyce's bait, and had turned back to shine the light of her attention on me. "You can see for yourselves how tiny Joyce is. She needed help last night, and Shirley was the only other one of the girls that was available to help her." "We were awake too. Dale would have been happy to help Sister Joyce. You left her in a very helpful mood. I wish you'd let her help too, because maybe then I'd have gotten a little more sleep than I did." Eddie pushed Dale on the shoulder playfully, knocking her back closer to where I sat. "Look at her now. She's still ready to help Sister Joyce. You tell Kenny how much you wanted to help them girls last night, Dale." Again she reached in, and, using both hands this time, pushed Dale back until she popped down into my lap. I looked over at Joyce, noticing her eyes starting to glaze over with sexual excitement. I put my hand around Dale's waist, trapping her there on my lap. She wasn't resisting, but I sensed she was waiting to see what move I'd make. I wondered if this was another test the two girls were giving us. "You know what, Dale? I think Eddie is projecting her hopes onto you. I think it was her that wanted to be in our bedroom last night. Tell me the truth, was it her that kept you up, or was it you that kept her up?" "We kept each other up. You kept us up too, with all that noise coming from your bedroom. I hope it isn't going to be like that every night, because I need my rest." I had my hand wrapped around her waist, but it was up high enough that I could feel the weight of her left breast against my forearm. Joyce and Eddie had both gone quiet, watching what was unfolding between Dale and me. "We have ear plugs if you need them. All the girls who live here seem to enjoy hearing the other girls scream. Only Shirley is really loud though, and only when she's having a really strong cum. The rest of the time, you can hardly hear her at all. You and Eddie have really big titties for such tiny girls. It makes you both look like Dolly Parton." "Dolly Parton? We don't look like no Dolly Parton." Eddie sounded indignant. Not so indignant that it kept her from thrusting those bodacious ta ta's further out from her chest though. "I think you do. In your chest at least. I always wondered what those big titties of hers felt like too." "Like silicone probably." Dale said that as she sat placidly on my lap. She had to feel the boner her sitting on my lap had given me. She didn't wiggle around suggestively, but she wasn't making any attempt to move away from it either. "Like silicone? You don't think those are the titties God gave her? Yours aren't silicone are they?" When I said that, I moved my forearm up just enough to put more pressure on the bottom of her breast. She didn't move away from that either. "No, all the women in our family have ones like these. Our Mama says it's a curse." She and Eddie laughed at that, obviously not sharing their mother's opinion on that particular subject. "Well, that's good to know. Joyce's titties are real too, and so are Shirley's." Joyce shot me a very annoyed look when I said that. She and Shirley were both sensitive about their breasts. Joyce liked nursing because it kept her breasts fuller. Shirley's had gone back down to two egg yolks even while she was nursing. I thought all titties were attractive, and I liked that they came in all different sizes and shapes. "She's dying for you to feel hers, Kenny. Go ahead. We both have very sensitive titties." Eddie put both hands on her own and gave each a little squeeze on her nipple area. "I don't think Dale wants me to play with her titties. If she did though, I bet it would feel great to see how much I could get in these big hands of mine." I took my arm off of her waist long enough to raise my hand and spread my fingers out. I have big hands and feet for my height, and I'm over six foot three anyway. The sisters were both so tiny, even the big titties on their chest would probably each fit into one of my hands. I dropped my outstretched hand until it was centered directly over her right breast. "If she don't let you touch hers, you can throw her off your lap, and I'll take her place. You can touch mine all you want to." "Eddie, you can be so trashy sometimes. What are these people going to be thinking about us if you say things like that to them?" Dale had started grinding her ass on my erection, and was using her words to try to cover up that fact. I moved my hand even closer to her breast, until no more than half an inch separated my palm from her very erect nipple. I felt her tensing up when I stopped moving. "You might as well go ahead now and feel it if that's what you want to do. I don't know why it is that you men have such a fascination with a girl's breasts." As soon as she got the words 'feel it' out of her mouth I had my hand caressing her breast. I let my thumb slide back and forth slowly and lightly across the nipple, and the wider areola area. Eddie was right when she'd said that Dale's breasts were very sensitive. I felt her responding to my touch immediately. I leaned in to whisper to her, low enough that only she could hear me. "Last night, I was thinking about how it would feel to be holding onto your breast like this if I was behind you, fucking you really good." She moaned, and then ground her hips down on my dick as hard as she could. I increased the pressure of my whole hand on her breast, squeezing it just hard enough to let her know that I felt her excitement too. I stopped playing with her titty, and reminded everyone that we still hadn't eaten yet. All three girls seemed disappointed that I'd gone ahead and spoiled the fun they were having. I had already told Joyce that we needed to have a group meeting to find out how everyone felt about doing things with the Pipkin sisters, before we did anything with them. Even what I'd done already in my office was more than what I'd planned on doing before that meeting. I had an eight thirty class in Accounting, and then an eleven o'clock class in Corporate Finance. I was going to spend my whole afternoon working on ideas about how to integrate the metals and the U.S. Dollar with my grain trading. I needed to find a reference base in order to align the one with the other. It had to be something that I could slide, as needed, to account for actual currency inflation. This basis line would keep me from chasing too big of a move in the Dollar, or in the metals. I wanted to make money on the volatility, but not get caught in the event of a major move by the dollar. I could profit from the 'noise' of the metal and monetary markets, but I had no interest at all in purely speculating in the metals, or with the Dollar. I'd leave that kind of trading to the people who were experts in that field. To me, these other markets were like an ocean. If I found a wave that helped me get to where I was going, I'd ride it. I didn't want to get caught out in the open sea though. Right then, I was safely on shore, watching the waves, and trying to figure out a safe way to harness their free energy to my uses. When I got home at around twelve thirty, Brenda and Emily were both in the kitchen, talking about Dale and Eddie. I went in and had a Coke, while Brenda finished making me two sandwiches. I noticed that Brenda and Emily had shared a Cobb salad. When I asked if there was more, they told me they had made only enough for themselves. Brenda promised to make me my own for the next day's lunch. "So, what do you girls think about Dale and Eddie?" I figured I may as well sound them out before we had a meeting of the whole group. Brenda was the first to answer me. "For this brain trust, or for our group too?" "That's what I'm asking the two of you. Joyce thinks we need to do things with them too, if we want them to be a part of what we're trying to build." "What do you think, Kenny?" Emily sounded suspicious. Not yet hostile, but definitely suspicious. "I've been thinking about the whole brain trust idea. What all of us in the group are now, that isn't like what I thought a brain trust should be. One big similarity though, is that we all help each other. Each of us contributes enough to make the group, as a whole, better and stronger. In a lot of ways, our group is like a company, and right now, the company is doing very well. Well enough that the thought of tampering with it has me worried." "Don't tamper with it then." This was so like Emily, jumping right on the first statement out of my mouth that happened to suit her own beliefs and conclusions. "Tell me why you think that." "You're the one who said it, Kenny. Things are almost perfect for all of us now. We have everything we could ever want. Why take a chance on ruining it?" When Emily finished speaking, I looked over at Brenda, and she seemed to be agreeing with Emily. "You feel like she does, Brenda?" "I agree that things are perfect, Kenny. I like both those girls, but that doesn't mean I'd be happy if you started sleeping with them too." Brenda put my sandwiches in front of me, going off to get me another Coke from the fridge. "We already share you with Shirley and Joyce. We already don't get to spend as much time together as we used to. You have so many other things you have to do now." "Sometimes I feel the same way, that I'm too busy to enjoy what I have. Then I remember the reasons why I'm so busy. I need this education, and I need to trade too, so that we can afford to do all the other things we're already doing. Trading is also something I'm real good at, something I enjoy doing." "Do you enjoy it more than spending time with Emily and me?" Brenda was starting to go into one of her classic pouts. "No. But that isn't what we're talking about. Do you enjoy cooking more than fucking?" "No, but I'm not fucking all the time. If I was, we'd all starve. I like to cook, but I like being with you too. I like it when we're all together, even if it means we aren't really doing anything with each other." "Joyce thinks the brain trust idea is a good one, that, in the long run, it will give all of us that much more time to enjoy doing fun things together. Joyce thinks that Dale and Eddie won't stay with us, not unless they become part of our group too. A real part of it, not just two more girls for me to sleep with." "Joyce sleeps with you more than half the time anyway. Plus, you know part of her wanting to do this is because she wants to do things with both those girls herself." Emily was getting wound up into a high gear. I could tell she had already given this matter a lot of thought. She and Brenda were both going to oppose the inclusion of the Pipkin sisters. At least, oppose them, in so far as it meant them being full group members. This is something that I'd been anticipating, in spite of Joyce's assurances that Emily and Brenda would go along if I said I wanted to do it. "If you both feel strongly about this, we won't make any changes." I had already told Joyce I felt this way. I wasn't going to risk what we already had in order to try to gather a brain trust. It was only an idea. What we had already was a living reality. It was something we needed to protect and keep going. I could survive and thrive without the brain trust, but I needed my family with me. Emily looked surprised that I'd given in to her so easily. She must have believed I was really going to push for the new girls to be included. "Joyce is going to put all the blame for this on us now." Emily looked over at Brenda, hoping for some comfort and reassurance from her. She didn't get it. "You're the one that was so against it. All I said was I didn't want Kenny to take any of my time away to give to those girls. Everything Kenny and Joyce have done with the group so far has been okay with me. If he does stuff with Dale and Eddie, it will have to be with one of his free days. I'm not giving up my turn, just so he can sleep with them." Brenda could change sides in a heartbeat, or even quicker. I think she wanted mostly to put some distance between herself and Emily, just in case Joyce did end up being really upset. "You're doing it again, Brenda. I don't know why it is you can stand up to me and boss me around, but you can't ever seem to do that with Joyce or Kenny. You know I'm right, you said so, ten times today, at least. As soon as you start worrying about Joyce or Kenny being mad at you, you change your tune." "There isn't any right, Emily, and you don't need Brenda to back you up. I'll back you up. Just you, all alone, would have been enough. This is our group, and we aren't changing it, not unless every one of us agrees to those changes." Sometimes, you had to be supportive of one of the other people, even if it meant going against what you wanted, or what you believed would be the best thing in the long run. To me, this seemed like one of those times. "You don't think I'm right though, do you?" Emily had dropped her aggressive stance. This was an honest question. When she got like this, she tended to be very open and reasonable. She didn't get like that too often, at least she didn't get that way around me a lot. "I can't say, because I can't really put myself in your same position. There's no question in my mind that Dale and Eddie could be tremendous assets to us, in the business, and in our lives. They are both super smart, and they know how to attack problems. I'm looking at this for purely selfish reasons though. The only way I'm going to have the time to enjoy my life and do the things I want to do is if I find a way to have other people running the company besides Joyce and me. You've seen how much time and energy my father spends on keeping up with running the company. He has to do that, and, with it growing like it has been, even that isn't enough. He has to turn all the bakeries over to someone else now, because he can't take care of them and still handle all the vending business expansion, and deal with all the finance things." "But, he likes doing that all the time." Brenda interrupted me to tell me this. "That's what I've always told myself too. What if it isn't true though? You saw him in California. Sure, he did some work when he was there, but he also took out a lot of time to do things with all of us. Maybe he only worked so hard because he didn't think there were any other choices available for him." "I'm sure he likes working. It's something he's really good at. Everyone admires him for being so good at running the company. Even my father admires him." Brenda was being stubborn. I think she knew where I was going, and she didn't want me to tell her what she thought I was going to say. "Even if he does, I wouldn't like it, and I've promised both my parents that I'd step in and take over the company, when the time comes. I'm going to keep my promise, and when I do, I'm going to have to work just as hard, just as long as my Dad does now. That's why I want to set something else up now, while there's time, so I won't necessarily have to." "Suppose you go ahead and do this, set up your brain trust, and all of us have even less of you than we do now? How do you even know it will work? You might do it for years, then, when your dad dies or retires, find out that it doesn't work. If we stay like we are right now, you might be forty five years old, or even older, before you needed to take over. You'd be too old to be much good in bed anymore, and we wouldn't even miss you if you were at work night and day." Emily tried to smile, to take some of the sting out of her argument, but I could see she meant she wanted what we had now, and let the future take care of itself. I just wasn't someone who could operate that way. I was always trying to think ahead. "I've got to try to keep it from happening like I'm afraid it will, Emily. This is how I'm being selfish. Maybe I should go out and find a few guys who would be good brain trust material first. I've been considering it, just so you'd know I wasn't just doing this so I could have more girls to fuck. That's what you think. You know already that I don't want to share you with other guys, and you know I know I'm being selfish to be that way. I think this is important enough for our futures though, that I'd be willing to do it, if the right guy came along, someone I knew could really help the brain trust idea." Both Emily and Brenda looked shocked that I would say something about that to them. Even before, when I'd threatened Emily and Joyce with having Don Grestwick fuck them, Emily had been excited and repelled all at the same time. Her need to be treated rough, to be punished, might have welcomed it, but, in her heart, she would have been wounded that I had allowed it to happen. I didn't want to do it, but it was becoming a practical necessity, if we went ahead and incorporated the whole brain trust into our family grouping. I was only one man, and I couldn't handle much, if any, more than I now had. Add eight or ten new people, and there simply wasn't any way I could keep up. Not if they were all females. We would need at least two new guys in the brain trust. Three would probably be better. Emily had said something I didn't want to think about too. What happened as I got older? Older guys slowed down sexually. What would happen when I could only do it once a day? Hopefully, that wouldn't happen until I was up in my fifties though. I wondered if it was the kind of question I should ask my father? I had to quit thinking like that, adding to the problem by worrying about things that hadn't happened yet. Even if I did start to slow down, the girls would still have each other. "You'd really bring some other guy in here, and tell him he could make love to us?" Emily was starting to build up another head of steam. I wanted to head her off before we got sidetracked again. That was the problem with speaking to Emily without pre planning what you were going to say to her. With Joyce, this wouldn't have been a problem. Probably not with Shirley, or Brenda either. "Emily, I was just saying how important it could be for all of us, to have this brain trust, so that none of us would have to work too long or hard on things they didn't want to. If I was able to share all of you, even though I really hate the thought of doing that, it should help you understand how important I think the idea is. That's all I meant." "You threatened me with that before, with Don, and I told you how bad that made me feel. Now, you're bringing it up again. It sounds to me like you really do want to do that. If you ever do it, I'm leaving, and I'll take the children when I go. You can have those other girls, if it's so damn important to you, but you aren't going to pass me around to your male employees, especially as some kind of bonus. You told me you loved me, and I believed you. If I knew what you were planning, I'd have never let you get me pregnant." I watched her turn and walk out of the kitchen, followed closely by a suddenly solicitous Brenda. This was exactly what I'd been afraid of. I was going to have to wait now for Joyce to get home so that she could help me get this mess straightened out. Worst of all, now I was so upset I wouldn't be able to sit still and think about how best to integrate the grains and the metals and Dollar. This whole thing about the brain trust was throwing off my schedule. At the rate I was progressing, I'd never get a team in place before my Dad needed me to take over for him. When Joyce came home, with Dale and Eddie, Brenda and Emily were still upstairs, and I was sitting in my office, staring at my two computer screens. I told her what was happening while Dale and Eddie were getting something to tide them over until dinner. Speaking of dinner, I wondered what we'd be having for dinner, with Brenda upstairs taking care of Emily. I told Joyce, and she said we'd just order up some pizzas. I guess I was sounding pretty discouraged to Joyce, but she just laughed and told me to stop worrying. "Kenny, Emily isn't nearly as upset as she's pretending. She just knows this is a way to get you to back down from doing what we're going to do anyway. All she's thinking about is what she thinks is best for her, right this minute. She has to understand that it can't always be about what she wants. You stay here and entertain Dale and Eddie while I go up to talk to those two. When Shirley gets here, have her order us up seven large pizzas. Make one of them cheese, one pepperoni, and at least three of them with all the toppings except pineapple and anchovies. Get one with only pineapple and anchovies, for you and Phil, but make sure you don't bring it too close to Brenda. She hates the smell of anchovies." "You might just end up making it worse, Joyce. Emily was pretty upset. I think she was starting to cry." I didn't want to get all the girls arguing and fighting with each other too. It was bad enough that Emily and I were fighting. Maybe I should go upstairs with Joyce, and apologize to Emily? "Emily will be fine, don't worry. You let her play out these big melodramas, but I don't. Remember to tell Shirley what to order. Don't make any other plans for tonight either, I've promised Dale and Eddie that tonight we'd let them come into our room and spend some time together." "Tonight's my night with Emily." "Tonight's special. I'll tell Emily she can have my night. I need to get more sleep anyway. Brenda will be having her baby in a month, and we haven't made any plans for who will take over for her to let her recuperate. I was thinking about inviting her mother to come for a visit. She's supposed to be a very good cook, and Mama told me that she's been driving her crazy always asking about what Walt and Anne are doing." "You might be surprised at how Emily reacts, after you tell her you've given up her time to Dale and Eddie. I don't think you're going to enjoy her reaction." "I'll worry about Emily. You think she's up in her bedroom crying, but I'm guessing she and Brenda are up there looking over their wardrobe and wondering what they're going to wear, after they aren't pregnant and you bring home your first male brain trust candidate." "You think she wants to have sex with another guy?" "No, Kenny. I think she's like you, only willing to do it because it will help the group. Of course she wants to. So does Brenda, and the rest of us. Don't you want to fuck Dale and Eddie? We would never do it if you didn't say it was okay with you, because we love you, but the thought of doing it with someone else is exciting. She'd never come out and admit it, because she'd be worried about how you'd take it." "You would want another guy to fuck you too?" "Only if it wouldn't bother you. It isn't so important to me that I'd want to risk hurting you, but, if you were okay with it, then why not? How is it different than you fucking other girls? You enjoy it, they enjoy it, and as long as no one gets hurt by it, where's the harm?" "But, you're my wife?" "And you're my husband. So what? Does that stop you from fucking all the X's? Sharing is sharing, Kenny. If this bothers you, then we won't do it. Don't get all upset because the thought of being fucked by another guy turns us on. We've all talked about it, all four of us, and we all said that we'd wait until you brought it up. You did, and now I'm telling you, it isn't anything that would upset any of us. No matter what Emily is trying to tell you now." When Joyce left, I was in an even worse mood. Here I was, trying to do my best for my family, and all the time, they were sitting around, just waiting for me to bring strange guys around so they could fuck them. These women were all the mothers of my children too. How could they claim to love me, and still be willing, even anxious, to get fucked by other guys? Right after I was thinking that, Dale and Eddie came into my office. I looked at them both differently then. If it hadn't been for them, none of this would have ever happened. I could have spent a long time, maybe forever, being blissfully ignorant that all of my wives were aching for someone new to come along and feed them his cock. It took less than a minute for Dale and Eddie to have me thinking about the other side of that coin. Having a warm tongue in each ear, and two little hands taking turns rubbing your dick through your trousers, that was enough to make any man stop feeling sorry for himself. I had both hands busy playing with two dark chocolate naked titties when Shirley got home and came walking into my office. At first, I was embarrassed to be caught like that, then I remembered that it was Shirley who first started me thinking about letting another guy fuck her. I promised myself, if I ever did bring another guy home, Shirley was going to be the very last one to get to try him. I told her the pizza order that Joyce had left for her, telling her that Joyce was upstairs with Brenda and Emily. After Shirley left, I wasn't in the mood for anymore horsing around with Dale or Eddie. Instead, I showed them some video I'd stored of the grain price movement across one screen, and the metals and Dollar price movement across the other screen. I tried explaining what I wanted to do with it, and why it might be important if we could get what I wanted. It was Eddie that told me I could get a third monitor to run both signals, merged together, with only a slight delay. I didn't follow her explanation very well, but she was sure she could set it up, if I had some kind of lead wires, a switch, and another computer screen for her to work with. She told me she could buy everything she'd need, at Radio Shack. When Joyce and all the X's came downstairs, that's where they found us, in my office, with Dale looking bored and Eddie drawing out how things would look after she got done setting up a third monitor for me. "Let's all eat in the dining room tonight, Kenny. We need to have another family meeting. You too Dale and Eddie, because this concerns you as well." Joyce didn't sound nervous or concerned, and I knew she would have, if it was going to be a tense meeting. I looked over at Brenda, because she was the easiest one to read, but I couldn't learn anything from looking at her. Emily was more of the same. We sat at the dining room table and the seven of us ate. The girls had sent Connie down to pick up their pizza too, a cheese pizza and a pepperoni. Phil and I split our anchovy and pineapple pizza, while Joyce and all the girls seemed to like to eat the ones that had all the toppings on them. After everyone had come to get their favorite kind of pizza, we were left alone, just me, Joyce, the X's and the Pipkin sisters. "Kenny, Emily has something she wants to tell you." Joyce had stopped eating long enough to wipe her mouth with a napkin and tell me that. When she was done, she went back to eating. Everyone was looking at Emily, waiting for her to speak. "I'm sorry, Kenny, for what I said before, about leaving and taking the children with me. I didn't mean it. Sometimes, I just like to make trouble, for no good reason. Joyce says its because I'm a troublemaker, but that isn't how it seems to me. When things keep changing, whether its good or bad, it makes me nervous, so I resist it, automatically. That is what happened to us today." "Was what Joyce told me true? That all of you already talked about whether it would be okay with you if we added another guy to the group?" I looked steadily at Emily. I didn't want to believe what Joyce had told me. "We talked about it, because of what happened with Shirley, and because of what you told us about Don. Joyce said you were going to do it anyway, so we should decide, in advance, how we felt about it. We all decided that it would be okay, if that was what you wanted us to do." Joyce interrupted her. "That isn't what we all decided. That was what Brenda decided. Tell him what you decided, Emily. Don't make it sound like you were talked into something." "You tell him what you decided, Joyce. I already told him what we all decided. Brenda said it, then we all agreed to it." Emily was getting angry again, not a good sign. "I told him already, when I came home. I think it would be exciting, and if he brought someone home, I'd do it with them. He'd have to say it was okay first, but, if he did, I would do it." "How is that different from what I said?" "One difference is that you didn't say what Brenda said. You said we all should get to sleep with as many guys as Kenny has girls to sleep with. That's a lot different than it would be okay if that's what Kenny wants." "I never said I wanted to sleep with a lot of guys, just that we should be able to, if Kenny can do it with a lot of girls." "Okay, ladies, that's enough. I think my question was answered. Now that I know how you feel, I will think about it. It will take me some time to get used to the idea of it. I've already been thinking that it might be necessary, because to really be a part of what I'm looking for, you have to be more than just a friend and an employee. I was worried before by what you said Emily. I meant what I said about not wanting us to hurt what we already have. I told you why I think we should recruit new people. We need enough to do everything so that no one needs to work like my Dad does. I think we need at least eight, maybe ten, more people. With that many, some of them will have to be men." "I can see why you need to have more people, and why some would be guys, but we don't have to sleep with every person you recruit, do we?" This was Shirley, and it was the first time she had spoken since we'd all sat down. "I think that's one of the things we'd all have to decide. One of my problems with you having other guys like this, is the way I feel about having sex with all of you. I love you all, and that makes it a lot different than just having sex with someone, like with Ellen. The other thing though, is that if I have sex with someone, that usually makes me start to love them. Maybe it's different for each of you, but that how it's been for me. I'd be afraid that you might start loving someone else more than me." "That wouldn't happen with me, Kenny. Not just because I love you so much, but because you're the only boy who ever made me cum. I've talked to other girls, even Bea, and they all told me that you were special, because you can make all of us cum, all the time. Unless you bring us someone as good as you are, it probably won't change anything." Brenda seemed pretty sure of herself when she spoke, and, of course, I wanted to believe her. "Is that true, Kenny? You make all these sisters cum, every time?" Eddie was staring at me. "I think so. Maybe not with Shirley, in the very beginning, but now she does, unless they've all been faking it." "Every single time? You don't ever miss?" Eddie was smiling and licking her lips. I had to laugh. "I think so. Sometimes it takes awhile. Once, Emily had a headache, so we stopped for a few minutes, but, later, I made her cum. I don't know if that counts as a miss or not." "You won't have any problem with me, 'cause I cum easy, but Dale, she can't usually get hers, not unless she's thinking about Big Luther." Eddie was trying not to laugh, all the while intent on avoiding the kick that Dale was sending at her legs. "That's why it's silly for you to worry, Kenny. It might be fun, even exciting to try things with someone new, but they wouldn't be you. To all of us, you're a lot more than just a big stiff dick." Joyce was laughing too, trying to lighten the mood. "What do you think we should decide about whether someone has sex with other people in the brain trust, Joyce?" "I might be the worst one to ask, Kenny. You know how I get. Unless it was someone I took a dislike to, I'd do it. I might do it anyway, just to see what it was like to do it voluntarily with someone I didn't like. I don't need to be in love to want to be fucked." "That's right, Joyce. Remember Sue Ellen? Were you two even introduced?" I think Emily was trying to be funny, to back off from her earlier confrontation with Joyce. We all could see Joyce didn't think it was funny. "Sometimes, Emily, you make it real hard for someone to be your friend. I answered Kenny's question. Why don't you tell us what your answer is." "I don't know, Joyce. I'd need to see who it was, and how I reacted to them. I wouldn't want to feel like I needed to sleep with anyone. To me, it's more than a handshake, when you have sex with someone." "Okay. How about you, Brenda?" Brenda looked up at Joyce when she asked her by name. "If it was something that Kenny said was important, and if it helped him do what he wants to do, I guess I would. I've done it with other people for less of a reason." "Shirley?" Shirley blushed when Joyce asked her. She was already embarrassed and nervous to be discussing something like this in front of Dale and Eddie. "It would be hard for me to do, if I was alone with some new guy. If Kenny was there too, it would be better for me, easier." She never looked up when she said that. It seemed like a painful admission, coming like it did. "Now you, Kenny. I'd like it better if you were there with us too. It wouldn't seem so much like something we shouldn't be doing. Would you be doing things with other guys, with us?" Joyce had a tight facial expression, half grin, half grimace. Shirley's head finally came up to look at me. I felt like Shirley had looked before, when it was her turn. There wasn't any place to hide. This wasn't something I'd wanted to confront right then. I still hadn't accepted fully, the idea that we needed to open our group up to other males. I felt like Joyce was deliberately leapfrogging me past where I thought I was getting ready to go. I needed to answer her, but I needed to do it without closing some of the doors we'd already thrown open. I didn't want to go so far back that the subject couldn't be raised in a future meeting. "If I thought it was really important to the success of our family, there aren't many things I'd be unwilling to at least attempt. This isn't something I would seek out. On the other hand, it's a good question, because it shows me what Emily was talking about earlier, and Shirley too. I think we need to make things a matter of free choice. If I propose someone to be part of our group, a member of our family, I wouldn't be hurt or upset if any of you wanted to have sex with him or her. It has been like that ever since we made Shirley do things with all the other girls. I still don't want to force anyone. With us, sex is voluntary, but I wouldn't want anyone in our family that someone else, someone besides me or Joyce, wouldn't want to have sex with. I think we need to make that a part of the selection criteria. We need to start it, right now too, with Dale and Eddie. Joyce and I are both willing, with both of them." "I'm willing too." Brenda was looking right at Eddie when she said that. "Me too." Shirley was looking at Dale. Emily stood up and walked away from the dining area. All of us watched her as she headed up the stairs. "It isn't either of you guys. She's upset with me. She's my girlfriend, and she doesn't like it that I said I was willing right away." Brenda sounded a little saddened as she spoke. Right after she said that, she got up and went towards the staircase, following after Emily. No one said anything for a short while, and then Shirley got up, and she started clearing away the boxes, and the leftover pizza. No one else stood up, or offered to assist her. Shirley gathered everything together and headed back to the kitchen. "Well, that went pretty well, Kenny. Now what?" Joyce was looking at me. I could see that she now looked nervous, but she hadn't earlier. From that, I surmised that things hadn't gone quite like she planned. "I think the best thing all of us can do is to wait and see how tonight's meeting seems tomorrow. I'm not going to do anything that forces Emily to take an action all of us would regret. To me, nothing has changed. I still need for her to say its all right, before I go any further with Dale or Eddie." "If you feel that way, you should go be with her. Tonight was her night anyway." "No, I think I'll just go to sleep in my own bed tonight. Emily needs time to think about things. If I went up to her, she'd see that as weakness. I'll talk to her tomorrow, after school. I think we made a mistake with her tonight. She feels like we've all turned against her. We need to show her that we haven't, and that nothing has to be changed for her." "Won't be any screaming or yelling from your room tonight then?" Eddie was looking at me, a smile on her face. "Not tonight. Soon though. We don't usually go more than one or two days without somebody screaming out when they're cumming." "Story of our life right here. They wait until we finally work our way up to the front of the line, and then they tell us that the last ticket has already been sold." Dale had eased back in her chair, her arms folded over her breasts, and a look of hurt and disappointment on her face. I would have liked to tell her something reassuring, but I didn't know what to say. "Man can make any girl cum, every time, I'm not about to give up my place at the head of his line." Eddie reached over and hugged her sister. "If Kenny pans out like these girls been telling us, we might have to change his name to Big Luther." "There ain't no Big Luther, and there ain't no man can make a woman cum every time. It goes against the natural laws of men and women." Dale stood up and she walked off too, in the direction of the staircase. The three of us that remained watched her climb the stairs. "She just said that because she's afraid to believe, that's all. She has a hard time with relaxing enough to really get enjoyment with a man. It's real easy for me, always has been, since I was about twelve years old. I used to rub myself, climbing up trees, and I could usually see stars before I got to the first big branch. Dale isn't like that, so it meant more to her, what these girls was all claiming. Didn't mean as much to me, because, if you were to disappoint me, I'd just go out in your back yard and climb up one of them skinny trees growing out there." Eddie got up and followed after Dale. I looked across at Joyce, seeing the frown lines on her forehead. "I thought we had this all worked out when the three of us were upstairs. If I didn't, I wouldn't have had this meeting, Kenny. I'd feel a lot better if you went in with Emily and Brenda tonight. Let her know what you told me, and tell her that I love her, and I'm sorry about how everything ended up." "She'll see it as weakness on our parts." "I don't care if she does. If us loving her, and worrying about her, is weakness to her, then let her think we're weak. I'd rather she held me in contempt for being weak, than to find out later that we could have saved everything, if one of us had gone to her and told her she was still loved." "Brenda will tell her." "Kenny, I know Emily. She wants you to come up there and be with her tonight. You need to show her how important she is to you. You keep trying to beat her at this game you two always play. Tonight, you just need to let her win." I got up with Joyce and we went up the staircase together. When we got to the top, I wanted to turn right, but, at the last minute, I gave in to Joyce's thinking and turned left. I went into Emily's room, expecting to find Brenda with her, but when I got to the bed I found Emily sleeping by herself. I got undressed and slipped in bed beside her, putting my arm around her as I snuggled in close. She didn't wake up, and, in a matter of minutes, I too was asleep. When I woke up the next morning, Emily was already awake and looking at me. I smiled at her. "Did you come because you wanted to, or because Joyce said you should?" "I came because I love you, and Joyce told me to come, because she loves you too." "Did you do it with Dale or Eddie yet?" "No." "Are you going to?" "Not unless its okay with you for me to do it." "I already said you could." "You said I could, but you didn't say it was all right with you. I don't want to do anything that would make you feel bad, Em." "It was bad last night, and then, after we got back up here, Brenda and I had a big fight." "Brenda was trying to be supportive of what Joyce and I told her we wanted to do. That doesn't mean she doesn't love you. We all love you, even when we disagree." "Last night was my night. Joyce just decided those girls were more important than me having my time with you. That's how she is. Whatever you want, or she wants, its always more important than what any of the X's want." "Sometimes that's true, but not always. Last night she gave up what she wanted so that I could come here to be with you." "I was already sleeping." "I liked sleeping with you. It doesn't always have to be wild sex. Not that you're able to have wild sex, not as big as you're getting." "Maybe that's part of the reason I'm feeling so bitchy right now. I've been feeling that way ever since you told Joyce that you noticed those girls weren't pregnant." "They aren't, and they aren't ever going to be pregnant by me. Did I ever tell you how much it meant to me that you were willing to have my babies? It's such a strong bond we have because of that. Way stronger than sex. We made something together, not once, but twice. You'll always be a special part of my life. Too special for me to ever want to force you into what you really don't want." "If I did that, it would change things between us. I don't want to change what we all have together. If you bring in other guys, everything will be changed." "All I'll ever tell you is that it would be okay with me. It wouldn't have to change for you, Em, because you wouldn't ever have to do anything with them." "Are you telling me you already decided, that you're bringing other men here to live with us?" "No, not yet. I'm still working up to it. I don't see any other way around doing that though. I already have a hard time trying to keep up with things by myself. If I keep thinking about it, soon it won't seem like I'm making such a big sacrifice. Right now, I'm the only one not sharing. Joyce is the first one to recognize that things needed to change. She's right, but its very hard to give up what I've been used to." "I won't be the first one, Kenny. You tell Joyce that she's wrong about me. I never brought the subject up, and I didn't want to talk about it. She wants you to think that I'm dying to sleep with another man, but it isn't true." "She knows that. We all know that. Joyce will be the first, but that doesn't mean she wants to sleep with every guy she sees either. She wants what she sees as being best for the group. She'll do what she thinks is best, and she'll try to make the rest of you do it too." "You always give her the benefit of the doubt, no matter what she says or does." "In the end, giving her that benefit helps all of us. She keeps everything together. She's always willing to do whatever it takes. Part of the reason is for her benefit, but most of the time, she puts all of us first." "You put her first." "That's true. You put Brenda first, I put Joyce first, Brenda puts me first, Shirley puts Joyce and me both first, but Joyce puts the whole group first." "Nobody puts me first." "Joyce and I both put you first last night. We took a big chance on losing Dale and Eddie, just to put you first." I bent over and kissed her, quickly, before she could think of anything to say, or to argue about whether we put her first or not. Joyce had been right again. Emily did need someone to tell her she was loved. She never really believed it, no matter how often she was told. I had kept my hand on her swollen belly all night long. I felt our connection, and I tried to make her feel it too. ------- Chapter 28 I left Emily and went over to my bedroom, to shower and get ready for school. So far, everything happening, as a result of my wanting to gather a brain trust for the business, had brought increased dissension inside our group. I was torn between what I wanted, what I feared, and what I felt was ultimately best for our family. All of this was caused because Joyce and I both believed we needed to add the sexual component to the mix, that doing so would tie our brain trust closer to us. Using physical intimacy as a bridge to give the new group a chance for some sustainable permanence. At breakfast, Shirley asked me if I'd drive her over to the campus so she could speak with me. When she asked me, I told her yes, and then I noticed Joyce had been trying to get my attention before I spoke to Shirley. When I nodded to her, after answering Shirley, Joyce just made a motion with her head, as if to say it hadn't been important. Shirley and I were still in our driveway when she began talking, telling me exactly what was on her mind. She too was having some of the same problems that Emily had spoken about, feeling like Joyce and I were pressuring her to support something she really wasn't certain she wanted to have take place. She didn't object to Dale or Eddie, she made that very plain, but she didn't see why the brain trust had to be added to our existing group. Joyce had kept telling her it was necessary, but she didn't give her any good reasons for why it was. Shirley wanted me to give her those reasons. I didn't have any reasons that I could give her. What I had was a feeling, based, mostly, on my own experiences with our group, and with working with other people in the business. When you had key people, you wanted to tie them to you more closely than any of the regular employees. Joyce was a good case in point, so I tried to explain to Shirley about how difficult it would be to replace Joyce, and how her leaving the company would have a long term very negative effect on our profitability and efficiency. I told her we were looking for the kind of people who were as valuable and effective as Joyce was, for our brain trust. For people like that, you needed to offer more than just a job or a career. They had to be a part of the company too. They had to be so comfortable with you that they'd never want to leave. "If you go ahead and do what you're planning, you and Joyce, it will destroy what we already have. I know this. To you and Joyce, the business is a lot more important than it is to any of the rest of us. You're doing all of this for the business, something we don't care that much about, and it makes us feel like we aren't as important to you as we all thought we were. You're telling us you're willing to sacrifice what we have with you, just so your business runs better, and is easier for you to operate. Nobody will tell you this in front of Joyce, but all the X's are here just for you. We love Joyce, but she isn't why we all agreed to be in the group. We didn't join just so you could use us to make your business run better either." "You would still have me. We aren't talking about taking anything away, we're talking about adding more to our group." "We don't want to add more. We want it to stay just like it always has been. Can't you find another way to help the company, one you could do without changing what we have?" I wanted to tell Shirley that I shared all her doubts and fears. I wanted to tell her I would abandon my brain trust idea, or else modify it so that it didn't impact on our group. I wanted to, but I couldn't, not without first discussing everything with Joyce. Shirley had raised a valid point about the business only being important to Joyce and me. To the two of us, the company made up a large part of our lives. Both of us were willing to do quite a lot to insure that it grew and got stronger. "Shirley, I'm happy we had this talk, and you've given me some ideas I need to think about. I promise you that we won't add anyone to our group unless everyone already in the group gives their permission and approval for it. I need to speak with Joyce more about this. Maybe she and I have been thinking solely about the benefits this would bring to the two of us. We all need to give this a lot more thought." I spent the rest of the day in my classes, thinking about what Emily and Shirley had told me, and deciding what I needed to say to Joyce. This whole brain trust idea was evolving anyway. It was a problem, but Joyce and I were both good at finding solutions to problems. We just needed to come up with something that would achieve what we were after, without hurting what we already had. One thing was already clear to me, and that was there wasn't any way, at the present time, to merge the group and the brain trust together. We were going to have to come up with a plan that kept them separate, but allowed us all the benefits we'd have if they were merged. I started thinking about the modular concept we'd used for the group homes, building smaller, independent units, all loosely connected under the umbrella of a single corporation. Dad had done something similar with how he had integrated all of our companies, to make each one more efficient. They all worked together with some things, but each unit maintained its own, separate, identity. This is what the X's were trying to tell us. They wanted to keep their own separate identity. They were my wives, not company assets, or brain trust playthings. I was almost through with my final class of the day before I finally started understanding what I hadn't learned earlier, from what Emily and Shirley were trying to tell me. Joyce had the piece of paper that made her my wife, plus, she had the openness to sexual experiences that the X's didn't really have. In addition, the business was even more important to her than it was to me. It was the combination of all these things that made the brain trust merger with the group attractive to her. The X's only had my declaration of love for them, and none of them seemed very anxious to go outside our group to broaden their sexual experiences, in spite of what Joyce would have me believe. To all of them, the business was just something Joyce and I spent our time and energy with. It wasn't an important part of their attention or their focus. All of the sacrificing to make the brain trust into part of our group, would end up being done by the X's. Joyce wouldn't be giving up anything she valued, she'd be getting things that she wanted. I would be giving up my exclusive position in our group, as the only male sex partner in their lives. To Emily and Shirley, what we were asking seemed unfair. Looking at it from their viewpoint, I had to agree. It wasn't a balanced change we were requesting from them. I began to ask myself if I thought I'd have a big problem with sharing Joyce, and only Joyce, with other male members of the brain trust. I already knew, from Joyce herself, that she felt excited by the prospect, and that she felt very confident that it wouldn't change the way she felt about me. I wanted to have sex with Dale and Eddie. I also wanted them to become part of our brain trust. Mostly though, as a result of my talking with Shirley and Emily, I wanted to protect the family grouping that we had already formed. I wondered if the X's would accept the type of compromise I could see taking shape in my head. A group, consisting of our family, and another group, an extension, consisting of all the members of the brain trust. Joyce and I would have membership in both, but would commit to spending our nights, at home, with our real family. The sex part would be trickier, and it couldn't work unless there were both males and females living at the extension. Another tricky element would be explaining to Dale and Eddie that they were being excluded from our family. It was tricky, but not impossible. We didn't really know each other that well yet, and everything had happened very suddenly. They had come to us, hoping for nursery worker jobs. From the way Dale had reacted the night before, it seemed that she was as anxious as we were to get this situation settled. The real problem was going to be Joyce. I still remembered the fight we'd had over the way my Dad and I had handled Biddy Walter's leaking our data to Coinmark. When I'd told her later that evening, she and I had ended up in a shouting match that had disturbed everyone in our household. Joyce had told me that she should have known better than to have trusted me to handle anything that needed a firm hand and a strong stomach. She wanted Biddy in prison. She ended up calling my father, and the two of them spent a tense twenty minutes, on the phone, arguing about what needed to be done. In the end, Joyce and I had ended up sleeping apart for a whole week. My Dad and I finally ended up telling her that she couldn't go to the company's offices until she agreed that she'd accept what we'd done concerning Biddy's punishment, or lack of punishment. Joyce had been as upset over that as I'd ever seen her. True to her nature, she persisted in aggravating the hurts we'd inflicted on each other. She didn't, seemingly, couldn't, let it go. I don't think she would have gotten over it at all, if Ellen hadn't started screwing up some deliveries from one of the rail hubs. When faced with not being able to go up to Bolling to get things straightened out, Joyce decided that making her department run correctly was more important to her than seeing to it that Biddy got what Joyce thought she had coming. It was a very tense period, and Mama made it decidedly worse, when she sided with Joyce throughout this whole period. I'd stood up to her then though, even though I understood what she was feeling. I took her worst verbal assaults and scornful abuse, realizing it wasn't me she was really mad at, but the frustration over not having been there herself to see that the right thing, to her way of thinking, was done. This was another case where Joyce and I weren't going to be able to completely agree. In the past, when we disagreed, Joyce's tenacity would win out because of my unwillingness to continue fighting against her. She would simply wear me down. I didn't want to get into another contest of wills with her. I'd present my case and listen to her response. There might be some room for compromise, but not in the area where we continued to try to involve the X's with the brain trust. They would be welcome to interact with the brain trust, but it would have to be from their own initiative. I wouldn't prevent them from doing it, but I wouldn't encourage them, or more importantly, allow Joyce to encourage them, to do so. I came home ready to do battle with Joyce. She wasn't there. Phil told me that Joyce had borrowed his truck to use it to help move Dale and Eddie over to their new apartment. Joyce returned, alone, at six thirty. The rest of us were just finishing up with dinner when Joyce got back. She joined us in the dining room. "I got Dale and Eddie their own place, over by the campus. I thought it would be better, until all of us decide what we're going to do." Joyce walked over and hugged Emily when she said it. After, she hugged Shirley, and then Brenda. She finally came over to me and sat down in my lap. "I was going to tell you this morning, Kenny, but you were running late, and Shirley needed that ride. Our other idea wasn't going to work. I was up half the night trying to think of a way to make it work, without it spoiling what all of us have now. It just won't work to expand the group like that." "You're right. I have another idea that might work, but it has some complications that would need to get ironed out first. I agree that we have to keep the brain trust separate from the family, but we can still have the brain trust, and try to make it work like we make our family group work. We can use the modular extension concept. Only you and me would be part of the brain trust. I think the X's were mostly upset that we were getting them involved in something that wasn't their concern. I don't mean that we'll exclude them if they want to participate, only that it wouldn't be anything they'd necessarily have to involve themselves in." "You mean that you and Joyce would be off fucking other people, but we could stay home and wait until you decided you wanted to come spend some time with us?" I looked over at Emily, the whole time I was holding Joyce tightly around the waist, to keep her from jumping up and making the situation worse. "You need to start working on that giving people the benefit of the doubt thing yourself, Em. I think Joyce and I have both shown good faith with you by trying to come up with a plan that doesn't force you to participate, while still accomplishing what we need to get done. Whatever we come up with, to you it will always be a plot to take something away from you. I'm tired of having to always deal with that attitude. I'm trying my hardest, and doing my best. There are a lot of other people we're trying to think of and protect. Everything we do isn't just about you. The business isn't important to you, but it is important to a lot of us, and to several thousand people who depend on us to keep the business solvent, so they can continue to draw a paycheck." "You didn't answer my question, Kenny. Does your plan include you and Joyce having sex with those brain trust people?" "Yes." "Okay, does your plan mean you'll be spending a lot of time with the brain trust, time you now spend with us?" I looked at her, deciding to go along and answer her question, even though I knew by then that my answer wasn't going to matter to her. "We'll be spending whatever time it requires. Sometimes, it will be a lot, just like we do now, at work, when something comes up, and we need to get it straightened out. The main change is that we plan to keep the two groups separate from you and the other X's. We'd keep our group just the way it is now. Only Joyce and I would belong to both groups." "Do we get a vote, or is this something you and Joyce will decide all alone?" Emily was going to push this, and it was pretty obvious no plan was going to satisfy her. She wanted everything to stay the same. "You get a vote, Emily, but this time we'll go by whatever the majority decides. I'd rather sit here discussing it, to try to find something that everyone can live with. If you want to put it to a vote, and you agree to abide by whatever the majority decides, then let's vote." "You said you'd never make me accept something I didn't want." "No, I said I'd never force you to do anything you didn't want to do, like fuck some guy or girl. All of us have to accept things we don't want to, that's just a part of living. You act like you're the only one that needs to be considered, and you get mad because we don't all accept your position on that. Right now, you're being disruptive, just for the sake of wanting to be disagreeable." "I vote we leave everything the way it is. I don't want you and Joyce going off fucking other people. That wasn't what we agreed on." "I vote for that too, Kenny. If you and Joyce go outside the group for sex, it weakens what we have. It makes all the X's less important to you." Brenda sat there speaking, a tenseness on her face, and a slight quavering to her voice as she spoke. She seemed upset, but determined in her stand. We all turned to Shirley. If she sided with Emily and Brenda, my proposal was defeated. "I'll do whatever Joyce and Kenny thinks is best. At least they are trying to come up with a way that is easier on us than making the whole group bigger. I don't like them having sex outside the group, but they both think they have to in order to get what they want." I felt relieved. It had been close, but I really thought, when they saw the way having the two groups would benefit all of us, and how it could get so much more done by having it, that they would soon become adjusted and accepting of the new way. "I vote with Emily and Brenda, Kenny. No matter how much we try to prevent it, us having sex outside the group will end up hurting what we now have." Joyce had crossed me up again. I had more than half suspected that Shirley would side with the other X's, but when she didn't, I thought we had won. Why would Joyce scuttle an idea that I was certain she agreed with? "What are you voting against, Joyce, the idea of having sex outside the group, or the one about us having a brain trust to help run the business?" There were times, like right then, when I knew that Joyce and I were miles apart, philosophically. All the things we managed to do together, and most of them so well, but, when the chips were down, we each voted for our own selfish interests. She'd done this to me before when she did what Mama had told her to do. I'd done it to her too, with the Biddy Walters decision, and with my running away for months after that time I lost it in Ridgeline. These great big chasms we each dug, chasms that increased the distance we kept between ourselves. Each of these chasms were costly, for both of us. "I'm voting with, not against, Kenny. There is too much at risk for us to push this thing through, just because tonight we happen to have a slim majority. This isn't a majority vote type of question. For something as important as this is, we need unanimity, and we obviously don't have that yet. We need to do what you said, keep on talking and thinking about it, until we find something that will work well for all of us." I was able to breathe better again, right after she explained her thinking. I understood why she had voted as she had. In essence, she was agreeing with what I'd said to Emily earlier. Still, her vote had aided Emily's position. I was still going to need to gather a brain trust. To me, the vote had been about outside fucking, and Emily had won that vote. It wasn't as though I was going without. I had more than enough, with Joyce, and all the X's. Still, something needed to be done with Dale and Eddie. We had to make a fast decision concerning what their status was going to be with our group. "What about Eddie and Dale? How did they take it when you decided to get them their own apartment?" I turned Joyce's head to me when I asked her the question. "Dale's still upset about us not doing what I told her we would. Eddie is just happy to be out of their old living situation with her cousin's family. They liked it when I said nothing was changed as far as them being part of our brain trust. I think they were impressed when I paid their rent up until the time school lets out in the summer. I gave them five hundred dollars, to buy food, and to get some things they'll need for their apartment. I called your father, and put both of them on our payroll, for two hundred a week each. Neither one of them drives, did you know that?" "We still need to spend time with them, and to get them involved in helping with business things. I want them to know this is a real job we're offering them. Eddie already showed me a way to fix a display problem I was having with my trading program. She's supposed to go to Radio Shack with me to pick up whatever she said she needed to take care of that." "What does everybody think about Dale and Eddie? The last time we talked about them, they were right here with us. I'm willing to accept that they are only going to be brain trust people, and I think Kenny is too." I nodded that I accepted that. "The thing is, before we had the problem with deciding about mixing in the brain trust with the family, we promised both of them that Kenny and I would sleep with them." Joyce stopped talking. I expected Emily to jump right in, to remind us we'd all just voted not to fuck outsiders. Instead, Brenda spoke first. "I like both of them. Since they're girls, I think they are more like Ellen than regular outsiders. If Kenny uses a rubber, I don't mind." "Do we all get to do things with them, or is it just you and Kenny?" Emily was full of surprises. "We should do them like we did Ellen, make them eat all of us, if they want to fuck Kenny." I looked over at Shirley. It sounded like she'd managed to get over her reluctance for doing things with girls. I spoke up then. "We don't even know if they do girl things. Did you ask them, Joyce?" "I didn't have to. Eddie told me that Dale can only cum when she's going down on her. Dale really has a big problem with having orgasms." "Kenny can get her over that." Shirley giggled when she said that, but all the other girls nodded that they thought so too. I felt like part of what was happening was that the X's were giving me the sisters as a consolation prize, because they thought I felt really bad about them voting against my proposal earlier. I wasn't about to try to convince them it wasn't necessary. I could be gracious and humble in defeat. "I'll see them tomorrow then, and we'll invite them to come home with us to Ridgeline. Do we tell them right away that they have to do all of us, or do we wait, and bring it up after we're already back home?" Joyce was back taking charge of things. The situation at the dinner table had gotten more relaxed, with all the tension dissipated. The decision had been made. Joyce wasn't the only girl at the table that seemed excited. As the discussion proceeded, it seemed like all the girls were in favor of letting Joyce and me get things started with Dale and Eddie, and then they would come in sometime later, and do the same as they'd done with Ellen that other time. I thought it interesting that none of the X's seemed at all concerned that one or both of the sisters might be unreceptive to their attentions. I tried to put the thought of failing, when attempting to overcome Dale's orgasm problems, out of my mind. She had certainly seemed very responsive to all my touching when she was sitting on my lap before. When she was grinding her ass as hard as she could, against my hard on, it had really seemed like she wanted it, and like she knew what she wanted to do with it when she got it. I figured I would be able to work something out that would be satisfying for her, just as long as I had a willing subject for a partner. I decided that I'd sooner be worried about the possibility of not being able to satisfy Dale, than being worried that our family was being split apart because of some of my ideas. I also knew that Dale could cum from Eddie's tongue. I had a tongue, and a pretty decent track record with using it. If all else failed, I could always fall back on that. Bea had shown me a whole lot of ways to find out what women wanted. She said all women had a hot button, if you only knew where to look for it. So far, I'd always been able to find it with the girls I'd been able to get into bed with me. I wasn't as big a man as the mythical Big Luther, but I knew I'd have no difficulty with moving Dale all around in my bed. Joyce was tiny too, and when I threw her all around, like some kind of a rag doll, something snapped inside her head, and she really got super hot from the feelings of helplessness, of being with someone who was so much bigger and stronger. With a whole weekend to work on her, I'd come up with something that worked. I felt like I was bound to. That night, I simply licked Joyce to a few nice cums. I wouldn't let her bring me to orgasm. I was trying to save myself for the weekend. Dale was going to present a challenge, and I didn't want to not be able to rise to the occasion. If I could make Dale cum, that would go a long way to tying her and her sister to us. From that first, tenuous, link, we could build up to a better and more balanced relationship. You had to begin somewhere, and giving a satisfying orgasm to a girl not used to getting them, that was probably as good a place to begin as any. ------- Chapter 29 The weekend didn't start or end anything at all like Joyce and I had expected it to. In fact, the only thing that did go as we had expected, was the trip up to Ridgeline. This was because Dale and Eddie's mother had suffered a convulsive seizure back home in Chickasaw, Oklahoma, early that Friday afternoon. She had later lapsed into a near comatose state before being discovered by a neighbor, and rushed, by ambulance, to the community hospital. Dale had called over to her mother's home from Ridgeline, right after we arrived, because she needed to let her mother know the address for her and Eddie's new apartment. A neighbor lady answered the phone, and she told Dale what had happened. An hour later, Eddie, Dale, Shirley, and I were flying to Oklahoma in my plane. Joyce, Emily, and Brenda stayed at home with the children. As soon as we arrived at the hospital, Mrs. Pipkin's physician told us that she had suffered a bad reaction to her new blood pressure medication. The convulsive seizure, as well as her subsequent lethargic condition, were enough to concern her doctor, and he wanted to order up a whole series of tests intended to help him get a better understanding about what had taken place. The problem that troubled him was justifying all the expense of conducting those tests, given his patient's lack of insurance coverage, and limited financial means. Fortunately, being in a position to help with the expenses was something I could do to help Dale and Eddie. I told the doctor to go ahead and order up any tests he thought might help him illuminate Mrs. Pipkin's medical condition. When he asked me if there was a spending limit he needed to observe, indicating that some of the tests might be extremely expensive, I just repeated my earlier statement about him doing anything he thought might help to provide better care for his patient. At some point, and this was relatively early in their testing procedures, they discovered a repairable aneurysm, and a blood clot that had formed high up in the neck area. Mrs. Pipkin was in surgery twenty minutes after the aneurysm was found, and in a post operative recovery room two hours later. The procedure went well, and I was able to meet Mrs. Pipkin, for the first time, early on Saturday afternoon. She was a lot younger looking than I had pictured her being, and even with the energy drain of all she'd just been through, a lively and good humored woman. She thanked me for helping to get the tests performed on her. The doctor had told all of us that those tests had led to his timely discovery of that potentially life threatening problem. She began by asking me questions about just who I was, who Shirley was to me, and then wanted to know what relationship I had, or hoped to have, with either of her two daughters. I tried my best to turn the topic of conversation away from me, to get back to discussing her current state of health and future physical well being. She wasn't having any of that though. "You may as well just come out and tell me, Kenny. Won't help you any to try to turn my head away from talking about this. It would be better if you were to tell me what it is you're planning on doing with my two babies." Like most people, her early reactions were turned into disquieting fears as soon as she sensed I was trying to avoid answering her question. I didn't want to risk upsetting her, and my sidestepping her question was causing that to happen. I started in with answering her by first telling her about my whole brain trust concept. I described the role that I hoped Dale and Eddie would play. After starting to explain about our company, I ended up admitting to not wanting to spend my whole waking life tied down with the responsibility for operating the family business, like my Dad. She stopped me before I could get into any of the nuts and bolts of my idea. "You keep talking around my question, Kenny, are you sleeping with or trying to sleep with either of these girls?" She was pointing at her daughters, as she was sitting up in her hospital bed, with the bed cranked up in the back. She had her head propped up with several pillows. I was sitting in a chair by the side of the bed, so she was elevated above me, and looking down, with a definite frown forming on her face. "Mama, you can't go asking him those kinds of questions. It isn't any business of yours anyhow. Eddie and I don't need any help protecting ourselves that way." Dale had leaned in from the foot of the bed, placing a hand on her mother's foot, and shaking it to get her mother's attention as she spoke. "You don't tell me what questions I get to ask, girl. I'm your mother, I can ask any damn question I feel like asking. This boy is already cheating on his wife, with this here other girl, cause she's sure enough pregnant, and I'm guessing that he's going to be the daddy. Man like that, he don't stop at just one other girl. He'll be sniffing after you two soon enough, I don't miss my guess." "Mrs. Pipkin, I don't cheat on my wife, or on any of my wives. The truth of it is, Shirley is my wife too, and, yes, she is pregnant with my child. I have four wives, and all of them are pregnant, but I don't see what any of that has to do with Eddie and Dale, or with you, for that matter." "Me? Boy, it don't have nothing to do with me. You might can talk Dee and Dee Dee into giving up the leg, but I've got way too much sense to fall for any of your sweet talking. I'm only afraid you might be taking advantage of these young, impressionable girls, what with all that money waving you've been doing to try to impress them." Dee and Dee Dee? Were those their nicknames? "If you call them Dee and Double Dee, you must be Triple Dee." I was staring at her large breasts, barely contained under the robe she was wearing. For some reason, it struck me as a funny set of nicknames to give to Dale and Eddie. "Don't you go and try to change the subject. Are you planning on sleeping with either of my girls?" Mrs. Pipkin adjusted her robe, checking to be sure she wasn't giving me more of a eyeful than she thought she was doing. I could see by then that she was enjoying herself at my expense. At first, she had me fooled, and then she had me going around in circles, as I tried to skirt away from giving a direct answer to her question. Like her daughters though, she had a twinkle in her dark brown eyes that gave it away that she was only playing with me. "You're the one trying to change the subject, Mrs. P. Maybe I was hoping to have a little something with Dee and Dee Dee, but that was before I met their mama. Now, I'm thinking I might just hold off for awhile, at least until they unhook you from all those wires and I.V.'s. Could be I want to find out if the water is sweeter if I drink it directly from the well, rather than having to be satisfied with drinking it only from the buckets." That did it for her, she knew then that I had caught on to her. Soon after that, all of us were laughing and kidding around together, able to relax and speak in a friendly way with each other. It turned out that Mrs. Pipkin needed to stay in the hospital for a few more days before she could be released, but she was moved over to a regular hospital room soon after we left Oklahoma the next morning. We got back to Ridgeline just in time to pack up our things and make the journey, by car, back to Lawrence. I rode back with Joyce and our children, and Dee and Dee Dee rode back with Shirley, Derek and Leah. Joyce and I talked about what had happened, and both of us thought that it might have been a good thing for Dale and Eddie to first understand that we would be there for them, and that our commitment was far more than simply a business, financial, or sexual commitment alone. Neither of us thought there was any hurry about us having sex with them. Tuesday afternoon, after classes, Eddie and Dale came over to the house to give us an update on their mother's progress, (she was ready to leave the hospital, and would return to her home the following morning) and to join us for dinner. A large part of our dinner conversation was given over to thinly disguised sexual innuendo, with some rampant flirting, for the most part initiated by Eddie, Joyce, and Emily. "I can't stand being around Dale when she gets like this, Kenny. You've got her walking around in full heat now." Eddie laughed, and avoided yet another under the table kick aimed at her legs, by an embarrassed Dale. "Why you going and kicking me, Dee? I'm only telling the God's honest truth. You know you've been just pining away, dying to find out if Kenny can deliver the goods or not." "Didn't Kenny tell you girls what we all decided, Eddie?" Joyce spoke up before Dale had an opportunity to rebut her sister's accusations. "Tell me what?" Eddie looked over at me. I just shrugged, unsure as to what Joyce meant, and willing to allow her to explain it herself. "Kenny's our resource, Eddie. We don't just loan him out without getting something back in return." Emily was laughing when she said that, but Shirley and Brenda were nodding their agreement too. "Like what? Are we supposed to pay you for him, or something?" Eddie was asking in a serious way, confused over what Joyce and Emily were saying. "A while ago, we needed some help with a big problem we had at the company, and Kenny told this girl that he'd sleep with her, if she could learn how to take care of things after we all left and came here to school. We girls all decided that she'd have to do things with all of us if she was going to do things with Kenny and Joyce. We made her lick all of us." Eddie and Dale were both looking at me. Dale seemed upset, but Eddie was still smiling. I figured I better not waste any time before explaining things to the sisters. "That wasn't something they bothered to discuss in advance with Joyce and me. I didn't have any idea about it happening, not before they came into our bedroom. We both would have stopped it, if Ellen had shown even the slightest reluctance. It wasn't part of the deal we had with her, but she didn't seem to mind at all, when the girls came into our room and started playing with her." All seven of us were silent at the table, waiting for someone else to speak up. Time seemed to slow as the silence lengthened. It was becoming uncomfortable in the room. "Kenny has to do us both first, and he has to make Dee have at least two good tingles. If he can't do that, then we don't have to do anything with all the rest of you all." Eddie was looking right at Joyce, intent on negotiating with what she perceived as the higher authority. "She's not speaking for me. I'm not going to do that with all four of these girls. If Kenny makes me cum, I'll do it to Joyce, but that's all I'll agree to do." Dale looked over at me when she spoke, negotiating directly with me. "If you only cum once, you don't have to do anything with the X's, but if you cum more than once, you have to do all of us. That goes for each of you." Emily was speaking right to Dale. It was Eddie who responded though. "I've got no problem doing all of you all, Emily, but first Kenny has to prove he can make Dee cum. If he can make her get off, I'm not even going to worry about whether he can satisfy me." Eddie stood up and walked behind where her sister was sitting. She leaned in and whispered something I couldn't hear. Dale shook her head from side to side, and then Eddie whispered something else to her. I couldn't hear this either. None of this was going anything like I'd pictured it. I'm not sure what I had thought was going to happen, but I know it didn't start with both sides sitting around a table, negotiating terms. "Look guys, I'll be in my bedroom. You all need to decide what it is you can all agree to, then Joyce can let me know what you've decided." I stood up, and, surprisingly, Dale stood up as well. When I walked over in the direction of the staircase, Dale started to follow after me. I stopped, looking over at Joyce, hoping she would take charge, and bring some order to what was going on. I was confused. "Take Dale up to our room, Kenny. The rest of us will stay right here. Eddie has already said she'd take care of all of us, if you take care of Dale. We're counting on you to make all of us proud." Joyce was teasing me. I could see that she and Emily had cooked up this whole situation. I also could see that Eddie was eager to see her sister out of the way, so that she could begin doing things with all my wives. Since the very beginning, I'd sensed that Eddie was similar to Joyce when it came to sexual situations. She got hot just from thinking about possibilities. She was obviously turned on by what was happening right then. I moved back, but just far enough to grab for Dale's hand, and then, with her firmly in hand, I started moving forward, towards the staircase again. She quickly moved forward with me, so that, by the time we arrived at the staircase, she was side by side with me. I could already smell her aroused state. We were halfway up the stairs before Dale spoke to me. "Eddie likes doing things with girls, but she's the only girl I ever did anything with before. Eddie said she'd take care of them, so that I wouldn't have to. Is that okay with you?" It was getting difficult for me to think clearly. I heard what she asked, but I was already thinking about how I was going to manage to make her have an orgasm. I was focussed on that, to the exclusion of any other thoughts. "You have to do Joyce if I give you one orgasm. You need to do one of the other ones for each time I make you cum. You can tell me to stop whenever you don't want to cum anymore." "Suppose you don't make me cum? What happens then?" "You don't have to worry about that, Dale, because making you cum isn't going to be a problem. The problem is going to be with you deciding if you want to quit before you owe all the girls a good licking." I felt a shudder passing through her as she paused between steps on the staircase. How could she be having the troubles Eddie claimed she had with cumming? She seemed so responsive every time we got close together like this, and the talk turned to sex. I felt confident as I led her back towards the bedroom Joyce and I shared. "It isn't going to be as easy as you think it will be. No man has even come close. I can't do it for myself most times. I get so close, but then it stops. Only Eddie can get me over the top, and she can only do it about one time for every five or six attempts." Inside my bedroom, I undressed her slowly. I had deliberately turned on all the lights. I wanted to see her without her clothes. Part of the problem might be that she was inhibited, or shy around other people, but she really didn't seem that way. She wasn't as outgoing as her sister, but she wasn't really shy. I finished undressing her, and then hurried out of my own clothes. I was happy to see that my dick was throbbing, bouncing up and down with every beat of my heart. It was ready. To someone tiny, like Joyce or either of the Pipkin sisters, my dick had to look pretty big. To Joyce, that was exciting. I wasn't sure how Dale would react to it. When I pulled her close to me, she groaned, and then wiggled around until my dick was resting between her big breasts. For some reason, I decided that the best way to be sure she could orgasm would be to tease her. What she'd said about getting close, and then having it all go away, that reminded me of something that Bea had taught me years before, about being careful not to over stimulate the clitoris. She had said that some girls can't take anything stronger than having a breath blowing softly on their clit, until they were already too far along to retreat from sensations by being over stimulated into numbness. I spent over an hour with her on the bed, touching her in places that were always away from her pussy, and paying close attention to all the different parts of her body that responded to my touching. We did a lot of kissing, and I could feel her increasing arousal, by the passionate nature of her kisses, and by the heat of her upper lip, and the warmth of her breath. It was incremental progress, agonizingly slow, as I carefully built on her own excitement. To go so slow was an almost painful thing for me. I really wanted to just climb up in her saddle and possess her totally, using all of my brute strength to overpower her. I knew that was what she was expecting from me. After a few minutes, as she got more excited, that was what she began encouraging me to do. Instead of doing what we both wanted, I resisted, continuing to take tiny steps forward, gauging, at every opportunity, the increase in her responsiveness, and in her body's increasing physical needs. By the time I first tasted of the juices collecting between her thighs, we were both well beyond what would be considered the normal state of excitement and readiness. I was careful to not allow myself to give any manual stimulation on or near her clit. The very first time I leaned down and blew on her clit, she screamed my name. I had to resist the pressure her two small hands were exerting on the back of my head, as she tried to force me down so that she could get the contact, and thus, the stimulation that her pussy was demanding from her. I knew she was very close to cumming, and I had already spread her thighs with my body nestled between them, trapping her hands in my own. There was a thick sheen of perspiration on both our bodies as we dueled with each other, each of us trying to take control of how our lovemaking was going to play itself out. I had spent fifteen minutes or more teasing her pussy, culminating, finally, with super light flicks from very tip of my tongue, and warm gentle gushes of air from between my lips. Her hips had taken on a life of their own, and she was doing her best, although unsuccessfully, to buck herself up, so that her pussy could make some contact with my face. There came a point where my patience and her need had become contrary points, the opposite ends of two very converse positions. My patience was stretched so thin as to become nothingness, and her need had grown to where it must have seemed like everything to her. I moved my cock head up to get it into position, trapping her hips in a raised up, welcoming angle. She felt and saw my dick head, as it flopped down against her needy opening. I knelt over her like this, poised to penetrate her, but remaining still, continuing with the excruciating tease that had played out between us for so long. "Please. I know I can cum, Kenny." I had raised up just a tiny fraction more, creating a slight separation of my dick from her hungry pussy. I settled back gently, regaining the lightest possible contact. After stopping all my movement for another minute, I then moved up and back, slowly, before lifting back up, and, again, breaking off physical contact with her pussy. I repeated this, twenty times or more, making certain, each time, that the contact wasn't enough to give her the satisfaction she was aching to achieve. In her frustration, she started to cry. She was now physically exhausted from her efforts at trying to lift her small frame up against the power I was using to hold her back from what she sought. I began talking to her, describing for her what I was almost ready to do. I used graphic language, trying to provoke a word picture in her mind, one that she could visualize, to see, in her imagination, what I was preparing to do to her. I timed it so that I sank my shaft into her, just at the second when she was fully engaged in trying to lift up her hips to provoke greater pressure sensations between her legs. It surprised her, and, because she was surprised, her reaction was instinctive, welcoming me immediately into her depths. I didn't pause to allow her any accommodation to my intrusion. I immediately hunched up closer, and began fucking in and out for all I was worth, like a dog, coupling with a bitch in full heat. All that slow preparation, now, suddenly abandoned, my own need overtaking whatever teasing technique I had previously been able to show her. My plan was abandoned, just at the point where I looked to be succeeding. I would have been so disappointed in my performance, especially after all the time and effort I'd put in to get to the point where I'd run out of patience, but Dale saved me from that by clutching my head in both her arms and hunching back at me for all she was worth as well. The two of us achieved our goal at the same instant, but neither of us slowed from the frenzied coupling we had so long denied ourselves. I hadn't managed to cum again by the time Dale started pushing me away from her, crying out that she was too sensitive to continue. By then, according to our agreement, she now needed to lick all of my wives. When I rolled off of her, my eyes were certainly wild, my nostrils flared, with my continuing unsatisfied needs. I desperately desired further physical release. I needed it right away. I got up from the bed, making my way out into the hallway, hoping to find someone to help me with my problem. I was able to find the others by following after the noises I heard coming from Brenda and Emily's wing. Like me, they had left all of the lights on, and I was greeted by an erotic tableau as Shirley had her legs raised up in the air, her voice loudly encouraging Eddie's lingual exertions between her legs. Joyce was busy doing the same thing for Emily, while Brenda rested, with both hands holding and caressing her distended belly. I spent the next ten minutes behind Eddie, my dick pushing in and bottoming out inside her, as she tongued Shirley to at least two further orgasms. By the time I managed to cum again, I was so tired that I just withdrew, collapsing in a heap, right there on the bedroom floor. It was some time later when Joyce nudged me gently with her foot. "Did you make Dale cum, Kenny?" I opened my eyes and looked at Joyce. She looked disheveled and sated, her eyes still a little glazed over from her recent exertions. I nodded my head, indicating that I had gotten Dale to orgasm. "How many times?" "I'm not sure. There at the end, they kind of ran together. I'm sure of at least four times though." I shielded my eyes from the light as I watched her moving towards the bedroom door. I knew she was heading over to our bedroom, anxious to be the first woman from our family to claim her due. If I'd had more energy, I'd have gotten up and chased after her, to warn her about what Dale had confided to me. I hoped it wasn't going to end up in a bad scene, with Dale resisting Joyce's advances. When I was finally able to get up and head back to my own bedroom, another ten minutes had gone by. When I opened the closed bedroom door, I found all of the lights turned off, and Joyce and Dale asleep in each other's arms. I realized that I needed to have greater faith in Joyce's ability to correctly interpret other people's moods and needs. When I woke up at seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, Eddie was sucking my dick, and Joyce and Dale were watching us, enjoying the show. When she had me sufficiently aroused, Eddie climbed on top, riding me to several orgasms. After she slid off, Joyce took a turn. Dale stayed where she was, watching all of us, but not joining in on any of it. I ended up being fifteen minutes late for the lecture of my first morning class. It was worth it. ------- Chapter 30 On the 16th of February, 1990, a Friday, Brenda delivered my son, Dwight Richard Parsons, into our lives. It was an easy delivery for Brenda, which was a good thing, as she had been fearful of having another difficult birth, similar to what she had endured back when April had been born. Again, Mama was there for the birth. No one had said anything about Mama's relationship to this baby, but all of us could see that "Dwightee" was a very special new addition to the family, at least in Mama's eyes. 'Doted' would be too mild of a word to describe the way Mama felt and acted towards our new baby. She lavished him with her attention, and spared no expense in seeing to his care, including hiring another girl, in transition from foster care, to serve as Brenda's assistant in caring for April and Dwightee. The new girl, Natalie, was eighteen years old, and very pretty, in a brassy sort of way. She reminded me a little of Bea in the way she always tried to show herself off to men in the most flattering ways. It was a little bit funny to observe the way she threw her shoulders back to puff out her chest, and sucked in her stomach, whenever an adult male came into any room she was in. The X's had a lot of fun imitating her mannerisms around me. I thought Natalie was very sweet natured, and I tried to go out of my way to make her feel welcome. Of course, my wives all misinterpreted the reasons for my attentions, attributing it to some kind of a sexual interest I was supposed to have for her. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She was just a girl who enjoyed having men pay attention to her good looks. It made her happier knowing that she was being admired. I suspected that Joyce and Emily were both interested in Natalie, but I didn't tease them about their interest. Eddie had set up that third monitor in my home office, and had managed to merge both signals together by using a new video card in one of my computers. It took me a month to be able to mentally integrate what I was seeing on the new screen, and even then, I needed to refer back to the other two screens with their separated feeds. I kept trading the grains, and only watching the metals and the Dollar. On March 17th, a Saturday, Emily gave birth to our daughter, Carolyn Constance Parsons. This was another name chosen solely by Emily. Within a week, we all called the new baby either "C.C." or "Sissy", and Emily was the only one who ever referred to her as Carolyn. This too was a quick and easy labor, lasting less than two hours, and culminating in a birth after a single hard push. At least, that's what Emily told all of us. I thought she was simply trying to get one up on Brenda, but there is no doubt that it was over with very quickly. April 9th, a Monday, Joyce delivered our daughter, Gwendolyn Rene Parsons, after spending nine hours in hard labor. After the easy time of it that Emily and Brenda had experienced, Joyce seemed a little bitter about her ordeal. This name was one that Joyce had decided on after looking through several baby naming books. The baby had such soft skin that I started calling her 'Silk', and the name caught on, after first being changed slightly to 'Silky'. On April 26th, a Thursday, Rebecca Starr Parsons was born to Shirley and me. Shirley had an easier time of it this time too, managing to spend only three and a half hours in labor. It helped that Becky weighed in at six and a half pounds, and was only nineteen inches long. Shirley seemed very relieved that this baby wasn't already tall. We had discussed possible names for the baby, and, surprisingly, Shirley agreed to use one of the names I had suggested. I had proposed Ringo Starr, in case it was a boy, and Shirley liked the name Starr for a girl. I was just happy and relieved that all of the children were born healthy, and that all my wives came through it without any problems. Twelve happy, healthy, children, that was more than enough for me. I was ready to close that chapter of my life down, looking forward to the raising and nurturing of all those little lives. I was sitting at my desk at home, ruminating about all of my blessings, staring off into nothingness, when I happened to focus on the new monitor I had placed off to the side, away from my trading program monitor. Before, I'd had all three monitors lined up side by side, and it had been a little unsettling and confusing, trying to follow all three screens at once. I'm not sure how long I'd been watching the integrated signal before I became consciously aware of doing so. It must have been several minutes though, because I started discerning a tradeable pattern between the Dollar and the grains. They had both taken off in opposite directions, and the metals had stayed steady. I called my floor trader at the CME in Chicago and started buying future Dollars. At the same time, I manually began selling each of the four grain contracts I was currently trading, trying to strike a dollar amount equivalent between the two types of trades. As soon as I completed setting up my trades, I realized that I'd made an error, and called to set up new grain sales in forward contract months. Once these were completed, I began moving in and out of the current contracts for grains, ignoring the third screen except for glancing at it occasionally, to make certain that the general pattern hadn't changed between the Dollar's value, and the forward trading months in the grains. I now had a box set up that would allow me to trade twice the number of current grain contracts as what I'd previously managed. I had a forward price cushion for the time value of the grain storage, and an inflation hedge with the Dollar purchase. By using the Dollar's position relative to the grains, I had eliminated a lot of the upside price risk in the grains. If the Dollar rallied, I'd have that profit to offset my grain losses, and if the Dollar continued to tank, I'd have big grain profits to offset that loss. I didn't have very long to wait, as the Dollar quickly regained all of that day's earlier losses, finishing up slightly ahead of the previous day's close. Because that Dollar volatility had been caused by Middle East oil rumors, the grain prices ended up not really being affected too much. I closed out my Dollar trades, ending up with a large profit. I closed out the forward futures contracts as well, making another very slight profit, before reducing all my current contract trading positions to their normal levels. It took me several hours to compute my end of day profits from my dollar and forward grain contract trades. As I'd hoped, the profit was very substantial. In two hours of trading on the divergence of the Dollar and the grains, I'd netted over seven hundred thousand dollars. I could see that this wasn't a trade I could initiate very often, but it was one that would prove very lucrative, over time. It wasn't yet as much as I had hoped for, but this single instance of a tradeable signal had more than paid me back for every cent I'd spent in research and development costs. I ended my day with a grain profit on my normal trading program that was comparable to one and a half times my normal daily average. It took me several more hours of dissecting the trade confirmations to draw a rough comparison between what I would normally have made and what I did make. When I was finished, I found that I'd increased what my normal grain profit would have been by some seventy percent. At dinner, I told Joyce and the X's about my trading day, and about the Dollar divergence, explaining how I'd been able to see the signal, and then successfully exploit it. Joyce followed my explanation easily, and Emily seemed to understand how significant this new trading possibility was. Brenda and Shirley didn't seem to be paying attention to anything I was saying until I mentioned that I'd had almost a million dollar trading profit for the day. That got Brenda's attention right away. She asked me if I'd included her account in my trading. I told her that I had, that it was automatic to spread all of my trades as evenly as possible between the fourteen accounts I was then trading. She did the math quickly in her head, arriving at an approximate $75,000.00 profit for her account. I confirmed her figure for her, knowing that her account was actually the third largest one I was then trading, so that her true profit was probably closer to one hundred thousand dollars. "How much money do I have in my account now?" Brenda was definitely interested in money, especially when it was her money. "I think it's a little more than nine million dollars, but remember we just paid some pretty hefty taxes for last year's gains." Brenda looked shocked at me telling her that her account was worth that amount of money. "How much of that is money I'm going to have to give the government?" "I guess that depends on how we end up in December. At the rate we've been going, you'll probably owe about four million dollars, but you should have around fifteen million by then, so you'll end up with about eleven million, net for you." This was the part I loved to talk to Brenda about. To her, money equalled status and position. There were many levels of wealthy, and she aspired to all of them. All of them above where she currently was. Her greatest fear was her losing her money somehow, like her brother had. "Is there a way I can not have to pay that money in taxes? Can I donate it instead?" "You still have to pay taxes on adjusted gross income, Brenda. If you give away four million dollars, that reduces your gross taxable income, but it won't lower your taxes by anything like four million, more like a little less than one point eight million, counting State and Federal taxes." "Can't we make my money tax exempt, like you did for the group homes?" I smiled over at her. This was so typically Brenda. She didn't understand why a charitable, not for profit organization, should have a tax preference that she wasn't also entitled to. I didn't know any way to answer her that she would find comfortable, or even acceptable. "Rich people have to pay a lot of taxes, Brenda. That's one of the burdens of being wealthy. The more taxes you pay, the more it's a sign of how wealthy you are becoming. This year, you'll easily be in the top one percent of individual taxpayers. That's quite a select group to be a part of." "Are you sure, Kenny? I'm in the top one percent?" Brenda seemed pleased with this news. "Probably in the top one half of one percent, Brenda. I doubt there are many other individuals, as young as you, who are paying the kind of taxes you'll be paying. If you go just by age, you're probably in the top one hundredth of one percent, probably even more than that, maybe as much as one in ten million. If I keep having enough time for my trading, and it keeps getting better, in a few years, you might be the top one in one hundred million." Brenda was beaming her most radiant smile at me, right up until I got to the part about if I had enough time to continue with my trading. Always before, when we had spoken about the need for having a brain trust, it was presented in a way that made it seem like I wanted it so that I wouldn't need to work at the company as hard or as long as my father did. To her, my wanting to work less seemed selfish. Brenda had always taken the position that having a brain trust wasn't worth her having to give up the access to me she had become used to having. For the first time, she began to realize what my not having the free time to continue with my grain trading could mean to her personal finances. She wasn't happy with the thought that I might have to stop growing her fortune. In that way she reminded me of Mama. "Why would you ever stop, Kenny? Look at all the money you're making all of us." "Trading takes a lot of time and concentration, Brenda. So does running my Dad's company. I won't be able to do both, not without a lot of help. I could still do some, but nothing like what I've been doing." "You should have explained it to me this way before. It makes sense to me now. Before I thought you just wanted more time to take it easy, like after work, and on weekends. I didn't know you meant you wouldn't be able to trade like you do now. How come you and Joyce didn't explain that part of it to us before?" "Maybe because it seemed pretty obvious to us. The brain trust isn't just for me or Joyce. It's for all of our family, so we can all have more time together to do the other things we want to do. The same thing goes for the group homes. Right now, all the money to operate them comes from my trading profits, and the money the State sends us. Because the trusts are tax exempt, it only costs us half as much income to operate them. We fund the trusts out of current income, but without the profits from trading, we'd have to use money that wasn't current income. It would end up costing us a lot more, because that money has already been taxed once before. We might have to cut back on the group home funding, to whatever our current income was. It wouldn't change that much, but it would probably mean the end of us expanding with new extensions." I had noticed that Emily and Shirley were both paying attention to the discussion concerning group home funding. Maybe Brenda was right, maybe Joyce and I should have emphasized the benefits to each of the X's. I was trading some of the trust money I'd set up for each of the X's and our children. All of us were benefiting, directly, from my trading profits. Emily had started taking a greater interest in impoverished children there in Lawrence, and had been getting after me to fund another food giveaway program in Lawrence and Kansas City. I was willing to do so, and I had the money available, but it would have to be someone else, besides me, overseeing the program. "You don't need to sleep with any of these people, Kenny. That's just something you and Joyce added, because you both wanted to sleep with more people." Emily was already ahead of me. She seemed to have this ability to reach inside my head and know what I was thinking at times. Thankfully, it wasn't all the time. "You might be right, Emily, about the part where it isn't necessary for any of us to sleep with the brain trust people. Joyce and I both thought it was, in order to tie them to us in a way stronger than a regular employer employee relationship would ever be. In our business, you don't want to train your competitor's. Joyce and I both think that might happen if we just used regular employee's for our inner circle. I've been thinking about it since we had that other vote before, and I still think it would be a mistake to just have employees in those positions. My Dad trusts Joyce and me, because we're family. If we weren't, there are things he'd never let us in on." "How do other companies manage to operate? Do you think the upper management of these companies all sleep together?" "No. But it isn't that simple. We're a private company, wholly owned by the family. We have more secrets than a public company does. We have unpublished earnings and expenses, making it harder for people to discover what we're up to, or where we're making the bulk of our profits. You saw what happened when some of our internal information got out to Coinmark. You also saw how important taking over our vending business was to those people. This is part of what we're trying to avoid. Right now, Joyce and I are the only ones each of us would trust with some of those operating secrets. Without those secrets, no manager could succeed as well as we can. My Dad didn't learn everything until after my Grandfather died. He only learned it then, because Mama and my Uncle Bunny were forced to trust him with the information." "Are you going to go against what we voted for?" Emily was expecting me to answer that we were. She always expected the worst. "No. We're going to find some other way to tie them to us. Right now, my father is toying with the idea of setting up an employment contract that would make it financially crazy for one of our brain trust people to think about quitting our company. He agrees with you about using sex to tie people to the company." "Because I'm right. You always think of sex first, because that's what you believe you've used to get us to want to stay with you. It isn't sex, Kenny, it's love. You can get people to love you without always fucking them. You always try the easiest way, or the one that worked for you before. You and Joyce better be careful, because, someday, you might go too far with this, and force all of us to stop loving you." I looked at Emily. For a few seconds, I wondered if her explanation to me was like mine had been for Brenda. I could understand a little clearer her objection to merging family and the brain trust. To her, she'd already stretched her tolerance to its limit, by being one of four women in my bed. She wasn't going to permit further dilution of the place she felt she had been forced to settle for. I remembered how difficult the negotiations had been to get Emily to join our group before. Now, with this latest warning, I understood that to her, our current living arrangement was still only a poor compromise, but the best she had been able to forge for herself and Brenda. It wasn't just the fucking, it was her seeing it as a further displacement of her position in our lives. All of our lives. Emily had been relieved after I had gotten my vasectomy. Even when it came to children, she was afraid of dilution. As an orphan myself, I could understand what she feared. One of the consequences of living in an orphanage is the lack of any feeling that there is ever enough of anything good to go around to satisfy everyone. Even then, after years of being away from orphanage life, I still found myself worrying about silly things, like whether there was going to be enough milk in the refrigerator for me to have some too. I could afford a lot of milk, but no matter how much I had, there would still be that nagging worry. Poverty and need were mostly states of mind. To Brenda, money alone was too abstract. Being one in a million, as far as paying taxes, to her, that was much more concrete. She wanted her sense of wealth constantly reinforced. Emily wanted the same for what she felt lacking. She wanted to be reassured of her place in our lives, and in our hearts. This was particularly true of Brenda and me. I knew I'd have to find a way to give her this reassurance. If not, she would continue being an obstruction to any of our future plans for the brain trust. It wasn't the sex, it was the competition she feared. I was her milk, and Brenda was her meat. She would never have enough of either to be relaxed and secure. I couldn't do enough to get her totally over her fear, but I could reinforce for her the importance she held in my life. One thing Joyce and I both needed to do was to find a way to play down the impression we were giving about how much we valued the idea of having this brain trust. To Emily, this made it too frightening. The brain trust was simply a tool. Because it was composed of living people, we had described it incorrectly to our other wives. Emily was the one who had suffered the most from our mischaracterization of what the brain trust would be in our lives. We needed to find a better description for her. One that she could more readily accept, and not feel overly threatened by. I looked at Shirley, and she seemed caught up in her own thoughts. I knew I'd been guilty of treating Brenda, Emily and Shirley collectively as the X's, rather than concentrating on their unique differences. To meet their individual needs, I'd have to start treating them as individual people again. I did that with Joyce, and because of that, our relationship was the most developed within the group. Brenda and Emily's relationship was the second most developed. As I sat there thinking about it, I realized that Joyce and Shirley had become closer than Shirley and I were. I'd somehow become too concerned with the big picture to take the time to participate much in the personal dynamics of our group. I'd delegated that to Joyce, not realizing that this was counter productive with both Emily and Brenda. I made up my mind that it was time I started mending my broken fences. I had a responsibility to these four women that I had been too busy to fulfill. That needed to change, and I'd begin this change with Emily. "Brenda, you need to sleep somewhere else tonight. I want to spend a night alone with Emily. Is that okay with you, Em?" There comes a point where even the most obtuse among us has an Epiphany. This was that point for me. Seeing her smiling at me, knowing that I couldn't have come up with any suggestion that would have pleased her more, made me realize what I had been putting at risk. This wasn't Joyce's group, it was mine. She had told me that a thousand times in the past, but I chose not to listen to her. I had wanted it to be Joyce's group, with me being just one of four who circled around, relying on her leadership. It was past time that I stood up and took my rightful place as the head of the group. I looked over at Joyce, realizing for the first time, as I looked at her smiling face, that she too had been waiting, very patiently, for me to finally grow up enough to assume the role she had carved out and kept waiting for me to assume. "You can come sleep with me, Brenda. I love sleeping with rich people." Joyce laughed, and so did Brenda, as she quickly agreed. "From now on, I'll be spending a lot more nights sleeping with just one of my wives. Not only for the sex, but for the love too." I made a note for myself, mentally, to see if there wasn't some way to get Brenda and Emily separate wings of their own. I didn't want to displace one, every time I spent the night with the other. I needn't have bothered with the mental note, because Joyce had already decided to cede the sole occupancy of our bedroom to me. She told me that she could always find a bed that suited her needs. It worked out better that way, for all of us. Joyce liked making the rounds, from bed to bed, and it made our times together that much more special. The other wives liked it a lot better too, because it made it seem like all four of them were equals. I liked it as well, because I marked that night's decision as the turning point, where I finally stopped being a boy, and became a man. I stopped being a lover to my wives, and became their true husband. I'm positive that the quality of our lovemaking improved immediately. That night, alone in my arms, Emily soared to heights that compared quite favorably to any Shirley had ever attained. She did it without being held down or abused in any way, shape, form, or manner. For once, I was able to love her to ecstasy, rather than punish or dominate her, to allow her to achieve her orgasmic bliss. It made the post-coital snuggling so much more satisfying to me. I finally felt like I was putting my house in order. It would take a lot more rearranging, but I was confident that I was going to eventually have the closeness with all my wives that I already enjoyed with Joyce. ------- Chapter 31 In the process of regaining closeness with Brenda, Emily, and Shirley, I didn't make the mistake of not paying adequate attention to my relationship with Joyce. She was still the anchor that kept me from going too far away from where I needed to be. The time we spent alone together was always loving and personally fulfilling, but we also managed to talk about important things and make our time together productive. I depended on Joyce to point me in the direction where my presence was most required, and where it would do the most good. Business information came to me mostly from Joyce, but I still made it a practice to speak with my Dad at least three or four times a week. We were seeing a lot of Mama as well, because she was coming down to Lawrence to bring us design changes for the nursery wing extensions. The addition being added to Uncle Bunny's house was almost completed, in spite of the fact that both Mama and Joyce had continued adding new features and additional size to the original plans they had submitted to the builder. One such added feature was a back staircase, and three self contained apartments in the downstairs portion of the new children's wing. This made it possible for Mama to increase the size of the upstairs nursery, which she had come to believe was too crowded. On the first weekend after school recessed for the summer, Shirley and I went off for a romantic weekend at a cabin overlooking a beautiful lake up in Wisconsin. We spent the whole weekend talking, making love, and walking together on narrow pathways that wound themselves throughout the densely wooded area surrounding the lake shore. By the time we were due to return to Ridgeline, both Shirley and I had regained the previous level of comfort we'd managed as youngsters, back when we had first gone together. It was a deeper, richer, closeness now, because we had many more shared interests than before. One by one, each of my wives went away with me for two or three nights of one on one intimacy. Brenda and I went to New York City, attending a Broadway play, and shopping at some of the better stores that Brenda had always wanted to visit. Most of her purchases ended up being gifts for her sister wives, the nursery girls, Phil, Claire, Thelma and all the children. At Brenda's insistence, Frank Clooney had gotten her several charge cards that were tied into her bank and investment accounts. She insisted on paying for whatever she purchased. It was something she wanted to do to celebrate her financial success. Dad and Mama decided to make a trip to Europe for three weeks, in early July. They spent a week in the south of France, a week in Italy, and three days each, in Germany and England. Gerta and Hans accompanied them on the trip, and were very surprised and impressed with what they saw in Germany. Impressed or not, it was after this trip that Hans quit comparing everything American, unfavorably, with what was available from Germany. In conversation after, Hans began making a distinction between American Germans, and Germans from Germany. He was more impressed with the expatriate Germans. During the European trip, my father and Hans got into a discussion concerning my success with grain investing, and, as a result, right after all of them returned, Gerta and Hans asked me if I would handle an investment account for them. They ended up funding the account with two hundred thousand dollars. I usually spent several early mornings a week, during the summer, over in the kitchen talking with Hans and Gerta, keeping them up to date on the comings and goings within our branch of the family. Hans liked the dirt, and Gerta wanted news about each of the children. I would usually bring over a weekly summary of their account activity, and the three of us would go over it in some detail. I knew the money wasn't that important to them, but being included, as part of the family was. Mama had both April and Dwightee over for day trips, with occasional sleep over's by April. I was sure that the sleep over's would include Dwight as soon as he became less dependant on Joyce for his nourishment. Mama and Gerta both spent a lot of time with all the other children too, but it was clear that Brenda's two babies were her favorites. Brenda loved this, and none of the other girls ever seemed troubled by Mama's obvious favoritism. Hans and my father seemed to prefer Derek and Bunny. Accompanied by Irma and Helen one day, Dad and Hans took the boys over to Bolling, for a morning's visit to the petting zoo, lunch at Gracerie's, and part of an afternoon at the company offices. Dad introduced the boys as future owners of the company, to all of the staff he could find who weren't too busy to avoid meeting them. This meet and greet tour extended all over the building. Derek liked the fresh baked bread. In August, Gold and Silver diverged from all the grains. It lasted for a full week, again on some kind of a news scare that had people seeking a safe storehouse of value during a time of political uncertainty. This time, I was fully prepared to exploit the disparity in prices. I traded huge grain quantities for the entire week, more than four times my normal trading limits. I took full advantage of momentary imbalances in spot, near contracts and forward contract months, arbitraging each of them against both the metals and the time differences. Since silver hadn't risen as much as gold had, I sold additional gold against silver, expecting the price difference to slide back closer to the normal ratios. I remained almost totally closeted in my office at home, trading the metals in several world markets, and buying and selling grains in Asia and Europe as well as at home. I ate on the run, and ignored attempts from all the women, attempts that were designed to get me to take it easier, and get more rest. By then, I knew how rare these price divergences were, and I knew, without question, that these opportunities couldn't exist for any length of time. The global markets were getting so much better integrated, and the computer programs were already setting up to exploit any price variances from market to market. I wanted to profit while there was still an opportunity to do so. Working eighteen and twenty hour days, I managed to make more than seven million dollars in trading profits, spread out over a six day period. When the metals came back to price parity with both the grains and the Dollar, I was scrambling to cover all of my open grain positions. I was happy that everything had gone so closely to the hypothetical model I'd projected from my earlier thoughts given to gaming out possible divergence scenarios. I had been anticipating the effect certain occurrences would have on all the investment vehicles I'd placed within my area of special interest. This time, it had been a classic case of unjustified panic, and flight to what were traditionally considered safe havens, in times of political or financial turmoil. It was so easy to accomplish the same thing by trading on the Forex markets. I decided that I would keep a close eye on the metals in the future, selling on any panic buying, and hedging with currency futures in all the most stable world currencies. Gold and silver had limited potential as safe havens in the current world situation, one where electronic switching from one currency to another took only a matter of seconds. It cost money to store gold or silver, but transferring the equivalents in currency cost just a small fraction of that total. Later that first evening, on the day I closed out my metal trading, when I informed Brenda that her account had increased in value by more than half a million dollars, all of my wives finally understood why I had worked so diligently for the past week. Even Emily, who seemed to care less than my other wives, about money, got excited when I informed her that the charitable trusts had made sufficient new, uncommitted, profits, to hire a crew of workers to begin the food distribution program in Lawrence and Kansas City. I already had plenty of money, certainly enough to commence operating the program earlier, but my telling her that the week's trading profits alone would finance the funding of the program for more than a year, made her realize that my trading was much more than a hobby I just dabbled in for my own amusement. Lives were being changed with the proceeds of my trading. Joyce had always supported my trading. Right from the first, she had realized that it had the potential to make a lot of money for the group home program. More than that, she recognized that earning my own way was an important part of me starting to believe more in myself. It was something I had done on my own, creating my own source of revenue. It gave me a new sense of independence, and confidence in my future. Inherited money was one thing, but money you had earned, that inspired positive feelings about your competence and place in your society. I became more independent when I began to believe I could manage to earn a good return on my inheritance. While my parents were in Europe, Joyce took over the day to day management functions. I became the front man for her. I returned calls in my father's absence, and met with sales and support staff to listen to their reports and requests. I sat in Dad's office, trading, and Joyce ran everything from down in her own office, with support from Ellen, and my other wives. All during the two weeks my Dad was gone, nothing of any real importance came up that required immediate action or decision taking. Joyce did initiate some changes, but these were mostly protocol and internal communication changes that had more to do with utilizing available computer capabilities and modernizing the company memoranda system. My father mistrusted computers, much the same as most older management types did. Joyce embraced all technological changes, and wanted to implement anything she believed capable of increasing either our efficiency or effectiveness. By the time my father returned, his office computer was set up in a way that made it capable of communicating directly with key managers from all the various departments in all of our companies. For the first month after he returned, he drove division leaders and department heads crazy with his constant sending out of computer to computer memos, all seemingly requiring immediate responses. One of the positive results of this new communication availability, was that it caused managers to assign someone from their department, usually their brightest people, to handle these communications with my father. Because my father was exposed to all these new, young and talented, people assigned to handle his requests and questions, three new potential brain trust members were identified, and later, transferred over to the Bolling offices. Two of them became founding brain trust members. The third potential member ended up marrying a local doctor, then quitting to have children, before the actual forming of a true brain trust. My father had a good eye for judging employee potential. Unlike me, he preferred to move slowly, incrementally increasing each individual's responsibilities, as they passed challenges he set for them. He was also more patient when it came to evaluating potential. This allowed him to discover other strengths that either Joyce or I might have overlooked, or missed entirely. He looked for natural talent, feeling like most of the day to day skill sets could be taught over time. In November of 1990, two months after we had all returned for our senior year at KU, Joyce uncovered our first, genuine, male brain trust candidate. His name was Michael Sparkman, he was nineteen years old, and already in his senior year at the university. Joyce became acquainted with him when Natalie, Joyce's personal nursery care assistant, turned up pregnant, and named Mr. Sparkman as the presumptive father of the baby. I say presumptive, because she did hedge her identification by mentioning that one other boy might, possibly, deserve to be included as the potential father also. Since Joyce had discovered that he went to KU also, she took it upon herself to locate him, and make him aware of Natalie's predicament. While Joyce was finding Michael, Natalie located a clinic that was willing to perform an abortion on her. Joyce didn't know that Natalie had already decided to abort the baby when she went to speak with Natalie's boyfriend. It was all a comedy of errors, compounded needlessly by Natalie's lack of communication about her decision. Joyce brought Michael home, hoping that he and Natalie would talk about their shared situation and arrive at some workable solution for it. Natalie had already left for her appointment at the clinic, after telling the other nursery girls that she needed to visit a sick brother, in Kansas City, for two days. Since Joyce had invited him to our home, we all made him welcome, inviting him to share dinner with us. Michael was a handsome young man, tall, with casual blonde good looks, and an athletic build. Under our questioning, we found out that he was from Topeka, one of four children, and something of a child prodigy in music during his youth. He graduated high school at fifteen, deciding on KU, for their music department, but, later changing majors, to concentrate on International Studies, with an eye to working, after post graduate studies, with the State Department, as a career diplomat. He was handsome, bright, and an obvious predator with the ladies. None of my wives escaped his flattering attentions. By the time we sat down for dinner, I had gotten over my amusement at his obvious flirting with my wives. I'd gotten over it, because it seemed to be working on Joyce and Brenda. Both of them were fawning over this boy, laughing at his jokes and simpering in appreciation, whenever he offered them compliments. He offered quite a few too. Some were so incredible that I was sure they would see through his fake flattery, but neither of them seemed to notice or protest whatever he said, no matter how outrageous the flattery got. After dinner, when he said he needed to return to the dorm, both Joyce and Brenda offered to drive him back. I was sitting in the living room, twenty minutes later, when Joyce and Brenda came back home, laughing together about something 'Mike' had told them. I hadn't really considered myself a jealous man before. I mean I did get jealous, but this was the first time I'd been able to observe a reasonable cause for me to be so. "Brain trust, Kenny. He not only has the smarts, he's got the looks to go with it. I've got to get him together with Eddie and Dale. They'll both eat him up. Did you see what a hound he is? I wonder if he would have come on to all of us like that if Natalie had been here?" Joyce had that semi-glazed look in her eye. I wasn't fooled by what she was telling me. Brenda had excused herself as soon as they returned, heading off to the kitchen to tend to something there. I wanted to talk to Brenda too, to get her impression of Michael. "Are you sure we want someone like that working with us, Joyce? He seemed a little fake to me. I'm not sure he's honest enough for what we want." Joyce looked over at me and laughed. "All that flirting was just his way. I'm sure he's a nice young man, just a little bit nervous around strangers. He was a perfect gentleman in the drive back to campus. He sat in the middle, and didn't even try anything with either of us." Somehow, that news wasn't as comforting to me as Joyce had intended it to be. It sounded like she and Brenda had arranged the car seating to allow him every opportunity to try to get fresh with one or both of them. I went from thinking that he might be trouble, to recognizing that he represented a clear and present danger to my newfound domestic balance and harmony. I would have questioned both Joyce and Brenda at length, if Natalie hadn't been brought back to the house by the girlfriend who had driven her to her clinic appointment earlier in the day. That's when we found out that she had aborted the baby. After undergoing the procedure, she had developed great remorse about having the abortion. Unable to calm Natalie, her friend decided to bring her back to our home, feeling as though she was unable to cope with her friend's crying and near incoherent ranting. Joyce went into Mama mode, joined quickly by Emily and Brenda, and the four women went upstairs with Natalie, intent on hearing all the details while providing all the comfort and reassurance she might need. This was just the sort of crisis the women loved to get involved with. I was sure that Natalie was in good hands, but I knew that all my questions about Michael Sparkman were indefinitely placed on hold. I was alone in my bedroom, at eleven o'clock, when Joyce came in to see if I was awake, and to ask if I minded if she came to bed and slept with me. We made love, but not as energetically as we normally did. After, Joyce wanted to talk to me about Natalie. She was concerned, because of some things that Natalie had told the wives, concerning her past drug use, and various other lifestyle choices. The upshot of all of it was that Joyce was very concerned about Natalie's fitness to care for any of our children. Joyce wanted to send Natalie to Bolling, and have her work with Ellen at the company. She wanted to help the girl, but didn't want to take any chances on Natalie endangering herself, or our children, with her sometimes erratic behavior. I told her that I would leave that kind of decision up to her, but that I'd support whatever she decided. "Kenny, what did you think of Michael today?" "He's smart, but I'm not sure he's good brain trust material. I didn't get the idea that he was very honest, or sincere." "Because of all his flattery to all of us?" "Because of that, but also some of the other things he told us about his music, and his father's contacts with the State Department. I find it difficult to believe that a six year old would be invited to give a performance with a symphony orchestra. That thing about his uncle being a bigwig lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, that's hard to swallow too." "Maybe he exaggerated, Kenny, but maybe it was true too. We don't know whether it was true or not. If it is all true, don't you think he's exactly what we've been looking for?" "If it is all true, don't you think he'd rather go ahead and have the career he's planning, working in Washington, at the State Department? We're pretty small potatoes, compared to something like that. I just have a hard time seeing him as part of our brain trust." "Are you jealous of him, Kenny?" Joyce was sitting up when she asked me that. I was turned on my side facing her. The lights were off, and I hoped she couldn't see me blushing. I was embarrassed that she even asked me that question. I was jealous though, and I didn't want to lie to her about it. "I don't know if you should call it jealous. I guess I'm a little concerned that either you or Brenda might fall for all his flattery and fake charm. I mean, he's a good looking kid, and you've already said that you find the idea of sleeping with someone new kind of exciting." Joyce started laughing at me, enjoying my discomfort. She slipped down on the mattress to smother my face with her kisses. "Thank you, Kenny. You have no idea how good it makes me feel to hear you say something like that. It makes me love you even more, and I didn't think that was even possible. It's good to know that you have such a high opinion of my appearance that you could even consider that Michael might want to take me to bed. Brenda is a different story though. I wouldn't suggest that you tell her what you just told me. Neither of us would ever consider sleeping with Michael. It would make things a lot better, as far as Eddie and Dale are concerned, if we added a male to the brain trust soon. Not so much because they might want to sleep with him, but because of him being a brain trust member and not having sex with any of us." "Why would that help them?" "Because they would know that sex wasn't a part of the brain trust arrangement. We led them both to think that, and if Michael isn't included, they won't feel like they've been excluded if we stop doing things with them. I don't want them thinking that we didn't find them appealing after that first time." "We aren't going to do anything more with them? Sex things I mean." "I don't know. We might with them, but not with Michael. All the wives have decided on no more men. I think Eddie would be fine with everyone, but maybe not Dale, because she only wants to do stuff with you." "I'm going to let you handle that too, Joyce. This is getting confusing. I thought we'd all pretty much decided to keep things strictly among us five from now on?" "We have, all the love things. All of us are happy with the changes you've made. No one is jealous anymore, and we all think it's better when we each have you all to ourselves now. That doesn't mean we want to completely exclude Ellen or Eddie, but only for sex, not to share you with them like we share you with each other. We can share sex, but none of us want to share your love with anyone outside our family." "So, Eddie and Ellen, they are both okay, but not Dale?" "Dale might be okay, if we were sure it was just for the sex. She'd have to be willing to have sex with all of us too. It isn't that complicated, not really. We all recognize that other guys are too threatening, to you, and to us too now. With girls, you don't seem to be threatened if we do stuff with girls, and we aren't too threatened by it, as long as we know it's only for sex." "Did you want to have sex with Michael? If it wouldn't make me jealous?" "It isn't ever going to happen, Kenny. It isn't anything I'd enjoy enough to risk hurting you, or what all of us have together. All of us feel the same way. We know how much you love us, and how much we all love you. Sex with you is enough. Anything else, with anyone else, would be recreation, at best. None of us wants to give up anything we value, just to enjoy an hour's worth of recreation." "Suppose I said you could, Joyce? Not the others, because I don't think they are like you. I think you could treat it just as some recreation, exactly like you said. If you really wanted to try it, I wouldn't stand in your way. You've always been willing to let me do that. I'd be jealous, because that's how I am, but I'd let you if you really wanted to." "I know you mean well, and you think you're making me a special offer, letting me do it, but not the others. It would have been a lot more special, if you told me you'd let all the others, but not me, because you couldn't stand to share me." Joyce kissed me lightly on the lips and snuggled down, making contact, from my chest to my toes. I lay there with her, my arm around her back, drawing her in closer to me. I knew what she meant, and she was right. I also knew that she was wrong about what I'd said. Joyce was the only wife I was that sure of. She was the one I couldn't afford to lose. I knew, no matter what, that her place in my heart was forever safe. I needed to somehow convince her of the place she held in my life. "Remember when I used to go a little crazy, Joyce? Like that time I just left home, and I didn't think about anything for months?" She nodded to me, indicating that she remembered back then. "I'm not like that now, Joyce. Things don't make me go crazy, or make me want to run away anymore. If something happens, I can take it now, I can deal with it. That's because of you. Not just you, but mostly you. "You can add in the children, and the other girls, because they're all part of it too, plus Mama, my Dad, and Gerta and Hans. All of them are part of it. But you're the biggest part, and if it hadn't been for you, none of the rest of it would have helped. I wasn't able to keep things together by myself, not even with all the people trying to help me. Somehow, you recognized what it would take to make me better, and you worked hard to put it together for me. "Whatever I am right now, I'm much better than I was before, because of you. You were the part of me that I was missing. When I said I could let you sleep with someone else, it was because, more than anyone else, you are a part of me. I know what we have together wouldn't be affected by you fucking someone else. We're too close for that to ever happen. With the others, I'm not as confident, but I am with you." I looked down at her face, resting against my chest. I could see that she understood what I had tried to say, even if it hadn't come out as clearly as I'd wanted. We were stronger than sex or even love. We were complete with each other, like conjoined twins. Our survival was inextricably tied together. Together, we made up a formidable whole, while separately, neither of us would ever be complete. ------- Chapter 32 Even before all of us graduated, my father began hinting about wanting to take life easier. Every week Mama had another story to tell us about something Dad had done that surprised her. In January, he came home from work early and retrieved his and Mama's golf bags from the country club. An hour after that, they were sitting on the company plane, heading for Florida, for a long weekend of golf, swimming, and relaxing by the cabana he'd rented for them both from one of the beachfront hotels. Mama wasn't complaining, it just was surprising to her that my Dad would start putting personal wishes in front of business obligations. It wasn't only isolated instances either. He was leaving for the office later in the mornings, and often came home before five o'clock in the afternoon. The summer we graduated, Dad probably drove into the office less than three times per week, on average. He worked at home, using the telephone, and his personal computer, to keep himself in touch with operational functions. He began delegating more and more to Joyce, Myra, Ellen, and me. Joyce and I had succeeded in hiring Michael Sparkman right before graduation. We didn't tell him it was for our brain trust, just that it was a junior management position where he'd be given a lot of autonomy and decision making authority. He took the position, expecting it to last for only that one summer. Dale and Eddie graduated with us as well, and moved in with us at the Ridgeline house. Joyce had discussed the sex situation with the sisters, telling them both that sex and brain trust business were two separate, unrelated, areas. Dale made it clear, once again, that she wasn't interested in doing sexual things with any of my wives. Joyce told her that none of the wives were interested in sharing me with her, given her attitude. Eddie said she had no problem with having sex with any of us. The whole situation might have been weird and uncomfortable, but it wasn't. Dale and Eddie were both very relaxed and easy to live with. The whole sex thing became more of a running joke, than a bone of contention between us. In late June, myself, Eddie, and all my wives wound up having something of a mini orgy together. It began over at the country club, starting out with some fairly innocent groping and innuendo in the swimming pool. Later, back at home, we ended up getting a little carried away in the family room. When it became obvious that all of us were in the mood to want to take things further, we went up to my bedroom and indulged ourselves. Dale wasn't a participant, not at the pool, and not later either. The next morning, I was working in my home office when Dale stopped by to speak with me. Everyone else was getting ready to drive to the office in Bolling. I was staying behind, because I had a lot of trading irons in the fire, and was trying to exploit some good trading opportunities. "Kenny, I don't think living here, with all of you, is working out for me. I spoke to your mother yesterday, and she told me I was welcome to use your apartment, in Bolling, until I decided what I was going to do." Dale was standing very close to my desk as she spoke. I was only slightly surprised by Dale's decision. She had to be feeling pretty left out, especially after the goings on of the day before. We hadn't been very circumspect in our activities, or very quiet with them either. "I guess I can understand that, Dale, but what about Eddie? She seems to like living here, just fine." "Eddie already said she was staying. Its only me that wants to move out." Dale seemed upset by that as well. I wondered if it would be better to just wish her well, or to have her sit down and discuss the problem she was having. I was pretty sure it was the whole sex thing, and there really wasn't anything I could do, or even wanted to do, to change what Joyce and the other wives had decided. To me, what they had come up with, seemed very fair. Eddie had no problem, and Dale was free not to participate. "I guess you have to do what feels most comfortable for you Dale. I'm going to miss having you living here with us. I wish we hadn't brought up that whole sex thing with you. It wasn't fair." "It would be different if it was you, me, and Eddie, or even you, Joyce, and me. I just don't feel right about having to do that with all the other girls. It's different for all of them, because they like doing that." "I guess most of them do now, but it wasn't always easy for them, especially Brenda and Shirley. Even Emily had a hard time doing things with any of the girls except Brenda." "So why did they all agree to doing it like they do?" Dale seemed honestly curious. I think she just thought that all the wives were naturally interested and attracted to other girls. "I think they were mostly afraid of it, afraid of what doing that meant. The whole lesbian taboo thing. After they did it, and nothing bad happened, they found out they didn't mind doing it anymore. Now, they all seem to like doing it with each other. It made them appreciate each other in a different way, to share a different side of themselves with the other girls. Joyce always liked it, and I think Emily did too." "Don't they already get enough just doing it with each other? Why do they want to make me do it with them too?" "I think you're looking at it wrong, Dale. To them, you want something that is theirs, me. Because they like you, they're willing to let you have it, but they want something from you in return. Without that, it would be like you were taking something of theirs. If you were a part of the whole thing, with all of them, it would be sharing, not taking. They did the same thing with Ellen. This is their way of claiming ownership rights, of collecting rent." "Why can't Eddie pay my rent? She doesn't mind." "Because Eddie pays for Eddie, Ellen pays for Ellen. It would be easier just to decide not to participate, like you have. There aren't any hard feelings. You living here doesn't make anyone else uncomfortable. No one expects anything more from you." "How do you think I feel, knowing that all those girls got their fancies tickled yesterday? You know how hard it is for me to do it, so how do you think I feel when I hear all them girls screaming your name? I smelled you on Dee Dee last night, when she finally came to bed. I tasted you from her, but none of what she did helped me any." "I see. Well, like I said, I'm going to miss having you around, and I'm sorry it isn't working out for you to live here with us." I didn't really have any suggestions to make to her. I liked her a lot, but, she already knew the terms my wives had offered to her. I wasn't free to just offer myself to her. She had decided not to pay the tariff the women were demanding of her. Dale left my office, looking more disappointed then she had when she'd first come to speak with me. Ten minutes later, Joyce came in, telling me that they were all ready to leave. "Did Dale already tell you what she's decided, Kenny?" "She said she was moving to Mama's apartment in Bolling, and that Eddie was staying here." "We're going to lose her. I tried talking to Brenda and Emily, but they won't budge. They don't care whether she stays or not." "Did she tell you that she's willing to have a three way, with you and me? She told me she'd do it with Eddie and me too." "It isn't doing it with women that bothers her?" "I guess not, at least with some of you. I think part of it is the cut and dried aspect of it. They make it sound like she's supposed to be paying for the privilege of being able to fuck me." "That's pretty much what it is. I wonder why she said she'd do it with me, and not with Brenda? You'd think, if she'd do it with any girl, it would be Brenda." "I don't think she's attracted to girls. Brenda's looks don't seem to impress her. I think she likes you, and is more comfortable around you, just like she is with Eddie. I don't think she knows the others well enough to feel that comfortable with them." After everyone from our house had left, at a little before eight o'clock, my Dad drove over and stopped for a few minutes, on his way to the office. Like all of the other things he had been doing, this too was unusual behavior for him. "You aren't going in today, Kenny?" "Not today, Dad. I've been trading all kinds of currency crosses against the grains. I've got the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc boxed in with Dollars on the downside, and the grains on the upside. I need to keep close watch on it, because I'm getting trading signals twenty times an hour. Did you need me for something?" "I'm not sure about some things, so I thought I'd ask you your opinion, but not if you're busy." He looked like he was getting ready to turn and leave, so I switched off all three of my monitors. "I'm not that busy. What is it?" I had a nervous feeling. My father hadn't really been acting like himself for the past few months, for almost a year, if you wanted to count that sudden three week vacation to Europe, the previous summer. He had gotten a lot more casual about timetables and deadlines than he'd previously been, and seemed to have lost some of his edge, especially when it came to the aggressive growth of the vending operations. He didn't seem fully engaged by the business anymore. "Is there something wrong?" "Wrong, no, I don't think so. I've been thinking, evaluating my future plans and options. Now that you kids have finished your education, I've been thinking of possibly cutting back on my own work activities. Giving way gracefully, rather than making all of you wait for me to call it a career. I wanted to touch base with you and Joyce, to get an idea about what you both think would be the best way for me to handle that." I listened to the words, while at the same time, trying desperately to understand what was behind those words. None of this was like my Dad. For all the time I'd known him, the business was the center of his interest. It was who he was, what he enjoyed doing. In my mind, my father was the business. "Well, we aren't ready yet, and we won't be for a long time. The only way we'll ever be ready is if you work with us to teach us what we'll need to know. They don't teach us that in school. What they have taught us is how to learn, but we need experience and seasoning before we'll be able to step in and actually manage to run the whole company. It has to be the right experience too, not just experience. We're counting on you to finish our education for us." "I remember spending several years, being anxious for the time when Senior would finally step down and let me take over. The day came, when I finally realized he had no plans to voluntarily step aside, I began to resent him. I don't intend to do that to you or Joyce, Kenny. I don't want you resenting that I wouldn't give way, to let you two take charge of running things." "That isn't ever going to be a problem with me or with Joyce, Dad. We both have so many other things we need to take care of, to worry about. When you and Mama were in Europe, the hardest thing we had to do was pretend to be you, to sit through the meetings, and read all the reports. You are able to take that in stride and do it. You even make it seem like you enjoy doing it. Joyce likes being part of the action, not all the other parts, the glad handing, and the social parts of running a business." "All of that is necessary. In fact, that's an important component to operating a large company. You have to have an open door policy, allowing people access to you. Ideas come from below, and you need to be able to sift through them, gleaning the useful, separating good ideas from the rest. People need to put a human face to who they are working for. I consider that a large portion of my duties to the company." "Joyce and I both realize it's necessary, we just don't want to be the ones to do it. Joyce can handle almost all the rest of it, but she likes having other people to bounce her ideas and plans off of. Joyce is a great organizer." "Kenny, you're going to find that your attitudes are going to change in the next little while. Right now, it might seem like a good idea to have someone else being the face of the company. That will all change when you find yourself not getting the credit, or the rewards, for all the hard work you'll be doing. That's just basic human nature." "Dad, I think you're making these assumptions based on your own prior experiences with Senior. Joyce and I are both different than you were. We're not in any hurry at all. We have very different goals and priorities than you had. We're worried that you'll quit too soon, not about whether you'll hang around too long. Maybe we confused you with all our talk about you taking it easier, and not working such long hours. We meant we wanted to put a team together, a team to help take some of the burden off of your shoulders. We want to get them in place early, so they have the necessary experience to do the job whenever the time comes that we need to. We want you to take it easier, not to think about retiring." "I have been taking it easier, but it isn't working for me. When I go back to work, I have to work harder than normal, just to catch up with what has gotten behind." "When you left last summer, you didn't tell us what you were working on. We just took care of whatever came up, anything which looked like it needed our attention. Next time, leave us one of your lists, and then see how we do. In fact, that's what we want you to do all the time, make up lists of what you want to be working on. We'll do the things on your list, and you can keep changing what you think needs doing. Other than prepare lists, and be the head guy, you don't have to actually do anything anymore. You can step back in and get more active, whenever we don't come up with what you want or need." "You and your brain trust?" "Joyce and me, and the people we can attract that will be extensions of all of us. The more people we have focused on solving our business problems, the better chance there is that we can find good, workable, solutions for them. I want to have a lot more top talent than we need, enough so that none of us need to spend the amount of time you do to keep on top of things. That includes you too, Dad. You should take more time to enjoy yourself." "Talent costs money, Kenny. Have you thought about what your brain trust is going to cost us?" "Talent doesn't cost, not real talent. How much has Joyce cost us? The kind of people we're looking for, they'll make us a lot more than they would ever cost us. We might have a higher percentage of executive salary costs, but I'm willing to wager our return on capital each year will be much higher than other, comparable, businesses. You always told me it was the people that made a company succeed or fail." "That's what I've always believed, but there is such a thing as having too much labor expense. You keep saying you want to find eight to ten people for this brain trust. That's a lot of extra overhead for us to support." "I'll make you a deal, Dad. I'll set up my own company, and we'll contract with you for our services. You pay us twenty five percent of net revenue growth, computed from today's current base. Pay us that amount, each year. I'll pay for all of our people, out of my own money. You reimburse us for our legitimate business expenses." "Ten percent would be more like it, with you paying your own expenses." My Dad and I laughed. I knew then that he understood the real advantages of our securing more talent for the company. It wasn't easy to pull the wool over my Dad's eyes, not about business or finance. After he left, I wondered if I had found out the real reason why he had stopped by to see me. We always seemed to stay on safe topics when we spoke together. He was definitely acting different. I wondered about his health. He looked healthy, and he still kept himself in decent shape, by exercise, and adhering to a healthy diet. Still, if there was something the matter with him, I wanted to know about it as soon as possible. I called Myra, Dad's secretary. "Hi, Myra. it's Kenny. My Dad just left here a few minutes ago, and I think he's acting a little funny lately, acting different, about work, and other things. Do you know if he's having any health problems?" "I don't think so. He went for his semi-annual physical, about two months ago, and everything was supposed to be fine then. He's almost never been sick. I think he works just as hard as ever, but, with our computers, he doesn't have to spend all his time tied down to the office anymore. When he's at home, he calls me just as much as he does when he's right there in his office, right in the next room." I thanked her and hung up the phone. Something was different with him. People don't make as many sudden changes as he was making, not without a reason, they didn't. I knew we'd get to the bottom of it. I'd put Joyce on it. She could talk to Mama. If there was something, Mama would know about it. At noon, I took a break to have some lunch. Phil and Thelma were in the kitchen with Brenda when I got there. Brenda asked me about Dale anyway. "Did Dale really move out, Kenny?" "She said she was going to. I don't think she's moved out yet though. Joyce and I both think she's going to decide against continuing working for us. If she leaves, Eddie will probably leave too. I think what happened yesterday bothered Dale a lot." "We can't stop living just because she doesn't get what she wants. She doesn't have to live here to be part of that brain trust thing. Why would she quit that?" "I'm not sure she will, but she might. It has to do with not feeling accepted. She can't fit in with the rest of us, because she isn't interested in doing what we said she needed to do." "We didn't say she needed to do anything. She can't claim we did either. I don't know why she thinks she's better than the rest of us. We all had to do what we told her she had to do. It isn't like we're asking her to do more than we already did. Eddie didn't have a problem with it." "Eddie is different. Eddie likes it. She likes girls too." "I don't like girls, but I did it. Shirley too, she doesn't like girls, but she did it. Emily didn't want to do Shirley or Joyce, but she did it." "This isn't some sorority initiation, Brenda, and you all did those things for more than just being able to sleep with me one time. It was to be part of our group. I'm not the one you need to convince, because I already said I agreed with what you girls were asking. I'd hate to lose her, but, we already told her she didn't have to do anything for the job. She wants something else, and its only right that she has to give something in return." "How sure are you that Eddie will quit if Dale does?" Brenda seemed concerned about Eddie leaving. "I don't know. They seem so close. I don't think Eddie would be happy if Dale left. From what they told us, they've never really been separated before." "Was Dale any good in bed, Kenny?" That question surprised me too. It was happening too much, people asking me surprising questions like that one. How did you answer that kind of question? "I think she's good, but she's a real challenge. It takes a lot to get her ready to enjoy sex. She hasn't had too many good experiences. When she does cum, you feel like you've achieved something. Eddie is a lot different, but she's good too. She cums very easy. Yesterday, she came when I rubbed myself against her. They look a lot alike, but they are very different." "Is it just Emily and me that bother her, or is it all of us?" "Shirley too. She said something about being willing to do things with Joyce and me together." "Let me talk to Emily. If you really think we're going to lose her and Eddie over this, maybe we can make some kind of an exception for her. Joyce might show her some tricks that Eddie doesn't know either. I don't think Eddie is too experienced with other women. Joyce is very good." I already knew that, but now Phil and Thelma knew it too. The two of them were sitting quietly, taking everything in. Brenda changed the subject abruptly, asking me about how my trading was going. Ever since our New York trip, Brenda had been even more concerned with the nuts and bolts of her investment account. When the statements for her credit card purchases from the trip had cycled through to her, she was amazed at how quickly those costs had accumulated to become a large sum. That afternoon, as soon as everyone returned, Brenda grabbed Emily, and the two of them went upstairs together. Fifteen minutes later, they came back down together, and quickly went over for a whispered conversation with Joyce, and later, with Shirley. By the time we all sat down to eat our dinner, my wives had reached agreement, and were ready to set their new plan into motion. "Dale, how many times did Kenny make you cum that time he had you in bed with him?" Emily had elected herself the group spokesperson. She never did care much for pleasantries and preliminary small talk. "I disremember." Dale had difficulty hiding her distaste for the subject under discussion. She told me later that she believed the girls were getting ready to make her pay up for those earlier orgasms I'd given her. "Five times, Emily, plus some little ones that she couldn't keep good track of." Eddie was smiling. I didn't know if my wives had enlisted her support for what they were doing. "Only two really good ones, Dee Dee. The rest weren't that much of a much." "She's lying to you now. She told me it was five really big ones, and then a bunch of smaller aftershocks at the end. Reason I remember, was because she never had more than one before, never. If I was like her, hard to please, I don't think I'd be worrying about what I needed to do to get me some more of whatever it was that made me cum like that." "Is that five total? Two big ones and three smaller ones? Or is it two altogether?" Emily wasn't going to be shunted aside in her quest for a clarification of the orgasm total from Dale's earlier interlude with me. "I told you I don't remember exactly. At least two big ones." Dale sat there, glaring at Emily, braced for her next sentence. "How many, Kenny?" Emily turned to me. "However many Dale says. I didn't keep an exact count either. We had fun, and it was good for both of us. Why are you asking her?" Emily turned away from me, going back to speaking with Dale directly. "Joyce wants to sleep with you before you move out, her and Kenny. Are you interested?" "Just her and him?" Dale looked over at Joyce when she asked the question. "Why did you change it?" "Joyce thinks she can do better than Kenny did. The rest of us think so too. We've got a bet on it." "What kind of bet?" "We're betting that, after Joyce gets done with you, you won't be that afraid of the rest of us." "I'm not afraid of you now. I'm just not that way." "You know, Dee, sometimes I think you are your own worst enemy. These girls are offering you another ride to the moon, and you're sounding surly and ungrateful. Why don't you just say thank you, and quit making all of us mad at you?" Eddie seemed genuinely angry. I found out later that Dale had been actively campaigning for her to move to Bolling with her. Eddie was happy staying with us. She loved working with Joyce, and was already totally sold on the lifestyle we were suggesting she could enjoy. "If its just Joyce and Kenny, I'll try it. I'm not promising anything more than that. I don't want the rest of you coming in on us, like you did with Ellen before." "Well, you do have to promise us something. If we let you have Kenny again, with Joyce, you have to promise not to move out for a month. Kenny is busy with something important, and we don't want him upset until he's done with it." "What is that?" Dale was suspecting some trick. "Two things, both having to do with his trading. He promised to set up a food program for children in Lawrence and Kansas City, and he also said he was going to give us the money for a new house for some older, pregnant, foster care girls that Shirley and I are thinking about opening." I never promised I'd give them the money for buying the house they had been looking at. I had listened to the two of them talk about setting up a house for unwed pregnant foster care girls who had decided to keep their babies. What I said was I'd think about it. I wasn't sure I thought it was a good idea for these young girls to take on such a serious responsibility as raising a child. Most of them, from what I'd been able to find out, were ill equipped to be mothers. The foster care system did all they could to discourage them from keeping these new born children. Shirley had gotten involved with one particular girl, and had done some investigating, to see if there were a better living situation available, to train the girl, and to get her better prepared to care for the child when it came. "That's it, just not move out for a month?" "That's it. After this time, if you want to do more with Kenny, we'll need to negotiate again. Same thing with Joyce. Brenda and I have a separate bet about that. I bet her you'd ask for another time with Joyce instead of with Kenny." All of the wives and Eddie laughed at that. I'm pretty sure they were agreeing with Emily's supposed bet. I didn't think they were really serious about making such a bet. It took a few more minutes to iron out the details, but, by the time dinner was over, it was all set. Dale, Joyce, and I would be bed partners for the night. By the time ten o'clock came around, all of us sitting in the living room were tense. Shirley had gone upstairs early, saying she wanted to spend some time with the children. Joyce had gone upstairs at nine thirty, to feed the younger twins and 'Silky'. At nine forty five, Emily started giving me the big pep talk. She acted like she was a high school football coach, talking to the team before the homecoming game. It was pretty funny, but I was too nervous to appreciate it right then. Brenda and Eddie were appreciative enough for all of us. Dale sat there on the sofa with me, separated by no more than a foot. Ever since dinner, she'd remained silent. I wasn't sure if she was entertaining second thoughts about it or not. When I got up at ten o'clock though, she got up with me. We both headed for the staircase. I was excited and curious. Watching Joyce in action with another girl had always been a big turn on for me. With Dale being the not so willing girl, it made it even more exciting. I remembered the first time Joyce was with Brenda, and Brenda's quick conversion from reluctant victim, to willing participant. All of my other wives were very willing bed partners for Joyce, soon after their first experience with her. Dale and I were naked and under the sheets by the time Joyce walked into my bedroom. We hadn't progressed very far, but Dale had my dick wrapped in both of her small hands. I had been breathing softly on her distended nipples, lightly touching the raised goose bumps on her areolas. Her neck seemed to be a real pleasure center, one that I hadn't fully exploited during our last time together. I had spent time kissing the sensitive area behind her ear, and under her hair line. Joyce quickly shed her clothes and climbed into bed on the other side of Dale. After all this time, and with our experience in doing this together, Joyce and I had perfected both our technique, and the order of progression. I felt her beginning to wiggle in closer to Dale, fitting herself in the opening that she found available to her. I continued on with what I had been doing. Joyce didn't need any help or any verbal communication from me. This was the first time in a long while that Joyce and I had worked in tandem together. The time with Eddie, and all the wives, had been more of a free for all than any kind of seduction. This time, it was going to be a well choreographed, and highly practiced, joint assault. Whatever Dale had expected or imagined, it didn't turn out to be what she had prepared herself for. There was no resistance. She was enveloped, and all her senses were assaulted without let up. Time and again, the two of us lifted Dale up to the very edge of orgasm before changing our tactics and edging her slowly back away from completion. When I knew she was as primed as she could be, I placed a fluffy pillow under her butt, so that her hips were raised up about four inches from the mattress. I stayed turned on my side, and entered her slowly, from slightly below. Joyce, who had been marking time, lazily tracing her fingers over Dale's now sensitive middle area, waited until I started feeding my cock slowly up into Dale's welcoming pussy. It took but a moment to be sure my cock head was bumping softly onto her G spot. I waited until I was certain, then built to a steady, predictable, rhythm. Judging that the time was right, and that Dale was now past any point of wanting to turn back, Joyce began using her mouth and tongue on Dale in an aggressive and hungry way. I could tell every second of every orgasm by the way Dale's pussy clutched spasmodically at my steadily moving shaft. We were well advanced in our joint assault when I felt Joyce's small hand trying to worm its way under my dick. I soon felt her little finger sawing in and out of Dale's butt hole, and heard Joyce describing to Dale how her strap on was going to feel later, when she was having her little ass plundered with it. I felt myself cumming, and then Dale's pussy walls were squeezing at me until it started hurting. That lasted for a good thirty seconds, before she suddenly cried out, and then, without any warning, she became limp and relaxed. Dale had lost consciousness. After I withdrew, Joyce moved right in and cleaned Dale and I both up, with her mouth, before moving back to the other side of Dale and going to sleep. At breakfast the next morning, there was a lot of kidding and teasing from both Eddie and Emily, but Dale took it well. She seemed more relaxed and comfortable around all of us. Eddie told me later that Dale was afraid the first time had been some kind of fluke, because she was already so horny. When she came to the room she and Eddie shared the next morning, she told Eddie that she better start taking some lessons on how to eat pussy from Joyce. After everyone left, I called the real estate broker that Shirley and Emily were dealing with for that house where they wanted to set up a group home for pregnant girls. I made him a firm cash offer for the house, and later that day, we opened up an escrow account. I still wasn't sure that their idea was a good one, but we wouldn't ever know if someone didn't try it. Later that day, I called some people in Lawrence that operated a small shelter for vagrants and homeless men. I had helped them out with small donations a few times in the past, and had been impressed with one of their staff members. I talked to the head man at the shelter and made him an offer. In return for my stealing Charles Payne, the staff member I'd been so impressed with, I'd have one of my charitable foundations donate fifty thousand dollars to their organization. They were sorry to lose Charley, but fifty thousand dollars went a long way towards setting their program on a firmer financial foundation. When I told Charley that I wanted to hire him to run a program to give away free food to needy families with children, he asked me how soon he could begin. Within a month, the free food distribution program had somehow been changed into a food distribution program and unlicensed homeless shelter for three impoverished families with young children. I had wondered right away why Charley had leased such a large warehouse space. On his own, he had converted more than half of it into three tiny, self contained, apartments. In return for providing the families with food and shelter, the women and older children helped him with bagging the groceries for the next day's delivery, while the men went out during the day, in search of a job. Whenever one family succeeded in regaining sufficient stability to move out of the warehouse, into their own apartment, Charley had another homeless family ready to move in and take their place. When I learned what was happening, and about how hard Charley had worked gathering together the limited materials needed to build the makeshift apartments, I had Phil drive over with two credit cards, and instructions to install hot water heaters, and properly ventilated ovens, in addition to the communal bath and shower facilities they still needed. I also put in an offer to purchase the warehouse building, not wanting the current owner to make an inspection, and somehow discover for himself what was taking place inside. In the end, it was primitive but livable. Not grand, but a vast improvement over living outdoors, in abandoned cardboard boxes, behind some supermarket. Nothing further happened with Dale for the next month, other than Joyce reported that Dale was a great source of ideas and suggestions for all of them. Eddie was the star though, having come up with the solution for a production problem that had stumped everyone for more than a month. Michael Sparkman had been sent to Dover, to look into several space constraints that had Kathleen Ulliott and Clark Sanders almost at each other's throat. They both knew something had to be done, but they couldn't agree on a single solution. Michael had been sent to mediate, and hopefully, to lead them to a workable compromise. After three weeks of being unable to get them to compromise, Michael proposed a whole new solution, something neither of them had considered. In my opinion, Michael's solution was the least worthy of the three that had been put forward and proposed. What made it viable was that no one had taken sides against it. They were about to adopt Michael's suggestion when Kathleen did an abrupt about face, agreeing with Clark that his proposal made more sense for their long term needs. With a solution accepted and implemented, Michael flew back to Kansas, disappointed that he hadn't done anything to really help. My father and I both disagreed, letting him know that he had done exactly what we had hoped he would, back when we sent him out there. The space problem was solved, and Clark and Kathleen were done fighting over it. A month after the night Joyce and I spent with Dale, Eddie approached Emily, on Dale's behalf, to begin negotiations for her to have another session with Joyce and me. It was funny that there was no mention made of just having it be her and me. Emily listened to Eddie, but when she was finished making her request, Emily told Eddie that Dale had to pick a different girl to be in bed with Dale and me this time. She said it didn't matter which of the three she picked, but it had to be one of them. The first indication I had that there was a negotiation going on was when Dale pointed to Brenda and simply said, "you," to her. Brenda's face lit up in a smile. Brenda always liked being picked. Joyce explained to me what had just been decided. This pairing wasn't nearly as successful as when Joyce and I had been with Dale. In the end, I wound up seeing to it that Dale finally was able to have a couple of cums. Brenda got Dale to eat her, but didn't contribute much more to the process, other than that. For awhile, I believed she had been deliberately trying to sabotage things. Emily told me later that Brenda was surprised that Dale didn't get more pleasure out of going down on her. That was typical Brenda thinking, so I let it drop. A few nights later, after something real good happened at work, something that Dale and Eddie had a big hand in bringing about, Joyce sent me to their room, to spend the night with both sisters. I talked to Emily, Brenda, and Shirley first, but they all gave their assent to it. The two women worked me over so thoroughly that evening, I felt like a bag of chicken bones after a banquet. I found out that Dale liked to ride on top, over Eddie's face. I also found out that Dale enjoyed anal sex when she was hot from having her sister eat her, and that Eddie could orgasm from having her sister's big toe in her pussy. A week later, Emily, Eddie and Dale had a session together, without my being there. I heard later from Joyce that it hadn't been a success for Dale. Two nights later, Dale and Joyce came into my room together, and we had another good time. The three of us were good together. Dale responded well to what we did with her. ------- Chapter 33 By the time summer had ended, Dale and Eddie were both being accepted as new members of our family. Not as sister wives to the others, but as some kind of kissing cousins. It was a slow process, this acceptance, and was made possible only because the sisters worked hard at finding ways to ingratiate themselves with all my wives. For Eddie, this came easily. She was very flexible in her opinions and beliefs, and willing, always, to cast her lot with whatever the majority was favoring. She wasn't easy to persuade, she just was able to manage to enjoy whatever choices currently favored by the majority. She had fun no matter what was decided. Dale was different, always being quiet, but holding those strong opinions of hers. She too, was a person who always felt the need to be constantly drawing lines and daring people to cross over them. Lines to protect her sense of fairness, her need for privacy, and whatever territory she had marked out for herself. She was a lot like Emily in that way, able to resist pressure from anyone, and willing to argue her side of an issue well past the point of reasonableness. She managed to overcome all these uncooperative traits, by simply overwhelming everyone with her competence and helpfulness in every area where she wasn't busy already, drawing one of her invisible lines to protect herself. As an example, she and Emily were constantly arguing over virtually everything. Even while they argued over something they both knew they would never reach agreement on, or sway each other's opinions about, Dale would be engaged in something, separate from the area of contention, something that was directly benefiting Emily. Dale was an accomplished seamstress, hair stylist, makeup artist, and dietician. When Emily's face started breaking out, it was Dale who helped her with her complexion. She showed Emily how to fix her hair in a way that all of us found better suited to her, and much more attractive. Dale could be a real pain in the ass, but she compensated for that by being so good to us in other ways. For Joyce, Dale was an immediate problem solving resource, someone she could bounce her ideas off of, to find any initial weaknesses that needed to be improved upon. Joyce had the added advantage of being a desirable sex partner to Dale Dale seemed to understand, intuitively, the best path to acceptance with each of my wives, even while still maintaining that she had no interest in having sex with any of them. By the end of the summer, only Eddie, Joyce, and I were still having sex with Dale. It wasn't something that anyone had agreed to, just something that had naturally resulted. Eddie became more like Joyce, as far as her sexual habits went, making the rounds from room to room, always being welcomed, wherever she decided to stop. Ellen had come over to our house on a few occasions, after work, or on weekends, and when she did, Dale stayed off by herself, away from the group. Michael Sparkman acted surprised when Joyce and I took him out to dinner in late August, presenting him with our formal proposal for him permanently joining our brain trust. At first, he demurred, saying that he already had a chosen career path, but Joyce began talking to him about the many quality of life differences between what he was aiming towards, and what we were offering to him. He hadn't known the scope of our other, non-business interests and activities, and was very interested in learning about the group homes, and the food distribution programs. The key to his decision to accept our offer came after Joyce mentioned to him that he too could bring us his own ideas for other charitable projects that he might have some personal interest in seeing implemented. It turned out that Michael had an avid interest in bringing musical training to children living on several Native American reservations located in the Midwest. As a child, and later, through his high school years, Michael had been a volunteer music tutor, affiliated with a program that had been disbanded due to a lack of funding, and a lack of interest, after the program's original founder had passed away a few years previously. The program itself began in a rather small way, and was very inexpensive for us to implement. The two greatest expenses being the cost of instruments, and the travel costs for transporting the reservation tutors. What had seemed to me to be most difficult hurdle, was the task of locating sufficient volunteers to make the program workable. Michael insisted that he knew plenty of young people who would volunteer, if such a program were reinstated. We gave him the go ahead to immediately set everything up, including all the funding he said he thought might be required. He left us for three weeks, to head back to Topeka to put the old tutoring program back together. After setting it up, he usually spent his weekends at one reservation or another, managing things, making certain that the program was having his intended results. It was a modest program in the beginning, but like most things, it was well received by the children who benefited from it, and, because of this, it started to grow and expand. With his love of music, Michael had the passion to see the program succeed. To me, the biggest advantage of the brain trust concept was that it left all of us with the free time to pursue our own, personal, interests. The main thing any of us contributed to the business, was our thoughts, and they weren't on any set clock or schedule. All of us would work on several problems at once, giving them thought, and discussing what we'd managed to come up with, among all the interested other members of the company, and with the other brain trust members. At first, my father maintained something of an attitude of reserved skepticism, concerned about the looseness of our problem solving methods and techniques. Joyce had become the coordinator for our initial group of five. She would usually be the one to speak with my father, although he would sometimes seek me out, or call me, to discuss something he thought I'd handle better than Joyce would. Sometimes, he'd go out of his way to talk things over with both Eddie and Dale at work. When he approached any of us, he usually would give that person four or five sheets of notes he'd made, outlining the situation, identifying the problem, and explaining what ideas he'd thought of, including why he had been forced to set those ideas aside. Whatever notes he gave us were first copied, and then distributed to all the participants involved. Whatever anyone came up with, including questions needing to be researched, and, later, to be answered, would be given over to Joyce, to be discussed later on, among the group, and, if necessary, reassigned for more thought and study. Many times, it was a fairly routine and simple problem we would be given, something requiring only a day or two of thought from us, before a consensus was reached on how best to solve it. Sometimes though, it would be a complex series of choices that my father faced, each with benefits, risks, or costs. These were the ones where there wasn't any clear answer to determine which choice would be best. Often, while there was no one clear choice, the answer we ended up choosing as the best solution, was one which incorporated combining two or more of the choices together, to balance the risk reward ratio much more in our favor. My father would always take our reports, spending time by studying them alone, reading carefully any answer we had come up with. Almost always, he would return our report with a list of more new questions, indicating areas where he wanted either, more thought from us, or greater clarification of what we'd meant or proposed. All of us in the brain trust learned a lot from those times when my father remained either, unsatisfied with our answers, or else unconvinced that what we had come up with answered all the questions he felt necessary to have answered before making the best possible decision. There were a lot of time like that, and we learned more about the factors he believed important to consider when making a decision. These were also frustrating experiences for us, because we tried never to send him anything, until and unless, we were all in reasonable agreement that this was the best we could come up with. What this taught us, right from the beginning, was that what we originally sent him hadn't really been our best, and that my father had a better understanding of the overall picture than we did. Joyce and I both thought that my father was deliberately withholding information when he presented us with his problems. Usually, this information concerned future plans that he had in mind. Had we known of these plans from the first, our answers would have better reflected his actual needs. When queried about this, his stock response was that we could have always come to him and asked, if we felt unsure about what his future plans were. This situation would have been more frustrating to us, if he hadn't been using the product of our thinking and advice to control and modify his own plans when steering the company in the direction he was taking it. It was a very heady thing, for people in their early twenties, seeing their own work being implemented, and integrated into the operational plans, for a three quarters of a billion dollar enterprise. ------- In November, primarily due to the work of our brain trust, my father committed two hundred million dollars to purchase the assets of a bankrupt Consolidated Foods. Our group had shown him a way to make the purchase without any outlay of our company cash, or any long term credit expense to be a drain on current profits. We even had a plan for retiring all the loans outstanding for the purchase, by splitting up the acquisition into multiple regional operations, and then selling off those areas where we were already showing a strong presence. My father was very concerned that we were doing something that made our competitor's stronger in those regions. We were able to convince him that our way ended up giving us the core holdings in areas where we had previously been weak, at no cost to us, without tying us down with any new debt to pay for it. If we didn't purchase those assets, we told him, one or more of our competitors would, and it would then be us who didn't get any improvement from the situation. "Some of their holdings in the Northeast and the Midwest would strengthen us, and their Southern distribution in Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida, is going to make Macklinson's a lot stronger than us in that region. They're the only ones who'll buy those holdings from us." "Suppose Macklinson's decides to bid on the whole thing, Dad? Then, they end up getting what you're worried about now, plus they'll get a lot more strength in areas where they have no current presence. Would you rather have that? We need to split Consolidated up ourselves, to make sure we don't strengthen any single competitor more than we're strengthening ourselves. If we're the ones to make the purchase, we make the decisions about who we sell what to. If someone else makes it, we're going to be left out of that process. We can't afford to let that happen." "I wanted you to find a way that we could buy those assets without needing to come up with any of our own cash, a way which would allow us to keep anything that would end up helping us." My father really meant that he had hoped we'd be able to do that. We had hoped it too, but it just wasn't possible. He could figure out a way to borrow the money himself, but he also knew that he was buying a lot of dead wood. Half of what we'd be left with was nearly worthless. All of our competitor's would be expecting us to choke on what they saw as a white elephant. Consolidated had been mismanaged to the point of extinction. They had never recovered from their earlier sudden flurry of ill thought out acquisitions, years before. They had become so worried about their share price dropping, that they had decided to sell everything they had acquired, to us, for pennies on the dollar. The interest payments on the leverage they had carried had eaten up any earnings their core business provided. Because of this, they had been unable to fund needed new purchases, and been forced to let their existing manufacturing and production assets deteriorate, getting to the point where they were becoming run down and obsolete. Half of their actual worth to us was in their national distribution set up. It was a lot more valuable to us than it would have been to any of the other possible bidders. It was more valuable, because we had a good plan allowing us to fully exploit it. We already had a superior national distribution network of our own. Joyce and Dale had come up with a method that would allow them to immediately sell off all of consolidated's distribution centers, primarily for their, somewhat hidden, real estate values, while keeping all the delivery channels fully operational, using our own available extra capacity at all the rail hubs that we already had leased, and under our control. Before we ever put in a bid, we had made decisions about what we'd sell, and what we'd end up retaining for our own use. All five of us had worked hard on devising a workable plan before we ever presented it to my parents. We needed Mama's help for our short term financing strategy. In addition to all the distribution centers, we were retaining five of their baking units, two on the west coast, one in Texas, another in Tennessee, and a small bread production factory in Michigan. The primary purposes for our keeping them was twofold, first, so that we could squeeze out more production, while converting them over to more modern equipment, and second, so that I could begin trading against their grain and ingredient needs. Down the road, after they had been converted, we hoped to use them to increase our market share in those geographical areas. We knew that, with me stepping in and guaranteeing to make all their future grain deliveries at the spot market price, and with our more efficient and cost effective shipping and storage abilities, each of these baking plants would immediately be returned to some level of profitability. Each had been losing money when operated by Continental. We already had the need for the amount of new production capacity this would add to our existing output. The entire purchase was hinging on our belief that we could keep everything operating at a profit long enough to allow us to convert each operation over to the newer, less labor intensive, ovens and automated packaging machinery. Our new plant in Omaha had paid for itself in less than three years of operation. The conversion costs were to be borne by the profits made from our existing baking operations. Dad was hoping that we could renovate each baking unit, but spreading it out, over several slow, but well designed and thought out, stages. In this way, we'd be, over time, converting five obsolete factories into ones that were highly efficient to operate, with state of the art ovens and machinery. We didn't need the income we were generating from the baking operations. We could plow it all back into projects that improved our efficiency, and raised our rate of return. Once converted, each baking plant would then be capable of producing significant profits again, by expanding on the number of shifts it could operate. In baking, production output and capacity was everything, and with our new equipment, and our shipping and distribution advantages, we could out produce, and out distribute, any of our then current competitor's. All the rest of the Consolidated assets were going up for immediate resale. We were hoping that our competitor's would think we were being left stuck with all the deadwood. If so, their willingness to purchase the regional assets would be greater. We had price objectives set for each sale. Another thing that was troubling to my father, was the plan we'd come up with to finance our purchase. Mama and I were putting up one hundred million dollars each. Since Dad was still the trustee of my main trust, he had to give his permission for me to do that. He was primarily concerned because there was too much self dealing involved. He thought there might be a problem because both Mama's money, and my main trust assets were serving as partial guarantors on the bank consortium's line of credit which my father had put in place for the company. He would have to get permission from the banking consortium to make those other funds available for the new acquisition. I didn't see any problem, since the new acquisition increased the worth of the company sufficiently to cover most, if not all, of the draw down in guarantor funds. It was simply an accounting change, and one that would end up leaving their security enhanced at the conclusion of the deal. In the end, despite having some misgivings, my Dad went ahead with the purchase. Within a month, all of the distribution center assets were either already sold, or in escrow. Seventy five percent of the regional asset sell offs were also completed. The only sale not yet consummated was for the Southern region assets we were going to sell to Macklinson's. We were ready to sell to them, but their offer to us was for three million less than what we had asked for, and had projected getting. This delay in the last phase of our Consolidated's asset sell off was causing the bankers and my father some worry. All of the brain trust people, my other wives, and all our children, were congregated together, up in the area around Joyce's office. I had come up from my Dad's office, after spending all morning listening to him dealing with one banker or another. It was becoming clear that we had to do something to get those assets sold. I was talking to Joyce, Michael, and Dale, in Joyce's office. Eddie was in the kitchen with Brenda, getting something to drink. When she returned, Brenda and Shirley were with her, carrying trays with fresh made Italian sandwiches, and enough drinks for all the rest of us. "We need to find some way to get Macklinson's to raise their offer. Dad is spending too much of his time explaining to all those bankers about what's going wrong. We all thought Macklinson's was going to be the easiest sale of the bunch. What they're offering to pay us is just about the liquidation value for what we're offering to sell them. They want us to throw in all the accounts that Consolidated still had down there, and we aren't going to give them those. We're already servicing all of them, out of our Atlanta hub." "They haven't responded to your dad's counter to their proposal yet?" Joyce seemed more upset about the delay than Dale had been. "We knew they might not want to give us a serious bid. They know what we got for what we sold in those other regions. Someone needs to tell them that us having to keep those plants and equipment in Alabama and Florida, will almost force us to start concentrating on building up our presence in that region. Right now, we aren't really doing much down there, except for the vending operations. Even with Consolidated's accounts, we aren't that strong in the area." Dale was well versed in the Southern situation, and it had been her initial strategy that we were now trying to implement with Macklinson's. Dale sounded confident that it was just a matter of making Macklinson's understand that part of the price they were paying was to keep us from moving in to compete head to head with them. Right now, we only had a small presence in some of the cities with populations greater than fifty thousand. The South was filled with smaller towns and cities where we hadn't ever tried to compete. Consolidated had tried, and failed, in their attempts to penetrate that small town Southern market. "If we threaten them, they might just stop dickering for any of the Consolidated assets. They want us to stay small there, and they see our taking over Consolidated's accounts as a threat to that. They are already the power down in that area. We can't touch their rural distribution. That's why Consolidated pulled back from going head to head with them." I looked at Dale, thinking that she should see that we had to do something more than threaten Macklinson's with something they already feared was happening. None of what we were selling them would help us to penetrate the smaller towns and cities. They could afford to drag their feet, because every day they delayed, made them stronger, and us weaker. Brenda put the sandwiches down on Joyce's desk, before going back through the bedroom to the kitchen area. Shirley was standing by there too, letting all of us choose our drinks from her tray. "How come they don't want to buy those factories from you Kenny? I thought you told us they were the ones getting the best deals out of everyone?" Shirley seldom showed any interest in the business or its problems. It was unusual for her to speak out like she just had. "That's what I thought when I said that, Shirl. They have the best total market penetration of any of our regional competitor's. With us selling off Consolidated's production capacity down there, they'll have the smaller markets almost all to themselves. Their only competition is the mom and pop bakers in the small towns, and us, in some of the larger cities. I thought they'd jump at the chance to keep out any new competition." I hoped this would answer her question, because I wanted to encourage her to participate in our future discussions too. She had a different perspective from ours, more of a housewife's frame of reference. She saw things from the consumer's point of view. Sometimes, that was what we needed to keep us better grounded. "If their business is so good, maybe you should try to buy it from them, rather than sell them this other one." This was an interesting idea, but not a practical one. For one thing we were already carrying a lot of debt on our credit line. For another thing, Macklinson's, like us, was a privately held company. If they were a public company, we'd have considered buying them before. We had ambitions for that region, and it was cheaper to buy market share than to build it from scratch. I was about to tell Shirley this, when she spoke again. "If they made such a little offer to you, maybe it was because they don't have enough money to offer you any more." As far as I knew, no one had done any investigating about the financial position of Macklinson's. It could be that Shirley had hit on the real reason for their too low offer to us. I didn't hold out any hope of buying them out, but, if we knew they were struggling for cash, perhaps we could exploit it in some way. It was too bad we didn't have more accounts in the rural South. If we had some, we could ignite a price war, and give them something real to worry about from us. I got up from the chair I'd been using, excusing myself to go back to Dad's office. Maybe he had someone he knew who could tell us more about Macklinson's balance sheet. I grabbed both my sandwiches, and one for my Dad, before I left the rest of them there, still talking among themselves. I found my Dad looking out his office window. This was a sure sign that he was deep in his own thoughts. He never liked to be disturbed when he was in the middle of trying to figure something out. I sat down, waiting for him to finish what he was thinking about. When he did, I knew he'd turn his chair back so it was facing his desk again. It took another fifteen minutes before he turned back and noticed me. "Gene Macklinson called me right after you left, Kenny. They've withdrawn their offer. He said to call him if we ever want to just sell the Birmingham plant by itself." My Dad seemed like this news was really a big setback for him. I didn't see it that way. We'd done well on the real estate deals, clearing several million more than we'd counted on. While it was true we'd gotten less for the Northeast assets than we had planned on, we'd done well on the West coast and in the Midwest. We were forty million short of our goal, but we still had the Southern regional assets that my Dad had told us he had least wanted to divest. I didn't remember how many times he had told me that we should be expanding a lot more in the South, but it was a mantra I heard from him often. He had already insisted we keep the baking plants in Tennessee and Texas. It wasn't hard to figure out that he had his eyes firmly fixed on expanding our marketing efforts in the South. "Shirley thinks we should forget about selling to them. She thinks we should try to buy them up. She says maybe their offer was so low because they're having some kind of problems raising cash to buy it from us." I wanted him to consider the possibility. Two good things could possibly happen if we decided to proceed as if that were the case. One, if they were having trouble coming up with forty million, they really didn't want any competition from anyone else in their marketing area. Two, maybe the pressure of having to keep low profit margins, to fight off competition from Consolidated, had left them vulnerable to either a takeover or someone coming in and undercutting their prices to steal market share. Often, at the conclusion of a price war over market share, the defeated company went under, or else was merged into the winning company. If Macklinson's was vulnerable, now would be a good time to make our move. Our banker's might be hesitant about our purchasing assets from a bankrupt competitor, but they never seemed worried about our spending money for expansion. It was funny too, because of the two actions, expansion was the most risky course. I wondered if we had any banking contacts in the South who could tell us if Macklinson's might already be overextended. If they had been a publicly traded company, I could have gotten the information with a single phone call. "It might be something to consider. Gene was being pretty vague when I asked him why he was pulling his offer. A year ago there were some rumors making the rounds. I think Gene might have gotten a little cash strapped after he got divorced. I don't think any of the family has ever sold any shares to non family members. I'm almost positive they wouldn't sell out to anyone unless they had absolutely no other choice." We talked for awhile, mostly about how we could find out more about the three Macklinson brothers, and any financial details about their baking and distributing operation. My father told me some stories about some run in's the Macklinson's brothers father had with Senior Chalmers as far back as the nineteen forties, when both of them were just getting started with expanding their respective businesses. "Maybe you should call him and tell him that you've decided to direct all our expansion to the South, since he has withdrawn his buy offer for the Consolidated plants. Ask him if he wants to sell to us now, or wait until after we find out who really has the deepest pockets to survive in a price war." I wanted to see if my Dad was ready to take some action. Too often, he waited until he was sure before he initiated any action. To me, that was maddening. I guess it reflected the difference in our personalities. "Where would we get the money if he did agree to sell? Not that he would, but just in the hypothetical case that he did." My Dad was watching me as closely as I was watching him. I knew then, that he was putting me to the test again. Had he manipulated me into this situation? I didn't see how he could have anticipated this turn of events. "How much money do you think it would be?" I had no idea what value he thought Macklinson's represented. I was sure that he had at least a ballpark estimate though. "Between three fifty and four hundred million, just as it is now. Could be a little less, especially if they already know they're vulnerable to a big player coming in and competing with them again. Where would we get that kind of money, Kenny? Before you say it, our facility with the consortium is already fully utilized. I've asked them about another acquisition, and they want us to first consolidate everything we've just acquired. They think the new baking facilities we picked up from Consolidated are going to require a lot more money than we're projecting, and a lot sooner too." "We can spin off all the bakeries and take them public. We talked about that before. We'll still retain control, but it would be a good way to raise a lot of money quickly. We take the money, and we use it to buy up Macklinson's. It would make us the lead player in the Southern region." "Your mother and I don't want to get ourselves tied down with the reporting requirements that would require, Kenny, or with our having to make decisions while keeping in mind the possible consequences of minority shareholder unrest. Too much new accountability, and not enough benefit to it for us. We prefer borrowing, over diluting our equity like that." "We can go to New York and see if we can find a new credit facility. General Foods uses insurance company money. With Macklinson's we'd be a billion dollar company." "Without them, we'll be at a billion before too long anyway. Kenny, you have to remember where most of our profits are coming from. It isn't from the breads and cereals. The vending business is now our core. The baking companies we keep because of our history, your futures trading, our obligations to our long time employees, and because it makes us large enough, overall, to attract the financing that we need to float all of the baking operation. All of our own money is going to building up the vending side of the business. We aren't putting new money into the cereal or bread side right now. Buying Macklinson's would require us to do that." "You don't even want to call them? I think, from what you've told me, that your call would light a fire under them. If they still don't offer us what we're asking, then we'll know they are weak. They aren't going to be willing to invite competition in, not just to save three million dollars. It will cost them that much, every month, if we give them any real competition. More than that if we try moving in with our most aggressive pricing. Call them up and see what their first reaction is." My Dad was leaning back in his chair, his hands pressed together, like he was lost in thought. I could tell he was running the idea through his mental strainer, weighing what the costs might be from making such a phone call. I was already sure we had to do something. The quickest and easiest solution would be having Macklinson's decide to buy up the Consolidated assets like we had originally planned for. In the long run, at least from the way I saw it, us buying them up, or taking them on in direct competition, would make the most sense. Sooner or later, we were going to want to open up the South to our own cereal and baking operations. I was betting, if my Dad came to the same conclusions, we'd be heading off to New York to find ourselves some new, more aggressive, banking partners. "You call Gene Macklinson, Kenny. I want you to tell him who you are, and then ask him what you wanted me to ask him. Tell him the new price for the Consolidated assets is forty three million. Give him a week to get back to us with his answer. Your mother and I will be spending next week in New York, because I don't believe Gene will be able to meet our new terms. Tell him we can send a team down to look over his operation, in the event he decides to sell out to us now." "Were you going to do all of this anyway?" I watched my father, as his face widened with a small grin. He was not a man given to much humor. "You never go into anything without a fall back option, Kenny. We always knew we were going to need to increase our market share in the South. I was willing to put it off, to take advantage of the opportunity we now have with our vending operations, first. What you've done convinces me that we need to rethink our overall expansion goals. To make that possible, we'll need to find ourselves some people, with financing capabilities, who believe as we do, that you have to take advantage of opportunities whenever they present themselves. I was already entertaining serious misgivings about strengthening Macklinson's by making this sale to them. To prevent that, I'm willing to go out and explore some other options, including negotiating a new credit facility." "When did you first decide that you were going to have to do something else?" I wanted to learn more about whatever game he was playing with us. I wasn't concerned that he played with us, only interested in his reasons for wanting to do so. "I've been considering making a play for the Southern market for six months or longer, even before Consolidated folded. I've known, for years now, that it was going to be the toughest market for us to crack. I didn't decide to do anything though, not until Gene told me he was withdrawing his offer for those assets. All I decided then, was to look into their finances, to see if they might be stretched too tightly. When you came to me with your thoughts, it helped me to clarify my own. Gene probably won't sell, but knowing we're going to be coming after his markets if he doesn't buy what we're selling, we'll still find out a lot by how he reacts to what we tell him." "Will he react to what we tell him, even more strongly, hearing someone as young as me telling him what his choices are?" I was looking forward to making the phone call, but I wanted it clear in my own mind what my father's purpose was in having me call Mr. Macklinson. "Gene's my age, Kenny, and he has sons of his own who work with him. His brother, Larry, he has two sons too, and they both work in the business. I don't know the other brother, but I wouldn't be surprised if he has sons working there as well. This company is more than just a business to all of them, more than how they make their livings. I'm hoping that your call will result in Gene calling me back with some cooperative proposal that would leave all of us able to co-exist. We don't need to be in every small hamlet and crossroads in the South to be successful. Gene doesn't need to keep all of the larger towns and cities to himself either. If we scare him enough, he might want to sit down with me and work out a livable compromise." "What about price fixing and anti-consumer collusion?" "It wouldn't apply in this case. All we'd agree to was an understanding of which markets each of us is most interested in. I'm not interested in going into towns with only one or two grocery stores in them, but Macklinson's is. I think he might be willing to give up on his expansion ambitions if it meant he knew he wouldn't have to be overly competitive in his pricing, for the bulk of his strongest territorial areas. We wouldn't discuss pricing, just where we plan on opening new markets." "What about New York? When did you decide you needed to go there?" "About three days ago, when I started spending half my day answering questions that never needed to be asked. We need banking partners that understand value, and who won't be questioning every single thing that isn't going exactly as we planned it. I need greater freedom to act than I currently have. Our current facility is secured by assets worth considerably more than when the original line was granted. I agreed to this banking program, believing they would be confident enough in our business competence to allow us to have a certain flexibility and freedom with our actions. This hasn't turned out to be the case." "When I speak to Mr. Macklinson, do you want me to be cordial, or pushy and brash? Do you want him upset, or calm, and willing to consider our new demands?" "You decide for yourself how you want to come across. He isn't an enemy, just a competitor. In the end, I'd prefer both company's arriving at some understanding where neither would have a need to cause injury to the other." ------- Chapter 34 I left my Dad's office and went back to Joyce's. When I told them what my Dad had told me, their reaction was mixed. Joyce and Eddie were hoping Macklinson's would pay the forty three million. Dale and Michael both wanted us to take over that Southern market. I hadn't told them what my father had told me about wanting to reach an accommodation with the Macklinson's over sharing the market. I'd tell Joyce later, when we were alone. To the others, it would seem like my Dad had been using us, pretending to be needing our help and advice, when he had already worked out for himself what he planned on doing. I already knew him well enough to understand that he always had several possible outcomes he'd prepared himself for. What we had seen from this call from Gene, was him being pushed towards one particular option, and even that one had several different paths he could go down. In his own rigid way, my Dad was becoming increasingly more flexible. He was using Joyce and me, and our brain trust, to increase this new flexibility. I didn't want to discourage Eddie, Dale, or Michael, and I wanted to encourage my Dad to become more willing to adapt to changing circumstances. I wanted them to believe that my father was responding to their suggestions. He was, just not in the manner they believed. My phone call to Gene Macklinson was a surprise. Instead of getting angry with me over what was, in essence, an open threat, he asked me questions about our plans for expansion into his area. I told him that my Dad decided those things, but he had left Joyce and I in charge of disposing of the Consolidated assets. When he questioned the reason for our raising our asking price for the Consolidated assets, I told him we needed that much more because our other sales hadn't earned us as much as we'd projected they would. "I told your father that we weren't interested at forty million, or even at thirty seven. Now, you call me back saying you've raised the price to forty three, and saying that if we don't buy it, you'll be forced to come down here and try to open new markets, just like Consolidated tried, and failed, to do. If I wasn't afraid of taking them on, why should I fear taking you on as well?" "I figured you'd have learned what it costs to protect a territory from a competitor intent on moving in. When Consolidated started competing with you, they were already weakened by other problems. We don't have any of their weaknesses. We've been growing by more than twenty percent a year, for the last five or six years. We can afford to go into a new area and compete as hard as we need to. We wouldn't expect to make profits for the first four or five years. We make most of our money with our other divisions anyway." "Consolidated never really made a dent in any of our core markets. They were a nuisance rather than any real competition." "They didn't have our sales force, or our willingness to absorb early marketing losses. We have the manpower to blanket the whole area, hitting every grocer in the region, giving them sound financial incentives to switch their business over to us." "If you're so strong, then why are you even bothering to call me?" "It was my Dad's idea. I wanted to call you to try to make an appointment for our accounting people to come down and go over your books, with the idea of trying to buy you out without us having to get into a price war over grabbing market share. My Dad said you have a family business, just like ours. He said it was more than just a company to you and your family, and, because of that, you probably wouldn't agree to sell. He hopes that you and he can work out some way where all of us can co-exist together. A way that leaves both of our company's in better shape than any of the other options would." "We aren't for sale, and if we were I don't think you could afford us." He was reacting to what he thought of as an insult, my offering to possibly buy their company. I wished then that I'd made the call in my Dad's office. I wasn't sure how far to push him. My Dad had told me to decide for myself, but I already knew what he was hoping for. "We got Consolidated pretty cheaply, Mr. Macklinson, and we sold off just enough to get most of our money back already. What we have left is probably worth over a hundred million, and it cost us less than forty so far. We bought Consolidated partly out of my mother's personal funds, plus I kicked in the other one hundred million, out of one of my trust funds. If we bought up your company, we'd probably do the same thing, just sell off all the pieces we didn't need. Mama and I are always looking for something we can turn a quick profit from. It's my Dad who likes to keep businesses together, not Mama and me." I knew I had made a strong case for his believing that Mama and I could handle the purchase cost of his company. He had to have some idea that I had told him the truth about our rate of growth over the past five years or so. I had given him all the reasons I could think of, to make him not want to take us on in his own marketing region. If Dad was right, he'd see that his best option was to work something out with us. A good portion of our product line was non competing with theirs anyway. They didn't make cereals, and our lines of frozen packaged breakfast rolls and dinner desserts was something they had no competing product to offer either. I called my father. "Dad, I just got off the phone with Gene Macklinson. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to get into another war with us. He was pretty relaxed and reasonable on the phone. If he calls you, why not offer to let him represent us in those smaller markets of his, with all of our noncompetitive lines? In fact, if you guys can make a deal, ask him if he wants to buy his grains through me, at the same rate the others pay. Those two things should go a long way towards convincing him we won't try to move in on him in the small markets later. I already made it clear to him that you want to reach an accommodation. If you add in some sweeteners, it will probably make the whole thing seem less like we're strong arming him into doing what we want." "Did you tell him about wanting to buy his company?" "I told him, but he didn't sound happy, or interested. I don't think he'd be willing to sell to us. He didn't say much when I told him I'd probably sell off any parts we didn't need. I told him that Mama and I bought Consolidated with our personal funds. I implied we could do the same with his company." "When he hung up, was he angry at you?" "I wouldn't say angry. He was unhappy, but I think he knew it was his unwillingness to buy the Consolidated assets that was dictating our latest move. I think he already anticipated we'd call him with something like we ended up doing." "He won't call back until he's discussed things with his brothers. If you sold him on the idea that you were serious, and capable of following through, he will probably call to see for himself what I'm willing to offer him. I talked to a banker I know in Macon, Georgia. He told me that Macklinson's has been quietly looking for a new source for their operating lines. If they already need operating capital, half our battle is already won. What made you think of having them broker our non competing lines?" "It seemed like the best way to increase our sales in the region, without having to spend a lot of money introducing the products to the consumers. I don't think the sales will amount to a whole lot, but, if we're really serious about staying away from their small town areas, this would seem like a good thing for us to do." "I agree. I'm not as certain about that grain business though. I'm sure it would be profitable for you, but it would strengthen Macklinson's, make them more competitive than they are now." "It would, but it would also make them more dependent on our future good will. It's harder to pick a fight with an ally. If they did, I'd naturally discontinue selling them grains. I thought it would just make it better for them, and make our deal seem less like a defeat in their eyes." "You weren't thinking about your extra trading profits?" "I was thinking about them, but I was also thinking about doing it to make it more likely you'd be able to get what you wanted. I've got other bakers who contact me, all the time, wanting to get the same brokerage deal I give our other allies." "I know. You keep giving them my number, and telling them to call me. I've already told you all the ones I don't mind you helping with this brokerage business." "Tell me what you think about my ideas on the non competing lines, and the grain brokerage again. I didn't mention either thing to Macklinson." "If he calls, and if he sounds interested in reaching some accord, I'll ask him about both of those things. You'd need to go see them, and find out how much grain they'd be using. If you do go down, take Joyce and Dale with you. It never hurts to have people on the ground, looking at a competitor's operation." The next morning, Mama and my Dad flew to New York City. He called every day, several times usually, to see if there was any word from the Macklinson's. He told me, on the fourth day they were there, that he had worked out a line accommodation with a lead bank representing a new consortium. He didn't go into any particulars on the phone, other than to mention that the new credit facility didn't include any guarantees from either Mama or me. I asked him the new amount of the lines, but he said he'd go over everything when they got back. He surprised me by telling me that he and Mama were staying in New York, over the weekend, to see some plays, and do some shopping. That Friday, Gene Macklinson called, and Myra gave him the phone number and room information for my parent's hotel. My Dad called me at home that night, and we spoke on the phone for more than an hour. He had spoken with Gene, at length, and both of them had expressed the opinion that it made more sense for them to try to work together. Nothing had been agreed to yet, according to what my Dad said, but, the basic idea of us staying in cities with greater than fifty thousand people, and leaving the smaller cities and towns alone, seemed to be a good beginning framework for fashioning an acceptable understanding. There were some questions about what constituted a suburb, and what was an independent town or city, but my father was certain it could be resolved, given some time for them to work it out. Gene Macklinson was sending up one of his children to talk to me, in the coming week, about my grain broker activities. He didn't believe I could make delivery at the spot market prices my father had promised him. I wasn't that sure that I wanted to explain everything about my own grain trading methods that made those prices possible. My father told me he thought it was necessary, explaining that it wasn't much of a risk for me to show him what I did, because it wasn't something that just anyone could do. I agreed with him, but I wasn't sure that it wasn't something another grain trader couldn't pick up on fairly easily. It wasn't that complex, and, once you saw my computer set up in action, you would be able to understand where my trading signals were coming from. I was at home Tuesday, waiting for a phone call, from whichever of the Macklinson sons they were sending to see me, telling me he had landed in Bolling. I was going to pick him up and bring him to the house, to show him some of my brokerage statements, and to try to acquaint him, somewhat, with my trading program. I still had reservations about doing so, but I'd promised my father that I would. It was almost nine in the morning before my phone finally rang. I was already trading the grains by then. "Hello?" "Mr. Parsons? This is Cindy Macklinson. My father told you I was coming?" I was very surprised that I was speaking to one of his daughters. Somehow, I'd just assumed it was one of his sons he'd be sending. I guess I didn't respond quickly enough to her. "Mr. Parsons, is there anything wrong?" "No, I'm sorry, Ms. Macklinson. I'm watching a price screen, and I got distracted by the way the metals keep moving around. Are you at the airport?" "Yes, I got here a lot earlier, but they somehow managed to misplace my luggage. I just found it, otherwise I'd have called you sooner. If you give me the directions, I'll take a taxi over to wherever you are." "No, that won't be necessary. Let me call someone, and I'll get you a ride over here. Can you wait out front of the terminal? It will probably only be about ten minutes after I hang up. What are you wearing, so she'll know who you are?" We exchanged information, me telling her that it would be my wife, driving a baby blue Lincoln Continental, and her saying she was wearing a grayish skirt and jacket. She said she was carrying a red purse and two pieces of luggage that matched her purse. That sounded so much like something that Brenda would say, that I changed my mind, and told her it might be a woman named Brenda who would come by to pick her up, but I told her that I didn't know what kind of car she'd be driving. I wasn't sure if Brenda took her own car or rode in with Emily, in hers. When I called over to the office, it turned out that Brenda was busy preparing lunch, and that Joyce couldn't afford to leave right then. Joyce told me it had to be either Eddie or Emily. Eddie and Dale had just recently learned how to drive, so I chose Emily, not wanting to risk Ms. Macklinson's life with a novice driver. Forty five minutes later, Emily and Cindy Macklinson came into the house. When they reached my office, I turned, getting my first look at her. She was smiling at me, and I was lost. Whatever I had in my head to say to her, as a greeting, was immediately forgotten. Have you ever had one of those situations where you see someone for the first time, and you know, right away, that this person is going to change the rest of your life? That's what happened when I first set my eyes on Cindy. The weird part, is that she wasn't even that good looking. She was about average in height, and in her suit jacket and skirt, I couldn't really get that good of an idea about her shape. She had long, straight, black hair, and high cheek bones, with the darkest eyes and the whitest eyeballs I'd ever seen. She had great teeth, very white, and seemingly all perfectly straight too. Her smile went straight to my heart. I tried to stand up, and stumbled over my own feet, almost losing my balance. Emily was giving me this very strange look. I knew that she could see how Cindy was affecting me. I tried to think of something good to say, something that would make up for my ungainly exhibition. "I thought your father was sending one of your brothers. I mean, when you first called, I realized that I was mistaken, but that was what I thought. I was going to drive over to pick you up myself, but when I found out you were a girl, I thought it might be better if we didn't leave you stranded at the airport for that long. Sometimes, a girl alone in a strange airport." I realized I was babbling, so I just forced myself to shut up. "Cindy went to UCLA, in California. She saw Gary playing basketball, can you believe how small the world is?" That sounded almost as lame as what I'd said. All of us had seen Gary playing basketball. He had been on televised games at least four times that I remembered. Then, I realized she meant that Cindy had seen him playing in a live game, in person. "We all went to KU. We played UCLA several times. How come you went so far away to college?" "I don't know why. It just seemed like a good idea. I needed to get out on my own. My parents were always fighting, and my brothers and cousins were too over protective. I thought it would be nice to be able to make all my own decisions. I only stayed for two years though. I ended up missing home too much. My parents got divorced, and I didn't want my mother living all alone in that big house." I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who was saying the first thing that popped into their head. "Well, welcome to Kansas, and to our home. If you want to freshen up or something, Emily can show you where you'll be staying. If not, I can start showing you whatever your father sent you to find out about. Anything you want to see, we have no secrets." I had no idea why I'd added that last part. "I'm staying here, at your home?" She sounded genuinely surprised. "Yes, that's what we thought. There aren't any good places to stay close by, and it would be silly for you to go all the way back to Bolling, when we have plenty of room here for you." "Maybe she's worried because of what I told her when we were driving over here, about you and Joyce, and all the rest of us, and about the children." Emily looked a little bit sheepish when she told me that. That wasn't like Emily to discuss our private lives with a stranger. Especially in a case like this, where the stranger was the daughter of a man we were negotiating an important business arrangement with. I realized this wasn't a good time or place to question her about what she'd been thinking when she did that. "You really do have twelve children, with four different women? And, you live here with all of them, plus two other women?" The words just came rushing out of her mouth. If I'd had any doubts about what Emily had meant when she said she'd told Cindy about our family, those doubts were now things of the past. "What happened, Emily? Didn't you have time to tell her about Ellen too?" I was already embarrassed and angry. I was certain my father was going to be upset as well. I wouldn't have said anything like that, except Cindy's question had been phrased in a way that made it seem like she thought I was some kind of a pervert. I really wanted her to like me, and that was pretty strange also. Why should I care? I wasn't ashamed of my life, or of any of the choices my wives and I had made. "I'm sorry, Kenny. We were just talking, and I started telling her things without really thinking about what I was saying." Emily looked upset too. None of this was going like it should have. I tried to think of something to say again, but Cindy beat me to it. "It wasn't Emily's fault. I kept asking her questions, because I found myself fascinated by what she was telling me. Are you a Mormon, or a follower of Islam?" Emily laughed, when Cindy said that. Not a polite laugh either. It was a ridiculing laugh. I wondered what she was angry about. "Kenny isn't religious, he just likes a lot of choices. He enjoys having a harem." I wondered again what had brought this on. Maybe my comment about Ellen? "Maybe we should just stick to the grain brokerage, and my grain trading programs? I don't mean to be rude, but I'd feel more comfortable talking about this with you if everyone affected by it was here to tell you their side to it." I thought this would buy me some time to figure out what Emily was up to. She almost never did anything without having a purpose for it. I had barely finished speaking when Emily suddenly turned, walking away, leaving the two of us all alone in my office. I was immediately conscious of our being alone too. Once more, I had to wonder why she was having such an effect on me. She really wasn't as attractive as either Emily or Brenda. She wasn't plain or anything, but she wasn't some raving beauty either. "Maybe I should leave, Mr. Parsons. I've apparently done something to make you and Emily upset with each other. I'm really sorry, because this was the last thing I ever wanted to do. I just couldn't stop asking her those stupid questions, but I really didn't mean to make either of you upset by it." "Cindy, this isn't your fault. This must be something I did to make Emily mad at me. If you'll wait here, I'll go speak to her, and we'll find out what it was. Sometimes, it only takes a few seconds to get these things sorted out." I almost never left people alone in my office, but I did it that time, without a second thought. I ran off, looking for Emily, finding her in the kitchen, crying at the table. I went over to her, putting my hand on her back. "Em, what's wrong? I'm sorry if I barked at you before. I was just surprised by what you both said." "I recognized the way you looked at her, Kenny. You used to look at me like that in the beginning. You're going to go off and do something stupid with her, and the rest of us are going to all be your X's again." "That's the craziest talk I've ever heard you speak, Em. In the first place, there's no way that I'd ever leave all of this, all of you. It just wouldn't ever happen. Think about what I'd be giving up. In the second place, while I'm not denying there is an attraction, she isn't the first girl I've ever been attracted to. I don't go off and make love to every girl that I find attractive." "You're going to with her, I just know it. She was looking at you the same way too. I don't want to talk about this with you right now. I called Joyce, and everyone's already on their way back home." "You called Joyce? From here? Why would you call her? It doesn't make any sense for you to call her. Joyce told me she had a lot of important things she needed to do today. What did you tell her that would make her drop everything to come home like this?" "I told her the truth, that you met someone else, and that you were going to be leaving all of us for her." I stopped rubbing my hand along her back. I wasn't sure if I should believe her or not. It was too bizarre, the idea of her calling Joyce at the office, and then having Joyce lend enough credence to what she was saying to agree to leave everything at work, and come rushing back home. This was crazy, and Joyce was the sanest woman I knew. The only thing she'd said that contained even the tiniest grain of truth, was that I'd had this immediate reaction to Cindy Macklinson. I went back to my office, but Cindy wasn't in there. I assumed she'd grown tired of waiting and had needed to find a bathroom. I sat down in my chair, determined to try to focus my attention on the three computer screens sitting on my desk. Ten minutes later, after I hadn't managed to formulate a single thought about futures trading, I heard Joyce, and the whole rest of the gang coming in the front door. Joyce was calling out my name at the top of her lungs. She opened my office door and came flying onto my lap. She was in tears, almost hysterical. I wrapped her in my arms, trying to comfort whatever fears she had. She was shaking and shivering while she cried. Whatever Emily had said to her, it had her really frightened. I lifted her head up from where she had it buried against my chest. I kissed her lips softly. "Joyce, I'd never ever leave any of you. Whatever Emily told you, there's no chance of that ever happening." Even as I held her, trying to get her calmed down enough to talk to, I wondered where Cindy had gotten off to. When I had a chance, I swung my chair around, so that I was facing the door rather than my desk. I wanted to see Cindy first, if she came back to my office. At all levels, I understood that Emily and Joyce's fears both contained some measure of substance. I'd never leave them, not for anything. Still, I wondered what Cindy's body would look like when I figured out a way to get her to show it to me. I could see I had a lot of negotiating to do with my wives. I should have insisted that Joyce take the time off to drive Cindy home for me. If I had of, most of this could have been avoided. Joyce was just reacting to Emily's fears. Once she met Cindy, she'd feel just like I did. It was too late now though, the damage was already done. Now I'd have to run the gauntlet, explaining to all my wives, the difference between just being attracted, and actually loving someone. I loved each of my wives. None of them had any reason to ever doubt that. I kept hugging Joyce, from time to time whispering what I hoped were soothing thoughts in her ear. I must have had some kind of reaction when Cindy again appeared in my office doorway, because Joyce turned from my chest and looked over there too. Before I had a chance to react, or to grab her, Joyce bounded up out of my lap, and closed the distance between herself and Cindy. I tried to jump up too, but again, my feet got tangled up. This time I did fall over. She must think I have some kind of balance problem. I hope she doesn't think I do this all the time. I looked up, just in time to see Joyce's hand moving forward. ------- Chapter 35 "Hello, I'm Joyce Parsons, Kenny's wife. Welcome to our home." Joyce had her hand extended, and was shaking hands with Cindy Macklinson. If you didn't know Joyce really well, you would have thought she was calm and composed by the way she greeted our guest. I stood up and walked towards the two of them, coming up behind Joyce and placing an arm around her shoulder, pulling her back against me. I could feel the pressure as she leaned her body back into me. The actions of her body giving lie to the words issuing forth from between her lips. I didn't know what I could say to her to calm whatever fears Emily had provoked by her panicked phone call. I was upset at myself for the reaction I was having over meeting Cindy. What use did I have for another complication in my life? "Cindy, I'm sorry for needing to leave you alone before, but it seems like Emily got all worried about something that she needn't have. Would you like to get started discussing the grain purchases, and learning about my trading program?" The whole time I spoke to her, I kept Joyce close against me. Partly, this was for her sake, to keep her calm, and, partly, for my sake, to keep me focussed on keeping things on a professional plane with Cindy. Seeing Joyce and Emily's reactions to things had finally registered and served to give me enough worry to cause me to pause and think about the danger my reaction posed to my family and myself. "You said we could talk about what Emily told me, after all your other wives were here to tell their side of it. Aren't they all here yet?" Cindy looked innocently up at my face, ignoring Joyce's presence. This was the first time it occurred to me that she might have been as affected by me, as I was, with her. I felt Joyce beginning to burrow further against my side. I knew I was in the presence of real trouble now. It would have been complicated enough if it had only been me that felt a strong attraction to Cindy. If she felt the same kind of attraction for me, there would be no way to smooth things over without provoking further fireworks from the wives. "I don't think that's a good idea now. Perhaps we should forget this whole idea. When we suggested doing this, we thought it would make it easier for your father and mine to get along as friendly allies, rather than being bitter competitors. We didn't know he would be sending you to discuss the grain contract, or my trading activities." I could see Cindy's eyes widening, a look of both fear and dismay was on her face, immediately after I suggested forgetting the original purpose of her visit. "You can't do that!" She practically shouted when she said it. "Kenny, it isn't her fault." Joyce said that as she moved away from me, and walked over closer to Cindy. "Joyce, you need to stay out of this. I think we'd all be better off if we just admitted this wasn't going to work. I think Emily made certain of that when she started discussing our personal business with Cindy. I don't feel comfortable with the way things are right now. None of us are comfortable." "We can forget that other thing. It isn't important. I won't say anything to my family about it. Can we just get back to what is important? I came here to find out how you can sell us our grains so cheaply. My father needs to understand how you can do that." The whole atmosphere had changed quickly when I said we should just forget the whole thing. It was like throwing cold water on two dogs knotted together. Whatever lust I'd been feeling had suddenly dissipated. From Cindy's statements and demeanor, the same thing had happened to her. Joyce had quickly gone from worrying about losing me, to worrying about how all of this was affecting Cindy. The three of us stood there, uncertain about what we should say next. I knew I wasn't going to be the next to speak. "It won't hurt anything to tell her how you do the grain purchases, Kenny. Tell her that, and show her your trading program." Joyce was looking at me, and then she turned back to Cindy. "Kenny uses all the grain requirements from our companies, and some others that we provide grain for, as leverage against his futures trading results. He buys and sells, as long as the grains trade in a range inside this box he has. "He gets out whenever his trades show a profit, and then he trades again. If they don't ever show a profit, he takes delivery against the grain delivery requirements he has with all the baking companies. That almost never happens though, because there is too much volatility in the markets. "When it does happen, something else is out of whack, and Kenny starts trading it against his grain holdings. All he ever has to do is make more money from his trading than the cost of delivering the actual grain to our customers. All the rest is his profit." Joyce was displaying a greater understanding of what I did than I would have given her credit for having. She was certainly describing the trading process a lot better than I would have been able to do. I could take issue with her description of my grain commitments as "leverage", but, other than that, I had to admit she had covered all of the essentials in describing what I did. I preferred to think of the grain commitments as reference levels, as the tops and bottoms of my trading boxes. As long as grain prices stayed inside my trading boxes, I could, and did, make money, from trading them. "What do you use to fix the grain price absolutes, the Dollar?" Cindy looked at me while she asked the question. Right away, I understood that she had followed everything that Joyce had said, plus, she had the requisite underlying knowledge of trading beforehand, otherwise, there was no way she could have asked such a pinpoint question of me. "Metals and the Dollar. I use foreign currencies too, if one of them seems too far out of line. I like the Swiss Franc and the Deutsch mark for that, but I use the British Pound sometimes, too." "Do you use platinum also?" "No. I use gold and silver, but only if the metals seem either too high or low to the currencies. I keep them all flowing on my computer screen, and I've attenuated each signal so that it shows a relationship with the grains and the other currencies or metals." "Are you using a proprietary program to tweak your signals?" That question answered any remaining doubts I might have had about Cindy's expertise, or where it was derived from. "Where do you normally work, Cindy?" "I do some back office accounting for a commodity trading firm in Birmingham. I've been handling all of my Dad's grain purchases, from just after he and my mom split up. She used to do it for him before that." I knew there was nothing I could do to hide the methods I used for my trading from her. Not if I continued explaining them to Cindy, from the point where Joyce had left off. Once she saw how I had configured my trading console, she would know everything necessary for duplicating my system, and would be able to convert it over for her own use. Even so, I was vain enough to believe that her trading results, using the whole of my system, would be inferior to my own. I believed this, but had nothing concrete to base the belief upon. For all I really knew, she might be a better trader than I was. At the very least, by showing her my entire trading program, I'd be inviting unwanted competition. It could cost me a bunch of money. "I'm satisfied that you already know enough, just from what you've been told so far, to be able to report back to your father that we can make deliveries at the prices we say. I'm not interested in giving you or your family any more of my trading program. I wouldn't care to have you using my methods to trade for yourselves." "I think that's fair. I would like to see your set up though. I only buy for the company through institutional grain brokers. I don't trade in any grains. I have a small account of my own, but it's used strictly for forex trading." I thought about what she was saying. There was a huge difference between trading grains and trading currencies. Forex trading was different from futures trading too. Just because she hadn't traded grains though, that didn't mean she couldn't learn to do so very quickly. "I'll let you sit and watch me trading tomorrow, but I'm not going to tell you anything about my internal software programs, or about how I've managed to attenuate and integrate the price data for all the commodities and currencies I watch. If you want to try to fool around and set up your own system after seeing mine, you're welcome to do that, but I'm not going to help you with it." "You needn't worry about me, or my Dad's company, Kenny. My personal account is less than twenty thousand dollars, and my Dad is having enough trouble just keeping what he already has together. We're having our own problems staying afloat. Even with the grain prices you've promised us, we might not be able to keep things going. I'm not supposed to talk to you about our problems, but I didn't want you thinking they sent me here to steal your secrets." Joyce began asking her pointed questions about her father's business. Many of the questions were outside Cindy's knowledge. She explained that she wasn't very active in the family business, other than as a buyer of grains for the bakeries. "Did the price war with Consolidated hurt your company that much?" "My dad said it almost put us under. It still might, unless he can get new financing. Our bankers are worried about their collateral. They're trying to make us submit to an outside appraisal of our plant assets. If they succeed, my dad says they'll pull our operating line. He's put it off for as long as he can, but he hasn't been able to find anyone else to take over our banking needs. When he first made the bid on those Consolidated assets, it was mostly so he could go to the banks and try to set something up, based on the value of the new assets he would be acquiring. It didn't work, so he had to withdraw his bid." "He should have raised his prices back up when Consolidated went under." "He did, but he couldn't raise them all the way back up. There is still competition from the small, independent, bakeries. They were squeezed too, and they had to lower their prices to try to compete with us and Consolidated. They haven't gone all the way back up either. It isn't good for any of us, and that's one of the reasons my dad agreed to work something out with your company." "How much is your current operating line?" When Joyce asked that, it surprised me. This wasn't the kind of information one competitor would give to another. That didn't seem to bother Cindy. I think she had already decided that our company was her father's only hope for staying afloat. "We have a revolving one hundred thirty million dollar operating line. That would be more than enough, usually. My dad, and Uncle Larry decided to finance some long term purchases using our operating account. That was the first time the bank started questioning the underlying collateral for their loan. Having those new trucks and ovens put their collateral fears to rest, but it came at a big cost to our operating capital. Over fifty million is permanently tied up in equipment loans now. What's left, isn't enough for us to maintain current operations. Dad could refinance the new equipment, but then the collateral would be impaired again. With depreciation, the ovens and the trucks are worth less to the banks each quarter, and that's why they're making noises again." "Are you operating profitably right now?" I figured I should ask her that right away. If they weren't currently showing an operating profit, no amount of assistance with their debt restructuring would help to close the gap. Without operating profits, debt wasn't their real problem. "We're break even right now, but we'd be very profitable if we abandoned our marketing efforts in the bigger cities, especially if we bought our grains for four to five percent less than we now do. My dad wants to do that, but both my Uncles, Larry and Phil, are against it. They both say we need to grow bigger, in order to make room for my two brothers, and five other cousins in the business. They are both against the deal my father is trying to make with yours." "If they're against it, then they must not understand what we're offering you. We don't want to compete in the smaller towns. Us being in the larger cities will make it harder for another national or regional competitor to come in and take you on. They'd have to go up against us too. We haven't had that kind of battle in a while." "It's mostly my Uncle Larry. Uncle Phil always goes along with him, because he's the oldest. There are only five votes, and my dad has two of them. My Aunt Patricia, she votes with my Dad usually, but Larry's convinced her that this deal will leave us too small to support all the family members who work in the business. He thinks the bank will pull our credit if we down size, and try to stay in the smaller markets only." "He might be right. The problem is, you don't really have any other choices. You don't have the financial resources to try to keep us out. Even if we decided to stay out of the region, others would move in and compete in the big cities. Your real strength lies in the smaller towns. There isn't enough there to make it profitable for someone else to go in and try to take market share away from you. I know you need to be profitable, but trying to compete in the large markets isn't going to work for you. Your father is right this time." "It won't do him any good to be right if he can't convince my Aunt that he is. She's also starting to worry about what happens if the business goes under. The family has everything we own tied up in the business. What will be left if the bank forecloses on the operating line? Nothing." I didn't have any easy answers for her. I was just grateful that our switching the discussion to business had helped take our minds off of our attraction to each other. When Joyce suggested that Cindy go with her to meet the rest of our family, I was relieved. I told Joyce I needed to finish working on a few things first, but that I'd join all of them later, in the living room. I hid in my office as long as I could, knowing that I was going to have to face all of them whenever I did decide to come out again. I had wasted most of a trading day, accomplishing very little. When I went back over my trade confirmations though, I noticed a lot of automatic trades had been processed by the program. The grain prices had been rising for the past two weeks, and I had been making money selling into gains, and buying back on the dips. I was hedged with the Swiss Franc and the U.S. Dollar on the upside, and with both of the metals down on the low end. It had turned out to be a good day to let the automatic trading program operate alone. There was good money to be made in skimming profits off of aimless volatility. I had earned quick trading profits repeatedly, but the overall rise in grain prices meant that all the baking operators were going to soon be paying more for their grains. Seeing this, I started playing with an idea I'd had for insuring the bakers against just this kind of a temporary market condition. It involved me selling into the forward contract months while they were carrying a lesser timer premium due to fears that the current grain prices couldn't be sustained. When storage costs and time costs were factored in, spot was selling at a premium to current month and future months. I knew there was a way to capitalize on this situation. No one thought grain prices would continue to rise. The futures market was already factoring in a price drop across the board in the grains. At six o'clock, Joyce came into my office to tell me that dinner was ready. I'd been so involved in my new idea, I'd completely lost track of time. I had made some progress with this idea, enough so I knew now that I could offer all our allied bakers short term grain at a slight discount from current spot prices. They would be able to save about four percent over current spot prices, but only if they committed to paying the difference between spot and my delivery costs if the market continued its price move upward. If they agreed to do this, they could avoid the necessity of having to raise prices to their own customers, while still maintaining their normal profit margins. Later, at the very worst, they would be paying the same price as their competitors, spot plus delivery charges. I knew I could keep my trading losses well within the margin I'd left myself. To a baker, a sudden steep rise in the cost of his raw materials could put him under quickly. My new proposition would smooth out any temporary price fluctuations, and, incidentally, allow me to box and bracket the grains in a way that made it possible for me to trade larger quantities of grains for longer periods of time. I had already decided that I'd try to hold my future grain delivery prices as close to spot as possible. I believed that the additional trading profits would make this, at the very least, a neutral decision, on my overall trading profitability. By the time I got to the dinner table, everyone else was already seated. I noticed funny looks coming my way from both Brenda and Shirley. I tried to smile, and act like I normally would. I didn't want to give anyone the impression that I shared any of Emily's fears concerning Cindy and me. When I looked over at Cindy, she blushed and wouldn't meet my eye. I looked around me, and all of the wives were watching Cindy and me. "You are all making both of us self conscious with your staring, ladies. Emily, did you get everything straightened out with Joyce?" Emily blushed too. I'm sure she wasn't expecting me to single her out as being the one responsible for all the furor we'd had that day. Maybe she thought I'd continue to be defensive about everything. I was worried about the reaction I'd had with Cindy, but I didn't feel guilty about it. I hadn't acted on anything. I didn't accept any responsibility for getting everyone all worked up about nothing either. That was all Emily. By not confronting her, I'd be admitting that her fears had substance. Attraction wasn't something that was controllable. Actions were, and I hadn't taken any actions towards Cindy. Emily had reacted as though she had caught the two of us in bed together. "Kenny, you shouldn't be mad at Emily." Joyce looked uncomfortable about what I'd said. She never liked it when any of us were at odds with each other. "Why not? She caused this whole thing. She embarrassed all of us, and she made you and I lose half a day at our work. All for no good reason. She shouldn't have said what she did to Cindy, to me, or to you, when she called you at work. She jumped to some pretty wild conclusions, but worse than that, she talked about our private business to a stranger. I'm sorry, Cindy. We don't usually fight like this, but today was very stressful for some of us." Emily got up when I said that last part to Cindy, and ran from the dining room. Of course, Brenda and Joyce ran right after her, leaving Shirley, Cindy and me, alone at the table, just as Phil and Thelma started bringing the food out to us. I got up and served myself from the serving plates and bowls being brought out. It was some kind of white fish cooked in a creamy white sauce. There were green things floating around in the sauce, some type of flavoring. I think it was orange roughey, but it didn't really matter to me. I had lost my appetite for food because of the turmoil we'd been having. I was only eating because I didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of keeping me away from my own dinner table. Cindy and Shirley sat there, silently, watching me eat my food. I didn't speak, and they didn't either. As soon as my plate had been emptied of food, I stood up, excusing myself, leaving to go back to my office again. It was after ten o'clock before Joyce came back to get me. "I took Cindy over to Mama's house. She was too uncomfortable to want to spend the night here. She's talking about flying back to Alabama in the morning. What you said to Emily tonight was terrible. She cried herself to sleep because of it. I was ashamed of you tonight." "Really? I'm sorry you feel like that. I'm not ashamed of myself at all. If I hadn't said anything to her, she wouldn't have understood how unhappy I am with her actions today. She overreacted. She knows it too, but worse than that, she told Cindy all those things about us, for no good reason that I can see. Why did she do that?" "I don't know why. I do know it wasn't to embarrass you. Did you ever stop to think what it must look like for someone who doesn't know about all of us? All those babies, and all of them yours? We aren't a normal family, Kenny. We take some explaining to people. Emily wanted Cindy to know that we were all together, in a loving way, that we loved each other, and were a family too. The other thing, later, that was because she saw how you two looked at each other. It scared her. We all love you, Kenny. We know you love us, but, we also know you could find someone you loved even more, at any time." "This wasn't a social thing, Joyce. This was business. She came here to see about my trading, and to try to find out how I could deliver the grain at the prices I quoted them. I blame Cindy too. She was the one who kept asking Emily questions about it. It should have all been just like it was later in my office, when the three of us were in there talking about business. None of this other stuff should have happened." "Maybe not. That doesn't change what did happen. What are we going to do about that? Emily has a hard time dealing with you criticising her like you did, in front of all of us. You need to apologize to her." "What about Cindy? What about our deal with Macklinson's? We don't even know yet what all the fall out will be because of what Emily started today. I'm sorry she's so upset, and I still love her, but I'm not the one who needs to apologize." "When you act like this, its like you're saying that Emily's feelings aren't as important to you as some business deal is. I saw you with Cindy, when she first came back to the room, Kenny. I'd have to say that Emily was right to be so worried about what might happen. I was scared too. You didn't see yourself when you looked at her. Emily and I both recognized that look. We understand what it could mean. We also saw how she looked at you." "Don't you start that too, Joyce. I already admitted to Emily that there was an attraction. Does that automatically mean I plan on doing anything about it? No. You listen to Emily though, and she's got everyone thinking that Cindy and I are about to run off together, to go live somewhere by ourselves. It never even occurred to me to leave any of you. It would never happen. To have you acting like it might, that hurt me." "It could happen. Just because you don't think it could, that doesn't mean it couldn't. You've left all of us in the past. Emily was afraid. I was afraid." "Shirley left me, I didn't leave her. Brenda went and fucked somebody else. You took my mother's side, against me. Emily told me to stay away from her. You make statements that aren't true, Joyce. Since we've all gotten together, and especially since we started having children, I never thought about leaving any of you. Even if something did happen, with Cindy and me, or me and anyone else, it wouldn't cause me to leave any of you. I'd never leave. You could try to kick me out, and I still wouldn't leave." "You left before. You've left several times. We all worry about it happening again. You don't see yourself the same way we all see you." I watched her as she leaned in and kissed me softly, on the cheek, before turning and leaving again. She shut the door quietly behind herself, leaving me to be alone with my thoughts. This wasn't the first time that Joyce had come to find me like this. Leaving me later, after telling me something she knew I didn't want to hear. I always thought things were all right, and then she'd tell me why they weren't. I went up to sleep at midnight, but there was no one in my bedroom. I felt lonely, but not lonely enough to go looking for someone. They all knew where I slept. They probably all knew I was alone too. I got myself undressed and got under the covers. It was becoming obvious that I needed to do something about the situation that was developing. I stayed awake for a few minutes, then I fell into a good sleep. I was no closer to finding a solution. In my opinion, it wasn't my problem. I decided in the morning to treat it like it wasn't a problem. That was doing something. It wasn't that I thought I could ignore it and it would go away. I thought I could sit and wait, and someone else would do something to straighten things out for all of us. I hoped it would be Emily. Cindy Macklinson came over to my house in the morning, with my Dad. He met with Joyce and me for about five minutes after bringing Cindy over. The message he gave us was simple, difficult to misinterpret. He didn't want to have our personal situations interfering with business. We were to treat Cindy as a business contact, nothing more. I spent the day with Cindy in my home office, showing her the trading set up, and explaining how each signal alerted me to trading inside the parameters my program had set up for me. She continued to ask a lot of questions, and seemed impressed at the sheer volume of contracts being traded. Like Joyce, Cindy immediately grasped the fact that my having an underlying need for the grains being traded freed me up to trade much more aggressively than someone who was only involved in naked speculation. I didn't know if Cindy had also been admonished for her behavior the previous day, but she asked no personal questions of me at all. Things stayed like that for the three additional days she spent with us. Emily seldom made an appearance except for the evening meal, spending much more time than usual with the children, up in the nursery. I felt like she was deliberately avoiding both Cindy and me. Joyce and I took Cindy to the airport on Saturday morning. She thanked me for showing her my trading techniques, and said that she would do her best to try to convince her Aunt and both Uncles that it would be a very good move to make an arrangement with my father and me. Fifteen minutes after we got back home, Mama called over to talk to me. Mama had uncharacteristically remained silent about what had occurred on the day Cindy came to town. With Cindy gone though, I really got an earful from her. I found out that she had been on the phone with Joyce and Emily daily, getting reports on my behavior, and had spent quite an evening with Cindy that first night, trying to calm her back down after what had taken place over at our house. I wondered who had called Mama to tell her we were back from the airport. It had to have been Joyce. I listened to Mama telling me what she thought I needed to do, but I didn't say anything in reply. "You can't just stand by and leave things the way they are now, Kenny. You should have never let it get to this point. Joyce and Cindy both told me a little bit about what happened. This wasn't anything that needed to become this disruptive to your family. Why can't you admit you were wrong, and simply apologize to her?" It was hard for me to believe that Mama was handing me this kind of advice. I didn't want to argue with her. "If I do, that would mean I thought she was right, and I don't. I didn't do anything wrong. If anyone did wrong, it was her. Don't worry though, this isn't anything that serious. Emily will get over it, once she sees that she was worried about nothing. Maybe she and I need to get away together for awhile. Neither of us is happy about what happened." After I got off the phone with Mama, I went back to my office. Now that Cindy's visit was over, I felt free to try to heal the breach with Emily. I wasn't upset that she had gotten worried about Cindy, because there definitely was something there on that first meeting with her. I was upset about her telling Cindy about our personal family situation. What Joyce had said, about our family needing to be explained, had gone a long way towards calming me back down about what Emily had said and done. I felt like Joyce had been right about me needing to be the one to approach Emily. She was avoiding me, and it was making everyone else uncomfortable. No one wanted to take sides, although Joyce had been clear when expressing her feelings about who was at fault. I had reached a point in my life, with my family, that I didn't care about who was right and who was wrong. Not if caring about it meant our family unity was being hurt while we waited for the issue to be decided. This wasn't something I was used to though. I didn't know much about giving in even when I thought I was right. I got up from my desk and went looking for Emily. There was no sense in prolonging the inevitable. I looked all over for her, before finding her out in the back yard, pushing Derek on the swing set we'd had installed during the construction of the new nursery wing. "Emily, Cindy's gone, and we need to talk." "I'm not going to tell you I'm sorry, Kenny." I could see Emily's body stiffening up when she spoke. "You don't have to. I'm the one that's sorry. I shouldn't have spoken to you like I did. I love you, and I shouldn't have been so critical. Joyce told me that our family situation needs some explaining to people who don't know us. I don't think about the fact that how we live is so unusual. To me, what we have, how we live, it just seems normal." I was surprised to see that Emily was fighting to hold back her tears. I went over what I'd said, playing it back in my mind, fearing I'd said something which she had taken differently than I'd meant it. "I was so afraid, Kenny. Even now, after your mother and Joyce have told me a million times that you'd never leave us, I'm still afraid that you might." "I couldn't ever leave you, any of you. You're as much a part of me as the air I breathe. I guess I take that for granted too, that all of you know how much you mean to me." "That girl, you looked at her different from the way you look at us. I could tell she did something for you that none of us do for you anymore. She got you excited just from seeing her." "Em, I'm not saying there wasn't an attraction there, or that I didn't think some thoughts about her. It wasn't love though. It wasn't anything like what I feel for all my wives. It wasn't anything I'd consider changing my whole life over. All of us together like we are, that's what my whole life is about now. Nothing else is anywhere near as important to me. No one else could be as important as all of you are to me." "I'm sorry too, Kenny. I went and made a big mess, then I didn't want to admit I had. Joyce said the same things you just did. Brenda did too. I wanted to believe them, just like I want to believe you now. Part of me does believe, but still, there's this part that will always be afraid." I had taken over the pushing of Derek in his swing. All the time we'd been talking, Derek had been laughing, and exhorting the two of us to push him higher. When I moved to the side, going back to take Emily in my arms, Derek started complaining about the swing slowing down again. I heard his pleas for more pushing as I kissed the tears away from my wife's eyes. By the time we'd ended our kiss, Derek was sitting in his swing, kicking his legs up and down, attempting to provide his own locomotion power. I picked him up, swinging him up on my shoulders, as the three of us made our way back inside the house. As soon as we walked into the playroom, I noticed Brenda, Shirley, and Joyce standing by the doorway. Shirley moved in and helped to take Derek off my shoulders. From the smiles on all their faces, I knew they all approved of what was taking place. Emily and I walked up the back staircase, through the nursery and over to my bedroom. No argument is ever over until you and your wife make love. It is the final punctuation on the process. I did my best to show Emily that she was mistaken about the way I looked at her. We made love with our eyes wide open. When it was time for me to shoot inside her, I wanted her to notice that it was far more than just a physical experience to me. I injected her with love from my eyes, and from my heart, willing her to realize that there was a wide gap between simple lust, and the overriding love I felt for her. She needed to recognize the difference. In that moment, as I tried to impart this awareness, I too understood what our relationship meant to me. I had been speaking a greater truth than I realized at the time. I knew this was my life, and that I had to do whatever it took to protect my wives from having the fear that my actions might produce. I had to make them know their importance, to understand the permanent place they had with me. ------- As time began to pass, my father became upset about my lack of participation in helping to resolve the Macklinson's situation. I had been busy at home, mending fences, and attending to my goal of giving all of my wives a better understanding of their individual, and collective, importance in my life. After more than two months, nothing had been resolved about our marketing plans in the Southern region. For my own, personal, reasons, I was staying as far away from Cindy Macklinson as I could. I had begun trading the Macklinson's grain requirements right after Cindy left to return to Alabama. This was done with my Dad's approval, including my shipping them all the grain they required at very favorable rates. My Dad was after me to push Gene Macklinson towards a definite decision about ceding the larger population cities to our marketing teams, while acting, at the same time, in their smaller markets, as our sales rep's for the non competing lines that we sold. I had told him, repeatedly, that I didn't want to be directly involved with any of the Macklinson family. Even though he was aware of the situation with Cindy Macklinson, he was still urging me to do his bidding. I had some ideas for my father, ideas I thought he might want to pass on to Gene. If he decided to implement them, it might create the profit momentum the company needed. I outlined my ideas to my father, and we ended up discussing all of them at some length. "Your mother and I are both worried about you, Kenny. You don't seem as committed to the business as we'd both like to see you be. We can understand having these personal needs, but not to the extent that they prevent you being on board to push our agenda forward." My father was an expert at letting the opponent seem to win. To him, there was no harm in giving in, not if doing so meant you got the best possible resolution to the problem. In some ways, I admired this ability he had. The way he looked at things, the problem with Emily and my other wives was over when I apologized to Emily. To him, I needed to forget about that, moving on to more important things. He wanted to move quickly into the Southern areas, while there was this window of opportunity. I was dealing with my Dad's disappointment over my lack of responsiveness to what he wanted. I told him we needed to let Gene Macklinson get his own family on board before we made a major expansion commitment in that area. A day after we spoke on the phone about this, Cindy Macklinson called for me at home. Joyce answered the phone, speaking guardedly to her, in a voice too soft for me to understand what she was saying. What I hadn't known was that Joyce and Cindy spoke often together, and had done so since Cindy's earlier visit. "It's Cindy Macklinson, Kenny. She needs to talk to you." Joyce handed me the telephone and left the living room area so that I was alone. Before she left, I held my hand over the mouth piece and asked her a question. "Did you ask her what she was calling about?" "I asked her, but all she said was it was about business. She said it was something only you could help her with." Joyce and I understood each other. I didn't try to pump her for information, believing that she would volunteer anything she thought I needed to be told. Like I said, at the time I wasn't aware that she and Cindy were regular phone buddies. "Hi Cindy, this is Kenny." "Kenny, thanks for taking my call. I need to ask you a question. My Aunt Patricia is thinking about selling her stock. The family has first right of refusal, but none of them can raise the kind of money we're talking about. Do you think you might want to buy her shares?" Well, I hadn't been expecting that from her. I almost told her no, but I was curious about what her aunt thought twenty percent of Macklinson's was worth, given their precarious financial situation. It seemed to me that the total family equity in the company was worth something less than five million dollars. I didn't think she would be interested in selling out for a million dollars. "What is she offering to sell for?" "She wants five million dollars. I know her stock isn't worth that much, not now, but it would be, if my father had voting control of the company again. Uncle Phil and Uncle Larry aren't willing to do anything to improve our position. The only way my father can do what needs doing is with voting control. He won't have that as long as Larry has Aunt Patricia's ear." "What do you think the liquidated value of all your company's assets are? After figuring in the bank loan, my guess is it's a negative number. I agree with you that the company might get back on its feet, but not when all the owners are fighting among themselves about what to do. Tell your father I'll buy out his two brothers, and Aunt Patricia, for six million dollars. I'm not interested in buying a minority interest in a closely held company, where people are at each others throats." "Six million each?" "No. The whole company isn't worth six million the way it is now. I'm betting it will be worth that, and a lot more, if your father gets a chance to run it his way." "They wouldn't sell for that little." "Probably not. Even if they did, the company would need restructuring. It's hard to do anything without adequate capital. Tell your Dad to keep in touch with mine. At the very least, I'm sure my Dad would hire him to try to put together a new marketing program for us in the South." "You know how to help us, but you don't want to." "You know how to help yourselves, but you aren't going to. I have the money to help, but I don't want to end up holding an empty bag. If you want to save your company, you're going to need to work together to do it. My father says your Dad is right. He better convince your Aunt, and pretty quickly, or there won't be anything left worth saving. The way things are right now, we figure you have six more months at the outside, maybe only four or less." "Would you pay her two million for her shares? That would give you enough to vote Dad's way. He could do what needs doing." "What about your uncles? You don't think they'd raise a stink? There's no use buying into a dissenting company. Get it worked out with your family, then bring me something I can work with." I didn't expect that she could make any difference in the ongoing family battle. Macklinson's was probably doomed to fail. It was really a shame, because they were a good company, before they allowed themselves to be suckered into competing in an area outside their real expertise. They should have stuck with the small markets, where they excelled. My father and I had both discussed what we could do in the event Macklinson's failed. We both agreed it was worth a lot more to us if it were still operating. We didn't want to wait until after the bank got done trying to sell off whatever pieces they could manage. Macklinson's, if operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of ours, made a lot more sense for us than any other way. They had the small town expertise that we could make good use of nationally. Most of the Macklinson children who worked at the company, would be much more productive, if they weren't all stepping on each others toes all the time. There were no clearly delineated territories, and everyone at the company, named Macklinson, seemed to think he was an expert at doing everything. My father thought there were way too many people making decisions. I called my father at home that evening and told him about my phone conversation with Cindy Macklinson. Both of us agreed that the family wouldn't ever come to an agreement in time to save the company. Two days later, the Macklinson's proved both of us wrong. Gene called my father and offered to sell us the whole company, for ten million dollars, but with several non-negotiable conditions. First, he asked for job protection for his entire current labor force, including five year guaranteed employment contracts for all Macklinson family members having three or more current service years with the company. In all, there were eleven Macklinson's that would be covered by those employment contracts. Dad asked me to go down to their plants to make an inspection, and, to bring back a good ball park appraisal for the reasonable value of their tangible assets. We would be assuming one hundred ten million dollars of their operating debt, if the deal went through. My father told me to assign twenty five million dollar, as corporate good will. When he named that figure to me, I knew he was planning on going ahead and making the deal. It took me four days to look things over. They only had a little over four million dollars in current accounts receivable. There was an additional seven million in delinquent debt, the vast majority of which could never be collected. The only reason for keeping it on the books was for recording it as an asset. The banks weren't fooled, but they went along, because they thought the company would continue operating. It was a common enough banking practice. Collateral was only important when there was a default. When the loan goes bad, the collateral seldom lives up to its appraised value. Usually, the banks set aside reserve funds to allow for this happening. Counting everything, including goodwill, I came up with ninety one million dollars in fairly solid assets, with another fifteen million in somewhat questionable ones. My father flew down to have a meeting between Gene, himself, and the bank that held all of the collateral for the operating line. I didn't attend. I saw Cindy only once, and that was when her father brought me to his house for a confidential discussion. We didn't speak much in front of her father. I did notice there was still a strong spark of interest on my part. I didn't try to see if there was any on her end. My father was always a good negotiator with bankers. At the meeting with Gene, and two of his bank's representatives, Dad offered them seventy five cents on the dollar, for the paper they were carrying on Macklinson's assets. When the bank balked at that deep a discount, my father told them he wouldn't do the deal if the paper was at par. They countered by offering to reduce the balance to one hundred million even, then offering to leave the credit facility in place. When my father stood up to leave the meeting, they quickly offered to sell the paper at eighty cents on the dollar. They finally ended up taking eighty three million, three hundred thousand dollars for their position, which was a little bit over a twenty two and a half percent discount from the original face amount. Dad paid the ten million into escrow for the various Macklinson's to tender their shares. This was a condition before the bank contract was consummated. We found out that Gene Macklinson had given each of his siblings three million for their twenty percent shares. he tendered his own forty percent for the remaining million dollars. To us, this fact alone showed us how much he wanted his company to continue as a viable business. He was as committed to his employees as my parents were to theirs. I was very surprised when my father told me he wanted me to go back to Birmingham to handle the liaison duties between Gene and himself. When I objected, he threatened to send Joyce instead. I had my plane, so we managed to compromise. I would spend Tuesday through Thursday in Birmingham. The rest of the week, I'd be at home with my family. Emily was the one who suggested that one of my wives accompany me on my trips down South. I was quick to agree. Joyce made up the schedule, placing her own name at the bottom of the rotation. I should have been suspicious when she included herself in the schedule. I didn't know that she and Cindy were becoming close friends, or that Joyce had designs on Cindy's body herself. ------- Chapter 36 Macklinson's had four major baking plants, with their head offices located between the cities of Birmingham and Bessemer, in Alabama. The plant just outside Tupelo, Mississippi, was their newest and best. The other three plants, located in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, were older, and much less productive. There were four hundred employees, not counting their sales and delivery staff, who were all independent sub-contractors. These independent contractors were all using their own delivery vehicles for their product deliveries and wholesale distribution. This last circumstance explained how Macklinson's had been able to penetrate their rural market areas so thoroughly. They didn't sell to retail accounts, only to wholesale delivery jobbers. That wouldn't work in a heavily built up urban area, too cost intensive. These route drivers were all independent, owning their own delivery territories, often passing them down to other members of their families, or even selling them outright to another would be route operator. For years, this method of commerce had been unworkable throughout most of America. Somehow, in that part of the South, it had managed to hang on and function quite well. It was a throwback to another era, but it was undeniably working well enough for the Macklinson's. It took me only a very short time to realize that people in the South valued personal business relationships more than they cared about costs. It wasn't the most cost efficient method of distribution, but it was one that had stood the test of time, within the rural Southern region of the country. Another difference was the regional variation there was in the taste of the products sold. Bread produced in Tallahassee, Florida was made a little heavier, with a sweeter flavored taste. In Atlanta, Georgia, it was lighter, with more of a flour taste. The bread from Tupelo was saltier tasting, and heavier, because the yeast being used was not so high rising. The Macklinson's understood all their various markets. They knew what was needed, and they gave their customers what they'd always been used to getting. This explained why they had been so successful in retaining their rural markets. In urban areas, the customer loyalty wasn't as strong, and the regional taste differences were more homogenized. In the cities, bread was bread. Sell one type for a nickel less than your competitor, and your market share would rise. Emily and I flew into Birmingham, on a Tuesday morning in early October. I had already met all the various Macklinson uncles, brothers, and cousins during my earlier asset appraisal trip. Emily was excited to be the first to accompany me to accomplish the task my father had assigned to me. Joyce had found us a furnished house to live in, just outside Birmingham. There were also two automobiles that came with it. The owners of the house and cars were a married couple, two doctors, who had gone off on a two year medical missionary project to Ghana. Joyce had gotten Frank Clooney to make a substantial donation to their aid program, which resulted in our having the free use of their home, furnishings, and transportation, while they were away. I never knew how Joyce managed to come up with something like that, but she did. It was money given to a good cause, and it carried some good tax advantages for us also. We took a taxi out to our new home, arriving at just before nine in the morning. After a very brief inspection of the house and grounds, I took the recent model Oldsmobile the couple had left, and headed towards the Macklinson's offices. Emily was left with the job of putting all of our things away, going out to the stores, stocking the house with some groceries, and anything else we'd need while we were staying in Alabama. The first day at the new offices was frantic. Everyone was worried about what was going to happen to them, wondering how the new ownership of the company was going to affect their families and their lives. Gene Macklinson was the middle brother in his family. Larry was the oldest, Phil the youngest, and their sister, Patricia, came somewhere between Larry and Phil in age. Gene was tall, about six feet two, with a balding head of brown hair, and large boned frame that was well started down the path towards being heavy. He looked strong, but it also looked like he had gotten a little soft from spending too much time sitting behind a desk. Cindy favored her father in her facial features. They looked a lot better on her than they did on him. She must have taken after her mother in size though. Cindy was only about five four. Larry had balding hair too, with a large, pronounced, beak of a nose. He gave off an air of impatience with everyone he came into contact with. Unlike either of his brothers, Larry was on the short side, no more than five eight or so. Phil was almost as tall as Gene, but he had a full head of dark red hair, and appeared to be in good physical condition. Phil seemed to lack possessing any convictions of his own. In the time I'd known him, he'd never expressed any opinions, other than to say he thought he could go along with whatever the group ended up deciding. I was taken to Gene's office first, walking in to find him gathering up his personal things, placing them into several cardboard boxes he had resting on top of his office desk. He was packing up to vacate his office in favor of me. "Are you moving somewhere, Gene?" "Just down the hall, Kenny. This is a better office for you. It has all the phone lines you'll need, and everything comes directly to here before being sent out to all the other departments." "What did my father tell you I'd be doing down here, Gene?" "He said you were coming down to figure out the best way to get things back running well again. Said you'd be reporting to him, by phone, daily." "Well, that's how my Dad talks. He didn't mean I'd be running things. He sent me down here to find out what you need to get the most out of your operations. You show me how you do things, and I'll help you get whatever you need to make it work better. I'm the one who's supposed to see what you want to do, then I tell him, just so he knows it fits in with our plans too." "You want me to stay in here then? Where do you want to have your office?" "I don't need an office. I'm here to find out how your family runs things down here. I'll be going out and talking to people, looking around, poking my nose into things. If I have any questions about how things are being done, I'll ask the people doing them. If I'm curious about the why of it, why it's being done a certain way, I'll probably bring those questions straight to you. It looks to me like a lot of your people are worried that I've come here to make a lot of changes. They seem afraid of me for some reason. I'm not here to cut back on anything. We want to add to things, to grow bigger and better, not to take anything away from what you already have now." "I tell people that, Kenny. Larry's a pessimist, and people see him going around moping about things. They just picked up on how he's been looking worried, ever since before we sold out to you, so they're worried too. Is it true that you're changing the name of the company?" I wondered who had started that rumor. With every acquisition we'd ever made, we'd left the company name intact. People liked doing business with the same people they had been, over the years. Put a new name on an old company, and it lessened customer loyalty to their products. "This will always be Macklinson's, Gene. We don't go in and change names like that. You had a problem with capital, not with customer loyalty, or name recognition. We want to grow your company, not change the name of it." "Well, strictly speaking, it isn't really our company anymore, is it?" "That's another thing my father sent me here to find out. When we bought out Rob Lucas, he and his daughter, Virginia, stayed on, and the people who worked there, they didn't have any problem with the kinds of changes we made. Today, it's still the Lucas Company, only now, it's five times as big as it was when we first bought it, and there are several hundred more employees. Virginia runs the whole company for us, and Rob is in charge of our national sales program. They both make a lot more money for themselves than they did when they were the actual owners. We helped them, and they helped us. We were hoping it would work like that here." "This has always been a family business. People are used to us giving the orders. They don't know any other way. It won't be the same if you people come in here and start making wholesale changes right away." "It's still a family business. We aren't planning on changing that. The biggest difference is that you won't have to be the one who's always running around, with your hat in your hand, looking for the money to do what you need to do. That's my Dad's job now, and he's good at it. We want you to show us how to make money from servicing the small towns, and we'll use our own techniques to take care of all the larger markets. There's no reason why we can't both be better off working together now." "How do you want us to get started with doing that? Making things better. Are we supposed to just keep on doing what we've been doing?" "You need to start making a list of what you'd have done if you'd had the money to do it before. Show me how each thing you want to do improves the company's long term profitability. I'll talk to my Dad when I go back home, and then he'll tell you what he decides to do, and why. He might not be convinced on everything, but, after you show him you're right most of the time, you'll find he's a lot easier to convince." "Just like that?" "That's how we do it with all our companies. The people that run the companies usually know best about what they need. If we agree with them, my Dad comes up with the money. If we find that our investment keeps making more money, why wouldn't we continue wanting to grow it? For us, if it works, and it makes us money, we want to do as much of it as we possibly can. My father believes in reinvesting his profits to make new profits. We don't have to take out money to live on, or to pay dividends to our investors." "Do you really have four wives, and a whole passel of kids? Cindy said you have two colored girls living with you too." Gene's face had turned red when he asked me the questions. I felt mine turning red while I floundered around, looking for an answer to give him. Cindy had told me before she left to go back to Birmingham that she wasn't going to mention my personal living situation to her family. I felt a little bit betrayed. "I have twelve children, Gene, by four different women. These are all women that I love dearly. As far as the colored girls, I guess you're referring to Eddie and Dale Pipkin. Yes, they live with us, and yes, they are both black women. They are very close personal friends of my entire family, not just me. In time, you'll meet all of my family. I seldom travel without at least a few of them with me." Gene just looked at me, nodding, then shaking his head side to side. His eyes plainly showed he thought I was crazy, but he didn't come right out and say so. "I was married to Cindy's mama for twenty six years, before she turned me loose. It wasn't a moment too soon neither. We liked to have killed each other before the parting. That experience ruined all women for me. I can't imagine trying to juggle so many at once, like you apparently are doing, or think of where you find the time and energy for doing all that. You best be careful around my Cindy, boy, because, unless I'm reading the signs all wrong, she's set her cap on joining up with those other girls too. You don't look like the kind to want so much of that female attention either. Why do you think all those women set such a high store by you?" "I couldn't say. It has me baffled too, but I'm grateful that they do. It wasn't something I set out to do, it just seemed to work out best that way. You need to speak with Joyce about this if you need to ask any more questions. Is my personal life a matter of general knowledge down here?" "I wouldn't say general, but it isn't exactly a secret either. I listened in to some phone conversations Cindy was having with one of your women. She kept pestering her with questions about you. You have to get to know Cindy before you can understand how unusual it is for her to show any kind of interest at all in a man. Her mama and me, well, let's just say we have given up on the idea of seeing any grand babies coming from our Cindy." From how he said that last, I got the distinct impression he was telling me that his daughter was gay. I almost laughed. I hoped it was true, although I didn't believe it, not from the reaction we'd each had to the other. I looked at him for another minute, waiting to see if he'd say anything else. "We ready to talk some business, Gene? How can we make the quickest progress towards us starting to make some money down here?" "You aren't offended are you, Kenny? I didn't mean to rile you up about any of this. I just wanted to make you aware of the lay of the land down here. That girl means the world to me, and to her mama too. Laura Lee counts my daughter as the main reason the sun rises in the morning." "I'll try to stay clear of her. I don't need any further complications in my life either." "I'll just say! Don't expect you'll have too much success keeping clear of her though. According to what she told me, she expects to have you and your wife over for supper tonight. I'm supposed to bring the two of you home with me. She said it was all set up, from the time before you left Kansas this morning." "This is the first I've heard of it. I'll have to check with Emily when I get back to the house. She didn't say anything about a dinner invitation." Gene and I spent the remainder of the morning going over the inner details of his business operation. It appeared to be almost totally unstructured. The distribution network seemed unable to coordinate with the production people. Drivers would call in their next day's orders before three in the afternoon. That seemed to be the sum total of all planning. I didn't see how an efficient production schedule could be formulated with so little lead time. "Kenny, this is how we've always done it. They tell us what they need, and we sell it to them. Some products, we don't bake daily, but with most of them, we need to bake through the night. We start loading for delivery at three in the morning around here. Four o'clock in Tupelo. Tallahassee and Atlanta, they load all through the night. Each driver comes by at whatever time he chooses to get started on his day." "How do you keep track of production volume that way? You can't be getting the maximum capacity out of any of your ovens with this kind of a baking schedule. This isn't like any other baking operation I've ever seen. Do you ever bake any planned overruns?" "Why would we do that? It defeats the whole purpose of how we operate. They tell us what they're buying, and we make it up for them. That's the best way we know." "That might be the best way for your route drivers, but it isn't anywhere near the best way for your production people. It costs as much to bake with a half full oven as it does to bake with a full one. There is the same wear and tear on the equipment too." Gene looked like he was getting upset. He'd been in the baking business since before I'd been born. I knew he was thinking that I probably had no idea about what I was telling him. I knew he was wrong if that was what he was thinking. I knew our bakeries were a lot more efficient than his were, and that it was this efficiency that made the difference in our bottom line. Macklinson's seemed to be working for their route drivers benefit, not for their own. I thought that way right up until the time when I first saw the prices they were charging the route drivers. After I saw those, I quickly changed my mind. Obviously, the economics of bread and bakery goods sales were very different down in the South. Their drivers paid about the same price as what we charged our larger chain grocery stores, and they were handling all the distribution costs themselves. I knew right away that Macklinson's profitability would shoot right through the roof, once they adopted our more efficient production methods. All we had to do was handle the distribution of any excess production this greater efficiency caused. "Kenny, you can't come in here and expect to change things in a hurry. We have our own ways down here. They work for us, or else we wouldn't have kept them all this time." "No, you're absolutely right, Gene. I'm not going to change a thing about your distribution system. I can see now why its always worked so well for you. The only change I want to make is in your baking operations. From now on, no matter what your immediate needs are, I want the ovens full whenever you bake up any run. We'll find a way to sell off the excess this creates." "Well, you're the boss, but it seems like you're just going to get killed by the cost of the day old products. You aren't going to ask us to start selling stale goods, are you? We won't do that. Our name goes on every package and loaf that leaves our bakery plants." "Gene, we can sell whatever you bake. We're opening in forty cities in this region, in the next month or so. We'll max out all your ovens, just to help feed the new distribution channel needs. We'll keep your brand name on your breads and goods, and then supplement that with our own brands too. We bake different flavors than you, so yours will just fill another niche for us. People have different tastes. In the bigger cities, those who like your bread will willingly pay a little extra for it. The chains don't care, not as long as we buy back any unsold overstock." I left Gene at around three, taking my own, private, tour of the plant. As with the plants I was familiar with from our own companies, there was a lot to be learned by walking around and speaking with the employees that did all the real work. I saw a lot of inefficiencies, the kinds of things that went by, unnoticed, except to a well trained eye. I also saw a lot of improvements on the way we did our own plant operations. Shortcuts that made more sense, as soon as you noticed them being implemented. I saw overhead conveyor belts for the first time in that old Alabama plant. There were lifts from the ovens that raised the baked goods higher, so the trays could be off loaded and conveyed over to the packaging and loading areas. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would save us a lot of space in three of our newest baking plants. It wouldn't work in our older plants because the ceilings were built too low. I called my father, right away, to tell him what I'd seen, and to ask him to make changes to the plants we were building in California and Nevada. I was back in Gene's office by five, and he reminded me that Emily and I needed to be at his house before seven, for supper. I tried to get out of it, as gracefully as I could, even telling him a little bit about what had happened the first time Emily and Cindy had met each other. "Kenny, if we're going to be working together, you're going to be seeing my family and I'm going to be seeing yours. You can't succeed by trying to keep your head buried in the sand. If them two girls are going to have it out, there isn't anyway in hell that you can do a single thing to prevent it. I told you all this was arranged before you all came down here. I've been looking forward to it all day. I can't wait to see what happens." I had the sinking feeling that he was right. I wondered if Joyce had set this up deliberately. Putting Emily and Cindy together like this, it seemed a recipe for social disaster. I never was one who liked to slow down my car to gawk at car accidents. Gene seemed entirely too anxious to watch what I was sure was going to be a train wreck. In spite of this, I told him that Emily and I would be at his home before seven. When I got back to our rental house, I saw that Emily had really gotten herself fixed up nice for our dinner engagement. She was wearing one of those push up bras that made her breasts seem larger than they were. Her hair had been professionally styled, and I'd never seen the dress she was wearing before then. She looked delicious. Other than Brenda, Emily was certainly the most beautiful of all my wives. Unfortunately, she was also the most contentious one of them all. If anyone was going to provide the kind of fireworks Gene seemed to be anticipating, it was Emily. I had to wonder why he would be anxious to subject his daughter and me to such a possibility. "Emily, how come you never mentioned that we were invited over to the Macklinson's house for dinner tonight?" I probably should have mentioned how good she looked before starting in with my question, but I was pretty worried about what might happen when she and Cindy got together again. "How do I look?" "Good enough to eat. Maybe we should call Gene and tell him you're too tired to be going out tonight. We can postpone it for another time." "We can't. Joyce was the one who set this up with Cindy. She made me promise to be on my best behavior. I won't do anything to embarrass you tonight, Kenny. Joyce says it's important that we show the Macklinson's that we're regular people, just like they are." "Gene pretty much told me that Cindy isn't just regular people. He practically came out and told me that he and his ex wife think she's gay." "She is, mostly gay. She did have a boyfriend in high school, but it didn't work out for her too well. Did Gene tell you that his ex wife is going to be at the dinner party tonight. She wanted to meet you too." "No, he didn't mention that. He said the two of them almost killed each other. I got the impression that their divorce was a bitter one. Why did Joyce say the ex wife was invited?" "Just that she insisted on meeting you too. Joyce told me to tell you not to mention your vasectomy to either of Cindy's parents." "Why would I mention something like that? This is nuts, Emily. This whole thing is a bad plan right from the beginning. I think Joyce is crazy to be wanting to throw the three of us together like this again." "Are you afraid you might not be able to resist her?" I knew that was a loaded question. I hadn't even been thinking about that particular aspect of it. I'd been thinking about Emily and Cindy getting into it in front of her family. This just gave me something new to worry about. "Look, I could be mistaken, but I really think that Cindy has the hots for me even more than I might be attracted to her. Gene mentioned something about that. Why ask for this kind of trouble?" "It was Joyce's idea. I think Cindy asked her to set it up. I know Joyce spent a lot of time telling me what I needed to do, and how I'm supposed to act tonight. She wants us all to get along better with Cindy and her family." Laura Macklinson, Gene's ex, came to answer the door right after I hit the door knocker to announce our presence. She was a woman in her late forties, standing about five seven or so, with a nice body, but one that was just a little too full in some spots. Her hips were a tad large, and there was a little loose flesh on the backs of both her upper arms. She had long dark brown hair, long enough that it came halfway down her back. She greeted Emily and I effusively, telling us both that she'd heard a lot of good things about us. I couldn't help but notice she was paying very careful attention to me. I felt like she was giving me a very close appraisal. Gene and Cindy were in the living room, with both her older brothers, and their wives. This was apparently going to be more of a dinner party than I'd thought it was. I introduced Emily to everyone, then Gene introduced his two daughters in law. Emily was the best looking woman in the room, by far. I watched the other women giving her the once over too, realizing that she had come in her full war paint, and was dressed to impress. Cindy's brothers were giving Emily their own version of 'the look' too. Once all the introductions were made, we were led directly to the dinner table. We were served our meal by a black couple that Gene introduced to us as Tom and Mabel. According to Gene, Tom's relatives and Gene's family had worked together for almost one hundred fifty years. Since this was longer than when slavery had been abolished in Alabama, I had a pretty good idea of what the relationship had been in the beginning of their two family's working together. At the start of the meal, Gene, his two sons, and I spoke about business. Both sons were in their mid to late twenties. Both favored their father in looks, although both seemed to have very full heads of dark hair, just like their mother's. Kyle, the oldest son, was in production at the Alabama plant, while Jerry, the youngest son, was in sales and marketing for the whole company. That meant that Kyle worked under his Uncle Larry, and that Jerry worked under Gene. The boy's uncle Phil was nominally in charge of plant equipment and plant maintenance. I say nominally, because all of the Macklinson family seemed to flit from one task to another. It seemed like they thought of themselves as some kind of royalty, royalty that had full right of access to any part of the kingdom. My father had identified this tendency as a big part of the reason why they weren't more successful. Too many chiefs, and not enough Indians, was how he put it to me. "Kenny, you seem to have made quite an impression on Cynthia. Why do you suppose that is?" I looked over at Cindy's mom as she asked me the question. I could see Cindy's face get pale as the blood drained from it. Gene, sitting beside me, had white knuckles showing, as his hands gripped the sides of the large dinner table. Kyle's wife, Trudy, gave off a high, nervous, giggle. All eyes were turned my way, awaiting my answer. "I'm not aware of having made much of an impression on her. I was the one that was impressed with how quickly she managed to grasp my grain trading techniques. If she was impressed with any of us, I'm sure it was with Joyce, not with me." "This Joyce, she's another one of your wives?" Laura looked over at Gene. I could see that each of them had heaps of unresolved anger with the other. I wondered if Laura was planning on using the dinner as a way of venting some of hers at Gene. Again, I heard a nervous titter from Kyle's wife. "Yes." I didn't elaborate, confident, from her question, that Laura already knew all about my domestic situation. I didn't want to get drawn into the middle of the Macklinson's conflict. "You have four wives, Kenny? Or is it six?" This woman obviously wasn't going to let my personal circumstances drop, as a dinner table topic, not any time soon, it appeared. "Just the four, Laura. Although, I do have sex with several other women at times. I only have the four wives, but that's plenty." I had made a decision to treat her questioning with the kind of answers I thought they deserved. I was being flippant and rude on purpose. I was a guest, and she was being deliberately rude and provocative towards me. "God Damn it, Lee! You're doing it again. You promised you wouldn't bring any of this up tonight." Gene was standing when he spoke. His face was a mask of unconcealed anger, as he stared down at his ex wife. Every one of the Macklinson family members seemed concerned that this was getting ready to be a big explosion. I got the impression that they had all been witness to this same type of confrontation, many times in the past. I looked over at Emily, to see how she was handling these uncomfortable developments unfolding there at the dining table. She looked surprisingly calm. In fact, there was a tiny smile playing on her lips whenever I happened to glance over at her. The sight of her sitting there, composed and smiling, did a lot to calm me back down. "Gene, please sit down. You're getting yourself all upset for no reason. Kenny and I are just getting acquainted. Putting all our cards on the table. There's no harm in that. You too, Kenny, you need to stop acting all upset at this. I was just bringing out certain known facts, clearing the air, so to speak, so we have a point of easy reference, to base any of our later discussions upon. Cynthia is our only daughter. As her parents, we can't be too careful when it comes to looking after her future. You are someone she has recently identified to us as a potential suitor for her hand. Of course, we need to have our genuine questions and concerns answered, before we can give our permission for you to undertake any courtship." This time I was the one that stood up. I wondered if I'd somehow managed to lose whatever contact I'd once had with reality. Were these people playing some preposterous hoax on me? Was some joke being made here? A bad joke, being made at my expense? I had just met this woman, and now she was quizzing me about my suitability as a possible match for her daughter? This was very unreal. "I don't find any of this amusing, Laura. I think we should end this, right now. I have no interest in making any kind of a match with Cindy. In fact, after what's happened here tonight, I think it might be better if my Dad were to send someone else down here to help integrate Macklinson's in with our other holdings. My personal life is just that, personal. I want you to respect my personal privacy." "Don't be so quick to make that kind of statement, young man. I didn't say that you had selected Cynthia, only that she has identified you as a potentially acceptable suitor." "Well, maybe things are different here than they are back home, but back there, we let the people involved do all the deciding about that, and it needs to be a mutual decision. We don't negotiate relationships between couples." "Hogwash! You listen to me now, Kenny, Cynthia has already said that she is interested in you. She told me she believes this interest is a mutual one. If this is so, we need to explore the best way of bringing it to fruition. If you have four wives already, what harm would there be in adding a fifth?" Emily looked amused, but, at the same time, interested in the way all of this was unfolding. It was like she made up part of the audience at a play being performed. I had to suspect that not all of this was totally unexpected for her. Not a surprise, like it was for me. Was Joyce a party to all of this too? Why would Emily be taking it all so sanguinely, unless she had already known this, or something like it, was in the offering? "Emily, did you know something like this was going to happen here tonight?" "Not like this. I knew that Joyce and Cindy have been talking about some things." "What kind of things? How come no one tells me about Joyce and Cindy talking? What about you, Cindy? Do you want to tell me what you and Joyce have been talking about?" Cindy wasn't happy with my asking her these questions in front of her family. It served her right, because I hadn't been that thrilled with some of the questions she'd been asking in front of mine. I was aware, as I spoke to her, that I was becoming aroused by the pure ridiculousness of the situation I found myself in. Cindy still had this weird, totally unexplainable, attraction for me. I was feeling that attraction strongly as I spoke to her. Whenever the conversation went to personal topics, something about her interfered with my normal thought processes. It was a little like how I got with Brenda, but not exactly like that. I didn't know what it was, but I was uncomfortable with it. Uncomfortable, but excited too. "We can talk about it later, Kenny. I didn't know my mother was going to be like this tonight. If I did know, I wouldn't have invited her." "Did you tell your mother that you wanted to be one of my wives?" "No. I told her you were very interesting. I did tell her about your family, but not so she could make you and Emily uncomfortable. I told her so I could explain what it was I found so interesting about you." "And what is that? What do you find so interesting about me?" "The way you allow your wives to be so close to each other. How you don't get jealous of them doing that. I spoke with Joyce about that. She told me how you are with them." "You mean you find the idea of my wives having sex with each other interesting? You don't need a husband to have sex with other women, Cindy." "You do need one for having babies though." Cindy had suddenly dropped her quiet demeanor with us. Now, I could see that she was her mother's child. She had an intensity, a singleness of purpose about her now. "That wouldn't be me. I had the operation. I don't make babies anymore. You missed the boat on that one." Cindy didn't act surprised, but I noticed it came as news to Gene and Laura. I wondered what else Cindy had conveniently forgotten to mention? How much involved with all of this were my other wives? Joyce, I could understand why she would want to do this. How would she get Brenda, Shirley, or Emily to go along with it though? "You have twelve children. Joyce said all your wives treat all of the children the same. She said all of them were mothers for all the children, that it didn't make any difference to anyone who the real mother was. I probably couldn't have children of my own anyway. I had a problem with my ovaries a few years back. This seems like the best possible way for me to have the big family I've always wanted." "What about me? What would I be getting out of it?" "I can give you a million dollars. It would be worth that much to me to see Cynthia married, and settled in with her own family." Laura spoke as though a million dollars would be an impressive amount to me. Apparently she hadn't found out as much about me as she believed she had. "A million dollars? I make more than that sometimes, during a good trading week. I'd be more than willing to do it, if you paid me an amount equal to my current net worth. Do you happen to have half a billion dollars to spare for that?" I could see by everyone's reaction at the table, that none of the children or Laura had known how extensive my own personal wealth was. I had told Gene earlier, which meant he had apparently failed to share this information with his ex wife, or any of his children. Gene sat there, smiling at Laura. He had decided he was no longer angry. It looked like he was now well satisfied, mostly because things weren't going Laura's way at the table. Those two had a lot of unresolved issues still. "Don't mind her, Kenny, she thinks everyone's for sale. She just hasn't met too many people with greater wealth than her own family has." From the way Gene spoke these words, I knew this wealth was something that had festered between them during their long marriage. I knew Gene had said that to get under his ex wife's skin, but it didn't seem to do that. Laura Macklinson was looking at me in an entirely different light than she had been before I mentioned how much money I was worth. Poor people were usually impressed with people who had a lot of money, but the really wealthy people were seemingly even more impressed when they encountered those who were wealthier than they were. To the very wealthy, it was the same as it was to most people in Texas. There were two kinds of rich. You had the rich, and then you had the big rich. Laura was rich, but, suddenly, I was someone who was big rich to her. It made a difference. She started to lose her veneer of superiority that she had earlier affected with me. "I won't haggle with you over a few dollars, young man. Cynthia has her own value. She doesn't need any financial lagniappe added." I knew that lagniappe, (pronounced lan-yap) meant a little something extra. Something that was added to sweeten a deal for a customer. It was a term used often, all throughout the South, but, most commonly, in Louisiana. I also knew that Laura Macklinson didn't seem the sort of woman who was used to being found wanting, not by any standard of measurement. She was used to getting what she wanted. I knew Mama would love her. I had the strangest desire to invite her to come up to Ridgeline, to spend a few days getting to know Mama. "I never said it was a deal breaker, Laura. Perhaps Cindy has something else that my wives would be interested in adding to their mix. Money just isn't something we happen to need anymore. Joyce is the one who you'd need to see about that." I had gotten over my own anger by now too. In a way, this entire past half hour had turned out to be interesting, and, now that I was starting to relax again, amusing. I'd heard things were done differently in the South, but I'd never before experienced what they meant by that. "What sort of something were you referring to?" Cindy asked me this without pausing to allow her mother to respond to me. "I have no idea. Joyce and the other wives would know what they feel like they're missing. Maybe Emily could tell you. Speaking just for myself, I don't need any more than I already have." I looked over at Emily, wondering whether she'd rise to the occasion or not. I think I was becoming overconfident by this point. I mistook Emily's calmness and seeming contentment as stemming from my earlier responses. In fact, she was feeling good because she had already known what Joyce and Cindy had been planning. She thought Laura's comments had derailed the train that Joyce and Cindy were trying to get moving. Hearing my words, she began to realize that this wasn't so. "I don't think Joyce wants us to marry Cindy. I think they're both just hot for each other." Emily had the capacity to go straight for the jugular. She feared no one either. I had a chance to see the look that Cindy and her mother gave to each other. Cindy looked worried, and Laura seemed to be disappointed, upset with her daughter. I wondered if Cindy had disappointed her mother like this before, perhaps by claiming to have one purpose, while really working for something entirely different. Emily's comment seemed laden with the weight of truth. I could see Cindy and Joyce working towards that sort of outcome. The thing of it was, if Joyce wanted to sleep with Cindy badly enough, I might soon find myself with yet another wife. "What about you, Brenda, and Shirley, Emily? Are you all looking to expand your horizons too?" I said it lightly, as if I were only joking with her. I wanted to find out if Joyce had already started recruiting support for her plans, among the other wives. "Shirley will go along with whatever Joyce asks her to. Brenda will too, if you're the one who asks her to." "So that just leaves you, Emily. What do you think?" "For us to sleep with, or for us to marry?" I waited, knowing I didn't want to answer her question. Emily would get around to volunteering her own opinion soon enough. She would use anything I said to her here, against me later, to defend herself with my other wives. I was beginning to really be curious. Emily wasn't one who usually equivocated about questions or answers. She held firm opinions, and wasn't in the least bit shy about expressing them. Finally, my waiting paid off. She spoke again. This time in a much quieter voice. She wasn't looking at me when she spoke. Instead, she was looking right at Cindy. "I'd do her." There was a long, embarrassed, silence at the table. I'm not sure who it was that asked about dessert finally. I had been sitting there, trying to take in everyone at the table at once. Was it possible that Emily felt the same thing with Cindy that I did? Before, I'd felt the thing with Cindy was a little bit like what happened to me, sometimes, when I was around Brenda. Could it be that Emily felt this same thing? If so, did that explain her wild reaction that first day when she'd picked Cindy up at the airport in Bolling? Things started making a little more sense to me. I stood up before anyone could call either Tom or Mabel to bring us whatever dessert they had planned for the evening. I thanked Gene and Laura for an interesting evening, and for the fine dinner. Emily and I stopped to make all our good-byes to each of the Macklinsons before we were finally taken to the front door. Emily waited until we were safely in the car, heading back to the rental house, before speaking to me. "Are you going to tell Joyce what I said, Kenny?" "No, but I bet Cindy does. Did you mean what you said, or were you just trying to upset the apple cart by saying it?" "What do you think?" This was Emily to a tee, getting herself all prepared for another battle royale with me. She was almost daring me to say something, so that the two of us would have a fight about it. Whatever I said, she would be offended. "I think you and I should get home as soon as we can, because I'm dying to hold you down, and fuck some sense back into you." I saw her relaxing her stiff backed posture. She didn't reply to what I said. When we got back to the house, I held her down on the bed, taking her in a very rough and highly physical manner. It was perfect for the way we each felt right then. We hadn't had sex like that in ages. We had both needed it, and in just the way we did it. I went right to sleep after we got done, waking up at six o'clock, to see Emily's face close to mine. She smiled at me, so, we ended up making love to each other. This time it wasn't a wild or punishing experience. It was only two people who were in love with each other. I was getting up to go in and shower when Emily spoke her first words to me of the morning. "I meant it, Kenny." "Well, that's good, I think, because, if Joyce has her heart set on fucking Cindy, there should be a little something in it for the rest of us." While I showered, I tried to remember that I was happily married, to four wonderful women. It worked. Well, it sort of worked. I kept thinking about what Laura Macklinson had said the night before. 'If you have four wives already, what harm would there be in adding a fifth?' As I reached down to begin rinsing myself, I felt the erection my thoughts had just given me. How much was too much? Was I really stupid enough to try to find out? Probably. ------- Chapter 37 I got over to Macklinson's too late to see many of the route drivers before they left. I did manage to meet one older gent named Titus Tucker. He was over seventy years old, and had began driving deliveries for "Old Tom" back in 1941. "Old Tom, I found out, was Gene's late father. Titus and I spent a full morning together, riding around the outlying greater Birmingham area, making sales and deliveries to small, independently owned, grocery stores. I was struck by the rapport Titus had with all the clerks and owners we met as he went about his route. At each stop, Titus was careful to make the introductions of me to his clients. "This here boy is Ken Parsons. His daddy has taken hisself an interest up at the bakery. I brung him along so he could meet you all. This boy gonna own the whole shebang one of these days. Kenny this here is Lena Davis. Her daddy owns this here store, and four more just like it. Otis, her husband, he works over for the County, in the Hall of Records. You need anything from the County, you come see Lena, and her and Otis will sure enough hep you out." It went like that all morning, making a steady three or four stops each hour. We stopped to talk to almost everyone who worked at any of these grocery stores. Titus would fill me in on who we had met as we drove to his next stop. His average sale was for between thirty five and forty five dollars, not very much at all. By one o'clock when he dropped me back off, he had made about five hundred dollars in gross sales. He was about halfway done with his daily deliveries. With the mark up he had, I doubted that Titus cleared more than about seventy five dollars per day for himself, and that didn't count the replacement and maintenance cost for his delivery vehicle. I had delayed going in to see Gene for about as long as I thought I could manage without seeming too impolite about it. I wasn't angry with him about what happened at his house the night before, but I didn't want to get into another discussion about any future plans I had for Cindy either. I walked into his office at one fifteen. "Kenny, you been out with Titus Tucker I hear. Good choice. What Titus don't know about our business, isn't worth knowing. He's a talker that one. Good man though. Never heard one complaint about him." "I went out to get some idea of what a driver does around here. Are all the route drivers like he is? He spends time talking to everyone he meets." "He isn't much different from most I guess. Maybe he doesn't do as much flirting as he used to. Them checkers at the store, they're the key to keeping out the competition. If they like you, the owner isn't ever in when the other salesman come around making their sales calls. The cards they leave seem to always get thrown out with the trash. All the clerks understand this is how our drivers feed their families, and each account is important to them. That's how it works. Titus's wife used to always put up some peach preserves that Titus would take over to his people every Christmas. She's passed now, but we sure do miss her preserves around here." "Today, I want to go over the accounts receivable. I don't want to be carrying a lot of uncollectible paper on our books from now on. I thought we could go through them on an account by account basis, and you could tell me what is real and what isn't." Gene opened his top desk drawer and handed me a sheaf of paper. He'd already anticipated my request. Of the approximately seven million dollars I'd thought of as bad debt, he'd confirmed a little over six million as such. We went over the other accounts, the ones who hadn't paid for awhile, but, which Gene had included in his collectible pile. We discussed each of these, and Gene told me why he believed we'd eventually get our money. Almost always, the reason why he thought we'd get paid was because he had a secured promissory note, and trust deed or mortgage of some kind, as security. "We aren't in the credit business, Kenny, but, sometimes, if its someone we've known for awhile, we will make an exception. I like to get something as a show of their good intentions. I can't always do it, but I try. That other debt, the write off, that was all handshake credit that we had to do to help some of our drivers get out of trouble. They give the credit, but we can't let them go under when all they was trying to do was protect their accounts. We end up spreading the risk by tacking on a penny or two to the price of every product that leaves our plants." "I noticed that the price your drivers pay is a little on the high side. You don't worry that another bakery will try to lure your people away with more competitive prices?" "It happens. I won't say it doesn't. A man might leave, but that doesn't mean all his accounts will move with him. Usually, it's around half that does and half that doesn't. We put someone else on the route, and make a special effort to talk to all the ones who went with the old driver. Surprising how many people stop going to the corner grocer, if he doesn't carry a certain brand of bread or milk. People are always willing to go where they know they can get what they're used to. Take that away, and they start driving into the city on the weekends, and doing all their shopping in the big chains. Larry is right about how we need to get ourselves in with the big grocery operators." "He's right, but, it isn't the same kind of business that Macklinson's is good at. The small grocer is finding it impossible to compete against the big chains, but we have gas stations that sell bread and cupcakes now, and convenience stores are popping up everywhere you turn around. Those are Macklinson's real market, because this is the new mom and pop grocery." "You think we should go after that trade?" "Absolutely. Titus showed me today how much what you do really is a people business, not a bakery business. What works for him now would work just as well at one of those convenience stores. We have a whole line of packaged snack foods that your drivers could sell to make up for the smaller amount of bread they'd be selling. Titus sells about forty dollars per stop. He could do that easy if he carried a broader variety. To make up for that, we'd put your breads in all the bigger cities around here. Your sales would grow steadily from the new city exposure, and your rural drivers wouldn't have to worry every time one of their grocers went under. Business is changing, but it isn't shrinking, it's growing." "You could be right. Did you have this in mind when you bought us up?" "No. We've been looking for a way to come down here and become a real player in the area. We didn't really know what percentage of your total sales were strictly rural. Now, my Dad is all excited because he wants to see if we can use your sales model to improve our rural sales in other areas where we're already strong. The convenience store idea, that was my wife, Brenda. She was the one who first noticed they were all selling bread and sweet rolls, and most of the same things we sell in our vending machine business." "Cindy told me about this Brenda. Said she was the most beautiful woman she ever saw." "She's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen too. You'll see her next week, and you can judge for yourself." "Last night, that wasn't any of my doing. I felt bad at first, but it didn't turn out so bad, did it? Lee, liked to choke herself when Emily said that last. You think Cindy went to all this bother with her mama and me just to try to get close to your women folks?" I could see that this thought was troubling to Gene. He was pretty sure his daughter was gay, but he must have gotten his hopes raised up when Cindy came home talking about me. I guessed it was hard for him and his ex wife to give up their hope for this again. "It's more than a little difficult to discuss sex with a girl's father, Gene. It isn't something you often get a chance to do. Cindy was telling you the truth about there being something interesting in the way we responded to each other when we first met. There's definitely something there, something physical. I think she's as hot for me as I am for her. I hope me saying this doesn't offend you?" "Offend me? If you think that, boy, you don't have the first idea of what Lee and I have been through with that girl of ours. She had one bad apple, Colin Underwood, and she let that one ugly experience turn her away from being normal. She was normal before that, totally normal, just like every other girl." "Girls liking girls doesn't have to be a bad thing, Gene. It seems to me that it isn't really as uncommon as most people think it is." "Common is a good word for it, because that's exactly what that is. To a Christian, it goes against what's in the Bible." "Well, I don't happen to agree with that, not at all. As far as Cindy though, I don't believe she's totally committed to only girl-girl things. I think she's interested in me." "If that's true, then you have my permission, and her mama's, to try to get her back on the right path." "Normally, I would do just that, and I wouldn't need your permission for it either. Thing is, after having this conversation with you, I couldn't do that." "Why not? I already said it was fine by us." "If I did, that would be adultery, and you don't have to be religious to know that goes against what's taught in the Bible." "I take your meaning, Kenny, and if I gave any offense to you or your wives, then I'm truly sorry. The thing is, she's my daughter, and it tears me up inside knowing she won't have all the things we want for her." "You don't think it might be the way you and Laura treat each other that has her turned off to men and to what you call normal relationships? After last night, I was thinking about giving up on women myself." I was kidding with him, trying to lighten the tone of our conversation, but he took me seriously. "I never thought about that. You think me and Lee getting after each other might have soured her some? I'd hate to find that out. I always thought it was that damn Colin Underwood. She acted real strange when she stopped seeing that boy, and never went near another one since then." "I can't say for sure, Gene. I did notice that she seemed upset whenever you and Laura got on each other last night. Maybe you should talk to her, find out for yourself if it bothered her." "I know it bothered her. It bothered all of us. We can't help it though. Whenever we get within a mile of each other now, it brings out the ugly in both of us. I don't know how we stayed together for as long as we did." "Make up sex?" Gene looked at me, scowling at first, but then he started grinning and nodding at me. "For someone so young, you make a powerful lot of sense sometimes. We did always have that part of it working smooth enough. It was probably the only reason we never did get around to killing each other. You really think that's why it took so long for us to get quits?" "Satisfying sex is a big plus for any relationship." "We had that. Only thing I really miss since the divorce." "Maybe Laura misses that too. No reason you can't declare a temporary truce and keep the best part going." "Maybe that's another thing that's different down here, from what you're used to. Divorced people generally avoid each other down here." "In Kansas, we don't invite our ex wives to our dinner parties, but, that doesn't mean two people can't get together to scratch each other's itch. Seems like a better solution than going to some stranger for your relief." Again, I was only teasing him. I didn't even know any divorced people that still had sex with each other. I was surprised when Gene got quiet and didn't make some reply back to me. I went down to the baking floor and went to try to speak to a few people standing around out on the delivery bays, smoking and talking together. They got quiet when I came close to them. People seemed more closed off to strangers down in Alabama. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was them all knowing who I was. I knew I needed to talk to people if I was going to do any good for this company, or for our other companies. I could only learn what I needed to know, if I spent time getting to know the people, and understood their thoughts. I stood there with them, trying to look pleasant, hoping someone would speak to me and break the ice. No one left, but no one spoke up either. "I'm Kenny Parsons, from the new home office, up in Kansas. I was hoping that some of you would tell me what I should be doing to make this plant a better place for us to work." "You could start by leaving us alone so we could have a smoke and enjoy our break." This was from a woman of about thirty. She was medium everything, with washed out dirty blonde hair. She wore dangling earrings in her ears, about two inch long earrings. No one else said anything. "Is that what you really think, or are you just being witty?" I wanted to give her a chance to either say she was kidding or, perhaps, back down from her earlier statement. "You asked us." She had a lot of attitude for someone who didn't even know me. I'd always heard that Southerners were a friendly people. I couldn't prove it from my own limited experience. "All right, I'll leave." I turned and walked away from them. I'd never had such a chilly reception from company employees when we'd taken over a company in the past. I hadn't been prepared for it this time. I walked over to look at an untended oven. Someone had recently spilled about three quarts of batter, in front of the oven door, and just left it there. If an inspector happened to come by and saw that mess, it would probably result in a write up. I went and found a trash bin and got myself some rags, a broom, and a big metal dust pan that I found over by another trash bin area. I went back and started cleaning up the mess. I had just started in on cleaning it up when the same blonde from the delivery bay came hurrying over. "Leave off from there, mister. I'll get it." I ignored her, after first looking up to verify who it was that was talking to me. She waited a few seconds before starting right back in telling me to get away from the spill, because she was going to take care of it now. I continued ignoring her, picking up as much as I could, using one of the cleaning rags and the dust bin. The batter had congealed enough so that I knew it had been laying on the floor like that for at least half an hour. "Is this your oven?" "Today it is. Get away from that mess, I said I was going to clean it up." Before, she had sounded angry, demanding that I let her clean up the mess. After I asked her if she was the one responsible for that oven, her tone switched to be more defensive. I continued swiping with the rag, moving as much batter on the dust bin as I could before emptying it carefully into the metal trash bin I'd brought with me. "Do you usually leave spilled batter on the floor, and then go waltzing off to take your break?" I didn't try to hide the accusatory tone to my words. It came out like more than a simple question. We both knew that spilling batter, then leaving the mess on the floor, was a Cardinal sin. This was true of anyplace where food was being prepared. By the time I asked her that, most of the spill had been picked up. I began using a different rag, trying to clean the area where the front of the oven met the floor. "I wasn't waltzing anywhere. There was someone out there I needed to speak with. I knew I'd be coming right back here. It wasn't that much of a mess anyhow." "How long have you worked here?" "Are you fixing to let me go because I spilled some cake batter?" "How long have you worked for this company?" "Twelve years. You didn't answer my question." "It wouldn't be right to fire someone for a little accident like spilling some batter." "I said I was going to clean it up as soon as I came back." I stood up and handed her the last clean rag and walked away. I went over and got a mop and a bucket, filling the bucket with hot water from the large cleaning sink. I rinsed out the two dirty rags and then squeezed the excess water out of them. I found a bottle of liquid detergent and poured an ounce into the hot water filled mop pail. When I got back, the woman was on her knees, using the rag I'd given her to clean things up as well as she could. I handed her the two clean, damp, rags, and left the mop and bucket near where she kneeled. I walked away from her, satisfied that the rest of the mess would be taken care of now. I had managed about twenty paces when Phil Macklinson sidled up alongside me, matching my strides with his own. "I see you met Miss Kitty, Kenny. Isn't she a piece of work?" "Is that her name, Kitty?" He nodded that it was. "Not very friendly, is she?" "Not so's you'd notice, she isn't. She's been in a bad mood since they made Jenny Calvin the new lead person on the conveyor train. She thought she'd get the job, since she's been sleeping with Donny, the line supervisor. She might have done too, except for Larry." "Larry, your brother?" "That's the one. Larry was the one that jumped Jenny into that job. Passed over more than a few people to give it to her too." Larry was head of production for the company. Deciding on who should get promoted to lead person on a conveyor shift was something for a floor supervisor to decide. It wasn't that atypical for one of the Macklinson's though. All of them seemed to cross over the normal lines of demarcation, as far as doing their duties went. Still, in a case like this one, I could see why some people might be angry. "Does Larry do things like that often?" "Only if he thinks he can do himself some good by doing it. Larry likes to advance the careers of certain people who have shown their willingness to work well, under him." "Girls who have been friendly with him?" "Usually that, but, sometimes, he'll do it on spec alone. I think that was what he did with Jenny Calvin. I guess he hopes she'll be properly appreciative for all his help to her." "Why are you telling me all this, Phil? Are you trying to get Larry into trouble?" "Not hardly. Fact is, I like Miss Kitty, and I saw what was happening between you two. Thought I'd come over and fill you in on why she's acting like she is right now. She's still sleeping with Donny too, after being passed over, so that says something about her good character." Phil barked out a laugh, clapping me on the back as he began to move away from me. This was just another example of how the Macklinson's seemed to treat their business as a personal fiefdom. Handing out promotions in hopes of getting laid. Talk about antiquated notions of how to run a business. Bring back droit du seigneur! At the end of the day, I didn't feel like I'd accomplished much. I was supposed to be looking for ways to help get this company up to speed, and ready to integrate itself in with our other holdings. So far, I hadn't really come up with anything I could relay to my Dad when I called him from home that evening. I only had one more day to come up with something to justify the time and expense of my trip down to Alabama. I wasn't that hopeful of being able to do that. ------- By the time I got back to the rental house on Wednesday evening, I wasn't feeling anymore optimistic about getting anything of value done the next day. I was beginning to believe there was too much of a cultural difference between what I knew, and what these people had experience with. We weren't on the same wave length. I knew it was up to me to bridge those differences, but I wasn't sure how I could begin. They thought differently about things, and they acted on their own sets of beliefs. I imagined this was what I'd run across if I tried to set up a bakery in a foreign country. Even the language we used was different to my ear. I could understand their words, but only if I concentrated intently. They probably had the same trouble with the way I spoke. I walked in the door, and Emily was chatting away on the telephone, with Brenda. She was describing the dinner the night before, and giving a blow by blow account of my conversation with Cindy's mother. The way Emily was telling it, it sounded like all of us had enjoyed a great time together. I was in the kitchen, trying to find something to eat when Emily called me to the phone. When she passed it over, she leaned up for a kiss. When I was done with that, I spoke into the mouthpiece. "Hello." "Kenny." It was Joyce. "I had a long talk with Cindy about what happened last night. Didn't Emily explain to you that you weren't supposed to mention having that vasectomy?" "She said something, but it came up in conversation." "Now her mother is all upset with her." "Her mother is upset with everybody. She offered me a million dollars to marry Cindy." "I heard. Emily told us you were magnificent after the two of you got home last night. Did Cindy get you hot?" "No. Emily was looking good, with her new dress and that bra that pushes her boobs up so they look like Dolly Parton's." I felt a light slap to the back of my head after I said that. "Cindy only likes girls, according to both her parents. I think she tried to use me as a cover, to infiltrate our group. She probably wants to have her way with all you innocent girls." "That isn't true. She definitely told me she wanted to go to bed with you. She finds you exciting. She's told me that, several times already." "Sure, that's how they do it. They say anything to get their foot in the door. Next thing you know, they're eating all my pussy, and there isn't any left for me. She kind of reminds me of you, Joyce." Joyce and I had spoken many times about the fact that the other wives were an important component of her sexual happiness. Joyce was becoming more accepting of her own preference for sex with women. She claimed that this preference didn't include me, that I was a very special exception to that. I knew our best sex came when we were both having sex with a third person. Best, in the sense that we each had our strongest releases at those times. Sex with Joyce alone was still very exciting, but not like it was when we had someone we were working on together. "She had a very bad experience, Kenny. It didn't start out as a rape, but that's how it ended up for her. She just needs what you gave to me. She needs to learn what a good experience with a guy is like." "How about if I come down by myself next week? I'll take her out and then bring her back here and give her my best stuff. After that though, we're all done with her, especially you, Joyce." "No. That isn't what she needs or wants. Why can't we make it like it was with Ellen, or Dale? Cindy would be more relaxed if another girl was there. It wouldn't seem so frightening for her." "Are you sure it would be better that way?" "Of course I am. She's a lot like I was before I did it with you the first time." "I'll call her and invite her to come over tonight. Emily and I will teach her what three way love is all about." I held the phone away from my ear, knowing I was going to get bawled out for doing that to her. Joyce knew I was teasing, but, she would have to start being more honest with me about what she and Cindy wanted. "Go ahead. That might be the best way." "You don't really mean that. You just don't want to admit that you were scheming to get her for yourself." "Is that what you think?" "Yes." Joyce laughed. It broke the tension that had been building up. I laughed too. It felt good to be laughing again. That was one of the nicest things about talking to Joyce. She could get me out of some of my funkier funks. "Tell me what's the matter, Kenny." I spent the next half hour telling her about the last two days at work, over at Macklinson's. She listened, asking questions, every time I paused long enough for her to get one in. When I told her about telling Gene about Brenda's comments about the convenience stores selling the same things we sold in our vending machines, she stopped me. "Brenda said that to you? How come you didn't tell me about it?" "Because I didn't think about it until Gene told me about a lot of the smaller mom and pop's going under from the competition from the big chains. He was telling me they can't compete, and I was telling him about the convenience stores, and that's why I remembered what Brenda said. I told him these convenience stores were the new mom and pop markets, and his drivers should open new accounts with them. I only brought up the vending products, so he would know the drivers would have more product to sell, if they went and opened the accounts." "I can't believe Brenda noticed it before any of the rest of us did. All those places, and they build a hundred new ones every day. Every exit on the interstate, and there are three or four new ones in every small town around here. You think of them for cigarettes and beer, but, now that I think about it, they have whole racks of snack foods in there. Where do they buy those things? Do you know?" "No. I know they aren't buying from us, because we've never gone out and tried to sell them anything. Macklinson's has the perfect set up for doing that. When I told Gene about it, I could tell he thought it might be something. He's worried about all those little stores they've been selling to, going under. I told him, with all those convenience stores sprouting up, the number of outlets suited to his kind of sales is growing faster than anything else." "I need to call your Dad, Kenny. We were talking about what to do after the vending market gets saturated. I bet he never even thought about the gas station stores, or the 7-11. You need to go out with some of their sales people and find out if they can sell product like that. Can you do that tomorrow? I'll have Virginia air freight some product to you overnight, tonight. I'll call her at home. No, wait. I'll get Tom Fremple, over at the hub in Atlanta. He can drive some over to you tonight. I'll work out a wholesale price list for you, and call you back tonight. Don't go anywhere, and stay off the phones." "You don't want me calling Cindy. All you had to do was ask me, Joyce." "This is business. If you're really that anxious, come get me, and the three of us will take a relaxing weekend together." "Not going to happen. If we decide to do her, it will be at our house, and everyone will be there. I don't want to have any problems with the other wives." "I don't think so. Not with Cindy. Not right away. She really does have a thing for you. I'm just going to be there to keep her calm, and to try to help her if she panics or something." "You aren't going to do her too?" "I didn't say that. We'll have to play it by ear. She isn't like Ellen was. She's very skittish." "I'll bet you ten thousand dollars that you'll be eating her, within an hour of when we first take her in a bedroom." She laughed, and then declined to make the bet. The whole time Joyce and I were talking on the telephone, Emily was right there, touching me, and giving me little kisses on my neck. "Joyce, I need to go. Call me back when you know for sure when Tom is going to be bringing over the stuff. If its going to be too late, tell him to deliver it to the bakery, at the delivery dock. I can pick it up in the morning. I need to call Gene and ask his permission, and to have him recommend someone for me to ride with to try this." I hung up and dialed Gene's home number. Cindy answered. "Hi Cindy. This is Kenny. Is your dad home?" "Hi. No, he called and told me he had a dinner date. Said he'd be home late. Do you know who he's seeing?" "No. He didn't say anything to me. Its probably a client, or some supplier in town, trying to wine and dine him." "Not my dad. He only does business like that during working hours. He said he had a date." "Well, he didn't say anything about it to me. I needed to ask him how I could get one of the route drivers to do a little experiment with me tomorrow." "What kind of experiment?" "I wanted to see if some of these convenience stores would buy some of our bakery products. I'm having some our vending machine products brought in tonight so we can see if they'd sell all right around here." "Are you still mad about last night?" "I was only mad at your mother. She sure thinks she's in charge of things, doesn't she?" "That's just her way. She got a little carried away after I told her I'd met someone." "I just got off the phone with Joyce, right before I called over to your house. This thing you two are doing, it's getting complicated. There are more people involved than just the two of you. I wouldn't want to see anyone getting hurt from this." "I meant you. You really are different." "I'm not that different. I like the same things other guys like. Joyce is different, a lot more so than I am. You shouldn't get us confused in your head. Joyce is more impulsive about this sort of thing than I am, or any of the others are. What Joyce wants isn't always the same as what the rest of us want." "You've already made up your mind about me. You should have waited until you got to know me better. Joyce told me you'd understand." I did understand. That was the problem. Cindy was a further complication in an already complicated situation. She wanted to squeeze herself in when there wasn't enough room for her. Joyce wanted to help her do that. I wanted to please Joyce, but not at any price. If Cindy was going to come in and be a big part of our lives, she needed to come in through the front door. She and Joyce were trying to sneak her in via a different entrance. "It isn't just you, me, and Joyce. You have to be part of the whole group. If Joyce told you different than that, she misled you." "All she said was that she'd help me with you, if I wanted her to." "She did that already. Tell me what you need help with." "I just want to get to know you better. You are different. You have a different way of looking at women. I wish I'd met you when I was young and innocent." "You're looking at our little group, and you're probably thinking that we have it because of me. Well, it isn't. Mostly, it's because of Joyce. She wanted it like it is now, and she did all the work, in the beginning, to make it possible for us." "She did it for you." "She did it for her too. A lot of it was because she wanted Emily and Brenda too. What she's doing now, that's because she wants to sleep with you." "She could have already, if that was all she wanted." "She wants to do it with the three of us too." "I want that too. Don't you want that?" "I've got four wives. I have to think about what is best for all of us. We need to get to a point where everyone agrees to something. In the past, we sometimes were able to get to that point. We haven't done that yet with you, because no one has asked us to. Joyce is trying to handle this in a way that is different than what we've all agreed to." "Tell me what I have to do to get what I want." "Tell me what you want." "I want to be one of your wives. I want to be able to make love to you, and to make love to Joyce too." "Is that it?" "That's all I want. If I had to, I could do something with those other girls. It's like what Emily said last night. I'd do her too." "All of my wives love all of my other wives. It isn't just sex. If Joyce led you to believe it was only sex, she misled you, like I said." "She said it didn't all have to be done right from the first. I might end up loving all of them in time. I just don't know yet." "They'd have to love you, Cindy, and to want you too. That might be hard for Shirley and Brenda. It might be hard for Emily too." "Could you love me?" "I could, and Joyce could, but we're different than most people. I love easy. I think Joyce does too. We aren't as selective about who we can love. It has caused us some disagreements in the past, with all the other wives." "Joyce told me I'd get a chance." "Ask your father to call me, if he gets in before eleven o'clock. If not, ask him to call me as soon as he wakes up. I really want to try my experiment before I fly back home tomorrow night." That had been a weird conversation. It sounded like I was trying to talk her out of trying to get to go to bed with me. I should have spent more time talking to Joyce. Cindy wasn't the problem, Joyce was. I turned back to look at Emily. She was sitting on the sofa, smiling at me when I turned. "Why are you smiling?" "Because I'm happy." "Why are you happy?" Because I'm here with you, without any of the others, and because I know that you meant what you just said to Cindy." "How do you know I meant it?" "Because it isn't something a man would make up to say to a woman." "Maybe I just said it because I knew you were listening." "You wouldn't have said those things about Joyce, or about how you and Joyce can fall in love with people easier than the rest of us can. You were being honest. You really do love all of us, because you wouldn't have said that if you didn't really love us." "Well, you've got me there. I really do love all of you. That doesn't mean I'm not going to fuck Cindy, because I probably am. I won't sneak around to do it though. I won't do it without all of you telling me first that I can." "I hope you do fuck her. Joyce told me she had only done it with one other guy before. He hurt her pussy real bad. He forced things into her pussy, just because she tried to make him stop." "What about her being a new wife?" "That might be a bigger problem with everyone but Joyce. I know it would be a problem with Eddie and Dale. I think Eddie and Dale are a big part of the reason why Joyce has been doing things the way she has. She doesn't want to hurt their feelings." "Okay, you lost me there. How does Cindy have anything to do with Eddie and Dale?" "They both love you too, especially Dale. They aren't your wives though. Since they came after us, and since they already know you had a vasectomy, they understand that a big part of the whole wife thing has to do with having your babies. If you made Cindy your wife, after not making Eddie and Dale your wives, what would that say to them?" "I don't know. What would it say?" "That we loved Cindy more than them." "What are we going to do then?" "Joyce says you have to quit calling all of us your wives. We can say we're your wives, but you just say only Joyce is your wife. Cindy, Eddie, and Dale can then say they're your wives too, if they want to, because it won't matter. Not unless you say they are too." "That won't work for me." "Joyce says it will work." "Joyce is wrong. You all aren't my wives just because I say you are. You're my wives because that's who you really are. I'm never going to say to any of our children that their mother isn't my wife." Emily just looked at me. Finally, after three or four minutes, she nodded. I didn't know if this meant she agreed with me, or if it meant that she had made up her mind about something else. "Come to bed, Kenny." ------- Chapter 38 I found out, in bed, that Emily had been afraid I was going to follow Joyce's plan about saying I only had one wife. Hearing from me, that this wasn't ever going to happen, had opened all of her emotional floodgates. She let me know, in no uncertain terms, how important it was to her that I acknowledge her as my wife. I accepted her love, and the physical outpouring that went with it, with joy. I had to wonder what Joyce had been thinking, to even suggest such a thing to all the other wives. I went into Macklinson's before six thirty, to find that Tom Fremple, the on site coordinator at our Atlanta rail hub, had dropped off a small truckload of vending machine products for me to attempt to sell. Joyce had called me back a little before eleven, interrupting Emily and me in our second bout of lovemaking, to give me the pricing information for the vending products Tom was bringing to me. It was a simple pricing strategy that Joyce had come up with. Eighteen vending products, all priced at seventy nine cents, retail. Wholesale price was nine dollars and sixty cents for a box of twenty four. This worked out to a cost of forty cents per unit. The retailer would just about double his money each time he sold one of our products. One advantage Joyce told me to stress was that our products had a much longer shelf life than most other fresh baked sweet rolls and snack foods. I knew this was true, because of the complex preservatives we used to ensure that it was. Shelf life is important in the vending machine business. Some of our products had an effective shelf life of a year or more. I was very surprised to find Kyle Macklinson waiting for me over at the loading docks. Gene had come home late, gotten my message from Cindy, then had called Kyle up, telling him to be at the plant before five o'clock, to take care of whatever it was I needed. Kyle was Gene's oldest son, and was a plant production man who worked directly for his Uncle Larry. Kyle hadn't impressed me in the few times that I'd had an opportunity to talk with him. He seemed too casual about everything, like nothing really mattered to him that much. I told Kyle what I needed, and showed him the thirty six cases of vending product that had been dropped off. Each case had four boxes of twenty four units each inside. It wasn't a lot of product, but when added to the breads and rolls that Macklinson's usually sold, it should be enough to give a fair test of whether we could make any sales inroads with the convenience store businesses. Kyle headed off to get one of the company delivery vans. These were mostly used as back ups for the independent drivers experiencing break downs during their own deliveries. Kyle had told me he knew the perfect guy to go out with me. I went upstairs to try to find something in the way of a sales book to record whatever sales results the driver and I were able to make. In the vending machine placement business, opening one new location per week was considered good. We had some people who averaged more than two per week, but one a week was good enough. I had decided that opening two new convenience store accounts in one day would be a positive indication of the viability of entering into this market. The thing that worried me the most was whether we would be able to make a sales pitch in front of the owner, or someone who had purchasing authority. I didn't know much about convenience stores, or whether they usually had the owners present. I found a sales book that would work well enough, just something the drivers used to record bread returns. It had the Macklinson name and logo printed on the top of the page, and about thirty lined spaces below for people to fill in which product was being returned. I picked up two of them, one for the driver to record any sales, and one for me to write notes for critiquing each sales call. I wasn't an expert in making sales calls, but I thought I might show my notes to Shirley's dad, and ask him to give me suggestions for the next try we made. When I got back down to the loading dock, Kyle was waiting for me, but he was alone. "Did you get the driver?" "I sure did. Me." "Kyle, I appreciate your being willing to help me with this, but I think it would be better if we tried one of the regular route people. I want to get a good idea about whether this would work or not." "I had my own route for four years, Kenny. I wasn't always stuck working in the plants you know. I can talk to people, and I know most of the people that live anywhere's close to here. We don't want to take a man off of his route anyway. Don't you worry none, if them convenience stores are buying, I can make the sale." I wasn't convinced. I hadn't seen anything from Kyle to make me think he had any sales ability. He certainly hadn't sold himself to me in the few times we'd been talking together. I figured the reason Gene had kept his younger son, Jerry, with him and had Kyle working with Larry, had been because he didn't think Kyle could cut it working in an executive role. All I had to go on were my first impressions, and the way my own father had kept me close to him in the business. "When you had your own route, Kyle, how'd you do?" "I had eight routes in four years, Kenny. I built all of them from scratch, then sold them, and started new ones. There's lots of delivery people that make good route drivers, but don't know how to open new accounts. Me, I was just the opposite. I loved opening new accounts, but I didn't much care for servicing them. I made a lot more money building and then selling them anyway, a lot more." "Why did you quit doing it then?" "They made me. Said it wasn't fair what I was doing. They said I was only doing so good because I was a Macklinson, so people would naturally want to buy from me over someone who wasn't part of the family." "Were they right?" "Hell no! What they were was jealous. One of Phil's boys tried to do the same thing, after I'd been doing it for a year. It was plumb pitiful what happened. I bought his new truck off of him two months later, at a deep discount from what he'd paid. None of the rest of them tried it, because they were afraid the same thing would happen to them that happened to Billy Ray." "How long ago was this, when you went out opening new routes?" "Eight or nine years ago was when they made me stop. I still go out once in awhile though, whenever one of our drivers jumps to the competition. I usually bird dog his old accounts he took with him, and any new ones he opens for a few months after he leaves. They usually hate it, because I generally can pull a good number of them back to doing business with us again. It kind of serves as a deterrent for other drivers thinking about doing the same thing. I don't know but two drivers that made a real go of it after jumping to another baker, but both of them were good at getting their own accounts. Sometimes today, if its a fellah I sold a route to, I'll go out and drum him up some business, when his route starts getting a mite peaked." I still wasn't convinced. In fact, I was more than half convinced he was making up a lot of his supposed success. At the very least, I thought he was embellishing quite a lot. I didn't see where I had much of a choice though. I wanted to spend a whole day trying to open new accounts. I'd find out soon enough if Kyle had any ability at all. I was right, it didn't take long. I was wrong, very wrong, about Kyle's abilities and his truthfulness when he told me of his past sales history. He was good. In fact, he was far better than just good. He was a star. I'd been out with some good route salesmen, professionals at opening new routes for the vending operation. I'd watched them closely. None of them had a thing on Kyle. He was smooth and friendly, but, he never stopped working to make the sale, and later, to improve upon it. We ran out of vending product by noon. He opened nine accounts in the morning, between eight and noon. Nine. We stopped at another four or five where only a clerk, with no buying authority, was on duty. There were three others where the individual with the buying authority was there, but didn't buy. Two times, they listened, but didn't buy, and the other time, the owner refused to listen, claiming he was well satisfied with his current vendors. We had a total of one hundred and forty four boxes of vending product when we started. We came back with nine unsold boxes. A small part of our success was that we were offering something new, something that looked different from the usual competition. A bigger part was our pricing. Other vendors were selling for either two thirds or three fourths of retail. We offered to let them double their money on a sale. That was, perhaps, forty percent of the reason we did so well. Kyle was the remaining sixty percent. They liked him, and they wanted to buy from him. "How many accounts like that would it take to make up a route, Kyle?" "Like those, probably one hundred and twenty. Those cakes aren't all going to sell in a week's time. Some will sell out in a few days, but a lot of them will take a lot longer than that. What does the driver make on each cake sold?" "My wife said she figured a dime per item for distribution expense, so two forty a box. Your drivers only make five dollars on thirty five dollars in sales." "Fifteen percent, and you're saying the commish on your product is twenty five percent?" "That's what my wife says, and she knows all the numbers better than I do." "A good route would be eighty stops a week then. You can figure an easy ten dollars for the driver, per stop, with your products and the numbers we're giving them. We're going to have a hard time keeping our own guys from jumping over to this. This is twice the money, for the same amount of work." "We wouldn't allow that. All your current drivers can sell our vending products. They should just add to their current sales, and try to add a few new accounts as well." "You going to try to put these cakes in with the bread and rolls at the small grocers too?" "That's always been a part of our strategy. All non competing products. We'll just pass on our normal distribution costs and allowances to the drivers." "Pop isn't going to like that. That won't leave any money for the company to make. You'd be better off giving two cents a unit to the company, and eight cents to the drivers. He'll still need to bail some of them out, when they go off and get in trouble from trusting people they shouldn't have ought to." "Why don't I just put you in charge of this whole program, Kyle? You seemed more excited about this than I ever saw you about any of the rest of the operation." "I'd like it, but they'd never allow it. Can't never let Kyle shine, that's what they'll tell you." "I don't understand." "Been like that my whole life. Macklinson people are all the same. Can't have one stand out, else it reflects poorly on all the rest. I'm no better than Jerry, Dougie, Wayne, Billy Ray, Jessie or Steve. They don't want to have it end up like it did with Pop, Larry and Phil. See, that's what caused all the trouble they say, because Pop stood out head and shoulders above his brothers. Caused a lot of bad feelings, they say, and made Grampy pass over Larry for Pop." "You can't run a successful company that way, Kyle. You have to use people's strengths. If you don't, you can't get nearly as much accomplished." "Tell them that, not me. Look at Jerry, he's purely being wasted in sales. He knows more about how to run a production line than anyone, but they won't let him near the baking floor. Steve should have Jerry's job, because he likes all that suit and tie bull shit. Dougie is wasted working for his Daddy too. It seems like they look at a body, and then do their best to put him where he can't possibly enjoy himself or get anything good done." "Why haven't you or your cousins quit? I would think they'd stop doing that if they knew it would drive you all away from the company." "We love the company, that's why. All of us have been here since before we had our adult teeth. We were all biding our time until it got to be our turn. We were biding our time, but only until they sold it out from under us. Now, I don't know. We all seem to be waiting, to see what changes you make here. If it's still the same kind of company, maybe it will end up being a good thing that they sold. If it changes too bad, then we'll have to think about what we want to do." "Well, I can't really advise you about that. I'll tell you one thing though, and it has to do with what you just told me. This is your time now. This is something brand new that you'd be perfect to head up for us. I watched you this morning, and it was easy to see that this is where you belong. I feel the same way about your brother and your cousins. If they are good at something, and that's where their interest lies, they should be doing it. "We want Macklinson's to stand out, to shine. That can't ever happen, not unless the people who make it happen are doing what they do best. I'll handle your father, and your uncles, if it comes to that. They have to understand that this is a business, not a kingdom that they rule. We need to do what's best for the business, and that doesn't include holding anyone back from excelling." "I can't do it if they say they won't allow it." Kyle was looking at me with one of the frowns I had gotten used to seeing on his face at our earlier meetings. It had been absent all morning while we were out selling. I didn't like seeing this new change in him. I really was impressed with the Kyle I'd spent the morning with. "Right now, Kyle, there isn't any program more important to the company than opening up new routes, and expanding on the products being offered on the old routes. These are the two keys to the company becoming profitable again. You are the perfect man for running this new program for us. You're young, energetic, and one hell of a salesman. This isn't your Dad's decision or either of your uncle's decision. They sold their rights to make those decisions. Right now, today, you work for me. I'm promoting you to vice president of marketing and distribution for Macklinson's Bakeries. It has nothing to do with what your father or uncles want or allow. You work for me now." "Things might be simple like that up North, Kenny, but down here, family is everything. I'm not going to go against my Daddy's wishes, not for anything." "I'll go up and talk to him. I'm sure he and I can reach an understanding." I left Kyle there on the loading dock. He needed to figure out the money and take his sales book upstairs to have each new account registered, and a folder made up for it. I headed over to speak with Gene. "Hey, Kenny. Good to see you. You and Kyle went somewhere?" "Hi, Gene. Yes, Kyle and I had a most profitable morning together. We went out and opened up some new accounts. Nine new ones, all convenience stores in the local area. We sold out before noon and came back. I just asked him to head up a new marketing program for us." "Here, or up in Kansas?" "Here. We're going to open up all these convenience stores, and we're going to start selling our vending machine products to your existing accounts." "Jerry would be better. He's the one in marketing. It should be him that does this for us." "Well, I did want to talk to you about Jerry too, and all the other Macklinson boys that work here at the plant. It seems that we have conflicting philosophies about how to run a company. I believe you should put a man to doing whatever he likes the most, whatever he'd be best at doing. Kyle told me that Jerry is a real production whiz. I wondered why he isn't down on the baking floor, working his magic for us?" "Its tradition, Kenny. Macklinson people can do anything they put their minds to. We train them in every phase of the business. You listen to Kyle, and you'll come away with the wrong impression. He's always been one of them conspiracy theorists. Thinks we all have it in for him, that we want to keep him down from shining as bright as he thinks he ought to." "He is one hell of a salesman, Gene. No question about that. Until today, I always thought he was something of a mediocrity. In fact, I've noticed that none of your sons or nephews seem to stand out in a crowd. Why is that?" "They're all still young men. They'll come into their own in time. All of us went through that." "Not you, Gene. From what I hear, you were the shining star of your generation. Didn't your father pick you to run the whole company, over Larry, who is the oldest?" "He did do that, but he was wrong to have done it. We all agreed it was the wrong way to do things. After he died, the three of us split things up differently, we did it our own way, to make each of us the head of an area. We were all equals after that, it was how it should be." "A worthy sentiment, I'm sure. Unfortunately, you can't run a successful company that way, as all of you eventually discovered. Somebody has to be in charge. There has to be a single clear plan and vision, and someone to see it implemented. My father gets a lot of advice, but he makes the final decisions. He's the one in charge, all the rest of us just support him. Right now, I'm the one he wants in charge of Macklinson's. I have hoped to leave here, after turning things back over to you, but that was only if we're in agreement about what direction we're going to be taking this company." "Well, that's what I told you on Tuesday, Kenny. This isn't really our company anymore. You call the tune, and we'll dance to it." Gene didn't look very happy when he said that. This wasn't how I wanted to have our working relationship turn out either. I needed someone in place who was in agreement with our plans and ambitions. Someone who would happily implement a strategy that he was in substantial agreement with. "That isn't going to work, Gene. We all need to be on the same page. All of us. This can still be your company, but that doesn't mean you get to take it in any direction you choose, or use up company assets to satisfy your personal philosophical beliefs. You can't make those kinds of decisions if they're at the expense of our bottom line. It's time for us to get back to worrying about how to make the most profit, not about how to keep all the Macklinson's happy and feeling good." "Is that what you think we've been doing, worrying about making ourselves happy?" "I don't know, Gene. You've been sitting on a gold mine here, but you've wasted it, trying to sell apples to all the people passing by. With the advantages you've had, as far as having no meaningful competition down here, you should be a lot bigger, and a lot more successful than you are. I've been impressed with your business sense, Gene, but then I couldn't figure out why you haven't done a lot better than you did. I think Kyle's right. I think all of you have been afraid to grab the ball and run with it, because you didn't want to promote jealousy amongst yourselves. I think this is the main reason why I'm here today, owning this company, rather than you and your family still owning it." "You sound just like Lee. She always used to preach that same drivel to me." "Maybe it isn't drivel. Have you ever wondered how well the company could have done if you weren't holding yourself back, deliberately? "I didn't hold back!" "You did, Larry did, and Phil did too. None of you ever wanted to admit that your father was right. I bet this company was a lot better positioned when he ran it." "He used to make us fight amongst ourselves. We had to compete for everything. We grew up acting like enemies, not like brothers. Our way, after he was gone, was better." "Maybe it was. Was the company better though? You could always treat work and family differently. Maybe your father wasn't having you compete just to compete. Maybe, he wanted each of you to get tougher, more capable, so that you could accomplish more with your lives. Maybe he should have explained where competition was good, and where it wasn't good. He probably did the best he could, what he thought was right." "It's too late now. We've already sold the company. You get to call the shots now." "Exactly the wrong attitude, Gene. This is still your company to run, you just have to run it better. Put the company first, not family feelings. All of you have a reputation for going around getting into everything, instead of sticking to your own jobs. You all need to find what you do best and do it. Let other people take care of the things they do better than you. I need you to call Kyle in here and tell him he's the new VP of distribution and marketing. He needs to have you give it your personal blessing. He wouldn't accept the job from me." "Kyle's a good boy. He likes to show off too much, and he thinks he's a little bit better than all the rest of us, but he's a good boy." "He's someone who can make this company an awful lot of money. After you tell Kyle and give him the freedom to do whatever he thinks he needs to, we have to bring in Larry and Phil. We need to get them on board with these other changes we'll be making." "Phil won't cause any problems, but Larry won't like what you're doing." "That's okay. I don't need for him to like it, just to do it. You can take him to your house after, and let him kick your ass at pitching horseshoes or something." "Not horseshoes, that's my best game. I'll let him beat me at pool." I could see that Gene was satisfied knowing that I'd be there to accept the blame for all the changes being made. I wondered how much better Gene might have done if he'd always had a foil like me to lay the blame off on. Maybe Old Tom should have made Larry the top guy, then Gene would have been free to excel as much as he was capable of doing. Maybe Phil might have been able to have his own opinions in an environment where thoughts and actions didn't carry negative consequences like being ridiculed, or subjected to family put downs. Gene called in Kyle, and I could see how much it meant to him, for his Daddy to tell him to go out and do his best. The meeting with Larry and Phil wasn't as positive. At one point, Larry said he'd quit rather than have outsiders decide where his sons worked. He started screaming at Gene, and at me, that we were ruining his father's company. "This isn't about you or your father, Larry. This is business. You can quit if you want to. If you do, when we turn this company around, and the profits start rolling in, people are going to believe it was you that was the problem all along." "More of your self serving bull shit, Parsons." "Maybe. Why don't you go ahead and quit and find out if it's bull shit or it isn't?" "You'd like that, wouldn't you? I've got a five year guaranteed employment contract at ninety thousand dollars a year. I'm not leaving until I've gotten every cent of it." "I'd rather give you the four fifty right now, and get rid of your obstructionist ass, Larry. Of everyone I've met down here, you've impressed me the least. Your whole attitude is poison. Nobody escapes your pessimism. Gene and Phil had to be magicians to keep this company going in spite of your negativity. I see why your Dad passed you over. Why don't you let me buy up your contract so you can leave?" "This is my company, mine! It's my name that's on the door outside. You can't just come in here and undo sixty years of family tradition. You might have these two doing what you tell them, but this is my company and I'm not leaving." "You're fired. Get your personal things together, then get off my property, Larry." I thought he was going to have a stroke. His face turned a bright shade of reddish pink, and he seemed to be having trouble drawing a good breath. Gene and Phil were both looking very uncomfortable and upset. I just stared at him, waiting for him to make up his mind about what to do next. I'd been as rough on him as I could be. He was a bully, and he needed to be out bullied by someone else. I could see how he operated now, he'd explode and everyone would try to do what they could to mollify him. He was absolutely no good to the company the way he was acting at that time. He needed to start changing, and quickly, or else he'd derail any improvements, Gene, or any of the others, could make. "I'll sue you." "Go ahead. You'll lose. I'll bring in some of the girls that work in production to explain what you made them do for their promotions. Whatever you try to do to hurt us, I'll hurt you more with what I can do to you. You aren't King Larry, and this isn't your personal playground anymore. I was willing to let you keep working here, because that was what your brothers both wanted, but I'm not willing to let you keep acting like a big ass hole, or having you going all over the place, fucking things up, just because you can't have your own way. If you want to continue being one of the Macklinson's, of Macklinson's Bakeries, you better get started in changing your ways. I'm done sitting here and watching you throwing tantrums, trying to get people to let you have your own way. If one of my kids did that, I'd paddle his ass until he quit it." "Gene? Are you going to let him talk to us like this?" Larry looked over at his younger brother. It was pathetic. I wondered how many times Larry had gone to Gene to get help for something like this. "He isn't talking to us like that, Larry, just you. You can't threaten a man when he's holding all the cards. He's told us we need to make some changes, and he's the boss now. You've got three million dollars, and so does Phil and Patty. I've got to keep on working, I still need money to pay Lee what I owe her." "Larry, I think Kenny's right. You should go on and retire from here. You don't like the work, and you aren't happy with anything anyone else does." Phil had spoken up, and that in itself was unusual. For it to be words against Larry, that was probably unheard of, judging by Larry and Gene's reactions to it. The four of us sat around the conference table. No one spoke for a couple of minutes. It was important that Larry see he didn't have his brothers supporting him. "I want you out of here by five o'clock, Larry, or else I need your word that you'll knock off all this negativity and get on board with the changes we need to make here. That means doing exactly what Gene asks you to do, or what I ask you to do. I don't want anymore diddling with the help either. You run your department like it was part of a real business, not your personal little kingdom. If you can't do that, then there is no place at Macklinson's for you." "I don't think I can do that." "Well, you have until five o'clock today to decide. When I leave here today, your brothers and I need your absolute promise, or else you're through here. If you leave, there won't be any coming back either." "What about my boys?" "They can stay. If they turn out to be bad apples, we'll deal with them the same way we're dealing with you. You can leave now and think about what you're going to decide. Gene, Phil, and I are going to make some decisions about changes we need to get going before I come back here next week." "Production changes?" Larry's voice had gotten back some of its old strength. Since his tantrum earlier, he'd been speaking in a meeker tone with us. "Changes, Larry. Personnel changes, philosophical changes. We need to discuss who should replace you if you can't put aside your personal problems and work with our team. I think we should consider Jerry for that." "Jerry? He could never run production for the company. I don't think he's even been to Tupelo or Panama City. He'd be completely lost, over his head." "Maybe you're right, but it doesn't matter until you make up your own mind about you. You can leave now, Larry. We have our own work to do." Larry got up and left. I was surprised. I was pretty sure he was going to ask to stay. He'd spent most of his life working at this plant, it was all he knew. Whatever friends he had, and all his family were right there. For the first time he was being forced to look at what he'd be losing. "Nobody ever talked to him like that. I'm surprised you're still alive, Kenny." Phil looked at me, seeming to want to say more to me, but holding back from it. "Larry's a bully. The only way to get through to him is to be a bigger bully. He'd have been a lot better off if someone had kicked his ass when he got like he did in here a few minutes ago. That shit might work in a school yard playground, but not in a business meeting." "If he does leave, Steve and Doug will quit too. Both of them are good boys. It would be a shame to lose them." Gene was looking forward to possible repercussions. I liked that. This was what I wanted. Gene had to start making his own plans, by himself. "Maybe Steve, but I'm not so sure about Dougie. I've watched him close for the past year or so. I don't think he'll quit just because Larry leaves." Phil was again expressing his own opinion, one that contradicted one of his brothers. Interesting. "You do a lot of watching, Phil. What is it you plan on doing with all that information you're gathering?" I wanted to see his response to my observation, and to the question I'd posed. "I'm the fixer, Kenny. You need to find out what's broken before you can figure out how to fix it." "How come you never fixed Larry?" "Not my place. That was Gene's job, not mine. I'm glad you did what you did today, Kenny, because it needed doing long since, but it was still Gene's job to do. Larry's going to come busting in here as soon as he sees you leave, and then he's going to start in on Gene and me, trying to make us stand by him. Gene, this time you need to do your job and tell him we won't. You tell him that we both think Kenny is right. If you do that, things got a chance for changing. If you back down, and tell him he's right, Kenny's going to need to fire you next." "When did you start growing some spine?" I was surprised that Gene would say something so negative to Phil. He should encourage Phil's participation, and be happy that he was finally offering us his opinions. "Didn't need to grow one. Had it all the time. You don't see Larry tinkering none with my machines. Times he tried it, I made him quit. The rest, it wasn't my place, it was yours. I'm getting too upset about things now to keep my own counsel about my disappointment over your failures with him. Best end it right here. Tell him he's wrong, and that he needs to change." Phil got up and put his hand out for me to shake, then he turned and left the conference room, leaving me alone with Gene. "Can you believe that? Known him all his life, boy and man, for more than forty years, and today's the first day he ever said I'd done anything wrong. He's probably right too, and I know it. He isn't the first that told me so either. Thing of it is, I can't really tell Larry you're right, because, in my heart, I don't believe you are." "Maybe I'm not right, but it wouldn't serve any good to tell Larry I'm not. Thing of it is, right or wrong, Larry either changes like I said, or else he's out of here. I know I'm right when I tell you that he isn't doing this company any good with the way he's been acting. You need to think about what the company needs, not what your older brother wants or needs. That's what we're paying you for. You can take him home tonight and be his brother, but today, you're his boss, and I'm yours. He'll either give us his solemn word that he'll change, or else he'll pack up his personal stuff and leave this company forever." "I can't fire my own brother." "You don't have to. I already did it for you. Phil's right about that too. It should have been your job, not mine. Doesn't matter though, because firing him didn't cause me five seconds of hardship or sorrow. If he decides to stay, gives us his word, if he doesn't live up to it, you'll get to fire him then. If you can't do it, then I'll fire both of you." "I hope it doesn't come to that." "Well, you better hope he decides to leave today then. I've got a feeling that Larry isn't going to be able to change. This is something personal with him, and it probably goes back a long, long time." "It is, and it does, and that's why I can't fire him." "Like I said, you better hope he stays fired this time. You never said what you thought about my putting Jerry in Larry's place?" "Larry's right about that. Jerry is good at figuring out ways to do things better, but he isn't good at details. Production is a detail job. He'd have trouble, a lot of trouble." "Give him the production job, and assign him your best detail person as his assistant." "You just fired my best detail person." "I never said it was going to be simple, Gene. I'm going to leave early. I want to get home to spend some time with my kids today. When Larry comes in, you can take his solemn promise. I trust you. If he gives it, I want you dogging him close, every day, to make sure he lives up to his word. If he doesn't give it, he stays fired. If he's still here when I call you on Monday, without him having given you his word today that he's going to change, I want you to fire yourself too." "This is going to make for hard feelings between us. You and me, I mean." "That's all right. It can't always be sweetness and light. Did you make a date to sleep with Laura last night?" I could tell by his blush that he had. "I'm thinking of flying Cindy back with us, for the weekend. You got any problem with me doing that?" Gene looked at me, realizing then, I think, that this was what I meant when I talked about keeping business and personal relationships separate. They were two separate things. "This is all fun and games to you?" "No. Business isn't about fun, it's about profits, and about living up to your responsibilities to all the employees who rely on you to keep their jobs safe. You can love your brother as much as you want to, or sleep with your ex wife whenever you can talk her into it. That's the difference, Gene. I don't interfere in how you conduct your personal life. I know how to separate business and personal. You need to learn how, and you better learn it pretty soon." I moved out from behind the table and walked out of the conference room. It had been an interesting day. I called Emily from the loading dock, and told her I'd be coming home early. "Call Cindy at her work number and tell her we're taking off from Birmingham at five fifteen. Tell her we're inviting her to come to our house for the weekend. Make sure she knows it isn't for sex. Tell her we want her to spend time with the kids, and with everyone else in the family. Call Mama, and ask her to call Laura Macklinson, the number is in my book on the night stand, tell Mama I want her to invite Laura for the weekend, at her house. Explain to Mama that we're going to be having Cindy at our house." "Suppose Cindy can't make it? Should I still call your mother about the rest?" "She'll make it. She really wants to be a part of what we have. I need to show her father something, because he's going to have a lot of hard decisions to make over the next few days." ------- Chapter 39 When Emily and I got to the airport at around four thirty, both Cindy and her mother were waiting for us. Mama had apparently told Laura that she would be sending Hans out with the limo to pick all of us up at the hanger, in Bolling. Cindy didn't seem very pleased to find out that her mother was going to be a guest of my mother. She was also surprised to learn that I was planning on piloting the plane we were to fly in. I took a minute to let her know that I was fully trained, licensed and qualified to fly the plane. Finally, I ended up telling her that my wives had enough confidence in my piloting skills that they allowed me to pilot the plane with all my children on board. It was the last part that convinced her. Emily spent most of the flight entertaining Cindy and Laura in the passenger compartment. I heard laughter coming from the other side of the curtain we had hanging up behind the cockpit. It wasn't too long of a flight, and the take off and landing were routine and unremarkable. I taxied over to the hanger of our maintenance contractor, spotting Hans and the limo standing by. Mama and Joyce were there as well, standing next to the open passenger door of the limo. It took us just half an hour for Hans to drive us from the airport over to my house. Most of that time was spent listening to Laura and Mama working through their list of possible mutual acquaintances. It was a long list from each. Although Mama was several years older than Laura, they ended up knowing many of the same people. Cindy seemed quieter, more reserved even than usual, with her mother sitting beside her on the limo's back seat. She and Joyce spoke some, but most of the conversation, other than from the older women, was between Joyce and Emily. Emily was asking about the children, and Joyce was wanting to know about the house, and Birmingham. All of that changed instantly, when I mentioned to Joyce that Kyle, Cindy's brother, had sold almost every box of vending product that Tom had driven over for me. "He opened nine new accounts in about four hours. You should have seen it. In one store, he sold one box each of all eighteen products. It was a sale of about one hundred and eighty dollars, and it took him less than fifteen minutes, from start to finish. We were putting product in the display racks and people were reaching over our shoulders to get some of them to buy." "Your father is going to be pleased, Kenny. He's already talked about converting the Consolidated plant in Tennessee over to producing vending products. If you can find us enough new outlets down there, it could make it a lot easier for him to justify the conversion costs. Your father is already at the top end of the new credit facility. He's talking to some man in New York about us issuing some new kind of debt instrument, one that doesn't need any security, other than depreciated plant equipment, and some of the accounts receivable we'd be generating." "How much is the conversion going to cost us?" It seemed like a lot of trouble and expense to go through just to raise the kind of money he'd need to convert a baking plant. "Fifteen to twenty million. We're building a whole new warehouse facility to take advantage of the Nashville rail hub. You dad wants to put in a big packaging plant there too. He wants to private label some of the vending products. This was even before I told him what you were trying." "Mama, we should put a partnership together, just the two of us, and lend Dad the money at prime. I've got some extra from the trading account, enough to cover half of it. He just got done with that new credit facility. I think he should stay here and worry about how we're going to use what we'll learn at Macklinson's to expand in all of our other areas. The wholesale route driver idea might not work for small grocers all over the country, but the convenience store sales probably would. With the numbers that Joyce worked up for me, Kyle said his drivers would make about twice what they take home now. That's probably enough to entice people to buy themselves a delivery van and buy the vending product from us. If not, we'll hire our own team of salespeople to go out and open accounts, then hire our own drivers to service them." "Kenny, whatever you think is best. I hear you talking about how much the drivers will make, are we making some money too? It doesn't seem like we could be making very much when you sell things for twenty five or thirty cents." "Tell her, Joyce." I knew that Joyce had all the costs for every product we made, carried in her head. Not just the product costs, but packaging, freight, distribution, and allowing for product returns. "We used vending products that we already make, Mama. Instead of retailing them for fifty five or sixty cents, like in a machine, we made them all seventy nine cents each. The retailer pays us forty, and we pay the distributor ten cents out of that. That leaves us with thirty cents. On average, counting all our costs, we spend sixteen cents per item, and this allows for everything. Some are a penny or two more, but others cost us less. Sixteen is the average. If we can keep that mark up, the convenience stores will be more lucrative than the vending machines, on an item by item basis. It all depends on sales volume. If product sells faster, or about the same in the convenience stores, Kenny has found us a real winner." "Brenda has, you mean. This whole thing came from something she told me. I think she should be given the credit for it. Maybe Dad can name the plant in Nashville after her, or put her picture up on the side of the building. She'd like that." All of us laughed, but it was true. It was her idea, and she really would love getting the recognition for it. Once we got home and said goodbye to Mama, Laura, and Hans, the four of us went inside the house. Everyone was happy to see us, and all the kids were awake, playing downstairs in the nursery playroom. I introduced Cindy again to all our children, telling her a little about each child. She was fascinated with our two sets of twins. Wherever Cindy went, Joyce hovered around nearby. My father called me right before our late dinner, to get my report on what Mama had told him about the success of the vending product sales in the convenience stores. When I interrupted my narrative to tell him that Mama and I wanted to loan him the money for the Nashville conversion, he told me that he already had a good solution. He said this other way made more sense, because he needed to raise a lot more money for other things too. He had his eyes on two new purchases that he had been investigating on his own, even before I was sent to Alabama. He told me about this company that specialized in raising corporate capital. They had assured him that they could put together a bond type of offering that could be privately subscribed, for almost any amount my father needed. All of this was supposedly made possible because of my father's great past business track record. Supposedly, all he needed to do was provide a guaranteed income stream, and some nominal level of either equipment or property values as security for the money. Pledging a portion of his accounts receivable would provide the necessary income stream to service the loan. The collateral was more for show than for any other purpose. They told him to put together a list of any equipment that wasn't currently necessary for any of his plant operations. They told him no one ever checked on the actual equipment being pledged. All they were concerned with was the income necessary to pay the interest payments. "Make sure he isn't talking about them taking too much off the top, so that you'll be left paying back a dollar for every seventy cents you'll actually be borrowing." I had heard of various ways unscrupulous people took advantage of unsophisticated borrowers "Six percent, interest only, for fifteen years, and then you have to give a full return of the initial subscribed principal, at the end of that time. We get ninety two cents of every dollar subscribed. They keep the other eight, to cover their commissions and expenses. It ends up costing us six and a half percent, without affecting our credit facility that is now in place. I checked with the lead bank and they said they had no problem with it, as long as I didn't encumber anything we've got pledged to them." "Have Frank find some people to look over every line of every contract, Dad. That sounds like it's too good to be true." "I already have someone. The same lawyer we used in New York for the new bank line. He was the one who recommended that I talk to this guy. He says this is the newest capital formation strategy. All the big players are going this route." I went up to my bedroom after talking to my father. Something about what he was telling me seemed wrong to me. I knew I'd have some time to think about it while I was at home before heading back to Alabama. Joyce came into my room when I was putting my clothes away. "Is Cindy supposed to be my present for being good, Kenny? Is that why you brought her up here with you?" "I didn't bring her here for anyone to have sex with her, Joyce. I brought her here to let her see how we really live, and so she could get to know us and the kids better. Emily told me something that's been bothering me. It has to do with me only having one wife, you." "What bothers you about that? Legally, it's the truth." "I have four wives, each of the women I've had children with. You are all my wives, because I say you are, not because of some legal piece of paper. You've overstepped yourself this time, Joyce. I won't have any of the others reduced in anyway, just because you have the hots for Cindy." "It wasn't for that. It was to protect Eddie and Dale's feelings." "Eddie and Dale don't need that kind of protection. They both mean as much to me as Cindy does. More, because we already have a relationship with both of them. I know you want Cindy. Hell, I admit that I want her too, but not if it has to be your way. How hard do you think it would be to get everyone to agree to have her be with us? With us in the same way that Eddie and Dale are. I'm not talking about taking on any new wives. If I was, then Eddie and Dale would be the first ones that I'd ask." "Cindy is different, Kenny. It isn't the same. There is a lot more at stake for her than there was for Dale and Eddie. The rest of her life kind of depends on something like this happening for her." "Why is she so different? You can't just make these vague assertions, Joyce. What makes Cindy more special than either Eddie or Dale?" "I almost never ask you for anything for myself, Kenny. I don't look for any special favors from you, and you know I don't. This one time, I am. I'm asking you to marry Cindy, for me." Joyce had gotten up on my bed and was sitting there, her feet dangling over the side. She looked a lot like she had the first time I made love to her, in my room, over at Mama's house, all those years ago. "You have to tell me exactly why it's so important to you. I'm not going to do it just because you asked me to. Tell me why. This is something that is too important just to do it as a favor to you." "When she was sixteen, she slept with this boy. He hurt her. When she tried to make him stop, he went crazy, and started doing bad things to her. Real bad, until she passed out from the pain. He put things into her pussy, a baseball bat, and other things. She got an infection from what he did, and she later had to have an operation. She never told anyone else about what happened, until she went away to college, a couple years later. She started doing things with other girls, but mostly because she doesn't trust men. She likes men, she just can't bring herself to trust any of them. She says she has a lot of scarring, up inside, between her legs, and she doesn't think its still possible for her to have babies." "I still don't see why this is any reason for me to marry her. She should go see a professional and work through her fears. She needs real professional help, not our little group. I don't see where any of us can help her." "I was getting to that. This got started when Emily told her about us, about you having four wives and twelve children. She also told her how we each have our own bedrooms. That was when she first started thinking that she might fit in with us. It is a pressure problem she has. She has tried sitting and talking with boys, ever since that thing happened, and she can't let herself be alone with any of them. I'm not talking sex, I'm talking about being alone in a room with a boy. Except for you, and her father. No one else, not since it happened. When she was here before, after that first day, she stayed in a room with you, alone, and it didn't bother her very much. That gave her hope, Kenny. That's when she started talking to me about her problem. "On her first day here, when you ran off to the kitchen to talk to Emily, it had bothered her a lot when Emily had left her alone with you. After you left, she ran off to hide in the restroom. She was panicked, and she didn't know what to do, because her father had asked her to come here to learn about you. She didn't think then that you worked all alone in a little room. She thought it would be a big office like she works for, with a lot of people around you. She knew, just from being alone with you for a few seconds, that she couldn't do what her dad wanted, not if it meant she was going to be alone in the room with you. "So, when she came back to your office, she was just going to tell you that she needed to go back home. She was going to make up some excuse about why she couldn't stay here. When she came to your office door, she saw me sitting in your lap, crying, and you holding me in your arms, trying your best to comfort me. I was so upset about what Emily had said to me, I was really coming to pieces, but you just held me. She said I looked so small in your lap, she thought I was one of your children at first. "When she met me, and found out I was your wife, it made a big difference to her. You reminded her of her father. You're the first man, besides him, that she hasn't found too threatening to be alone with." I thought about what Joyce said, remembering that Cindy had seemed a little scared right after Emily ran off crying. I remembered her being gone for a long time before coming back to see Joyce crying in my arms. She had seemed pretty normal later, in the days when I was showing her my trading techniques. I wondered if I had mistaken her fear at being with me when we first met as some kind of interest in me. I didn't know what to say to Joyce. I wasn't going to marry a girl just because I was the only guy, other than her own father, that she wasn't deathly afraid of. "I need to think about what you told me. I love you, Joyce, and I'd do almost anything for you, but, this is all pretty bizarre. How much of why you're asking me to do this is because she gets you hot?" "Less than you probably think. The sex talk I've been doing with you was mostly to try to get you interested, and thinking about her in that way. She needs a whole family, one that won't scare her to be around them. She almost never can be relaxed. She doesn't want to spend the rest of her life, hanging out with girls, and living with her father." "What happened to the boy who did all this stuff to her?" "She told me he had died. I think she feels guilty about it, because she believes she wished it on him. It was her senior year in high school and he had some kind of accident with some farm machinery. Before that, she hardly had a life at all, because she only left her house to go to school, and then straight back home. I know a lot about what she went through. Hers was worse than mine. I know how bad it was for me. I want us to help her, like you helped me." Joyce got up and left me alone in my room. I think she knew me well enough to know I didn't need to have more information or further discussion. I had to get used to the idea that none of this stuff with Cindy was really about sex. It was all about fear, and her looking for a place where she wouldn't be afraid. She offered sex, but it was really only a payment for her being allowed to enter our small society. I spent an hour in my room, adjusting to the news from Joyce. When I came downstairs again, I found out that Emily, Brenda and Cindy had taken a ride over to look at a couple of our group homes for little girls that were situated close by. Earlier in the day, when we first got home, I had spent some of the time before dinner, playing in the nursery with the children. We wrestled on one of the play mats, and we played horsy with the older kids. I always lost when we wrestled, and it was always my turn to be the horsy. By the time the girls took pity and rescued me, I was sweating, and ready to be brushed and curried. I was hungry too, and hoped I wasn't going to be given a bag of oats. I noticed that Cindy was looking at me strangely when they all came in to get me out of the clutches of the little ones. After dinner, all of us were sitting in the living room. I was repeatedly propositioned by both Brenda and Shirley. For some reason, Joyce wasn't joining in with any of the bantering, or making any bids for my stud services, like Shirley and Brenda were doing. After a few minutes of this bantering and innuendo, I started talking with Cindy. I asked her what she thought of the group homes. She couldn't believe how many children we had in our group homes. She wanted to know what had given me the idea for having them. "I lived in an orphanage for over eleven years. After I got adopted, they decided to close the orphanage, and I wanted to help some of the boys being displaced. It kind of just grew from there." "I didn't know you were adopted." Cindy looked over at Joyce. Joyce just shrugged. "I was very fortunate. Incredibly fortunate. Just when I had given up all hope of ever having a family, this man came over to Bolling, told me to pack up my stuff, and then took me away with him. I couldn't believe it. I was too stunned to be properly grateful to him. Later, after he had died, the thing I regretted most was never having told him how much I appreciated all he'd done, or how he'd changed my life, forever, by choosing me. Part of the group homes, really, part of everything I try to do, is to show in some positive way, my gratitude for what he made possible." "How did you get so rich if you were raised as an orphan?" "Well, I made a lot of money playing golf with my parents, and with Uncle Bunny, plus I always saved all my birthday and Christmas money. You know what a good trader I am." "Really? You made all that money just from doing that?" "Well, that, and plus, when he died, he left me about four hundred million dollars. But the rest of it..." We were all laughing at Cindy's confusion. I wasn't sure if she believed my story or not. It had been awhile since I'd spoken to anyone about Uncle Bunny and my years as an orphan. So many changes. I remembered now, clearly, the difference Uncle Bunny had made for me. I was in serious trouble, emotionally so closed off when he rescued me. I'd made a lot of changes, and gone through some rough emotional upheavals since. I looked around me at all the people in the room, people that I loved, and who loved me. I could hear some of the children upstairs, either laughing or crying, and from earlier, when they were all down in the playroom. My children. My family. I truly felt fortunate. Joyce had proposed that I marry Cindy. If I substituted the word rescue for the word marry, I could see the parallels and similarities that Joyce had spoken about. Joyce wanted to give something back to pay honor to her own rescue. She wanted me to help her with that rescue, just like she'd helped me with the group homes, and so many other things we'd accomplished together She was saying those were for me, to pay honor to Uncle Bunny. Now, she wanted to do this for herself. She was the one who brought me around to accepting the idea of the workability of having four wives living with me at once. More than anyone else, Joyce had helped me to work through my earlier emotional difficulties. She did what she believed I'd needed. It didn't matter that she had benefited from having the other wives too, or that she had other motives, ones that, perhaps, weren't so pure or altruistic. In her heart, I knew, primarily, this thing with Cindy was a rescue effort for her. I just couldn't see or understand how it was supposed to work. I hadn't seen that with a lot of things she had proposed, but that hadn't kept them from working. I could see the advantage to Cindy in all of us providing her with an environment that could come to be a safe haven for her. I also didn't have any problem with knowing that she and my wives probably would enjoy each other sexually. I knew I might end up not being someone Cindy could take any sexual pleasure with. Joyce had asked me to do this for her. This was Joyce's marriage, not mine. Would I be okay knowing that? I hoped the answer turned out to be yes. It really came down to me deciding if I'd be okay with assisting Joyce's rescue efforts. All I had to do was accept the situation, then do some talking and explaining to each of my wives, and to Eddie and Dale. It was something I could do, something I'd be doing mostly for Joyce, but, hopefully, also for Cindy. It was all a matter of definition anyway. What was a wife? In my world, I already had two kinds, one legal wife, and three wives by my oral declaration. These were all definitely my wives, and each of them were, in turn, somehow married to each other as well. Cindy and Joyce would be married, and through them, all the rest of us would then be connected to Cindy by that relationship. Perhaps it would grow, and the connections would be extended, like they were between my current wives. The same had become true already, for me, with Eddie and Dale. The connection was there, but it was different from that with my other wives. We had love and sex, but, without sharing children with them, they were different from my other wives, less connected to me than those I'd fathered children with. One less connection, but still connected firmly to me all the same. There were even differing levels within all my currently existing wives. Joyce was my wife, because I married her, and because we had children together. Emily, Brenda and Shirley were my wives because I fathered children with them. Cindy would be connected to me, in the beginning, only through her connection with Joyce. Eddie and Dale were connected to me because we loved each other, and because we enjoyed each other sexually. Joyce was a five level wife. (Marriage, children, love, sex, wife to all my other wives) Emily, Brenda, and Shirley were all four level wives.(Children, love, sex, wife to all my other wives) Eddie and Dale were two level wives. (Love, sex) Eddie had a stronger connection to my other wives than Dale did, except with Joyce. There, Dale had a strong connection also. I didn't yet know where Cindy would wind up with me. She might end up being only a one level wife. (Wife of my wife) Love was a level, connection was a level, sex was a level, children another level, and marriage yet another. If any one of my other wives ever raised her connection with Eddie or Dale to the level Joyce was wanting to give to Cindy, they would be raised up another level in my eyes too. I had it all straight in my head. Straight enough to proceed with claiming Cindy, Dale, and Eddie as our wives. Now I needed to spend some time alone with each of my first four wives, explaining this new level system I'd worked out. I wanted all of them comfortable with how I was thinking on this subject. I wasn't taking away from anything we shared, merely looking for a way to become more inclusive. I started with Joyce of course, that Thursday night. I took her hand in the living room, at about ten o'clock, and started pulling her towards the staircase. All of the other wives thought this was my way of making and announcing my choice of that night's bed partner. It took me only a minute to tell her what was important, that I was ready to give her what she'd asked for. I tried explaining all about the levels to her, but she stopped me with her kisses, before I could get very much of it out. We made love for over an hour. Joyce was all about the results, caring about them, much more than about how they were achieved. Friday morning, after Joyce, Shirley, Eddie, Dale, and Cindy left to go to Bolling, so that Cindy could see our head office, and the others could get some work done, Emily, Brenda and I spent the morning in bed together. I told them about Joyce's request, filling in some of the background that Cindy had gone through. Next, I explained the intricate level system I'd worked out for all of my wives. Both of them seemed to like the fact that they were level fours, and that both Eddie and Dale would only be level twos. They even accepted my assertion that it was really Joyce who was marrying Cindy. The only part that didn't go as planned, and which caused me some concern, was when both of them told me that they were going to try Cindy out too. Friday evening, we went over to Mama's house for dinner. It was good to spend some time with Gerta. I even tried to explain the new level system to Hans and Gerta, but they just laughed, and wanted to know more about this money deal, in New York, that my father was thinking about getting involved with. Gerta told me that she had gotten two letters from Bea in the past week. Both were postmarked from San Diego, and both had requested that Gerta wire her some money. She wanted to know what I thought she should do. "I don't know. It's probably for drugs. It isn't really that much money she's asking for. I think, if it was me, I'd send her the money, and tell her she had to phone here if she wanted some more. If she calls you, try to get her to come back here. Tell her no one is angry with her, about anything, and that we just want to know that she's okay." "You think this is best?" Gerta seemed very uncertain. She had a strong distaste for Bea's drug use. "I don't know, Gerta. Now that she's writing you, maybe she's trying to reach out for some help." Mama and Laura were getting along well together, just like I thought they would. They had gone out to the country club, with Georgia Connor, and had themselves a three hour, liquid lunch. Even at the dinner table, the two ladies were still a little bit impaired from their lunch time excesses. That didn't prevent us from having a good time, or from enjoying some of the less inhibited comments they were being made about me, and about Cindy. Friday night, after we got back, I brought Shirley up to my room. She was ready, and it was definitely one of her good days. Her screaming still traveled all through the house, and she still liked to come up with some physically impossible or extremely challenging suggestions. All made while she was in the throes of a strong, seemingly continuous, orgasm. Her reaction to my announcement and attempt at an explanation was to cut me off by saying that she and Joyce had already talked about it, and she didn't have any problems with anything, not as long as she didn't lose any ground to her position within our original group of four. I told her she hadn't lost any ground with me at all. That was that, as far as she was concerned. She woke me up and took further advantage of me in the middle of the night. I'm pretty sure we woke up anyone in the house who didn't have a set of ear plugs in place. Saturday, I took Eddie and Dale for a ride in my plane. We went to Oklahoma to see their mother. On the way there, I explained my level system, and tried to make them understand that I loved them both, and was sure that Joyce loved them each as much as I did. "So, now we're your wives? Where's our ring?" Eddie looked at me. I was pretty sure she was kidding. "I don't need a ring. Where's my honeymoon?" Dale seemed much more excited by my news than Eddie did. Of the two, I'd have to say that Dale and I had a more serious romantic attachment with each other. Eddie was more casual and relaxed about the time we spent together. "What do you think this is? I'm flying you home to Chickasaw, so we can tell your mother I'm finally making honest women out of you. Has to be a short honeymoon though, because I told Joyce we'd be back in time for dinner." "What are you planning to do with Cindy? I hope you aren't planning on fucking her before you satisfy both of us. You're marrying her too, right?" This was Eddie letting me know that she saw through to what she believed was the real reason for all these new levels I was proposing. To her, it wasn't a question of me declaring my love. It was all about me making Cindy's new status palatable to her and Dale. Joyce had been right to be concerned about their feelings. "Actually, that's the other part of it. Joyce is marrying her, not me. My connection to her, for right now at least, is only through Joyce. Cindy has some problems relating to men. She had a terrible experience when she was younger, and it causes her some anxiety being around guys. It might turn out that she and I don't get together like I do with the rest of you." "You'll be boning her before you even take her back to Alabama. I know you, Kenny. I bet you already have a plan too. You just remember what I told you. You definitely need to take care of both of us before you start plowing any new acreage." Eddie might have been suspicious of my motives, but not Dale. For her, it was enough that I told her I loved her, and wanted her to be a part of my life forever. She understood that this was an honest, heartfelt, commitment I was making. We had a nice visit and lunch with Mrs. Pipkin, then we went out to the grocery store and bought her plenty of meat to fill up the freezer that Eddie and Dale had recently bought for her. I saw Eddie sneak two one hundred dollar bills between the pages of her mother's Bible. When they were all in the kitchen, I put a few of my own in there too. Mrs. Pipkin often prayed for money, to help people that were less fortunate than she was. Most of the meat we'd just bought for her would likely find its way into someone else's stomach. That was just how she was. I knew she liked being able to share any extra she had with her friends and with other relatives. I knew it gave Dale and Eddie a lot of pleasure to be able to help her with doing this. Saturday night, Dale, Eddie, and I did our best to make up for the shortness of our honeymoon. It was a lot of fun, but more than a little bit tiring on all of us. Sunday morning, I rested. We had a big cook out in the back yard, in the early afternoon, even though the days were beginning to get a lot colder, as October progressed. Sunday afternoon, Joyce asked me if I wanted to sleep with her and Cindy. She told me that Cindy thought I was mad at her, or else trying to avoid her. I told her I was too tired from all the sex I'd already had the last few days. I told her they could come to my room, and maybe we'd cuddle a little. Joyce was smiling. I think she took it as some kind of a challenge. "Joyce, I want to take it very slow with Cindy. Even if she thinks she's ready, it would be better if we were all relaxed around each other at first. Tonight, we'll just get used to being in the same bed together. Don't try to make anything sexual happen." I had gone to bed alone, at around ten o'clock. When I went upstairs, all the girls were down in the living room, talking. Joyce and Cindy remained downstairs. At about eleven, the two of them came into my bedroom, with both of them stopping first in my bathroom. I heard them whispering to each other in there. It took about ten minutes for them to come back out. I had moved over so that I was in the center of the bed. "Kenny, would it be all right if Cindy stays on one of the ends of the bed, and I get in the middle?" I didn't say anything, I just slid over to the edge of the bed, opposite from where they were standing. Joyce got in first, and then Cindy. "You need to talk to us, Kenny. Cindy's a little nervous." "You don't have to be nervous, Cindy. I'm not expecting to do anything but talk. We're probably all a little nervous tonight. Joyce and I don't want to do anything to scare you, or to bring up any bad thoughts or memories." "Maybe we should just get it over with. If we did, maybe I would be more relaxed." Cindy sounded very nervous, uncertain about what she was doing there with us. "Maybe it would be easier if you and Joyce did whatever you've been doing." Joyce and Cindy both giggled when I said that. "Well, I could leave and go somewhere else if I make you nervous by my being here." "We're laughing because we haven't ever done anything, Kenny. We wanted to wait for you, before we did anything with each other. Cindy wanted us to wait." Joyce and Cindy giggled again. "Cindy, I don't know if Joyce told you, but I've set it up so you don't ever have to do anything with me, or any of the others, if you aren't comfortable with it. You can still have a place with us, the same place any of us have really, but you wouldn't have to force yourself to do anything at all that was uncomfortable for you." "I told her that, Kenny. She was very clear about saying it isn't what she wants. She wants us to help her to feel safe again. Safe with you. She wants you to be able to make love to her, without her getting all panicky whenever you look like you're going to touch her." Joyce had moved close to me, and while she was talking to me, she started touching my cock, rubbing it with the back of her hand, across my boxers. I'd left on my underpants, just in case. I didn't want to scare Cindy if she happened to see my crotch. "He's already hard, Cindy. I told you he would be. I know Kenny. All he's been thinking about, for the last hour at least, is fucking you." "That isn't true, Joyce. I've been up here practicing my times tables. I've been working on the twelves. I always get hard when I do math in my head. Its something I picked up from the nuns when I was twelve or thirteen years old. Sometimes, when I was in class, I'd start to think impure thoughts, so I'd need to do math in my head, to try to make myself stop thinking them. The nuns would see my lips moving, and they'd think I was praying. I don't know why, but seeing them smiling at me when they saw my lips moving, always made me get hard." "So you weren't thinking about fucking us both? You didn't want to watch Cindy and me doing things with each other?" Joyce had my dick out of my pants by then, and was really starting to fondle it. "Not tonight. Tonight, let's just talk. Cindy, did you ever find out where your dad was on Wednesday night, or who he was with?" "He went over to my mom's house. After, he took her out to dinner. That was his date. My mother called me on Thursday morning, to ask me if I knew what happened to make him ask her out like that." "Part of it was my fault, probably. I suggested to him that he could make a truce with her just to ask her for sex. He said they always were compatible, at least as far as their having sex went." "It was so funny listening to my mother talking about her date with daddy. When he got home, after midnight, and saw me waiting up for him, he got all embarrassed, and wouldn't tell me where he'd been. He ran off and phoned up Kyle to tell him to get down to the plant early. I don't know if they plan to do any more of it. My mother didn't answer me when I asked her if they would." "How about you, Joyce, do you have anything you want to tell us?" "Ellen is sleeping with one of the boys from the loading dock." Her hand was becoming more insistent as she stroked me faster. "Bea wrote to Gerta, asking her for money. I think Gerta's going to send her some." I tried to maintain a casual tone to my voice, even though Joyce's efforts were beginning to take their toll on me. "Georgia Connor has some young guy that she sleeps with. Mama said he works over at the plant nursery. She said he's about my age. Georgia has been redoing her whole back yard, ever since the beginning of summer. Mama says she's doing that because she's still upset that Walt married Anne." Joyce had her other hand down under my leg opening, toying with, and gently caressing, my swollen balls. "How are those two newlyweds doing? I haven't seen either of them for months." I had moved my hand over to Joyce's side and was slowly inching it up closer to her breast. "I don't know. I see Aunt Clara about once a week, but she doesn't tell me anything about them. They must be keeping to themselves a lot. Cindy, would it upset you if I give Kenny a quick blow job? His dick feels like its about ready to explode. I don't want to get the sheets all wet and messy." Cindy just giggled. Joyce took that for her assent, and her head soon went under the covers. I looked over and saw Cindy watching my face. Both of us couldn't help hearing Joyce, not with her making as much noise as she was. I knew it was deliberate too. She didn't usually make loud slurping noises like that. Cindy didn't look too nervous. I noticed both her hands were under the sheet. My eyes were well adjusted to the darkness, and I could see a little bit of movement as she played with her pussy. Just thinking about her playing with herself caused me to cum. I know Joyce was surprised. It just started, suddenly, without any prior notice. "What happened, Kenny?" Joyce was talking with half a mouthful of my cum. She did that on purpose too. By then, Cindy had noticed me watching her hand moving, so she stopped. I didn't say anything to her, but I didn't stop looking either. A few seconds later, she started moving her hand slowly again. I saw Joyce turning her head around, so I knew she was watching Cindy's movements. It was only a minute or so more before Cindy was able to bring herself off. Right after that, Joyce moved back up so that she was lying right next to me. "I guess I'm the only one who doesn't get to cum tonight." I smiled at her, but I didn't say anything. "Somebody should eat me at least." Joyce had put on her little girl's whiney voice when she said it. I looked over at Cindy, and she had this lazy smile on her face. It looked like she was relaxed, not really worried at all, about anything. "Do you mind if I help Joyce out a little? If I don't, she'll be complaining all night, and none of us will get any sleep." Cindy was still smiling when she shook her head, indicating that she didn't mind. I smiled at her then, before ducking my head down under the covers. I was bringing Joyce along nicely, slowly, when I noticed Joyce's hand creeping over towards Cindy. She stopped moving when her hand was close to where Cindy's body was, pausing just for a minute, before lifting her hand up, which also had the effect of raising up the bedcover's with it. Joyce wanted me to see that Cindy was playing with her pussy again. I took one of my fingers, getting it nice and wet, before putting it right where Joyce liked it the most when being eaten. This set her off, just like I knew it would. Cindy came again a few minutes later, just as Joyce was coming back down from her second strong orgasm. I got up and walked over to the bathroom to clean myself up a little. When I came back, Joyce and Cindy were facing towards each other. They were very close, and I could hear them whispering very softly to each other. I got in bed and started trying to will myself to fall asleep. I had almost made it to sleep when Joyce called out my name. "Kenny, guess what? Try to guess who Cindy tastes like?" "I can't even begin to guess." "Try." "I don't know, is it Emily?" Joyce and I had often compared notes about the distinctive taste of all the other girls. Joyce always maintained that, while all the others tasted good, she believed she tasted the best. I didn't argue, although a strong case could be made for all of them. "No. Eddie. She tastes just like Eddie." Both girls were giggling again. I went to sleep. I woke up at about three o'clock in the morning, and Cindy was pressed up next to me. Joyce was right behind her, leaving lots of empty room on the outer edge of the bed. Cindy was asleep, both women were smiling. I smiled at them, happy to see them both smiling and relaxed. I turned away from them and went back to sleep again. Cindy spent Monday night in bed with me too, we were alone together. Joyce had come in with her, to get her settled, before giving us each a warm kiss and leaving us alone. We didn't do anything except talk a little, mostly about all of my children. I managed to fall asleep sometime before she did. When I dozed off, she and I were situated on the far edges of the mattress, on opposite sides of the bed. When I woke up again, at about four o'clock the next morning, she was sleeping right up against me, with her right leg thrown over my right leg. I tried to get back to sleep but I couldn't. I stayed where I was, not moving, until she finally rolled over in her sleep, at about five thirty. I got up as carefully as I could, going into the bathroom to take a leak. When I returned and got back in bed, I turned on my side, so my back was to her, then I fell asleep again. When I woke up, it was nine o'clock, and Cindy had already left my bedroom. Tuesday morning, at just after eleven o'clock, Brenda, Cindy, Laura and I were wheels up, heading for Alabama. We were getting a late start, but I was going to stay in Alabama until Friday afternoon. We were in the air for about ten minutes before Laura came into the cockpit and sat down in the right hand chair. "Did you sleep with my daughter, Kenny?" "If I answer your question this time, you have to promise never to ask me a question like that again. Okay?" "Yes, I promise. Tell me." "We slept together, Sunday night, and last night too." "She was okay? You made love?" "You were supposed to only ask that one question, remember? You asked it, and I answered it. As for this other question you asked, I will only say that she seemed very relaxed and contented the whole time we were in bed with each other. I'm not going to discuss the details of what we did or didn't do." "What about your other wives? Can you tell me if Cindy got along with them?" "Laura, why don't you just relax and let whatever happens, happen? You can't treat your daughter like some participant in a spectator sport. Let her find her own way." "Very well, although it wouldn't have hurt you to volunteer a few details to me. Tell me about Kyle. I called him from your mother's house, to ask about the comments you made at dinner the other night, but he was being very closed mouth about it." "Kyle is a big part of our future plans for the company. He's already received a big promotion, and we're evaluating Jerry, and all his cousins to see if we can find other areas that they might do better working in." "Someone told me that you fired Larry. Is this true?" "When I left on Thursday, the question was still hanging in the air. He was given two choices, one of those choices was to be terminated from any involvement with Macklinson's Bakeries." "Did you know that I gave Gene twenty percent ownership in that business, as a gift? I bought the shares from his mother, after his father passed. It cost me four million dollars, and that was a lot of money in those days. With the other twenty percent he already had, all he needed to do was get either Patty or Phil to back his play, and he could have taken over that company just like his father always intended. He wouldn't do it. That man is such an aggravation." "He doesn't like competing against his brothers." "Well, maybe not now, but he didn't always mind it. I was almost married to Larry before Gene came in and swept me off my feet. We went off and eloped, three weeks before I was supposed to marry his brother. He didn't seem to care about competing back then." I didn't say anything. That was interesting to find out though. It was hard to imagine Laura with Larry. It was hard to imagine Larry with any woman, in a normal romantic relationship. "Did you sleep with Gene when he took you out to dinner?" Laura raised her head and turned to look at me. She had a smile on her face when she did. "It was you who put the idea in his head? I knew Gene wouldn't think of it on his own. I figured someone had to have put him up to it. We went to dinner, and he did raise the subject, but I told him it was out of the question." "Too bad. Now that you two are divorced, the sex should only be better. Gene told me that he missed that a lot. Said it was something that was always great." "Well, even if it was good, I'm certainly not going to give him that satisfaction. We can't get along for long enough to make something like that possible." "That's why you make a truce. You leave all your past hurts and hard feelings outside the bedroom. Set up a specified time, like for two hours, then don't fight or make each other feel bad. After, you can just go back to how it usually is. Really, doing this is the mark of civilized people. It eliminates the social awkwardness of trying to manufacture a new relationship just because your hormones are acting up." "How is that civilized behavior?" "The ability to rise up, above all the pettiness, in order to work for a mutually satisfying outcome, that is the true mark of a civilized being. Other people, those without good breeding or refinement, they'll usually satisfy their animal urges without concern for their social position. But really, what reputation or social standing do they have to lose? What does it matter if they appear ridiculous, needy, or undignified, among their peers? "People who do have social standing, on the other hand, they would naturally desire to protect it. In many cases, to do this, they seek to make these discreet, temporary, alliances. Doing so allows them to relieve the pressures that are natural in all of us, while still allowing them to maintain the outward appearance of behaving properly. This is especially easy for divorced couples." "No one pays attention to things like that any longer." "Maybe not, but if Gene believes it, and is willing to stop arguing long enough for the two of you have a great time, where's the harm in that? There is greater benefit to you in going along and acting as if it makes perfect sense to you too. It's pretty obvious that you both still have strong feelings for each other." "Hatred is a strong feeling." "He doesn't hate you. He's afraid of you, afraid of wanting or needing you too much. He can't give in to you, not and still retain whatever compact he's made with himself concerning his brothers." "You think we fought over Larry and Phil?" "No. I think you fought over how he ran his business, and how he continually allowed Larry to walk all over him." "We fought about everything, not just that." "Yes, that's probably true. But how much of your fighting was because he refused to do the obvious? Didn't you lose respect for him because of the way he let himself be pushed around, and got talked into making poor decisions?" "I don't remember. We started fighting, and we never stopped until we got divorced. It still hasn't stopped, and probably never will, as long as we're both alive. Part of it was the way Gene let Larry do whatever he wanted. He just didn't turn out to be the man I fell in love with, and ran off to be married to." "Gene has disappointed a lot of people, mostly himself. I think a lot of that is going to change. I know his relationship with Larry is going to change, or else they both won't be continuing their employment at Macklinson's." "You'd fire Gene too?" "I wouldn't want to do it, but I would if he can't act on what I tell him he needs to do. Gene knows what he needs to do, but he doesn't always do it. That has to stop. I want him to learn how to separate his business life from his family or personal life. Did you ever hear how Gene split up the ten million we paid the family for their equity in the business?" "No, is that all you paid them?" "We assumed all their debt too, but we gave them ten million for their shares. Gene got one million, and the others got three million each." "That's ridiculous! Gene owned forty percent of the company. Why would he do that? He owes me four million dollars. I thought he asked me out for dinner so he could pay it back to me. How is he going to get the money to pay me back now?" "I'm pretty sure he did it because that was the only way he could get the others to agree to sell to us. He knew the company would be worthless, and they'd be out of business in another four to six months. He did it to protect all those jobs, and the people who depended on the company staying in business." "That's Gene. He always puts himself and his own family last. It's a weakness. He better find a way to get that money back to me. I loaned it to him last year, because he said he just had to have it." "You can look at it as him putting himself and his family last, or else you can look at it as him being noble and selfless. Him caring for others who he sees as weaker, and less able to take care of themselves than he is. Gene knew he could always support himself, and take care of those who needed him." "I could look at it that way if I wasn't already looking at the reality of having just lost four million dollars that I foolishly believed he'd pay me back someday. So, you think I should pretend to believe all these things you keep telling me, that I should allow Gene to seduce me with this truce proposal of yours?" "Only if you miss sleeping with him. If not, just tell him no the next time he calls to ask you to go out with him." "You think all we have to do is not let ourselves get drawn into fighting?" "Maybe for the first time. I think you both should really try to make the sex so good that you both feel like giving up whatever pleasure it is you derive from fighting. That's really the only way for you to make sure it happens again. After awhile though, you need to learn how to be together, talking to each other about the issues you have in common, without always fighting over everything the other one says. Good sex is excellent motivation, but you still need those other kinds of communication." "Is that what you use to keep all of your wives in line?" "No, that's how they keep me in line. I do what they tell me, and we get along just fine." I was making my final landing approach when I said that. We had covered the five hundred and forty nautical miles in a little more than two hours. Nice to have a tailwind. I was anxious to find out what had happened with Gene and Larry, during my absence. I had deliberately not called Macklinson's while I was home. I wanted to give Gene as much time as possible to think about what I'd told him. I also wondered what Gene did with the four million he'd borrowed from Laura. It hadn't been invested in the company. I'd gone over all the company books for the past three years. There was no sudden infusion of capital. ------- Chapter 40 It was a little bit past three o'clock in the afternoon when I pulled into the Macklinson's Bakeries employee parking lot. The first thing I noticed was Larry's bright green crew cab pick up parked in its usual place. The second thing I noticed was Phil Macklinson outside of one of the delivery bays, banging away with a large hammer, on a thick piece of what looked like wrought iron. I parked the car, and went over to see what he was doing. "Hey Phil, what's that you're destroying?" He looked over at me, a dark scowl creasing his brow. He didn't say anything to me, but, when he resumed his hammering, I thought I could detect a little extra force in his efforts. I could see he was mad at something, and, whatever it was, he didn't care to talk to me about it. I turned and headed for the back stairs, anxious to get up to the offices, so I could find out from Gene what had been worked out with Larry. Danielle, Gene's secretary, came running over to me as soon as she saw my head appear in the stairwell. She looked a little bit frantic. "Mr. Macklinson has quit!" At first, I thought she was telling me that Larry had quit. I imagined that Gene was saying that because he didn't want to have Larry embarrassed by word getting out that he'd actually been fired. "Where's Gene?" I wanted her to calm down. Sometimes, employees started a whole wave of rumors and speculation when they ran around passing on half truths that they had overheard from their boss's conversations with others. When that happened, it took a lot of effort to go back and explain what was really going on. I wanted to avoid that in this case. I didn't want people worrying that Larry was just the first of a long series of planned layoffs or dismissals. "I just told you he quit, Mr. Parsons. Didn't you just hear me tell you that?" Danielle looked at me like she was suspicious that I was retarded or something. All I could think of was that we were all in for a rough ride if Gene had actually quit. Maybe I shouldn't have told him I'd fire him if he didn't fire Larry. He'd just gotten through telling me he couldn't fire his brother. I could have handled that a lot better. "Okay, Danielle. Calm down. We'll get to the bottom of this in a little while. What I want you to do is go find Phil and Larry, and ask them to meet me in Gene's office. Would you do that?" She nodded that she would, then set off, presumably to do what I'd asked her to do. I hoped so. I went into Gene's office and started trying to figure out what my options were if he really had quit. One thing I realized, right away, was I'd be the one my father kept down here until I managed to get things operating the way he wanted them. One of his favorite sayings was: 'You make a mess, you clean it up. Don't leave it for the next guy.' I had apparently made a mess. I was sitting behind Gene's desk when Larry came in. "You wanted to see me?" "Yes. Tell me what you know about Gene quitting." "I just now heard about it from Danielle. He's quit before. He'll be back. You probably said something to him that got him started. He'll stew on it for a few days, then he'll be back." "When I left here on Thursday, you were terminated, Larry. You want to tell me why you're still on this property?" The look he gave me let me know right away that he and I would never be friends. That was fine with me. I wanted him to understand that I wasn't Gene. I didn't have any problems at all with holding him to a standard of performance and behavior. He might be able to get whatever he wanted from Gene, but, where he and I were concerned, he had to play by my rules, and that meant acting the way I demanded he act. He was going to obey what I told him. This was going to be his first test. I waited for him to speak. He didn't. "Okay, Larry. You're done here. I want you off company grounds, sometime in the next hour." "You fire me now, this whole operation will stop running. You might just as well send everybody home, and padlock the front doors." "Well, that's a chance I'm prepared to take. Get out." "Okay. You'll see. Don't expect me to come running back here when you start calling me." Larry actually had a small smile on his face. I wondered what he knew that I didn't. Not that what I knew was looking very positive. I saw Phil and Larry meet up over by the stairwell that led down to the back baking area. They exchanged several words back and forth until Larry lost his temper and pushed past his brother, heading down the stairs. "You just fired Larry again?" "Gene quit." "I knew about Gene. Why did you fire Larry again?" "I asked him why he was still here, after what happened Thursday. He didn't answer me." "You fired him for not answering a question?" "No. I fired him for having the attitude that made it seem okay for him not to answer a direct question that I asked him. Larry has a bad attitude problem, and one of the things he needed to do was lose it. Why did Gene quit?" "Probably for a lot of reasons. This thing with Larry. What you did with Cindy, Kyle, and Laura Lee. Gene can be funny about some things." "I guess. Do you know what Gene did with the four million dollars he borrowed from his ex wife?" Phil laughed, then nodded his head that he did. "He bought the Underwood place, almost eight thousand acres. He thought he was going to make a killing, selling it to one of the big developers. Right after he bought it, the whole bottom fell out of the home building market around here. Now, all he has is the money coming in from share cropping those worn out fields. I think it pays the taxes, but not much more than that." "Do you think Gene will come back now that Larry is gone?" "Not sure, but that isn't your most immediate problem." "What is?" "That would be me quitting, because that's just what I'm fixing to do. That wouldn't be such a big problem for you, except, when I quit, all the boys will quit you too." I was surprised. I wondered if they were trying to pull some kind of power play. Losing Gene was bad enough, losing the whole family, that really would effectively shut us down for awhile. All of the Macklinsons were holding down the key positions in the plant. I had no idea what the operations were like in the other Macklinson's baking plants, but this one was top heavy with family members. I knew there was a relative over in the Tupelo bakery that had been covered by the employment contracts we'd signed, protecting the family members for five years. "What about all these other employees, Phil? What happens to them?" "That would be your problem now, Kenny. You brought it on yourself by not just firing Larry when you could have. If you hadn't gotten tricky, none of this would have happened. You knew Gene had a weakness when it came to Larry." "What about Kyle? You going to make him quit too?" "I'm not making anyone quit, Kenny. They'll all do it themselves. Macklinson people will always be loyal to their family. We fight among ourselves, but, against outsiders, we all stick together. Larry's the only one who doesn't feel that way, and you fired him." After Phil left, I sat in Gene's office. Before four o'clock, every Macklinson had made his way up to my office and quit. Kyle was one of the first of the cousins to do so. Of all of them, Kyle was the one who looked like he most regretted taking this action. Regret it or not, they all quit, and left the plant right after. I went down to the bakery floor, and people were all still working as if nothing were different. I knew it wouldn't last. Too many key departments were left without their head person. I needed to bring in some supervisors, and quick, but that would just alienate the employees already here. I was standing in one place, down on the baking floor, when Donny Calhoun, the line supervisor, came over to me. I was wary of what he was going to say. "Could I maybe have a few minutes of your time, Mr. Parsons?" "Sure, Donny, but my name is Kenny. Mr. Parsons is my father. What can I do for you?" "People are wanting to know what they're all supposed to do now. We going to shut down?" "I was wondering about that myself. I'd rather not do that, but I don't know enough about the plant yet to know if we can still operate without all the Macklinsons or not." "We can operate, but we need to switch some things around. We need to get in some mechanics to replace Phil and them two youngsters. Someone has to take over scheduling for the ovens, and we'll need to have some help over in packaging. I can run the day floor, but Wayne and Jessie ran the night floor, and they both have done quit you." "Do we have anyone on day shift that could take over for you, if we put you on nights for awhile?" "Only Miss Kitty, but that would only cause you more problems, because she's a female, and because people would think I was the only reason she was promoted up." "Could she do the job, Donny? The rest of that doesn't bother me, but I need to know if she'd be a competent line supervisor or not. I can't put the workers at risk just because I need someone to supervise them." "She knows as much as me, I can tell you that much. She's been here, working on the line, since before I came to work. She's done every position. I don't see why she couldn't." "How come she isn't already a supervisor, if she's so good?" "She's a woman, she gets awful mouthy, and, she and Larry never did get along. If they ever was going to make a woman a line supervisor, Miss Kitty would be her." "Why does her being a woman make any difference? Aren't there other women in leadership positions?" "Upstairs, but not on the floor. Never was. Lead people, yes, but not supervisors." "This is tradition?" He nodded. "How do you keep from being sued?" He shrugged. "You aren't from around here, are you Donny?" He smiled, shaking his head that he wasn't. "If I were to appoint Kitty as the temporary day line supervisor, would we get many people who'd quit?" "You might get a few who'd call in sick, but I don't think many would outright quit. Jobs around here aren't that plentiful. Lots of people would like nice, steady, work like we have here." "Do we need to make some kind of announcement or anything?" "I can finish up today, then work the double tonight. She can start tomorrow. I'll go around and let people know what you said. Right now, people are a little bit in shock, afraid their job is gonna be lost. It might be that them being so scared, they'll let it pass that you done made Miss Kitty a line boss." "What about those machinery mechanics? Do we have anyone that can keep the machinery up and operating?" "We got guys who know a little, but not real mechanics. Phil is a real whiz with machines. We don't have no one like him." "How mad would people be if I brought in some of our mechanical maintenance people from our other bakery plants? Just until we can get things straightened out here?" "You got somebody that's good? That's what would be important to people. Broke machinery causes accidents. Nobody wants to get hurt because something don't work right." I told Donny to find out from Kitty if she wanted to give the day supervisor job a try. I told him to warn her that it wasn't a permanent appointment, just filling in, until we knew where we were heading. I went back upstairs to Gene's office. I felt a little better, knowing that all those people quitting hadn't stopped the baking so far. I called my father, explaining quickly how my afternoon had been going. The first thing he wanted to know was whether any of this was affecting the other three bakeries. I told him I didn't know. All of the accounting and payroll was handled in our offices in Birmingham. We'd get production and sales figures daily, but, other than that, each plant was pretty self contained. Phil and Larry used to visit all of those other plants, I knew that much, but I wasn't sure how involved they'd been in the day to day operations. My guess was, not very. They were all set up the same way as the Alabama plant, as far as distribution methods went. I told my father that I knew I had to stay down there until things got sorted out and stabilized. "Kenny, I can send you two good production people, and one good mechanic, from the closed Nashville plant. We aren't going to be starting up again until after we do the conversion down there. Consolidated had a good work force at their plant, and a lot of them are out scrambling around, trying to make ends meet for their families. I'm trying to get moving quickly on this conversion, so we can hire as many trained bakery people as we'll need. You need to call Joyce tonight too. She has some product shipments to you that she needs to coordinate. You aren't planning on delaying your convenience store program, are you?" "I might have to. Kyle quit, and he was the man I was counting on to get the program up and going. I'm pretty sure we need someone local to get this started. These people don't warm up that easily to outsiders." "You should go ahead and introduce the new products to the route drivers. Let them get familiar with them. It should produce some product movement from their existing accounts." I told my Dad I'd do what I could. When I got off the phone, I felt a little better. My father had taken the mess I'd made a lot better than I thought he might. In fact, he told me I'd done the right thing by telling Gene I'd fire him if he didn't fire Larry if he needed to. It was after six when I got off the phone with my father. I wanted to get home to spend some time with Brenda, who I'd left all alone in the house when I'd taken off to come down to the plant. There were a couple more phone calls I needed to make, but I could make those from home. When I walked in the front door, Brenda and Cindy were sitting in the kitchen, having a glass of wine. Something smelled really good in the oven. That was another advantage of having Brenda down in Alabama with me this time. I knew I'd be eating a lot better. Emily wasn't much of a cook at all. She just never had any interest in learning to cook. I got myself a glass of the white zinfandel too, and came over to sit down between them. "Daddy said he quit today." "I heard that too, as soon as I walked into the office area. It would have been nice if he'd stayed around long enough to tell me himself." "He said he couldn't fire his own brother. Uncle Larry said something to him in the morning, and he just knew he either had to fire him, or else quit himself. He decided to quit." "I fired Larry again too, and then Phil quit. By the time word got around that Phil had quit, both your brothers, and all of your cousins, had quit the company too. There aren't any Macklinsons left working at the bakery." "Most of them will come back, Kenny. They had to quit, but Daddy will talk to them, and tell them they need to go back. He'll go talk to Uncle Phil too, but I'm not sure Phil is going to come back. He's pretty steamed at you and my father both." "Cindy says she came to spend some time with us, Kenny. She's going to take me around and get me introduced at all the places I need to know about." Brenda had a wicked gleam in her eye. A predatory gleam. I remembered what she had told me about her and Emily deciding they would try Cindy for themselves. "She brought some of her clothes and things over. She decided to quit her job too." I looked over at Cindy, who was blushing furiously. From what Brenda was telling me, it looked like Cindy was cutting most of her ties, and had decided to move in with us. I had wondered what she'd do after leaving Ridgeline, but I hadn't wanted to push her into making any hasty decisions. "That's good. I was going to miss you if I couldn't see you as much as I've been getting used to." Cindy was smiling shyly at Brenda and me when I told her that. Brenda got up and started putting out the plates and utensils for dinner. From the way those fragrant smells were coming from the oven, I thought dinner might almost be ready. I was hungry, and thinking about food took my mind off of some of the other problems I was facing. "How much time before dinner, Brenda? I need to make some phone calls before it gets too late." "Fifteen minutes. Don't take any longer than that either. I've cooked a great rib roast, and I'm trying out a new way to cook potatoes." I jumped up and ran out to where there was a phone in the living room. I already had the home numbers for Kathleen Ulliott and Clark Sanders in Delaware. I called Kathleen first, but got an answering machine. I left a message about why I had called, and told her I'd be trying Clark's number next. Clark answered on the second ring. I chatted with him briefly, telling him where I was, and what I hoped to get from him. "I can spare him for a few weeks, Kenny, but not for more than that. Jerry is the guy who makes everything function. Without him there to keep everyone on their toes, I'd be afraid that things would get left undone." "Maybe that's a good reason to keep him away longer, Clark. You shouldn't have anyone who's irreplaceable. You should use the time he's gone to bring someone along who can do everything Jerry does." We talked for awhile longer. Things were running smoothly in Dover. Clark and Kathleen were working well together. I answered some of Clark's questioned about rumors he'd heard about future plans from the home office. When I got off the phone, I had Jerry Davis's home phone number, and permission to bring him down to Alabama for as long as he was needed. I had grown fond of Jerry when I'd been at the plant in Dover. He was rough, gruff, and profane, but he knew everything there was to know about maintaining baking and related machinery, and he wouldn't be intimidated being set down, all alone, in the middle of a hostile bunch of strangers. "Jerry, Kenny Parsons here. I need you to do me a favor." "Here's trouble. Fucking guy calls me in the middle of the fucking night, then says he needs a fucking favor. What do you fucking want?" I was relieved, he sounded in a good mood. "I need you to come down to our new plant in Alabama, and keep the natives from tearing up all of our bakery machinery. We had a good man here running things, but he didn't like me, so he quit." "No fucking surprise with that, is there? What kind of fucking ovens do they have down there?" "The kind that get real hot, so they can bake fresh bread and rolls. How the hell do I know what kind of ovens they are? Why are you asking me that? Can you only fix one kind or something?" "How long will I be out there in Bum fuck, Alabama? I can't leave my fucking guys alone for very fucking long." "I talked to Clark, he says there are three or four guys who work for you that could do your job and still do theirs too." "That will be the fucking day. We talking a fucking week there, two weeks, what?" "I really don't know. The other guy might come back tomorrow, or he might never come back. I just don't know. One thing I know you have to do is find out if there's anyone down here that knows anything about at all about maintaining this kind of machinery. If there isn't, we need to bring some of our own people in. I don't want to get caught with my pants down again." Brenda came in to tell me we were eating in three minutes. "Fly into Birmingham if you can. If not, fly to Atlanta, and I'll come get you in my plane. I need you here by tomorrow, at the latest." I gave him my home and office phone numbers, and told him to handle all his own travel expenses, we'd reimburse him when he got down to Alabama. When I got back to the kitchen, Brenda was just putting my plate on the place mat in front of where my chair was. It was a great dinner. None of us were really that fond of how the potatoes tasted. I liked my potatoes plain, not with nuts and spices in them. Brenda said she wanted to try something new, and didn't seem at all upset that none of us liked the new recipe. The rib roast was terrific though, and the horseradish sauce she'd whipped up was just right to clean out all my sinuses. She had baked some fresh homemade bread to use to sop up the meat sauce with. Cindy ate almost as much as I did. "Kenny, did I hear you, on the phone, inviting someone to come down to stay with us?" "No. That was Jerry Davis, from the plant in Dover. We're bringing him down to keep the ovens running, until we can get this thing with Phil straightened out." "You're getting someone else to fix those machines at the plant? Good. When Uncle Phil hears about that, he'll find out he can't be quitting work every time he doesn't get things his own way. He might be mad as the dickens at you and Daddy, but I don't know if he could ever get mad enough to let someone else start tinkering with his precious plant equipment. Are you really going to try to run the plant without all of them?" "I don't have any other choice. I can't let the company go under just because a few people don't like the way I manage things. I'll tell you another thing too, all your relatives seem to think they can't be replaced. Anyone can be replaced. Your father asked me if we were going to change the name of the company, and I told him we weren't. We own that name, and we paid twenty five million for the goodwill that name was supposed to bring us. "Having every Macklinson quit us in one single day like this, I don't really see where we got too much for all that money we paid out. It would have been cheaper for us to let the company go under first, then buy it back, out of receivership. We didn't do it that way, because we wanted to keep the tradition of Macklinson's Bakeries alive. I guess it turned out we took more pride in that tradition than any of your relatives ever did." "Daddy says it isn't really our company anymore. He told me before he agreed to sell, that it was going to change the way our family felt about the company. He was always worried that the family members wouldn't be able to live with new ways of doing things." "He told me that too. It didn't have to be like that. It could have still been the same kind of company, only better, because with us, the money would be there to do what was needed in order to grow. Macklinson's is still going to grow, that won't change because of the people who quit today. What will change is that from now on people will remember that the company only started getting bigger and better, after all the Macklinsons decided to quit it." "You might not find it so easy to do what you're saying. Daddy tried every way he knew to do it." "Don't kid yourself about that, Cindy. We knew exactly what we were buying when we took over this company. What we really were buying was the growth potential of this marketing area, not what was already here and in place. Right now, Macklinson's is just four smallish baking plants, with two hundred independent route drivers distributing their products. In a year's time, you won't even be able to recognize the company. We'll put all of Consolidated's plants under the company, and we'll bring in our own crack marketing people. Most of the growth will come from all the larger cities. Within a year, eighteen months at the outside, Macklinson's will be selling two million dollars a day, counting the Nashville plant, which will be producing vending machine products and private label snack foods for us." "If you can do all this, how come Daddy and Uncle Larry couldn't do it?" "They didn't have the resources we do, and they couldn't raise the expansion capital. Macklinson's had one strength, and they used whatever they made from their strong suit, to try to compete in a market where they never even had a chance. Small market tactics could never succeed in these bigger market cities. To sell to the big chains, you need to be able to offer sophisticated distribution and financing. We deliver product to the big chains in February that they get around to paying us for in June. They use us to float all their inventory. None of their own capital is tied up in inventory." "How can you stay in business that way?" "We have to finance them for four months, but once that four months is up, we get our money every month. The same money is always tied up, but, once the four months is up, our cash flow problems are over. All of the big grocers do that. The business is as much about financing as it is about sales and mark ups. To operate a business where two percent of gross sales is considered a good profit margin, you need to be more efficient to compete. We're efficient, and we bring all that experience and expertise to Macklinson's." Cindy just looked at me. I knew she was being torn between her loyalty to her family, and to her hopes for joining our family. I wanted to reassure her, to let her know that in our family, arguments over business issues weren't important. I didn't believe that all the Macklinson's had really quit forever, or that we wouldn't eventually find a way to bridge these early differences. The worst that could possibly happen, from our point of view, would be for the Macklinsons to try to set up another, competing, bakery. The threat of that didn't bother me much either. Having their whole family employed in the same industry, at the same baking plant for so many years, left them with almost no options they could fall back on. They were all bakers, it was in their blood, and they didn't know anything else to do to make their money. Donny's assessment had been accurate. There weren't that many other steady jobs they could go to. If it were just Larry, Gene, and Phil, I'd be more worried. They already had enough money to last them for the rest of their days. The boys were younger though, with their own young families to support. They didn't have the luxury of being able to sit back and do nothing. At nine thirty, I called over to the bakery floor at the plant, and spoke with Donny for ten minutes. He said things were going all right, and that Kitty was ready to take over as the day shift line supervisor, in the morning. I told him my Dad was sending us a couple production people, and a mechanic, from Nashville, but then I assured him that I was going to be using local people, wherever it was possible to do so. As it got later, I could tell that Cindy was beginning to have either second thoughts, or was worried about something. I thought it had to do with her not knowing what our sleeping arrangements would be. I didn't know how to raise the topic with her. Brenda didn't have any trouble doing it though. "We have two big beds, and only one Kenny. How are we going to do this?" Brenda was speaking directly at Cindy. "I'll take the guest bedroom. I don't want to put you out any." "That isn't what I meant, Cindy. Who goes first, is what I meant. Joyce already told me that you like to sleep with Kenny, so that's all right with me. You can have the master bedroom, where Kenny keeps his things, and I'll take the big bedroom down the hall. Kenny can come tuck me in, for an hour or so, and then he can leave, to go sleep with you, in his own room." "I can sleep in that other room, Brenda. You and Kenny should sleep together at night." "Are you saying you want him to tuck you in first, then come sleep with me, after?" "No. He can just go straight to his own room. I'll be fine, really. I'd prefer it like that." Cindy looked uncomfortable. I was hoping that Brenda would notice this and drop it. It would be better if Cindy got accustomed to living with us first, and then proceeded at whatever pace she found comfortable to her. I had hoped that Joyce had told Brenda that Cindy and I weren't on intimate terms as of yet. That reminded me that I hadn't called Joyce, like my father had asked me to do. "I need to call Joyce about some product shipments. Brenda, let Cindy sleep in the big guest bedroom. I'll come to bed after I talk with Joyce." "I want to talk to her too. I miss April and Dwightee. I should have brought them with us." Joyce had told all of my wives that it would be a lot simpler if we kept all the children together. We had the big nursery, and all the help, in place in Ridgeline already. Joyce said it made a lot more sense to leave them with all their siblings anyway. Joyce wanted to raise all of the children together, as brothers and sisters. She thought that separating them, for more than a day or two, while they were still young, would be a mistake. "Can I tell her hi too?" When Cindy asked me that, I turned back, towards the master bedroom and motioned, with my hand, for Brenda and Cindy to follow. In my bedroom, I lifted the phone and dialed home. Shirley answered, and I talked with her for the time it took for someone to run upstairs to the nursery to get Joyce. I didn't tell Shirley about the trouble at the plant, just that we had enjoyed a nice flight, and that Cindy was staying with us at the house in Birmingham. After a few minutes, Joyce came to the phone. Joyce and I spent ten minutes going over the product shipment schedule she had arranged. My father had already called her and told her about the labor problems I was having. I told her that Cindy and Brenda were both waiting to speak to her. "Put Cindy on first, Kenny. I need to talk to her for a few minutes. Put Brenda on after. I need to speak to you again before you hang up." Joyce must have already anticipated that Cindy might have wanted to come stay with us at the house in Birmingham. I could tell, from the way she was talking, that she was nervous for Cindy. I handed the phone receiver to Cindy, going into my bathroom, to freshen up, and start to get ready for bed. I made sure to take my time, to allow Cindy and Brenda to have whatever time they needed on the phone with Joyce. I heard some giggling. It sounded like it was coming from both girls. When I came out of the bathroom, Brenda was on the phone, with either Joyce or Emily. She said something to whoever was on the other end, then held the phone out for me to grab. Joyce said my name, telling me that Emily wanted to tell me something. "Kenny, be careful of Brenda tonight. Don't let her sneak into Cindy's room." She was laughing about something, and I heard Joyce saying something to her in the background, It sounded like she was laughing too. "Joyce wants to tell you something. Remember what I told you, don't let her sneak around tonight." "Kenny, listen, can Brenda or Cindy hear what I'm saying to you now?" Both girls were standing about five feet from where I was. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, on the side nearest the bathroom. Brenda turned and walked slowly over to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her when she went inside. "No. Did you want to tell me something?" "Brenda and Emily made a bet about whether Brenda could seduce Cindy before you fucked her yourself. I already warned Cindy, but you know how Brenda can be when she thinks she's in a competition with someone. Emily said she was only kidding about the bet. I had her talk to Brenda, but Brenda told her a bet is a bet." "What did she say?" "What did who say, Brenda or Cindy?" "Not Brenda." I didn't want to mention Cindy's name to draw her attention to what we were talking about. "She said it didn't matter." "That's a funny reply." "I think she figures she's going to have to do things with all of us anyway. You should do it tonight, Kenny. She's so close to being ready. I think if you'd kiss her a little, that would take care of whatever worries she might still have left." "I'll call you tomorrow. Don't worry. How did Dad sound when he told you about all the Macklinsons quitting?" "He was laughing and joking about it. He said you were getting too cocky anyway, and that you'll learn more when you have your own messes to fix up." "He's probably right. Remember that guy I told you about in Delaware, the one that says fuck all the time? I called him, and I'm bringing him down here to help me. I want to see how they react to him. If anyone can get along with them, Jerry can. Not that he cares about doing that or not." "Kenny, remember to be especially nice and gentle with Cindy tonight. This is very important to her. If she just has one good experience. You don't know how much that would mean to her." "You know me, Joyce. I'll do my best. I love you. I'll talk to you tomorrow." After I hung up the phone, Cindy and I talked a little bit about where she thought she'd be taking Brenda the next day. We were interrupted when Brenda opened the bathroom door. She was all dressed up in her naked loveliness. Brenda knew how good she looked. She had studied herself in the mirror almost all of her life. She was constantly hitting poses, wanting to show off her physical perfection. Over the years, I'd made a hobby out of watching people's reactions to Brenda's appearance. I watched Cindy as she got her first full exposure to Brenda in a completely naked state. Her eyes followed Brenda as she moved over to the other side of the bed, pulling the covers back before jumping up and landing heavily on the mattress. She had some lotion squirted in both her hands, which she immediately began applying over her breasts. Naturally, with this direct stimulation, her nipples responded immediately. My dick wasn't far behind in responding to it either. I had on some briefs, but I didn't do anything to try to cover up the effect that Brenda was having on me. Cindy spent a few minutes watching Brenda massaging her breasts before croaking out a quick good night to us, taking herself off to the big guest bedroom she had selected. I remained where I was, avidly watching Brenda's continuing display. "Do you think she got hot watching me walk around like this?" Brenda pulled the covers back, so that her body was fully exposed, down past her knees. "I don't know. If you want, when I go in to spend the night with her, I'll ask her if she did." "You're going to take care of me before you go, right?" "No, it looks like you're already well started on taking care of yourself. I wouldn't want to come between you and you. I hope you did get her a little bit hot, because I'm hoping to get a little tonight." "Kenny, that's not fair. She said I should have you tonight. That's what I've been looking forward to." "Emily told me she'd treat me really nice if I helped her win her bet with you, and Joyce told me she doesn't want you doing anything with Cindy before she's ready for me." "We could do her together, Kenny, like you and Joyce do. I'm really ready for some fun like that tonight." "Not tonight, Brenda. I'm going in to talk to her for awhile. Maybe, if it doesn't work out, I'll come back in here to sleep, then we can talk about what you were mentioning just now." "Why don't you bring her back here? I'll be good, I promise. You can do her here, and I'll just watch, until after you finish. I really need you tonight, Kenny. She can go first, but I need you inside me tonight too. Feel my pussy, Kenny. You can tell how much it wants you, and how ready I am for a good hard fucking." I got up from the bed, and it was a very difficult thing for me to do. I knew I'd succumb if she kept up her speaking, while she kept running her own hands all over her body. Resisting Brenda was not something that could be done for an unlimited time. She knew this, and she exploited it often. I was nearing the end of my resistance time. When I got up and walked away from her, my swollen cock was tenting out in front of me. Brenda whistled, and gave off a good humored laugh. "I almost had you, didn't I?" I turned to look at her, daring, because of the fifteen feet we had between us to grab at my cock, through the briefs, to give her a little salute that I aimed in her direction. Just that little squeeze I gave it nearly caused me to forget my earlier firm resolve to leave Brenda, and go to Cindy's room. My mind was already beginning to play tricks with me, insisting that one quick little coupling with Brenda would help take my edge off, thus allowing me to perform better with Cindy, if it turned out that this was the night we would first be lovers. What saved me was thinking about what Joyce's reaction would be if she found out I had weakened, after she had already warned me not to. I hurried the rest of the way out of the bedroom. Cindy's bedroom door was opened. I went and stood in the open doorway. "Are you still awake, Cindy?" "Yes. You can come in if you want to. Did you tell Brenda not to try to seduce me tonight?" "No. I told her not to try to seduce me, but she didn't listen. I barely escaped her clutches." "I believe it. She's so beautiful. She's one of very few women I've ever seen who looks better with no clothing on. She looks perfect." "I don't know about perfect. If you look between the third and fourth toe on her right foot, there's this really ugly little scar, its about a quarter inch long." Cindy and I were both laughing. I had made the scar up. In truth, Brenda had no permanent blemishes on her face or body. She did have a filling in one of her teeth, but it wasn't really a blemish. It was a back tooth, and the filling was very small. "Is it all right if I get into bed with you?" Cindy slid over to the other side of the bed, and then patted her hand on the mattress, to let me know I was welcome. I came over and got into bed with her, careful to stay over on my own side, hoping to make myself as non threatening to her as possible. "Joyce said I should let you sleep in here, with me, to keep Brenda away from me." Cindy said it in a playful way. I wasn't sure if she was kidding me or not. "I'm not sure it would keep her away. Brenda is very competitive about some things. I'm surprised Emily made the bet with her." "Do your wives all react to you the same way Brenda and Joyce do? I don't know Shirley that well, but Emily seemed like she needed you less than Joyce or Brenda do." "It's hard to generalize in that way about any of them. Emily is more complex in some ways. She is probably closer to Brenda than to me. Probably loves her more too, which is fine. I love Emily a lot, but I don't expect her to react to me like Joyce does. Shirley, when we're alone, is super intense. Otherwise, she isn't that demonstrative." "Did Joyce say you should make love to me tonight?" "No. What she said was she thinks we're both ready to try some kissing. I think we should see if Joyce is right." "Why doesn't it bother you that Joyce sleeps with all those other girls?" Cindy had turned on her side, facing me, with her head propped up on her hand, supported by the elbow pressed into the mattress. Her sheet had fallen down to the point where her left breast had become exposed. I remembered Bea telling me, years ago, that girls didn't ever expose themselves like this by accident. Cindy wanted me to see her bared breast. "Why should it bother me? Joyce isn't hurting me in any way. She takes and gives pleasure with the other women. She likes it, and so do they. Some of the best sex Joyce and I have ever had, was with another girl there for both of us to enjoy, together. Joyce is very open to stimulation, visual, aural, tactile. The more senses she uses, the better it is for her. Her mind is her greatest pleasure center. She gets very hot thinking about things. Right now, I'm sure she's thinking about us, imagining what we might be doing." "If we start kissing, can we stop if it bothers me?" Cindy had somehow caused her sheet to move down further, exposing her other breast. Both nipples were distended, evidence of her arousal. I made it a point to look at them, wanting her to know that her show had an appreciative audience. "If we start kissing, and it doesn't bother you, can we keep going?" I was smiling at her, and then I reached down and removed my briefs slowly, careful to keep the sheet covering me. Even so, she could see a clear outline of my erection when I smoothed the sheets back down again. I noticed that she kept her eyes trained right on the protruding bulge I'd highlighted for her. She reached down and brought the sheet back up, so that her breasts were again covered. "This is starting to go a little quicker than I thought it would, Kenny. Can we stop for a minute?" I looked at her carefully, noting that she had become a little anxious. I moved my leg over a little, turning on my side, so that I was facing her with my body, making it so that my hard on wasn't as obvious to her. "Cindy, we really don't have to do anything, or go any further. I don't want to scare you. All we're doing here tonight is finding out where your real comfort level is right now. Joyce thinks it will change, once you start trusting me more." "I already do trust you a lot. I'm in bed with you, and I never thought I'd be in bed with a guy again. That other thing, when I saw how big you are, it scared me. I was thinking about what you said, the kissing, and, then suddenly, it was already more than that, and we hadn't even kissed yet." "I made a mistake, reading your signals." "My breasts you mean? I did that partly because of Brenda. I think my breasts are one of my best attributes. Not like hers, but still, better than some others." "They're very nice. Brenda pretends to be self conscious about different parts of her body. She says her breasts are too small, or her hips are too wide. In reality, she thinks all of it is perfect. This opinion is shared by others. There's more that's important than physical beauty though. I almost didn't realize this with Joyce. It would have been a huge mistake if I hadn't finally found it out. Joyce has a real beauty, but it isn't physical. She can make my dick hard with just a smile though. There are so many kinds of beauty. You aren't competing with Brenda, or with Joyce. I find you very attractive." I saw her tugging the sheet back down again. "Can we try a kiss, just a little one to start out with?" Instead of answering her question with words, I moved over, closing half the distance between us. She watched me stop somewhere near the center, and she moved in closer, stopping about five inches from me. I leaned my head in, turning my face a little to the side, and she closed the last few inches that separated us. I let her set the tone for this first kiss, meeting the pressure that she offered to me. After ten seconds, she pulled back from me. She had a little smile on her face. "Okay so far?" She nodded that it was, then leaned forward again, waiting for me to close with her the remainder of the way. We spent the next half hour getting more familiar with each other's kissing techniques and preferences. I never tried to make contact, other than with my lips. I kissed her lips, her neck, and both her shoulders. She kissed me too, on my face and neck. I was getting a little troubled by the constant near pain of having a dick filled, no, gorged, with blood. I was experiencing a minor case of the blue balls. At the pace we were moving, I was hoping that Brenda wasn't going to deny me her favors later. I knew she might, just to teach me a lesson for refusing her earlier offers. I was pretty certain that Cindy and I had gone about as far as we were going to with this session. "Do you still have your hard on, Kenny? I had just pulled back from yet another long kiss when Cindy asked me that. I nodded that I still did. "Let me see it." I hesitated for a few seconds. I was afraid it might have turned into an ugly, red, instrument. It did that sometimes, when I got too excited for too long. I didn't think she wanted to see something like that. She was probably thinking about something like Michelangelo's David, and what I was sporting was something that resembled an over cooked summer sausage. I didn't want to offend her sensibilities. I didn't want her to think about it, then start to worry when she saw what it looked like. "I can show it to you, but it isn't at its best right now. Too much blood for too long. It looks better in the beginning, before it gets all aroused for a long time. Right now, it's all red and angry looking." "Is it angry with me?" "No, with me. It will all be forgotten and forgiven in the morning." "I'd still like to take a look." "Okay, just remember it only gets like this after a lot of good kissing. It doesn't always look like this." I pulled the sheet down, exposing my dick to her, and, as an added bonus, exposing her body to me. Like me, she wore nothing on the bottom either. She didn't seem to notice that I'd pulled the covers off of her too. I almost said something to her about it, until I again remembered what Bea had told me. Cindy probably knew exactly how exposed she was. "Its so big, and red. It looks like it has to hurt like that. Yours is much bigger than Colin's, and his really hurt me when he put it in." "That was your first time." "I know, but that's all I have to judge it by." "Joyce is pretty small down there, and it doesn't hurt her. It isn't really that big either, that's just the red color. It makes it look bigger, and all those swollen veins. Usually, it's smoother, and kind of pale looking." "I'm not that frightened. I thought I'd be more afraid when I actually saw it." "Do you want to touch it?" "Not right now. You can touch it though." "I better not. If I touch it, something bad might happen, and there would be cum all over your sheets." "That wouldn't happen to you if I touched it?" "Well, yeah, but that would be different. If a girl touches it, it's okay if that happens." "Lay on your back. I want to have one more kiss, then you should go back to Brenda." I moved too quickly. I think it frightened her, because she jumped back, startled by the sudden movement. Laying there on my back, my dick was sticking straight up in the air. Cindy seemed to have recovered, and she moved over close to me again, leaning over to press her lips against mine. It started out innocently enough, but then she started pushing her tongue inside my mouth. It ended up with my arms wrapped around her, and her laying almost on top of me, one of her legs making some tentative contact with my dick. When she rolled herself off of me, she looked like she'd gotten nervous again. She quickly moved over towards the far edge of the bed. "You should go now, Kenny. I really enjoyed the kissing. Thank you." I knew enough to not make any sudden moves as I got up from the bed. She was already skittish and vulnerable. I could see her nerves, but I could also see she was excited, and had become visibly aroused by what we'd just finished doing. I had an idea that she wanted to go further, just not with me, not right then. "Should I send Brenda in to say good night to you? I know she'd love it, especially if I told her you wanted to see her." "Do you think we should do that? Wouldn't Joyce get mad if we did that? I don't think we should." She kept saying we. It was obvious she didn't want to make the decision alone. "I don't think she'd be mad. If I know Joyce, somebody's pussy is getting a real workout tonight. She's probably in with Shirley right now, or else with Eddie and Dale. I don't think she'd be jealous." I could see that Cindy was reluctant to say she wanted me to send in Brenda. My own dick felt the same way about it, wanting me to save Brenda for myself. I slipped out of Cindy's room, heading for my own. When I got there, Brenda was sleeping on top of the covers. From the way her spread legs looked and the smell in the room, Brenda had fallen asleep happy. I put my face between her legs, knowing that this would wake her up happy too. When I felt her hand on the back of my head, pulling me in against her, I pulled back. "Cindy was hoping you'd come in and tell her good night." After Brenda moved away from me and got out of bed, I regretted saying anything to her when I had. I stayed awake another hour, hoping that Brenda would return, but she didn't come back. I finally fell asleep, waking up at seven, still alone in my bed. I looked down, and was happy to find that my dick had gone back to looking like its much friendlier self. I couldn't help thinking that Cindy might have been a lot friendlier, and more receptive, to this dick I was looking at, than she was to that fat, ugly, red sausage that I'd shown to her the night before. I was up, showered, shaved and ready for breakfast by quarter til eight, but Brenda wasn't in the kitchen making me any breakfast. I knew where she was, and I knew what she'd been doing. I wondered what I'd have to do to make this up to Joyce and Emily. I was in the office, sitting behind Gene's desk, when Joyce called me, wanting to know how I'd made out with Cindy. When I described how far we had gotten, Joyce was pleased. She said I was making real good progress. "Not as much progress as Brenda. After I was done, Brenda went in there and spent the night with Cindy." "Kenny, I told you not to let that happen. Did she wait for you to fall asleep, then sneak in there?" "Not exactly. When I got back to our bedroom, I started eating Brenda, to wake her up. When she woke up, I told her that Cindy wanted her to come say good night." "That was stupid. Did Cindy really say that?" "Probably was stupid. My balls were screaming for relief, but Cindy looked like she was horny. She was afraid to do anything more with me. I thought it might end up being a better experience for her if she got to cum. I'm pretty sure she was interested in Brenda, especially after Brenda came out of the bathroom buck naked, right after you and I got off the phone. If it makes you feel any better, Cindy was worried about what you'd think if I sent Brenda to her room. She didn't tell me to do it. A naked Brenda is a whole lot of temptation for anyone to resist." "Emily is going to be mad. Do you think Cindy's going to get to the point where she's going to let you fuck her? This week I mean. The reason I'm asking, is because that's the second part of the bet. If Emily and Brenda both do Cindy before you do, then it's a tie, and nobody wins." "I'm not sure I'm going to make it home this weekend, Joyce. The way this thing is looking right now, I'm not sure when I'll get home again. How much did they bet, anyway? If it isn't that much, you can give Emily back whatever she winds up losing to Brenda." "No, it wasn't money. Loser has to give the winner a pedicure." "What's so big about that? Brenda gives Emily pedicures all the time." "That's right, but have you ever seen Emily give Brenda a pedicure? That's why Emily didn't want to lose this bet." I couldn't understand how women thought. Emily could spend hours eating Brenda's pussy, but was squeamish about playing with her toenails? It didn't make any sense. I just hoped I didn't have to do too much to make this up to Emily. I already knew I was going to have to do something. Kathleen Ulliott called me at ten, to tell me that Jerry had arranged for a connecting flight from Dulles, straight through to Birmingham, and would be arriving at around five thirty that evening. I had Danielle call one of the better nearby hotels to reserve a room for Jerry, for an indefinite stay. I had her arrange for Jerry to pick up a rental car at the airport too. She came in a half hour later with the reservation information and both confirmation codes. Everything had been charged to Macklinson's, so Jerry wouldn't even need to show a credit card, only a valid driver's license. Just before noon, Gene called me. He and I spoke for about fifteen minutes. It wasn't a cordial conversation. The gist of it was that he was apologizing for Phil and the boys quitting, telling me he would talk to some of the boys, to advise them to rethink their resignations. I told him not to bother, that I was prepared to make Macklinson's better than it had ever been, and would do it without a single Macklinson working for the company. He asked me about Cindy, and I told him she was staying with me. He didn't seem as happy about that as he'd been a week before, when he first thought it might be a possibility. I guess I had kind of worn out my welcome with him. Nothing we could do for it though. I wasn't cut out to play the kind of games they seemed to be used to playing down in Alabama. They had this start-stop kind of mentality. I wanted to get started, then keep on going. All this stopping was a waste of good energy. I was happy that Gene had called so quickly. I still wondered if this was some kind of power play they were trying to pull off. At three, Kyle's wife called me. We spoke for fifteen minutes also. She was calling to thank me for recognizing Kyle's potential, and to apologize to me for him not seeing that he was throwing away the opportunity of a lifetime. After we got off the telephone I tried to imagine Joyce, or any of my wives, making a similar phone call. They would never think to do that. There had to have been a lot of sincere feeling for her to have made such a call, and I figured she must be a very proud woman to have even felt the need to call me like that. Having a wife as committed as that raised Kyle up in my eyes. Right from the first, when all of them quit, I knew Kyle was the one I'd miss having the most. He represented a near perfect match, between the job that had to be done, and his abilities and strengths for getting it done. I thought his wife was right, it had been his opportunity of a lifetime. I heard from Jerry Davis when he was waiting to change planes in Washington, D. C. I gave him all the information that Danielle had given me, telling him to call me at home when he got settled in his hotel room. I was looking forward to seeing Jerry again. Alabama would seem like a better place, with him here for me to talk to. ------- Chapter 41 When I got home at five thirty, I was greeted at the door by Brenda and Cindy. Both of them gave me kisses, but Brenda's was a lot warmer than Cindy's, which had only been a quick peck on the cheek. Brenda told me they had only gotten home a few minutes before me, then went on to explain that the three of us were going out to dinner together. I told her that I needed to wait for Jerry to call me, and let me know he had gotten settled in okay. "Why don't we drive over to his hotel first, and get him to come out to eat with us?" Brenda didn't like waiting around for things to happen. I tried to imagine both girls responses after spending five minutes in Jerry's company. The more I tried to imagine it, the funnier it began to seem to me. I finally relented, telling the girls that I'd call and leave a message at the hotel for Jerry, letting him know that we were coming in to get him, and would be taking him out to dinner with us. It was only when we were in the car, and driving over to the hotel, that I started thinking about how Cindy might respond to Jerry's vulgar profanities. I wasn't worried about Brenda, knowing she wouldn't be shocked, and, if anything, would think Jerry was funny. Cindy was a different story. Jerry might send her back into her shell after she had a chance to see him at his worst. Jerry was a very big man, barrel chested and robust. He was physically intimidating, even without the gruff exterior he liked to project. "Cindy, this man we're going to be meeting. I have to warn you about him. He is very outspoken, likes to shock people with his language. He's big, and he swears like a drunken sailor, but, really, he's a very nice man. He's as good at fixing machinery as Phil too. Don't be upset by any of the things he says." Cindy just stared at me from her seat on the front passenger side. I could see my words had frightened her a little. "Really, his bark is much worse than his bite." All I could hope for was that Jerry, seeing I was with two young ladies, would tone down his language, and try to not be so intimidating. He was standing by the registration desk when the three of us entered the hotel lobby. "Parsons, you big candy ass! Look at what you brought us too. Which one is for me?" It was obvious that Jerry thought I'd brought some hookers with me. The last time I'd seen him, I'd still been single. Brenda and Cindy were both wearing nice dresses, with light Fall jackets, that only came down to their waists. Jerry was staring at Brenda, his look making it extremely clear which one he'd like to be his 'date' for the evening. Brenda looked back at Jerry and started giggling. "Hi Jerry. This is Brenda, my wife, and this is Cindy Macklinson. We just bought the company down here from her family. Ladies, this big gorilla, with his foot wedged so firmly in his pie hole, is Jerry Davis. He likes to tear things apart, then watch the real mechanics put them back together for him." I went over quickly to shake his hand. "Jesus, Kenny, I'm so fucking sorry. I just thought, you know, that they were too fucking good looking for them to be girls that you really knew." That was the way Jerry apologized. Brenda was beaming at him. Cindy hung back, keeping me between her and Jerry. We went out and got into the Oldsmobile, with Brenda and Cindy both insisting that they'd sit in the back so that Jerry and I had plenty of leg room up front. Cindy gave us directions to this restaurant she had recommended to us. It was a place over on Oak Street, close to the country club. The food and the service was excellent, and the appetizers were really special. Jerry and I had the crabcakes, Brenda had the Jamaican jumbo shrimp, while Cindy had the bacon wrapped scallops, and sauteed spinach. Jerry and I both ordered the small filet mignon with the sauteed lump blue crab meat. Brenda had the broiled sea bass, and Cindy ordered up some oyster and artichoke soup with red snapper, baked to perfection. During dinner, Jerry refrained from speaking, except to answer direct questions with short answers, usually a yes or a no. I saw that he was feeling out of place and, perhaps, a little bit intimidated by the ladies, now that he had adjusted himself to who they were. I didn't want him feeling uncomfortable, but was unable to draw him out enough to get him relaxed so we could have our normal conversation together. "You know, Jerry, both these girls have heard colorful language before." "It isn't them, Kenny, its this fucking place, and these fucking people. They're all staring at me. I keep thinking I've got fucking food stuck on my fucking chin or something. What's fucking wrong with me?" I laughed, and so did Brenda. Cindy didn't see what was funny. "I hate to burst your bubble big guy, but they're staring at Brenda, not at you. In case you haven't noticed, Brenda's totally beautiful." Brenda warmed to my compliment. I felt her hand, under the table, reach out to tap my thigh, thanking me for my observation. "Naw, that ain't fucking it. Look at the fucking old broads too, they keep looking over here also. Its me, something's fucked up about me." "Tell you what, go to the rest room. When you come back, wait over by the bar for a minute, then you'll see who they're looking at. Believe me, it isn't you." Jerry got up. I noticed he was scowling at every other table of diners he passed. I took the opportunity, while Jerry was absent, to check with Cindy, to make sure she was doing all right. She said she was fine, but she looked a little nervous to me. I told her we'd finish dinner, take Jerry back to the hotel, then go back to the house. She smiled at me, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it. I once again cursed myself for not anticipating something like this happening. When Jerry finally came back to our table, he seemed satisfied with my earlier explanation of who the other diners were looking at. We finished our dinners, then drove back to the hotel. I had given Jerry directions out to the plant, and told him I'd see him out there at eight o'clock sharp. Back home, the three of us had ourselves a glass of wine, laughing about how Jerry would fit in at the plant. I knew he wouldn't have any problems. Cindy thought it wouldn't take long for word to get back to her Uncle Phil, that someone was in the plant, doing things to his precious machinery. I thought it would be interesting to watch Phil and Jerry having a conversation about the best way to maintain plant equipment. I went into the bedroom for a quick shower, pausing long enough to brush my teeth and have a quick shave. I was planning on going to see Cindy again, hoping to continue making progress with our kissing. This time, before she decided she wanted to go say goodnight to Cindy, I was going to make sure I made love to Brenda, right after I came back from visiting Cindy in her room. When I came out of the bathroom though, Cindy was in my bed, the sheet pulled up to her neck. Brenda was nowhere to be found. Cindy was smiling at me, smiling in a way that seemed to hold some real promise. I went over and got into bed, careful again to stay over on my side. "This is a pleasant surprise. I hoped you wouldn't be too upset about Jerry. He really is a nice guy, just a little rough around the edges." "Brenda thinks he's cute. When the four of us were together tonight, I was able to appreciate the contrast between you and him. You're softer, gentler. He's more like what I've been afraid of." "Jerry's not really like he sounds or even acts sometimes. If he was like that, we wouldn't be friends. He wouldn't ever want to harm a woman." "No, that isn't what I meant. What I was trying to say was this is what I meant before when I said you were different. You aren't like the other men I've met. You make me feel safer. There's something about the way you look at your children, and the way you were, when you held Joyce, after she was so upset that time. Even last night, when you sent Brenda in to be with me, because you could tell I was a little afraid, and didn't want to be left all alone. After you left, before Brenda came to my room, I was hoping you would come back." "We aren't in any race here. We can take all the time we need. I had a very good time last night. It's been awhile since I took the time to really enjoy just kissing someone." "What I'm trying to say, Kenny, is that, after this dinner, I know for sure what I want. That's why I asked Brenda to let me stay in here with you tonight. I've been thinking about it all day, and seeing Jerry tonight, and watching all the other men in the restaurant, the way they were looking at Brenda, I know I'm ready." "What about the men who looked at Brenda? That's normal. Wherever we go, people always stare at her. It's a part of how she looks. Brenda is so used to it, she hardly notices it anymore." "They all stared, but you didn't. You spent as much time looking at me, as you did looking at her." I didn't realize it, hadn't even thought about it. I sure didn't take Brenda's beauty for granted, but, I'd learned that there were offsetting traits with Brenda. Her looks made up for them, and I loved her, but she wasn't perfect, and I didn't value her more than I did Joyce, or any of my other wives. I didn't want to talk myself out of whatever significance Cindy had attached to my not staring exclusively at Brenda. If it made me a more desirable partner to her, I'd accept her praise. I turned over on my side, moving towards the middle of the mattress, so I was facing her from much closer than before. "So, you think you might be ready to go past where we went last night?" I didn't try to close the distance separating us all the way with her. She seemed to become afraid whenever I moved past the physical separation boundry she had fixed inside her head for us. Cindy was moving closer herself. It must have been slow and subtle movement, because I hadn't noticed it until I looked at her, after finishing asking my own question of her. "I want us to be together, Kenny. Not just in the same bed, or kissing. I want you. I'm aching inside right now, even though I'm scared to death that it's going to hurt me. I'd rather it hurt as much as it has to, then have to go another minute without us being together." She finished up talking, running her words together, as she launched her face at mine. From the heat of her lips and breath when she kissed me, I knew she had done all of the preparatory work for me. She was ready. I had to clamp down on myself, to prevent things from getting too rushed. I didn't want to get too carried away by her apparent enthusiasm. One of the worst mistakes I could make would be to move forward too quickly. I was grateful for the early experience I'd had, especially the times when I'd been with several of the wives at once. I knew orgasms were built, that they could be strengthened and made more intensely pleasurable, by taking the time to allow them to reach their highest potential. I'd experimented often enough to know this was true. Joyce had cautioned me several times before, that this first time needed to be very special and pleasurable for Cindy. She had some very horrible memories to overcome, and it would take much more than ordinary sex to help her put some of those memories back in the recesses of her mind. Cindy kept all those memories right at the surface now, and this explained why she was so tentative and skittish around men. Almost everything having to do with men brought back terrible memories for her. The time that had passed had done little to improve her reaction to men. I wasn't Superman, and I didn't have any magic to give her to take away any of the hurt or suffering. All I could hope for was to give her a new memory, one to compete with the negative ones she now kept so close to her consciousness. I did my best, doing what I could to fan her passion to the highest point I could coax from her. It wasn't long before I showed her that having me inside her wasn't a painful experience. This relaxed her, then I could withdraw, and go back to using my fingers and tongue, to raise her up to an even higher plateau. I felt like one of the Macklinsons, starting and stopping, although I like to think my stops were simply pauses, designed to evaluate where all the many starts were taking her. I learned her body, what she reacted most to, only doing enough of it to verify, for myself, that this was her best path to pleasure. It was a time consuming process, but not one without its rewards along the way. I had already cum twice, before I felt myself sufficiently attuned to her body's pleasure centers to start my drive to give her the greatest sexual pleasure I was capable of giving. I wanted every nerve ending of hers vibrating with pleasure when she reached her next climax. She had already enjoyed multiple orgasms, but nothing like what I was preparing for her at the end. Her body was my instrument, and this was the best music I was going to be able to coax from it. The crescendo was with me, on top of her, transporting her charged emotions past all of the barriers she had erected to prevent herself from going into a sensory overload. She resisted at the end, fearing giving herself over to the excesses of sensation I was producing in her body. Even her resistence was surrender. The noises she made were primal sounds, disconnected from rational thought, expressing the feeling that she could no longer shield from me. When I came, at the end, she was no longer in any state of consciousness to know it. She hadn't passed out, but she had ceased to do more than react, and even that reaction was due more to those raw nerve endings than any sensation of pain or pleasure. After I pulled back out of her, I pulled us both together, in a face to face embrace, while we lay there, on our sides. The sex was finished, but as she began to regain her awareness, it was an awareness of me, kissing her, worshipping the connection we had just formed. We had enjoyed and endured an intense physical bonding, one that opened us both up to a place where no emotion stays hidden. I kissed and loved her with my lips, holding her, with my exposed self, vulnerable, until she had gotten back to the point where she could consciously accept or reject what was happening between us. She accepted me, raining kisses of her own, and crying, our tears merging together as we shared the profundity of the total joining we were both now acknowledging. There is making love, and there is MAKING LOVE! One is a physical act, and is a lot of fun. The other is a commitment, a commitment to share yourself fully with another. It was this last I had shared with Cindy. It was more than I'd ever done before, with anyone. I needed to pull out all the stops to ensure that this one was special. I was making love to Cindy, not just for me, but for Joyce as well. I couldn't have done what I did, not if it were just for myself. I didn't have that power of giving, or selflessness. That, I needed to borrow from my own memories of what Joyce had always given to me. Joyce had asked me to do this for her, I owed it to her to do the best that I could. We finally managed to fall asleep, but it was a shared sleep, one we entered embracing each other. We slept as wordlessly as when we had made love earlier. We communicated in other ways. Words were unnecessary, they would have complicated and clouded what needed to be simple and clear. In the morning, we made love again. Not intense love like before, just the physical act of people taking pleasure from each other. When I was cleaned and dressed and ready for work, Brenda was up and my breakfast was ready. She gave me a kiss that was much more than our usual morning smootch. "Thank you, but what was that for?" "I watched part of last night, Kenny. It was so beautiful. I think I learned something from you two. When do you think we're going back home? I need to see Emily. I want to tell her what I learned last night." Normally, something like that reaction wasn't what you'd expect from Brenda. I didn't know what she meant, or what she could possibly have learned from watching us. I ate my breakfast, telling her that we could probably fly back home, for part of the weekend, if Dad's people arrived from Nashville. With Jerry, the other maintenance guy, and two production people here, I didn't see any reason we couldn't fly home for the weekend. I needed to see Joyce, to tell her how much I loved her. I needed to see my children too. When I got to the plant, Jerry had already made his presence felt. I heard him before I saw him. He had a clipboard and was walking around the bakery floor jotting down notes furiously, while yelling out to anyone within earshot, just what he thought of the state of cleanliness and disrepair of all he was seeing. To hear him telling it, it was a wonder anything worked, and the entire plant was the breeding ground for all manner of diseases, including botulism. People stared at him, afraid to approach him, and wondering who he was. Jerry was obviously making the impressive entrance I had envisioned. He turned around and saw me walking towards him. "Parsons, what the fuck were you thinking, asking me to come down to this damn pesthole? You don't need a maintenance man, you need the Center for Disease Control. This whole fucking plant needs to be shut down and fumigated, from fucking top to fucking bottom. In Delaware, a place like this would be closed down so fucking fast, it would make your fucking head spin. Did you know there are fucking bugs infesting the fucking packaging room?" I almost laughed. Show me any place that makes food, and I'll show you bugs. We all do our best, but it's impossible to keep them totally out of any food plant, anywhere. I knew Jerry knew this too, and I'd seen, with my own eyes, plenty of bugs in Dover. "Jerry, when you're done with your inspection, come upstairs and give me your preliminary report." "I already fucking did. You should close this place down. Then, fucking torch it, for the insurance money." I saw Miss Kitty walking quickly towards us. She didn't look happy. She obviously wasn't enjoying the show Jerry was putting on. "Mr. Parsons, who is this man? Why is he out here disrupting my line?" "Good morning, Kitty. This is Jerry Davis. He's our new head of maintenance. He used to run our plant up in Delaware. I asked him to come in early and make an inspection. He was just telling me that he thinks we might need to work on one or two things to get the plant up to where it meets his high standards." "I don't want him running around and shouting at any of my people. He can either be quiet, or he can leave, because I've got a production schedule to meet, and the number six oven just went off line. I think it blew another circuit breaker again. Phil said he fixed that short, but every time it gets hot in there, it pops back off line." "That's not a short, you've got a worn element. These old Simpson's were shit when they were new. I'm surprised there's any of them left working at all." Jerry was smiling, seeming to be sure of himself. "Phil says it's a short, and he says he fixed it." Kitty wasn't awed or intimidated by Jerry. I thought that spoke well for her fortitude. I knew Jerry was just having fun, and he still intimidated me some. "Well, fucking Phil doesn't know his ass from his fucking elbow then. If it was a fucking short, and he fucking fixed it, the fucking oven wouldn't fucking be going off fucking line, would it?" Jerry had both hands on his hips, looking down at a red faced Kitty as he spoke. "Jerry, why don't we pause your inspection, at least long enough to take you upstairs to turn in your expense sheet to accounting. Did you sleep well last night?" I had my arm around him and was steering him towards the staircase. He'd already said and done enough to announce himself to this part of Alabama. I hoped he was right in his diagnosis of that oven too. If he wasn't, the laugh would be on him, and we didn't need that, not right then. We got up to accounting and Jerry got his plane fare reimbursed. We went into Gene's office and closed the door. I told Danielle to hold all my calls. "What time did you get here, Jerry?" "Four thirty, about. I had trouble sleeping on that mattress they have in the hotel. This plant's in very good condition. Whoever you had looking after this equipment is top notch. The only change I'd make is to your spare parts room. You don't have hardly any spares for anything. I saw a total of six spare elements. How can you hope to keep things running, without having spare heating elements?" I was struck by Jerry's total lack of 'fucks and fuckings' in his conversation there in Gene's office. I wondered if he could turn it on and off like that, or if he changed things up when he was talking about his business. "How come you're talking different in here, than you were just now on the baking floor, or at dinner, last night?" Jerry just smiled, ignoring my question. "I know someone in Texas, he has a ton of spares for all these old Simpsons. I'm talking a whole truckload of the stuff. If you wanted, I could call him up, and get us a whole shit load of good spares, pretty cheap too. Nobody uses Simpson ovens nowadays. Damn shame too, because it's a hell of a dependable oven." "If its such a good oven, why were you bad mouthing it downstairs?" "That was just to get people's attention. People who really know ovens, they would know I was only fooling. People who don't, fuck them." "So, you think this place isn't ready to fall down around our ears?" "Not hardly. From what I've seen, this plant has plenty of life left in her. I really like that custom conveyor set up. A man could get rich doing retrofits from that good idea." "Well, that's good. I already told my father about the conveyor belts. I told you I lost a lot of people, Jerry, but what I didn't tell you was that they were all from one family, the Macklinson clan. Ten of them quit me a few days ago, and this is the family we bought the company from. "Did Cindy have anything to do with all of them quitting?" "What? No. Listen, it was three brothers and seven of their kids. Two of the kids are from a sister of the brother's, I think. They left me with a big problem, and they thought it was too big for us to handle. We can get along fine without them, but I need to prove it to them, or else this shit is going to keep happening to us down here." "That's simple enough, don't let them back in. People who like to quit, what good are they anyway? Give me a dependable guy who might not be that bright, over a real whiz bang, who doesn't show up when you need him." "You might be right, but, for right now, I need these guys. We're about to begin a major expansion down here, and we're going to be stretched pretty thin to do it. The fewer people I've got tied up down here, the more we have to make sure the important part of the expansion effort succeeds. I don't want to be tied up babysitting this operation, and I don't have anyone good enough to plug in here, to make it work well. These Macklinsons, if they aren't with you, they'll work against you. Plus, some of the younger ones have a lot of potential, especially one of them." "You said before that you're expecting them to want to come back?" "I think so. I got a call from one of the brothers yesterday, hinting that some of them would come back. I need to stabalize the operation first, let them see we don't really need them. If I do let them come back, I want them to understand it has to be on my terms, not theirs." "I can keep all this stuff up and running, no sweat. What about those spare parts? You want me to call him or not?" "How much are we talking about, cost wise?" "Not so much, maybe five thousand. The other part, and this is the big part of it, I'd need to tell him that a job comes with it. He's a good man with a wrench, but he's had some trouble holding a job in the past. He likes to drink. He told me he's beat it, but they all tell you that. If it was me, I'd give him the shot. Catch him back drinking, and I'll personally come down here, on my own dime, and throw him out on his ass." I could tell that Jerry meant what he said. I couldn't help wondering why he was so anxious to help this guy though. "Okay, give him a call. What's his name, I'll need to tell personnel?" Jerry smiled his crooked grin, and I knew I'd just been had. "It's Davis, Jim Davis. Before you even ask me, its my kid brother. I meant what I said though, I'll come down and give him the boot myself." After Jerry left, to try to fix that bad element in the number six oven, or so he claimed, I started calling the other three plants just to find out if everything was operating all right. I talked to all three plant managers and each of them reported no problems at all. I asked about the Macklinson relative in Tupelo, but that plant manager said he was showing up for work everyday, just like normal. At eleven, Cindy called me. We had one of those conversations people have when their relationship is first getting started. She told me that she couldn't wait for me to come home from work. I told her I felt the same way. After another ten or fifteen minutes of our saying sweet nothings to each other, Cindy told me she was over at her father's house, and he wanted to speak to me. I hoped he hadn't been standing around listening to all the gooey stuff we were saying to each other. I told her I'd talk to him. "Kenny, did you mean what you said before, about running the plant without any Macklinsons?" "I meant it at the time, but I'm not totally inflexible. What did you have in mind?" "Kyle and Steve. Neither of them are in a position to do what they did, especially Kyle. Phil, Larry, and I, we all talked it over, and we want you to let them come back to work." "If I did let them come back, it would have to be as new hires. How much was Steve making when he quit?" "I think he was making forty a year. I think they all made about that much. When you say new hires, you aren't talking about wages?" "No, I wouldn't do that, because they're both experienced. What I meant was they wouldn't work under their old, guaranteed employment contract, and they wouldn't get their old jobs back. I'd put them both wherever I thought they'd do the best job. You already know what my plans were for Kyle, and none of that is changed. I heard Steve is more suited for Jerry's old Job than Jerry was. I'd be taking a look at him for something up here in the office." "What am I supposed to tell them?" "Tell them to show up for work on Monday. They'll need to report to personnel, and they'll have to begin service all over again. There is a penalty attached to just deciding to quit your job. I won't cut their pay, but their employment date starts again on Monday, new hires." "What about their benefits, insurance and all that? Bonnie is four months pregnant." "All right. I'll let them keep their benefits, but I'm still going to show this as a four day break in service. If people call to ask how long they've worked for us, we're saying they started on Monday." "Okay, they'll be there. Phil wanted me to tell you that he's got a part on order to fix that number six oven. Should be here in another two weeks. He said he tried to work around the problem, but it looks like his fix isn't working." "All taken care of already. My new maintenance guy figured it out himself, and he'll have the parts to fix it by Monday. He said the rest of the stuff is a piece of cake, and I don't have to worry about any of it." "Did you really promote Deborah Kitchens to be the line supervisor?" "If she's the one they call Miss Kitty, then, yes, I did. She's doing a good job for us too. I moved Donny up to the night shift, and I've got two new production people that should be here by the weekend. I expect to be back up to full strength by sometime next week." "You planning to stay here and run the company yourself?" "Not for long. I've got a guy in mind to take my place, but we've got him off working on a real problem right now. When he's finished with that, I'll bring him down and ease him into it." "Well then, I guess I'm glad to know you've got everything under control. I was a little worried about that." "No need to worry, Gene. It takes more than a little shock like this to derail our expansion plans. I was telling Cindy, in another year, you won't even recognize Macklinson's." "Happy to hear it. I've got a few things I'm finally getting the time to work on now. Things I've been putting off for a long time." "Yes, Phil told me you bought the old Underwood farm, and that you hope to develop it. Maybe you and Laura should do a joint venture, you put up the land and she would handle the construction costs. Give you a reason to see her more often." "You have a droll sense of humor, young man. I'm afraid it leaves me less than appreciative." "That's all right. I grow on people. Listen Gene, thanks for calling. I hope we can keep in touch. I'm looking forward to having Kyle back. As far as I'm concerned, he's the real star of the Macklinson litter. It wouldn't surprise me if he ended up running this plant someday. Maybe he'll hire all his cousins back when he takes over here." I hung up, satisfied that both of us had gotten substantially all we wanted. I think Gene was beginning to understand that I was prepared to do what I'd said. Now, it was simply a case of me making sure that all of them knew things were going to be done on my terms, not theirs. To make sure they understood this, Kyle and Steve were the only Macklinsons I was taking back for the rest of the month. I wondered if Cindy had mentioned anything to her father about the direction our relationship had taken? I wondered if what we had done would help her with her old memories? Mostly, I wondered whether Brenda had called the other wives in Ridgeline, to report that her bet was totally won now? ------- Chapter 42 The men my father sent over from Nashville, all arrived together, early Friday morning. I put one of them in charge of production scheduling, and the other one began filling in for Donny and Miss Kitty, arranging for both of them to have some days off from work. I sent the maintenance man over to Jerry Davis, to be checked out on all the equipment we had in the plant, and to be assigned wherever, and whenever, Jerry most needed him. Jerry had already confirmed that the maintenance people who were still with the company, were, for the most part, untrained, other than for performing relatively routine tasks. I was given a list of three names, by the two Nashville production people. These were names of people they thought had either the experience or the skills to perform tasks we had a desperate need for, like packaging, inventory control, recipe dough mixing, and ingredient formulation. We needed people to fill in for those now vacant positions. I had the guy I'd put in charge of scheduling, call these people they'd told me about, instructing him to find out if they would be willing to come to Birmingham, to accept temporary employment with us. I told him to offer to pay all their travel expenses, including motel expenses while they were here working for us, as well as guarantee each of them at least one month's full employment. As an incentive, I also told him that anyone coming here for us now, would be guaranteed a place, when the first call back to work came from the Nashville plant, once we finished converting it over to a vending product baking plant. From our experience with the newer plant in Omaha, we knew that less than half the former workers at the Nashville plant would be hired to work at our new plant. Knowing you would be among the first called back to work was a huge advantage to have. I was sure it would help convince any that were hesitant to come over, even if it were for only a single month of work. Jerry also informed me that his brother had left Luling, Texas, on Thursday night, and was expected to hit Birmingham sometime before Friday evening. He also told me that his brother, Jim, had tried to get us to pay seven thousand for the Simpson spare parts, but that he'd ultimately agreed to taking only five thousand, because of the added prospect of being hired for a good job. "I called and spoke to Shannon, his ex, and she confirmed to me that Jim hasn't touched a drop of any booze, for going on five months. He wouldn't lie to her about it. At least, I don't think he would." "Five months isn't very long, Jerry." "Maybe not, but it's the longest he's ever gone without drinking, since he was about fifteen years old. Losing Shannon, and both his boys, because of what the booze did, has maybe finally taught him something. He really loves his sons, and he took it hard when Shannon threw him out. I rented the two of us our own furnished place, close by here, in a trailer park. We'll stay there together, until I go back. By then, we'll know more about him. If he's drinking, I'll know about it soon enough." Joyce had sent down many cases of vending product, enough for us to put it into the small grocery stores our route people serviced. I had it all piled up over at the ingredient storage buildings, hoping that Kyle would be able to handle setting up the distribution program, as soon as he came back to work, on the following Monday. I wanted to assign him three or four local people to assist him, but, without Gene around, I didn't have anyone I could ask about who we had, people who might be the best, to give him to work with. I decided I'd just wait, and let Kyle decide, for himself, who he wanted to have working with him. Thursday night, Cindy and I had our first disagreement. It came about because I told her, right when I got home from work, that Brenda would be spending the night with me. She didn't come right out and admit she was jealous, but that was what it was. I tried explaining to her that our lifestyle only worked if there was no jealousy involved, but she denied being jealous. When Brenda and I went to my bedroom, at about ten, I heard the guest bedroom door slam shut, a few minutes later. Brenda and I enjoyed ourselves anyway. I hoped that Joyce would have a talk with Cindy, when we all went back home on Friday night. I had asked both girls to be packed and ready to leave by four o'clock, just in case I could get away early. At three, I called over to the rental house, to let them know that they should load up the van, and meet me over at the airport. Brenda told me that Cindy was over at her Dad's house again, but that she'd call her for me. She said everything was already packed, and she would just swing by, to pick up Cindy, on her drive over to the airport. Ten minutes later, Brenda called me back. "She's not coming. She said she has to do something with her mother, something she says they had planned for awhile, but she says she forgot, until her mother reminded her about it, an hour ago." "Is she still at her father's house?" Brenda said she was. I called over there, and Gene answered the phone. "Hi, Gene, this is Kenny. Can I please speak to Cindy?" Gene said hello, then he said she was out back, and that I should hold on, and he'd go out and get her for me. It took about three minutes before Cindy came to the phone. "Kenny, I was just going to call you. I forgot all about us planning on going over to Atlanta tomorrow, to visit my Aunt Margaret. My mother hates to drive any distance by herself, and I usually drive for her, whenever we go somewhere visiting. You're coming back on Monday?" "Probably Sunday afternoon. Maybe you should call Joyce before you leave, to let her know why you can't make it this time. We're all going to miss you. Drive carefully, and call us in Ridgeline, when you get there." We finished up our phone call, after another few minutes. When I put the phone back in the cradle, I thought about how Cindy sounded when we talked. She hadn't seemed upset or anything, so I thought it was just what she told me it was. She had forgotten about her and her mother planning to visit her aunt, until she'd been reminded. I forgot stuff like that all the time. I put the disappointment over Cindy not flying home with us out of my mind. I had grown very fond of her, very quickly, but I was sure that we'd have a lot of time together in the coming weeks and months. Cindy had already said she wanted to stay wherever I was. I was a little bit afraid the other wives would resent her getting to spend more time with me than they did. Her not coming back to Ridgeline with us might help prevent that resentment from getting started, for at least a little while longer. Brenda and I were back home with the family before seven thirty, Friday night. Joyce told me, as soon as I saw her, that Cindy had called, to tell her about needing to visit her aunt with her mother. I played a quick nine holes of golf on Saturday morning, with Shirley, Mama, and my Dad. It was cold, and a little on the breezy side, so we didn't play the back nine as we'd earlier planned. Saturday night, the whole group of us, including my parents, Shirley's parents, Hans and Gerta, Georgia Connor, and Aunt Clara, drove over to Gracerie's for a big dinner party in the small banquet room. Jane was there too, having taken the night off from her job at the hospital, to be with all of us. My father had a lot of questions he wanted to ask about my plans for launching the sales campaign for the convenience stores. When I finally got around to telling him that I was expecting Kyle Macklinson to rejoin the company, the following Monday, he seemed pleased, and also content to wait for further word of our progress. He told me about several things that had come out, concerning the private subscription offering of the bond dealers. These were all things that he found potentially troubling. The most important issues all were concerned with the contract language. Their standard contract specified that the bond issuers, (the bond company) were to be the holders of all collateral, and that this included all of the accounts receivable we'd be pledging to provide funding for the amount of the annual debt service. What troubled my Dad was the absence of any language in the agreement that limited or controlled some of the uses the bond company could employ for this money. Additionally, the amount of the accounts receivable, and any other accounts collectible to be pledged, was unspecified by them, and these could be either raised or lowered, depending on the stated requirements given to us by the bonding company, during the life of the loan. Both these contract features were news to us, not having been discussed in any of the preliminary talks Dad had with them. What it seemed to amount to was an open call on whatever receivables we were able to develop, from any expansion efforts we would undertake, using the subscription capital they had raised for us. My Dad was troubled by all of this, but he thought he could get necessary changes made, changes that would spell out, and limit, the amounts, and the approved uses, for our pledged assets and income. He said he'd insist on having specific language inserted to restrict the kinds of uses the bonding company could make with our income stream. "I'd feel a lot better about this whole thing if we floated the bond issue ourselves. You're talking about four or five hundred million dollars. Frank could find someone who knows about this type of placement, and we could pay him to set it up, so that someone we trust handled the income stream, and all our other pledged assets. Put up all the property we'll be acquiring with the money, and whatever net revenue it generates. Give them the six percent interest, for fifteen years, and add some kind of sweetener at the end, maybe an extra ten percent return on their initial capital." "The other way is cheaper, and they do all the work of subscribing the offering." My Dad was looking at the work he thought might be involved in doing all of this ourselves, and at all the uncertainties surrounding our being able to find sufficient investors for it. I didn't care about any of that, certainly not as much as I cared about being worried about running all of our income stream through a bunch of outside hands, and knowing we didn't have any way of controlling things, or the power to restrain them from making their own uses of our assets. "If we could do it ourselves, we'd start out with one hundred percent of the money, not ninety two percent, and, we'd also have the certainty of knowing no one else was going to be misusing either our income, or any of the other collateral we were pledging. Mama and I would each put up a hundred million. We had that much pledged before, with the other credit facility. You'd only have to find another three hundred million. If it would make it easier, Mama and I will both subordinate our income and capital payback to the other subscribers. We've never had any security pledged for our loans to the business before anyway, and we already know you're going to be making plenty of money for us with this capital you'd be borrowing." "It seems too complicated your way. We're not in the money business, Kenny, and I think we should leave things like this to those who are. We'd be beginning this from scratch, your way, without any guarantees, when, or even if, we'd be able to raise the rest of the money we're going to need. I can't make purchase commitments based on something so uncertain as what you're proposing." "It wouldn't hurt to call Frank, and tell him what we need. Let him recommend someone who can do it for us, then wait to see what he tells you. With this company you're dealing with now, you're talking about giving them open access to almost all of the company's expansion assets, without having any way to prevent them from screwing us. You can't know for sure that you can close all those loop holes they have written in, or even if you've already found everything they might be able to do to you. We already know we can trust ourselves not to try to take advantage of each other." "I'll call Frank, but I'm still going to see if we can get a contract that we can live with from these other people. One that removes all the ambiguous language, so there are no worrisome unknowns in the legal language, nothing that threaten our interests." Driving home, I spoke to Joyce about my concerns with how my Dad was going about raising his new expansion capital. It wasn't a case of me thinking my father wasn't capable of protecting our interests, because I knew he was. What bothered me, was that this company had already shown a willingness to play fast and loose with the truth. They had failed to voluntarily disclose the nature and degree of their contractual involvement with our revenue stream, and had encouraged us to put together a list of equipment and plant assets that didn't represent anything of any real value to us. The way their contract was currently worded, they could use any current income from our receivables to pay out interest payments to the investors in any of the other bond offerings they were handling. There was no safeguard to prevent their co-mingling of the funds under their control. It was beginning to look like some kind of a Ponzi scheme to me. I was worried that my father was so anxious to get his hands on the expansion capital he needed, that he might overlook some potential pitfalls. Joyce listened to all the points I wanted to make, but she didn't give me any immediate comment. When I finally ran out of concerns to list for her, she reminded me that my father had always ended up making good financing deals for the company. It was something he handled, exclusively, for the company, and we should allow him to continue making these decisions. She reminded me that I didn't like it when people tried to interfere with decisions I made, especially when they were in my areas of responsibility. I didn't say anything at the time, but I was thinking that none of my areas of responsibility involved anything like the kind of money my father was currently negotiating for. Forty percent of the potential losses would be mine too, and, to me, this was plenty of reason for me to be concerned. ------- Sunday, at about three, Shirley and I flew to Alabama. I was looking forward to my week at the plant, and to spending more time with Cindy. When I'd related some details about the first night that Cindy and I had become lovers to Joyce, she told me that Cindy had phoned her, the very next morning, to tell her all about it, in great detail, and that Brenda had also called herself the next morning, to tell Emily about what she'd seen. I had attempted to explain to Joyce how making love to Cindy had made me feel even more connected to her, and to all the wives and children. Really, it had made me feel more connected to everyone I loved. I felt like I had finally tapped into all the energy that Joyce kept claiming our family had developed. In the past, because I hadn't known how to feel it, I had doubted this energy even existed. Now, I knew better. I had finally learned how to reach outside myself, to use the love around me, to add to my own inner strength. I felt the power of this added strength, and the protection it seemed to give me, like an emotional shield. I had been thinking of that new energy, and Shirley and I had even spoken of it, on the flight back to Birmingham. Shirley had mentioned that she hoped she and Cindy could get to know each other better during the week. I knew she didn't mean that in a sexual sense, just that she and Cindy should learn more about each other. Of all the wives, Shirley was the least interested in doing things with the other women, and the least open in her sexual appetites. She and Joyce slept together frequently, but Shirley didn't do that much with any of the others. When she was with me though, she became much more open to doing things with all the others. I think she believed things were somehow more all right, just as long as I was present, to provide the heterosexual justification to the gathering. When we got to the Birmingham house, a little before seven, Cindy wasn't there. When she still hadn't arrived, or called us, by ten o'clock, I began to get worried. I knew she had been planning on getting back to Birmingham before we did. I hoped she hadn't had an accident, or had something go wrong with some member of her family. It didn't really occur to me that she was deliberately staying away from me. We had given Cindy her own house key, so Shirley and I locked up, then went to bed ourselves, at ten thirty. We made love, but it wasn't one of Shirley's good days, and she finally asked me if we could stop trying to bring her to orgasm. That almost never happened to us when we made love anymore, but, it sometimes did, if Shirley was upset, or was worried about something. Monday morning, right after I got done briefing Kyle and Steve on the duties I wanted each to assume at the company, Joyce called me, and she was very upset. "Kenny, Cindy called me this morning. She was crying so much I couldn't understand what she was trying to tell me at first. She finally was able to get out what she wanted to tell me. She wants to take some time to think about what being with all of us means. She didn't come right out and say it, but I'm pretty certain she's having trouble with the idea of only being one of the women in your life. She said she has difficulty in understanding what place she was supposed to be filling with us." I felt like I'd somehow failed. Failed Joyce, myself, and Cindy too. I had been so certain that she understood that she had become a loved person within our family, and that she too believed she belonged with us. What we'd shared had been an important breakthrough for me, and I thought it represented at least as much, if not more, to her. I wanted her to feel safe with us, a protected member of our family. All I could think of was that she was jealous, that she had somehow convinced herself that she and I would be different than whatever I now had with my other wives. It was different, but the difference wasn't something that would weaken my ties and connections with any of my other relationships. In fact, I believed it had strengthened them, just like it had strengthened me. "Did she tell you she was going to call me too, or come over here so we could at least talk it over?" "No. She said she was calling me because she didn't want to face you, not until after she figured out what her feelings were about all of this. Maybe she's hoping you'll call her anyway, that you'll be so concerned that you'll want to confront her, or reassure her." "I don't think I want to go against her stated wishes. With her past history, even me trying to see or talk to her might bring back the kind of fears she's been plagued with for the last few years. Cindy has these boundaries. If you encroach on them, she gets nervous, becomes very agitated. You have a better chance to talk her into coming back and speaking with us than I do. This whole fear of men thing has effectively tied my hands with her. Make sure you tell her I love her, and that the reason I'm not running after her is only because I don't want to frighten her." Things weren't off to a good start. Jerry brought his brother in to see me right before lunch. Jim was a smaller, younger version of Jerry, and it was easy to see that Jim really looked up to his older brother. "We came in yesterday and unloaded all the Simpson spares into the parts stock room. We fixed the number six oven, replacing two of the heating elements, and some frayed wiring that might have contributed to the original problem. We had the covers off anyway, so we switched out two or three other parts that looked like they had seen better days. "We have enough spare stuff now, we can afford to take things out and rebuild them later, if we need to. Enough extra, to build three or four ovens, almost from the frames up. Phil used to have to try to repair or rebuild all the interior switches and circuitry himself, because all that stuff is pretty hard to come by now. The company has been out of business for twenty years. We have enough extra heating elements now, to last us for the next twenty years, both new and used. Jim wants to have the check for what he's selling us, cut to Shannon, for her and the boys." Jim nodded to confirm what Jerry said about the check for the spare parts. "He brought us even more stuff than I knew he had. You ended up getting quite a bargain. If I'd known how much stuff he had, I wouldn't have chiseled him down to five grand. The stuff is worth a lot more than even the seven he was asking for." I was a little distracted by the news about Cindy, but I did call over to accounting and tell them to cut a check for seven thousand to Shannon Davis. Hearing me say the amount, both Jim and Jerry broke out in big smiles. I always believed in being fair to people, and I knew that the two thousand meant more to the Davis brothers than it did to me, or to the company. Sometimes, it was the little gestures that paid the biggest dividends. I wanted both of them to know I wasn't out to strike the hardest bargain I possibly could. It must have been after four when Gene called me again. This time, he was calling as a worried parent, not as someone having business to transact with the company. "Kenny, would you mind telling me what the hell is going on with you and my daughter? One minute, she's up on cloud nine, and the next thing I know, she's refusing to come out of her room, or even talk with me through her door. What did you do to her?" "I don't know how to answer you Gene. When she didn't come back to the house last night, that was the first indication I had that things might not be all right. She didn't call me or anything. She called my wife, Joyce, this morning, and told her she needed some time alone to think about things. She didn't tell her what things, but we both think it has to do with all the other women in my life." "She knew about them before she got that involved with you." "She knew, but its one thing to know, as a factual matter, and another thing to realize the same thing, emotionally. I think Cindy has developed a problem with the idea that she'd have to share me. It isn't something that comes up in most relationships, and Cindy isn't the first girl to have problems with that idea." "Well, what are you going to do about it?" "I'm getting Joyce to talk with her. Cindy has some problems with relating to men. I don't want to scare her, and I don't want her to think I'm applying pressure on her. I love her, but I think she needs to make up her own mind about what being with me has to mean." "I take it that being with Cindy, exclusively, isn't an option?" "No, and it never would be. She had to know that. She's seen me with my family, all the children. I'm afraid Cindy would have to accommodate herself to us, because we're too important to each other to make any kind of changes that would disrupt what we've already built up together." "I wish this hadn't come up right now. Not on top of the other problems we're having." "I wish it hadn't come up too, but it did. As far as those other problems go, I thought we'd pretty much worked everything out last week. I don't bear any of you any ill will, and we think we've turned the corner as far as plant operation goes. My new maintenance guy and his assistant fixed the number six oven yesterday, and it's working as good as new. We bought up a whole slew of replacement parts for all the Simpson's, and I've been assured that we have enough of everything now to keep things running well past the useful life of this facility." "Where did you get these spare parts for the ovens? Phil has been scouring the country, trying to find some of the things he needed." "A guy in Texas bought up a warehouse full of Simpson spares a few years back, for scrap mostly. He liked to collect things, figuring he might someday get a chance to sell them for a profit. It happens that his brother works for us, at one of our other plants, and he told us about the spare Simpson parts his brother had. We got in touch with the guy, and he loaded a truck with all his stuff, and drove it right to our doorstep." "You have to have been born under a lucky star, Kenny. I can't tell you how worried we've been about how much longer we could jerry rig things, to keep all those ovens on line. You come in, and, in less than a month, all those replacement parts fall right into your lap." "I don't think it was luck, Gene. You have to remember, our network spans the whole country, and we communicate with all our technical people, about any needs we might have. We're always coming up with finds like this. Besides, we have all that old equipment from Consolidated's Nashville plant, that we could have brought down here to switch out the ovens. We're converting that plant to feed our vending product needs for the expansion we're getting ready to undertake. My Dad is raising five hundred million for that. When you have access to capital, it's easy to be lucky." Gene didn't say anything more for awhile. I knew he was thinking about what he would have been able to accomplish if he'd only had access to the capital to do it. I wanted him thinking about that, wanted him to begin regretting his decision to quit our company. Gene wasn't that different than my father, his weakness came from being unwilling or unable to take the point position, to lead the company in the direction it needed to go. My father didn't have that weakness. If anything, he was becoming too aggressive in his leadership. "Well, as always, it was interesting speaking with you, Kenny. I learn a lot when we have these talks. Do you wish me to relay any message from you to Cindy?" "Just tell her I miss her, and the house isn't as warm without her in it. Tell her my life isn't as sweet either." "That might be awkward for me to tell her. Do you have something a little less personal for me to tell her?" "That's what we have, Gene, and it's a personal connection. What I told you was as impersonal as I could make it. If I told you what I was really feeling, it would make both of us uncomfortable." "I'll tell her you miss her." "That's the truth, I do. While you're at it, tell her I love her too." I called Frank Clooney, at his office, right before I left for the rental house. He and I talked for half an hour. I told him my concern for what my father was doing, and asked him if my father had consulted with him, or had tried to call him anytime that day. "I spoke with him this morning, and he asked me to see if I could develop some information on a New York attorney." He mentioned the name, and it was the same man my father had used to look over the new bank facility contract, before he entered into that agreement. I told him the proposal I'd made to my father, and asked him if he personally knew of anyone who could set up what I'd outlined, someone who could also find enough outside investors to subscribe for that other three hundred million. "Kenny, I know some people who are qualified to write up the contracts, but for what you're talking about, you want an investment fund manager, or one of the large insurance companies. Mutual of New York, or Prudential, or even one of the foreign investment banks. The Japanese have more money than they know what to do with, right now. A three hundred million dollar placement wouldn't be too large for some of those investment banks to handle. I know someone in San Francisco, with good ties to some of the Japanese banks that handle foreign investments. I can either call him for you, or give you his name and phone number." "Why don't you call him for me? Tell him that my mother and I will invest forty percent of the money, and subordinate our own position, in favor of any investor who will take the sixty percent position. Offer six percent, interest only, for the fifteen year life of the loan, with a ten percent capital sweetener at maturity, or else a six and a half percent annual interest payment, with no sweetener. We can pay quarterly too, if it makes a difference. Tell them we guarantee no early pay off, not unless we happen to sell off the company, and we have no current plans for doing that." "Should I give him the contact information for you, or for your father?" I needed only a few seconds to decide my answer. "Have him come through me. Dad is only thinking about getting the money quickly. I'd like to show him another option, but I'd need to put it to him after it was all agreed to, ready to fund. Anything else, and he wouldn't trust it." I was sitting at home, on the sofa with Shirley, watching a special report about the so called "peace dividend" from the ending of the Cold War. The narrator was suggesting that the opposite was occurring, and that the American economy was getting hard hit by cutback's in Defense spending. The telephone rang, and I reached over to answer it. "Hi, Kenny." It was Cindy. I couldn't believe how affected I was just from hearing her voice again. It was almost like when you first realized you'd been holding your breath for a long time. I felt the air coming back into my emotional lungs. "Hi, Cindy. I'm glad you called." "Are you alone? Can we talk?" "Shirley's here with me. We can always talk." "Can we speak privately?" I told her to hang on. I whispered to Shirley that it was Cindy, and that she wanted to speak to me in private. Shirley got up, heading off towards the kitchen. "Okay, Cindy, we're alone. We can talk freely now." "I've been thinking about us since Thursday night, Kenny. I know things are still the same as they were before we made love. Joyce and the others, and the children. I know you love all of them. and I knew how it was before anything happened. Something did happen though, and when it did, it changed things for me. In my head, and in my heart. I didn't think it would change things, but it did. I don't think I can live like the other women do. Maybe I could, if it was one other woman, or maybe even two, but not to be only one out of seven. I need more of you then that." "I was afraid you were going to tell me something like this. I even tried to explain this to Joyce, before we ever really got started. I think I already knew this wasn't something you could adjust easily to. Really, none of the others, except for Joyce, adjusted easily to it. Joyce did, because it was partly her idea, and she wanted the other girls, for both of us." "What can I do? There must be something I can do to make you want to just be with me, or with both Joyce and me?" I could feel how heavy my heart was getting. I knew how this had to end. "Cindy, I really wish I had something positive to say to you right now, but there isn't anything. I can't get along without any of them. I wouldn't even want to try. You're asking me to make a choice, and all I can tell you is that all of them will always be a part of me. I understand how you feel, and I've felt like you do, and so have Emily, Brenda, and Shirley. Sharing like we do isn't that easy. Love always wants more, it wants everything." "You aren't giving me anything to even have a hope for, Kenny." "You aren't giving me anything to hope for either. That's the problem. We have an unreasonable situation, and there isn't any hope for resolving it, not unless one of us changes their position. We could pretend there was hope, but, in the end, we'd both find out there wasn't any, not for what each of us needs. I've already told you that I could never give up any of the other women, that I'll never be able to give you what you say you need from me." "If I hang up, it will mean we can't even try to work anything out between us. How about if I were to stay here in Birmingham? I'll get a little house, just for the two of us. You can come here, to be with me, for one week every two months, but just to be with me. When you're here, it will just be the two of us, we won't even talk about the others." I knew this represented a huge sacrifice for her. On the face of it, it was a very reasonable, even generous offer for her to have made. The problem with it was that I was already married to the others. I wasn't willing or able to put them out of my thoughts for a week, not even for a day. They were so much a part of me, I couldn't imagine leaving them for a week at a time. "Cindy, I'm married, and I want to stay married. You can join us, and it would make me very happy if you did join our marriage. That's the only option I can see that might work for us. If you can't do that, then the only thing I can suggest is that we break it off now, before we get so much in love that we're unable to do it." "You don't love me enough to even think about what I suggested?" "I thought about it. It won't work, because I don't have one minute to give up being who I am now. You think I could just forget my family, for a whole week, to be with you? You could have as much of me as I have to give you, but not if it means me giving up what I love and cherish the most, my family. I invited you to be a part of my family. That was as much as I could offer, and you tell me it isn't enough. I'm sorry." She waited another minute before replacing the receiver in it's cradle. I was close to crying. I wished that Joyce could be here with me, because I knew she'd feel just as bad as I did. I wanted to be with her, to help her share the disappointment, and the pain. I got up, going over to the kitchen, to find Shirley. When we went to bed, we didn't say too much, because we didn't need to. She could tell, just by looking at me, what had happened. We went to bed, but we didn't make love. We did hold each other, and somehow, holding Shirley was like holding all my other wives. I might have lost Cindy, but I still had all that I needed. I hoped Joyce would feel the same way. I went to sleep feeling bad, and I woke up feeling the same way. What I marvelled at the most though, was, even while feeling terrible about probably losing Cindy, I still felt very strong and positive about all the good aspects of my life. In the past, when I was hurt or troubled, I'd forget all my other advantages, getting lost in what was wrong, without appreciating all that was still good for me. It was strange that I was feeling bad about Cindy, and good that being with Cindy, that first time, had put me in touch with the strength to draw on the rest of the love that was surrounding me. I was part of a whole. My family had provided me with what I hadn't previously been able to provide for myself. When I drove to work, I knew I had changed for the better. I had more confidence in my future. It was this confidence, this optimism, that made me begin to believe that our family could still, somehow, provide that safe haven for Cindy. When I got to the office, the first thing I did was place a call to Joyce. I started in by telling her about the last conversation I'd had with Cindy, telling her what Cindy had finally proposed, and my reaction to it. As I'd expected, Joyce was upset. She was very concerned for Cindy. "I'm worried about her, Kenny. She's alone again, and she has to be feeling bad about this." "I was wondering if you could come down here, Joyce. I think Cindy relates better to you than to anyone else. Maybe you could explain it to her better than I did, about what our whole family means to all of us. I tried, but I don't think I handled the explanation very well. What I was hoping was that Cindy could still be a part of our family, without necessarily having this relationship with me. She seems to think it has to be only about us, but I want her to see it could be good for her to have the rest of it too. It isn't just the sex part, its being part of a whole family." "Kenny, right now I have too much going on at work to come down there. I'll be down in two more weeks anyway. She and I will talk on the phone, in the mean time, and it will give her time to understand that she can't have you just for herself. She needs to face up to that, to accept it like we all had to. Until she does that, it won't do much good for me to come down there and talk to her about joining us." I told Joyce about my phone conversation with Frank Clooney, about other possible funding alternatives, This ended up upsetting her more than the situation with Cindy had seemed to. She told me again, that I was interfering in something that my father had already told me he was handling himself. I tried to explain why I was concerned, but she didn't budge at all from her position. When we got off the phone, I briefly considered calling Frank back, to tell him I was going to let my father handle things his way. In the end, I decided to give Frank time to make his calls, to find out if what I was thinking about was even a possibility. My Dad hadn't specifically told me not to look into my own idea. What he'd said was that he was going to try to get the bonding company to alter their contract, to ease his own concerns. The primary concern was still with us getting the money. If I came up with a better, safer, way to do that, I didn't think my father would be upset, or feel like I was poaching on his territory. I thought Joyce was overstating the potential problems this would cause me with my Dad. At work, Kyle and I had a meeting for most of the morning, planning out the best way for him to get the independent route people to begin putting our vending products out on their existing customers shelves. "Kenny, after we tell them about the commission involved, we're going to need to worry about them not wanting to tie up space on their trucks with our bread and rolls. Did you think anymore about what I said about holding back two percent of the gross sales as a reserve for bailing out the drivers who get into financial problems when their credit accounts go sour? We've almost always helped them out in the past, and we did it with money we made from adding a little to the price of everything." "Don't you think twenty percent of their commission is a little bit steep to withhold, Kyle? I'm sure their losses don't even approach that amount." "We're talking about two pennies on every unit sold. Five percent, not twenty. When these accounts go bad, it can add up quickly, and when it does, you'd be surprised to see how much money is actually involved. I know it happened to us often enough that we could never get ourselves ahead of it, not even with the extra money we held out from the drivers for all the goods we were selling them." He was right, in that I'd never before been in a situation where I was selling directly to route drivers. We had experienced large chains defaulting though, and I knew it was just one of the hazards of our type of business. We also made allowance for it by factoring the possibility of loss into our pricing models. It wasn't the same as cutting their commissions by twenty percent. That took away their incentive to push hard for placing our products. "Look, go ahead and withhold one cent per unit. We'll try to get by with that at first. If necessary, I can get another penny per unit out of the company, from the money they're selling the product to us for. We'll charge it back to product promotional expenses. I really want to see how much extra these sales make for your drivers, because it might be enough to have us expand this type of sales model to other areas of the country." "There is also the question about how this company is going to profit from distributing these other products. How are we being paid?" "For one thing, all of your salary is being paid now, directly from the home office. You work at Macklinson's, but not just for them. For another, we're building a plant to produce our own vending products, these products will be, primarily, for distribution down here in this area. This plant, in Nashville, will be a wholly owned subsidiary, controlled entirely, by Macklinson's, from right here, in this office. In the planned expansion, we're putting all of the Consolidated bakery plants that we retained for ourselves, under the Macklinson's Bakeries brand name. From Texas to Florida, most of what we sell will be going out under this logo, and this includes whatever baking goods and cereals we sell anywhere here in the South." "Did you talk to my father about doing this?" "No, why should I? Your father already made his choice, and that was to quit the company. I don't want you discussing our expansion plans with him either. I shared them with you, because you have to know about them so that what I'm telling you makes better sense." "Maybe he wouldn't have decided to quit, not if he had known what you were planning. Uncle Larry kept on pushing him, so he needed to do something." "Yes, well I've been over this ground already, with your father, and with Phil too. I know they think I should have just handled Larry myself, but that isn't how people run a business. That isn't how we run our operations. Your father was given a clear choice, and he made it, choosing his own, personal comfort, over his duty to this company." I could see that Kyle was becoming agitated, and I knew he was loyal to his family. He'd quit once before, to demonstrate this to me. I didn't want to push this so far that he felt like he had no other choice but to quit us again. On the other hand, I needed him to take back a clear message to his family, a message that I wasn't about to tolerate any more of their putting their personal and family interests in front of their company responsibilities. "I'm all for family, Kyle, and I'd sacrifice a lot to keep my family safe and secure. I've always found the best way to do that was to make sure I was first taking care of my business and financial responsibilities. When there was a conflict, I usually took care of the business needs first. When there was a business conflict that involved my family, we resolved it privately, among ourselves, but we didn't do that at the expense of our business, or our employees. That's what your father did when he decided to quit, rather than to fire Larry, like he knew he was obligated to do. I understand his decision, but it was the wrong one to make, if he wanted to be an effective leader of this business. You don't have the luxury of putting your personal needs, or family considerations, ahead of your commitment to the company." "Family is more important down here. With us, family is everything." "Maybe so. Maybe this is one of the biggest reasons Macklinson's is now owned by people who put their business needs ahead of their family needs. I wish you could spend a week or two with my father, to see the difference between his commitment, and that of your father. If you did, you'd understand what I'm saying to you. Most of the time, business and family can co-exist, but when they can't, business has to come first, to protect both." "I wasn't raised that way." "I wasn't either. I knew nothing about the sacrifices that owning a business entailed. I had to learn it, and when I did, I still resented it. I used to feel bad for my mother, that my father seemed to care a lot more about running his business than he did about being with us. I learned that he wasn't just doing this for himself, but for us too, and for the people who depended on us. I have a lot of responsibility now too, and I can't just put it aside to do what I'd like to be doing. That is the price you have to pay, to accomplish anything lasting and worthwhile. If you aren't willing to pay that price, then don't accept a leadership position." "I don't think I could fire any members of my family either." "That has to be a personal choice, but you better hope you don't ever put yourself in a position where you might have to do just that. Your father didn't do what he needed to do. It seems like owning this company made all of you think there wasn't anything that could happen that would have any permanent consequences. Phil told me that all of you have quit your jobs in the past, usually over some disagreement with the family. Maybe that was possible, back when your family owned this company, but it sure isn't like that now. The next time you resign, you won't ever be eligible to return here. That would apply to any of the other family members who quit during this past week. I'll give a man one new chance, but only after I'm certain he understands I'm not ever going to let him repeat the same mistake." "Does this mean you're going to hire all of them back, if they come and ask for their jobs again?" "No. What it means is that I'll decide each case individually, hiring back anyone I think has a positive contribution to make to this company. I'm not hiring any more Macklinson people this month though. I want all of them to take the time to think, to decide for themselves, whether they want to work in a real business, or not. If they don't, they can go out and start their own business, running it however it suits them best. If they do, then they have to understand they'll need to work by my rules, not theirs." "What about Larry? Are you going to give him another chance too?" From Kyle's tone, it was easy to see he was hoping I'd say no, that I wouldn't rehire Larry. "Same thing applies to Larry. Only difference I'd make with him would be to bring him up here first, then tell him exactly what it would take to get him fired again. It wouldn't take much either, and if anything happened to make it necessary to fire him, I'd expect it to be handled by another Macklinson. Right now, that would be you, Kyle." "Me? But why? He wouldn't be working for me. Why would I need to do it?" "It would be a test. You just got done telling me you didn't think you could fire a member of your family. Your father told me the same thing. I just got finished saying you needed to put our business needs ahead of your family needs. This would be the perfect test for you." "You'd fire me if I didn't fire him?" "I'd fire you as soon as you didn't do what I told you to do. I'd make damn sure that Larry understood that he wasn't just risking his own job again. I can't use people who won't do what I tell them to do. If I tell you to fire Larry, it will be because he did something that went against the rules he agreed to follow. When I first started working with my Dad, he had me go down and fire some people. It isn't fun, but, sometimes, you have to do it, because the business runs better with them gone." "Maybe I could fire Larry, but I couldn't fire my brother, or several of my cousins." "Let me know which cousins, and I won't hire them back, or Jerry either. As far as Larry, he has a lot of good qualities that we could use. I'd like to have him back, as long as he stuck to only taking care of the part of the business that is his concern." "Jerry didn't do anything to not get hired back." "No, and I have nothing against him. I'm not hiring him back, in order to help you out, because you just told me you couldn't fire him if I told you to do it. I have big plans for you Kyle, and they're important enough to me, that I'd be willing to not hire back any of the rest of your family, including Larry, just to make sure you don't lose your job for not doing what I tell you to do. You see me before the end of the month, and give me a list of who you couldn't fire. I won't hire any of them back." Kyle looked at me, finally understanding what I'd been telling him. I put my own business needs ahead of his family needs, and I was going to insist he do it as well. I was holding his whole family hostage to his acceptance of my demand. This was going to be the test, not whether he could fire whoever I told him to, but whether he would give me a list of names to prevent my hiring those family members back in the first place. I knew this was going to cause a family meeting, and that plenty of Macklinson people would be cursing my name. After Kyle left, I spent a few hours working out logistical solutions for the vending product roll out that he and I had spent time discussing. Even though I didn't know what form his final decision would take, I had to proceed as though he would be here to implement the planned roll out. I didn't leave the office until just before six. I had a lot going on, both business and personal, and I had been thinking constantly about both. I found it somewhat ironic that my argument with Kyle, was about business taking precedence over any family or personal considerations, while my discussion with Cindy, his sister, centered around my unwillingness to make changes to what I already had, to make some some special accommodation for her stated needs. They weren't connected, but they were being associated together in my mind. It was like having two train engines running in the same direction on the same track. For whatever reason, I wasn't able to separate them in my thoughts. I believe there had been some spillover when I spoke to Kyle. I had to be careful that I wasn't taking out any of my frustrations, over the problems with Cindy, on Kyle. It was upsetting enough, just recognizing that it was a possibility. Was I taking hostages with Kyle, because I thought Cindy was doing that with me? Holding herself hostage, to try to get me to give her what I couldn't? Was any part of what I was doing, me preparing to use those family member jobs as a bargaining chip, to leverage Cindy into doing what I wanted her to do? Was I guilty of using the business to further my own selfish, personal, goals? Most importantly, I thought, if I was trying to do that, could it possibly work? By the time I got home, I was becoming consumed with the possibilities, while hating it that I would stoop to doing something so unfair and underhanded. When I walked through the front door, Cindy was sitting in the living room, laughing with Shirley, about something one of them had said. When she saw me, she stood up and ran to me, throwing herself into my arms. I held onto her, hugging her close to me, watching as Shirley got up too, coming over for her own hugs and kisses. I didn't know what had happened, but, whatever it was, I was in favor of it. I really believed that Cindy needed time to get used to the idea that we were all equal parts of the same marriage. I shared her with all of the family, just like she needed to share me with them too. "I talked to Joyce, and she said it was okay if I just stayed here with you, while you're down here." I wondered how any of that was different than what she already had before she decided to leave? It didn't change my relationship with any of my wives, or with my children. To Cindy, it obviously was some distinction that she could accept, whereas, before, she felt like she was being asked to share me with six other women. Did this mean she wouldn't go back to Ridgeline with us? I didn't plan to be spending time in Alabama, every week, not after things got set up, and were running smoothly down here. I needed to clarify that to her, to let her know that my being in Alabama was only a temporary situation. We ate our dinner and talked together, the three of us. No one mentioned anything about our other relationships, or about the problems we each had with how things were. Later, sitting in the living room, after dinner, watching television, no one said anything about our sleeping arrangements either, although Shirley was displaying some obvious signs that it was a very good day for her. By now, all I had to do was look at her, to know when this was happening. I was hoping someone would say something soon, so we could discuss what sleeping arrangements we should choose. The way I felt, I could see myself taking care of both of them. I was hoping someone would suggest our going to bed early, and that the girls would be flipping a coin to see which one got to go first with me. "When I talked to Joyce, Kenny, she told me that everyone else had agreed that I could be here with you, like we are now, but, only if the wife who was down here with you agreed that we could all sleep together, in the same bed. I talked to Shirley when I first came back here, and she said it was okay with her." Cindy looked at me, waiting for me to say it was okay with me too. How many times had I failed to give Joyce the credit she deserved for her ability to solve difficult problems for me? Too many times. I resolved, once again, not to ever do it again. Thinking about that reminded me of what she and I had been arguing about, earlier, on the telephone. She wanted me to stay out of my Dad's financing arrangements. The reasons she'd given for it hadn't made much sense to me. What I wanted to do was get up and take both my lovelies to bed. In fact, that was actually all I wanted to think about at the time. I was reminded, instead, of what I'd been telling Kyle earlier, back in Gene's office, about all of us putting our business needs in front of either family or personal considerations. I must have groaned out loud or something, because Shirley asked me what was wrong. "I need to call my father. Cindy reminded me about it when she mentioned Joyce just now. Why don't you guys go in and get yourselves ready for bed, and I'll go phone him, so we can get this taken care of? It shouldn't take more than just a few minutes." I watched the two of them heading off to the master bedroom together, cursing myself as I tried to think about the best way to present my case to my Dad. I still wanted him to consider using other options for raising the money, and I still believed we would be a lot better off if he did business with a different company, not the one he seemed to be seriously considering. I dialed the personal phone number to my Dad's study over at Mama's house, determined to tell him everything I'd asked Frank to do, but to tell him, also, that I was prepared to let him speak to Frank himself, then decide what he thought was the best thing to do about raising the money to finance our newest expansion phase. Naturally, my father had been thinking about these things too, and, just as naturally, he was sitting in his study at home, wanting to discuss his thoughts on the subject with someone just like me. We spent more than two hours on the phone together, going over all of the possibilities. He'd been thinking about what I'd said, and had made some phone calls on his own. He had two meetings scheduled for the next week, in New York, appointments to talk with people who were familiar with alternative methods for raising the kind of capital we were looking for. I enjoyed talking business with my father, never failing to learn something when I did so. Unfortunately, I wasn't in a good mental state to be able to concentrate on what he was telling me. My own thoughts were on a different subject, namely, what might be going on in the big bedroom, while I was sitting in the living room, stuck talking to my Dad. When I finally got him to realize that it was getting late, and I had a full schedule of things I needed to do in the morning, it was after eleven o'clock. We said our goodbye's, my father actually thanking me for spending the time to think about his problem. I felt better that he didn't think I'd been trying to go around him. All I had wanted was something I could be comfortable with. It looked now like he now wanted the same. When I finally got to the bedroom, Shirley and Cindy were sleeping in the center of the bed. They were snuggled together, and I could see Cindy's hand resting between Shirley's damp thighs. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth before hopping into bed next to Cindy. I pressed up against her, managing, as I did so, to place my own hand so that my fingers were pressing between her thighs, and my forefinger was resting up against the cleft of her sex. It was still damp, the kind of damp you get from having someone licking you repeatedly. In spite of my disappointment at missing out on all the fun, I was content that Shirley and Cindy had managed to enjoy spending some time together. I hoped we could have a repeat performance the next night, this time with me there, to help liven up the proceedings. I wondered how Cindy would react, to being in the same bed, when I got Shirley fully wound up, to the point where she was screaming out her desire for me to do some nearly impossible things to her? ------- Chapter 43 I woke up early in the morning, my hand still nestled in between Cindy's thighs. I needed to get up to use the bathroom, but I hesitated, not wanting to disturb or awaken either of them. This thought lasted only long enough for my brain to process the urgency my bladder had been broadcasting. Cindy moaned softly, as I slowly removed my hand, but she didn't fully waken. I was cleaned up and ready to got to work when Shirley walked into the kitchen, as naked as could be, with a mischievous smile on her face. She came straight over to me, and, immediately began trying to lure me back into the bedroom. I was faced with a difficult choice. Unfortunately, I had arranged an eight o'clock planning meeting with Kyle. He was going to tell me who he wanted as his assistants for the new sales and distribution network he was forming for us. When I held Shirley, explaining why I couldn't accept her very tempting proposal, she pouted, telling me that I'd disappointed Cindy and her the night before. I told her that neither of them were half as disappointed as I'd been, but promising to try to come home as early as I could manage it. It was difficult to leave her like that, but I did. Kyle had picked two assistants, telling me that he wanted to reserve adding a third, until after I hired back one of his cousins, Wayne Jennings, his Aunt Patty's oldest boy. I remembered Wayne, a quiet man, with almost no hair on his head. I wasn't sure if he was balding, or if he just liked to shave his head, like some of the athletes did. "I'm a little surprised that you'd pick Wayne for what is essentially a sales and marketing position. He didn't impress me as someone with much sales potential." I had tried to voice my misgivings, without coming right out and telling Kyle he was definitely making a mistake. I had previously discussed with him the fact that he was free to choose whomever he wanted, anyone from within the company. "No, Wayne isn't a salesman, but he's a real organized person. He can keep track of everything for me, and I'm pretty sure that's the part where I'm the weakest right now. We need to get a system set up that lets us know what we're using, who's selling what, and how much of everything we're going to be needing for the future. Wayne can do all that, in his sleep. It just comes easier to him than it does to anyone else." "We have people and programs that do all that for you. With our computers, all you need to do is bring in the daily sales invoices, and we'll have people that put all the data into the computer. Once it's in there, you'll be able to call up reports about anything you need to. My wife will be able to see what you're selling, so she will start sending new product to replace it, right away." I made a mental note to ask my father to send down one of our computer people to set all of that up for us in this plant. My trading experience had shown me the value of being computerized. Joyce had changed things around so that all of the people involved with her had their own computer terminals. Having a main frame computer was expensive, but the information it developed for you more than paid for the costs involved. What we saved in the research needed to prepare sales reports each week was a staggering sum. Now, that information was available to us with two or three keystrokes from Joyce's office. "I'd still like to have Wayne. Someone has to get all of that information, then make sure it gets over to the right people. Wayne will do whatever I tell him to, and I'm sure he isn't one of the ones I'd ever have to fire. I called him last night, and he said he'd like to work with me, whenever you let him get hired back on. I told him it won't be til next month, but he's been busy going hunting and fishing, so he doesn't mind being off none from work. Wayne's not even married." Kyle had picked one of the independent route drivers to assist him. A man named Henry Shutter, who I didn't know. Kyle told me that Henry was the best salesman, besides himself, that the company had. Kyle wanted Henry to help him open up new convenience store accounts, which would later be sold to new route drivers. When I questioned him about how this was going to work, he assured me that proceeds from the sale of each route would be used to pay for training and promotions that he'd be running. When I asked him about Henry's own route, Kyle told me that it was being sold to a friend of Henry's. Henry was buying himself a new delivery truck, one that would hold a lot more product. He would use this to open up the new accounts. Kyle told me he had picked Sonny Donaldson, one of the night production people to work as his marketing assistant. I didn't know Sonny either, but when Kyle told me he and Sonny had been friends since the first grade, I began to regret my decision to allow Kyle to pick his own support staff. In the afternoon, I started meeting with some people who were going to be opening bread and cereal accounts in the larger cities for us. They were part of a wholesale account sales team that my father had just ordered moved down to the South. Previously, the team had been busy working on the west coast. Mostly, they went in and negotiated with the larger grocery retailers. My father was already producing some products using the Macklinson's recipes, mostly just bread and dinner rolls. His plan was to supply enough baked product, produced in his own plants, to allow us to cover the area, until all the other Consolidated plants were back up operating again. Once that took place, they would be producing sufficient baked goods to take over this function for themselves. My Dad had teams of people at each plant, evaluating what needed to be done, in order to reopen them again. Early reports indicated that a lot of money would need to be spent to bring these bakery's back up to acceptable standards. Consolidated had been cutting too many corners with their maintenance and upkeep, and they had let the operational status of their plant equipment become more of a liability than an asset. Mostly, the people I was meeting with, had only stopped by to let me know they had begun working in Florida and Louisiana already, but would be keeping away from selling to anything but the very largest of the chain grocers. These were the accounts that were structured with complicated inventory financing, and promotional considerations that were designed to move a great amount of product for us. There would be cooperative ad campaigns and shared advertising expenses. There was a separate team, coming in later, to open accounts with the smaller grocers, grocers with fifteen or fewer retail locations. Joyce called me at three, wanting to find out why I hadn't had sex with Shirley and Cindy the night before. I told her about spending over two hours on the telephone with my father, letting her know that he and I were now in complete agreement about how to proceed to secure the financing he was seeking. I thanked her too, for telling me what I needed to do with my father, and for whatever it was she did to convince Cindy to come back to give things some more time. "She wanted to come back, but she didn't know how to do it. When I told her what you said about wanting her to be part of the family, just to feel safe, without any sex being necessary, she finally admitted to me that only part of her problem is the sharing, but another part of it is with Dale and Eddie coming down to the rental house. She's afraid for what her family and friends will have to put up with because of how other people will react to them staying with you. She says she's worried about what these people's reaction will be." "Because they're black? I haven't heard anything prejudiced being said by any members of Cindy's family. I haven't seen any of that kind of trouble while I've been down here." I did remember Gene asking me something about my living with four wives, and two black girls, but that was all he said about it. He had just asked if what he'd heard was true. When I said it was, he'd made no negative comments to me. "I'm telling you what Cindy told me. Maybe you need to ask her about it yourself. How would you feel if Cindy stayed away next week, when Eddie and Dale both come down?" Joyce asked the question quietly. I sensed something in her voice, something I wasn't able to identify. "I don't know. Do you think Cindy's prejudiced, or only worried about what others will think?" I didn't want to commit to an answer without knowing what Joyce either already knew, or was thinking. "I think it's mostly worry because of the time period she grew up in, the geographical area where she was raised. We can't know what she's heard all her life. She said she doesn't really know that many black people. How many black people work at the Alabama plant?" I hadn't thought about it too much, but after Joyce asked the question, I realized that there really weren't many, and, of those that I'd seen, most of them were female. There were two black men I'd seen working at the plant. There were about one hundred twenty employees at the Birmingham plant, not counting the route drivers, and about ten of the employees were black. That wasn't too different of a ratio from our own plant in Bolling, but in Bolling, our black community was a lot lower percentage of the total population than Birmingham's black people were. I didn't know if we could make any valid assumptions based on that. "I'd say about ten percent, maybe a couple people less than that. About the same number as the number of Macklinson family members who worked here, before they all quit. I don't see any racial problems here though. All the people here seem to be working with everyone else okay. There isn't any friction, or any signs of prejudice that I've noticed. "I guess I'd be troubled, a lot, if Cindy turned out to be prejudiced like that herself. Maybe not so much if it was just her being worried about what people would say and think. Nobody goes out deliberately looking for that kind of trouble." We had experienced one or two incidents ourselves, where people had seemed to take offense that Dale and Eddie were living with us. So far, it hadn't amounted to so much that we couldn't just ignore it. "My take on it, Kenny, from when I spoke to her, was that she was more afraid of what outsiders would think, then about any of the members of her immediate family. I think you need to ask her about it, sometime when it's just the two of you talking. If it's going to be a problem, we need to decide ahead of time what to do about it." After that phone call, I had a difficult time getting back to the things I needed to attend to. I had been trying to do my grain trading over the telephone, without the benefit of having my computer programs, and the real time price data displays I'd grown used to having. What I was doing in Alabama, with my trading, was more like it had been before I'd begun using all this other information. I didn't have the luxury of knowing the complex, ever changing, price relationships, between the grains, metals, and currencies. As a result, I tended to trade much more cautiously. My results, while still good, weren't nearly as good. My profits, since coming to Alabama, were way down. I needed to get set up with the data feeds down there, so I could resume my normal method of trading. I called several of my floor traders, hoping to find the names of people in Birmingham who could come out and set me up with the five different live feeds I was used to having. I already had the necessary computers and programs, taken from my home office in Lawrence. Once I had the feeds, I'd be up and operating in no time. There were other annoyances and distractions that I needed to deal with too, because I wasn't living back home in Kansas. There, I had a whole house full of people, all ready and willing to take care of the day to day chores and errands that seemed to continually crop up down where I now was. Having this group of helpful people had left me free to isolate on specific problems, and concentrate on finding good solutions for them. It was the way I preferred, because it allowed me blocks of time to really think about one thing. In Alabama, I kept finding myself more distracted, my thinking time interrupted and fragmented. This left me unable to enjoy any long, uninterrupted, periods of time, periods where I could lose myself in thought. Joyce was the main person who took it upon herself to make sure I wasn't being disturbed. She was able to do that by being there, to take care of things that people would normally be disturbing me about. Without her around to be a buffer for me, I was operating at a much lower level of efficiency. Perhaps I'd just gotten spoiled, always expecting that I'd have that kind of freedom to work on my problems. All I knew was that I didn't feel like I was getting as much accomplished as I should, and I was starting to resent having to spend so much time away from most of my family. I managed to find a service that could provide me with four of the data feeds I was used to having. He gave me the name and phone number for someone who he thought might have access to the fifth feed. He also told me he could come out on Wednesday, to set things up for me, but he said I'd need to pay extra for the signal splitters and the switches the four separate feeds would require. I called the number the first guy had given me, but it turned out he didn't carry that particular price data feed. He gave me the name and number of the man who did. I called this new number and was told I could have it installed and working on Friday. I left the office, satisfied that I had managed to get at least one problem solved. Driving back to the house, I mentally rehearsed different scenarios. I wanted to be alone with Cindy, and ask her some questions about what the things were that were troubling her about Dale and Eddie. I had no plans to give up Dale or Eddie, and I didn't think I could accept knowing that Cindy was operating from her own personal convictions of prejudice. I needed to find out what it was she feared. We didn't end up having any chance to get into a discussion about Dale and Eddie. Instead, we ended up with the three of us deciding to take a nap together, at five thirty in the late afternoon. I'd been in bed with Cindy and Joyce together, but had heard very little of what they were doing. Most of what I knew came from things Joyce had said. I hadn't tried to get any confirmation of what Joyce was saying for myself, wanting to allow them some semblance of privacy. Cindy had been very skittish at that time, and I was fearful of embarrassing her. This time, it wasn't going to be like that. Shirley and Cindy must have already worked out what each of them wanted to do, or see, with me there with them. Together, they started treating me just like Joyce and I might treat another of my wives, when we were together in bed with her. That isn't to say I had anything to complain about. I liked, at times, being the one taking the passive role. I allowed the two of them to do with me as they wished. It wasn't much of a nap, and I certainly didn't end up being relaxed and refreshed in time for a late dinner, like they had promised I would be. Instead, I ended up feeling very wrung out and exhausted. They used me to satisfy their own pleasures, especially Shirley. It changed the way I thought about each of them. This was the first time I'd ever seen Shirley acting like that, being so aggressive with another woman. This ended up making her act more demanding and aggressive with me as well. Cindy seemed to lose all that reticence and shyness I'd associated with her. When we'd made love before, she'd been the one who I'd had to act upon, rather than an actor in her own right. She allowed Shirley to take the dominant role with her, but, with me, she was definitely acting more aggressive and demanding. Several times she pulled me away from Shirley, wanting me to do to her what I'd been doing to Shirley. Each time she did that, Shirley would come over and sit astride Cindy's face, forcing her to lick her. I went along with everything, at first, letting them do whatever they would. The effect of being the dominant partner seemed to drive Shirley to a higher state of arousal. When I thought she was becoming too aggressive or demanding, I sprang into action, forcing her off of me, so that she was pinned under me, face down, and then I placed myself inside her again, from on top and behind her. I knew, from years of past experience, that Shirley loved to feel small and dainty. At nearly six three, dainty wasn't something she could pull off easily. She was already in a high state of arousal, having been manhandled into a submissive posture, so this fed right into her desire to feel somewhat smaller, more vulnerable. In the position I was now in, it didn't take much to cause her to feel real vulnerability. With that feeling came even greater arousal for her. Cindy had moved off to the side when I had quickly reversed positions on Shirley. She looked concerned about what I was doing, but only for the first two or three minutes. By then, Shirley's responsivness to what I was doing had become quite vocal, and got increasingly louder. Cindy could hear that I was being encouraged to go ahead with even more of what I was doing, being asked to slam into Shirley with increasing force and power. It was almost like I was being taunted into putting forth greater effort. When Shirley reached a hand out, and starting pulling on one of Cindy's legs, at first I was concerned. The look Cindy had on her face, seemed to be one of fright. I was almost going to tell Shirley to take it easy when she pulled her to her with one final hard yank, and dove straight for Cindy's pussy. That was when it became somewhat surreal for me. Cindy just laid there, eyes open, staring back at my face, as I pumped my cock in and out of Shirley, from behind. While all this was taking place, the two of us staring at each other, Shirley continued her voracious oral attack on Cindy's pussy. She was really going to town with it, using her whole face, not just her lips and tongue. I took notice of what the girls were doing, but not to the point where I was dwelling on it to any great extent. I'd seen this, many times before, with all my wives. The interesting part, to me, was the way Cindy kept staring at my face, seeming as though she was trying to gauge the level of my reaction to what Shirley was busy doing to her. During all this time she was watching me, Cindy herself wasn't showing any reaction, at least not facially, to what Shirley was doing to her. That was the surreal part, her holding back from reacting to Shirley eating her out so aggressively. I'd never seen Shirley being so forceful either. Cindy's lack of reacting to Shirley's tonguing ended abruptly. Shirley stopped her ministrations to Cindy when she lifted her face out of Cindy's pussy, just long enough to shout her instructions to me. She began by telling me I needed to fuck her better, then ended by telling me how sweet and juicy Cindy's pussy tasted. This change of stimulation provoked an instant reaction from Cindy. She reached her hands over behind Shirley's head, pulling her face back to where she wanted it, arching her hips up, and moving Shirley's face back and forth against the exact location she needed it. I assisted her in this effort by leaning my hips more forward, thus severely limiting the range of front and back motion that Shirley now had. It looked to me like Shirley had stolen a page out of Joyce's play book, when she started biting and nipping all around Cindy's thighs and pussy. Not tiny little gentle nips either. I saw reddish marks beginning to appear on Cindy's inner thigh. Again, I grew concerned, and was about to say something. This was when Cindy started thrashing around and began yelling at Shirley to bite her harder. I felt my load of cum beginning to boil up inside my nuts when she started doing that. I also felt Shirley's pussy beginning to clamp down tight on my dick, signalling that she too was getting ready to have a good orgasm. Somehow, I managed to hold off for a little while longer, straining my stomach muscles as I used both arms to move Shirley back and forth on my diamond hard dick. Something let loose inside Shirley, and it coincided with Cindy finally closing her eyes, and starting to moan, and make a series of yipping animal noises. Shirley was having the big one, and I could tell. No amount of arm movement could make my dick move in or out. I was trapped, while her pussy spasmed, clutching wildly against the length of my cock. The heat from the interior walls of her sheath was tremendous, and then, suddenly, my prick was again released from that tremendous pressure holding it in place. I felt the presence of liquids, and it wasn't from my cum, because I was still holding that in. Shirley was squirting around my cock, and, with three or four quick strokes, the juices were being forced out, with all the noises this entailed. A lot of squishing noises, accompanied by the sound of liquid being moved out under pressure. That did it for me, and I let go then too. When I got done, my whole body felt weak and exhausted. I rolled off Shirley, plopping down on the mattress on the other side of the bed, away from Cindy's side. It had been intense, but the whole thing had only lasted for a little more than thirty minutes. I was still drained, to the point where I didn't even want to think about moving. Only my mind was working, the rest of me had shut down. Things had changed. I knew that much. Shirley had changed, and my previous knowledge and opinions, concerning her sexual comfort level with women, now needed to be reevaluated, and adjusted accordingly. Cindy too, even though I hadn't known her long enough, or well enough, to have formed many definite impressions about her sexuality. There were some definite appetites of hers which had come into play during this little nap session we'd just enjoyed. Roles were changing, had changed. This was much different from what I'd expected. There had been no reluctance shown by either woman. I had no sense that this was something they were doing just to please me. This had been more like Joyce and Brenda going at it, each trying to wring the most pleasure possible from the encounter. I felt just a tiny bit superfluous to the proceedings, kind of like a dildo, only there to increase the pleasure, only a tool, like Shirley's screwdrivers. There had been a definite connection between Shirley and Cindy. Much stronger than what I'd seen occurring between Cindy and Brenda the week before. There was that other part too, Cindy staring at my face, watching me for my reaction to what Shirley was doing to her. What was that all about? My reverie was disturbed by Cindy getting up off the bed and going into the bathroom. Shirley hadn't stirred, not since sliding down to lay flat on the mattress, after I rolled off of her. Cindy was in the bathroom for a couple of minutes, and when she came out, she came around the bed and climbed in next to me. I welcomed her in close to me, putting an arm around her as she snuggled in to be even closer. She felt good like that, a nice fit I thought. "Are you upset, Kenny?" I wasn't upset, more like confused. It was mostly because I knew now that most of my assumptions about Cindy hadn't been accurate. There was even more of an adjustment I needed to make concerning Shirley, but it was all connected together somehow too. "No. I'm just a little confused, not upset." "Me too. I've never had this kind of reaction to another girl. It really surprised me, I can tell you that too. I wasn't expecting her to be so... I don't know, so forceful, demanding, in control?" "I know exactly what you mean. Shirley usually isn't anything like how she was with us tonight." "I can hear you, you know?" Shirley turned over so that she was on her side, facing us. I looked at her, lifting my other arm up, inviting her to join Cindy and me in our after sex cuddle. Shirley seemed to hesitate a short time before finally moving over and turning so she was over on her back, my outstretched arm underneath her head and neck. I pulled her in a little tighter to me, knowing Shirley liked to be held close after having a strong orgasm. I saw Shirley's arm reach over me, to take hold of Cindy's hand, clasping it in hers. They rested their clasped hands on top of my stomach. "Tell me, Shirley, were you surprised about anything that happened with us tonight? Did you notice anything very different?" I looked over at her when I asked the question, deciding not to say anything to color my query, not wishing to signal either my approval or disapproval. In fact, I didn't know how I felt about what had happened, other than knowing I had been very surprised by it. "I don't know if I'd call it surprised, Kenny. It started out with me trying to show you I could be more like Joyce in bed. When I tried that, other things happened to me. Is that what you mean?" "No, I'm not sure if I meant that. What did you mean? Why would you want to show me that?" Shirley had never been at all like Joyce in bed. Joyce was aggressive, ready to either dominate or else be dominated. Shirley had never been like that, a predator. Well, at least she hadn't in my presence, not before this time. "Why? Because I seem to be getting lost in the shuffle, with all the changes that are taking place. I'm not as pretty as either Emily or Brenda, especially Brenda, and I'm not all new and exciting like Eddie and Dale, and now, there's Cindy too. It's almost like I don't have the same place I had with you and Joyce before. There isn't anything that makes me stand out. I wanted to be appreciated by you and Joyce, because I didn't want to get left behind. I thought, if you knew I could do some of the same things Joyce does, in bed, maybe you'd want to spend more time with me." "That's all it was, you trying to show you could be more like Joyce in bed?" Shirley giggled, burying her face in my shoulder. That too was un-Shirley like behavior. Shirley wasn't, usually, a giggler. She wasn't that great an actress either. Part of what she was telling me might be true, but that wasn't all of it. In fact, I doubted it was even most of it. She wouldn't have reached for Cindy's hand like she had, not if she was just trying to prove a point to me. Something more was going on with her, something important to her. "I get along better with Cindy, than I did with some of the other girls. It's easier for me to be comfortable with her. She likes some of the same things I do. I started out just trying to show you I could be like Joyce was in bed, but then, I really got into it. I wanted to do it like that, because it got me hotter than the other way. I wanted to lick her, and to make her lick me. It was fun being the one who controls things." Shirley was blushing, and she refused to look at either Cindy or me while she said these things. I didn't want to embarrass her, or make her uncomfortable, and I believed it would do that if we kept talking about the same thing. "Tell me why you thought I'd be upset, Cindy. Did you think I'd be bothered that you and Shirley had fun in bed together?" "No. I knew that wouldn't bother you. How could it? It was just different having you see what Shirley and I were doing with each other. I'm not used to being in bed with any guy, and have never had one watching me when something was going on like what we were doing. It was strange." "Did it make you uncomfortable?" "It made me even hotter. I can't even say why. I saw you watching us, and, somehow, it seemed like everything was stronger, because you were there watching. When Shirley started saying those things about me, like she did, it just made it even better for me, and then, it got to being so strong I couldn't even try to hide showing you what it was doing to me. All I wanted was to feel her doing more of it." "That's how Shirley gets too, when she gets hot. All her inhibitions go away. All she wants is to feel more of everything." "I wanted you inside me, while she was biting me like she did. We need to try that soon, okay?" I thought that might be fun too. I knew Joyce would love doing that to her, and Joyce was small enough that she could get down closer and get right into it. Joyce had bitten my cock when I was fucking both Brenda and Emily before. Separately, not both together. I didn't remember her doing that with Shirley and me, but she did it frequently with Brenda, when the three of us had a session together. My dick was getting aroused again, from thinking about this. This wasn't lost on Cindy either. A few minutes later, Cindy was astride me, trying to get my semi hard on fitted up inside her. After she managed to do that, things got firmer, right away. Shirley moved up so that she was sitting all the way up, watching Cindy moving back and forth on my cock. She leaned over and started kissing Cindy's breasts and stomach, staying away from her pussy. It had the effect of making Cindy speed up her rocking motion, while trying to widen her leg spread, just in case Shirley decided to try to bite her pussy and thighs again. I wasn't doing very much at all, just staying hard, and maintaining the same position for Cindy to ride me. From experience, I knew I could last almost forever, the way things were. Shirley finally moved down, biting Cindy lower, causing Cindy to move both her arms backwards, so that more of her weight was supported by them and lifting up her clit to give Shirley access. Right after that, Cindy stopped moving on me, and the only movement was from Shirley, trying to get at all the places she wanted to get to. I felt her tongue on the base of my cock, and could feel what her tongue was doing to Cindy from the clenching and un clenching of her pussy on me. Again, I was being marginalized, reduced to feeling like a tool. I waited for Cindy to begin cumming, and then I moved Shirley out of the way, and turned Cindy and I over. Before, when she and I had made love, I'd taken great pains not to scare her, or be threatening to her. We had been intense in our lovemaking, but always, in spite of that intensity, I'd made sure not to overpower her, not wanting to remind her of what had happened with her first experience with a boy. Now, and I'm not sure of my reason for doing so, I reversed my previous policy of being careful. I didn't attack her exactly, or hold her down like I'd sometimes do with Emily, but I didn't try to be particularly gentle with her either. What I did was fuck her, the same way I sometimes fucked all of my wives. If anyone had asked me to explain why I was doing it that way, I wouldn't have been able to provide a good answer. Part of it was me thinking that I was only a tool to Shirley and Cindy's lovemaking, and part of it probably had to do with my worry about needing to confront Cindy with questions about Dale and Eddie. Another part, maybe the biggest part, was that this was what I was in the mood for right then, some good old, straight, hard, heterosexual, fucking. Because of how tall I was, and the position I'd assumed, Cindy's head and face was situated underneath my neck, and I wasn't in any position to know how she was reacting to what I was doing. I don't know if it would have changed much if I had known. I built up to the rhythm I preferred, and then I maintained it. I could tell as soon as she started trying to give me some help, because her hips starting moving and lifting up a little, whenever I pulled back from her. It was quiet though, almost the only sound came from our breathing, and from the sound of bare flesh repeatedly coming into contact with other bare flesh, making a slapping kind of sound. It took me a long time to finally cum, but when I did, I started thinking about, worrying about, how Cindy had taken the assault. I lifted up a little so I could see her face, but she thought I was trying to get off of her, so she threw her arms around my neck and wrapped her legs around my legs, to try to prevent me from disengaging from her. We stayed like that, me trying to support the bulk of my weight with my knees and elbows, until my dick had shriveled up and fell out her. When that happened, she groaned out her disappointment, and unwrapped herself from me. Released, I rolled over so that I was again on my back, on the outer edge of the side of the bed. I wasn't going to say anything until either Cindy or Shirley made some comment. I didn't have too long to wait. "That was wonderful! How come you didn't do it like that before?" Cindy's enthusiasm surprised me. The first time we'd made love, I'd played her like a fine instrument, bringing her to the peak of her orgasmic potential. The next morning, I'd made the most gentle, most tender kind of love to her. Was she telling me now that she preferred me to just fuck her? I had tried to shower her with sexual diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls, and she was telling me she preferred sexual costume jewelry instead? I didn't know what to reply to her. Shirley, over on the other side of the bed, just laughed. I think she understood part of why I was making whatever face I was guilty of making. It appeared that Cindy had a hamburger palate when it came to sex. Down and dirty, rather than experiencing, and appreciating, all the nuances of the well crafted, and flawlessly executed, love making, I'd earlier provided for her. Thinking these thoughts, then analyzing them, was when I first realized that I was the one guilty of pretentiousness. Since when was sex some competitive sport, like figure skating? It wasn't a sport, and it wasn't something to be crafted at all. You couldn't keep score like I had been doing. It was obvious that Cindy appreciated real passion over contrived performance. Honest enthusiasm, over controlled, precise, competence. Maybe, seeing the way I fucked Shirley, she had wanted me to do the same with her. It was something for me to think about. I still thought our first time together had been more successful, at least in terms of Cindy having had the stronger orgasms. I didn't know if she had even cum when I was fucking her this time. I'd always believed orgasms, and their relative strength, was how you judged your sexual prowess. Nothing I'd ever heard, from any of my other sexual partners, had led me to believe I might be mistaken in this belief. Nothing until now. "What did you like about this time that made it better than before?" I had to ask her. I knew I probably shouldn't have asked, but I needed to hear her tell me what was better about this time. "I'm not sure. Every time has been good.This time, it seemed more real, more normal for you. It seemed as though it was something that you wanted to be doing. Before, I felt like you were only trying to please me. I wondered whether you didn't enjoy it. This time, I knew you were enjoying it, so that made me feel good." "I always enjoy it. I loved it those first two times, even though they were different from what we just got done doing. This time, I was just being selfish. I didn't think much about whether it was good for you too." "I didn't think at all, Kenny. That's what I mean. I didn't have to think or worry about anything. You were doing all of that already. It was like with Shirley before, it didn't matter what I wanted, and later, it didn't matter to me what she wanted. I liked not having to think about those things. It relaxes me not to have to worry about them." "Did you even cum this last time?" "Not when you were on top, but it still felt good, because I had cum before, and what you were doing was still part of my earlier time. Maybe I wouldn't like it like that if we started off that way, not unless I had already gotten my orgasm first. I was already relaxed when you did it this time. I wasn't thinking about cumming or not cumming" What we were talking about had nothing to do with Eddie and Dale. There was no reason for me to bring it up, especially with Shirley there in bed with us. The only thing was, we'd just had a good time together, and we both had said we were relaxed. "I spoke to Joyce this afternoon, and she told me you were worried about Eddie and Dale?" I felt Cindy flinch. Maybe it was from the mattress, because she and I weren't in physical contact at the time. I felt some movement though. "Did she tell you I was worried?" "She said you were concerned. She asked me how I'd feel if you didn't come over here, when Eddie and Dale came down next week." There was a long pause. I could feel Shirley getting up, then I heard her saying she was going out to the kitchen, to check on the tuna casserole in the oven. After she left, there was still silence from Cindy. "Did you think it was only because they're colored?" She didn't say that their being black had nothing to do with things. That could be a bad sign. "I don't know what to think, that's why I'm asking you. I know you met them both, and I didn't see any problems from when you were at our house before. Joyce asked me what I thought, and I told her I needed to talk to you, to find out why you might be wanting to stay away." I was already wishing I'd given this some more thought before plunging into it. Maybe my father was right, maybe just doing things and reacting to whatever happens, maybe it isn't the best strategy. "Part of it is having two of them here, instead of just one, like Shirley this week, and all those other weeks, with Emily and Brenda before. Another part of it is that they are colored, which makes no difference to me, but which has been a big source of problems down here, for a very long time. I don't want to have problems for my family, or for your family either. There are still plenty of people around who would say things, or do things, because colored and white don't usually live together, not like how you and Eddie and Dale are living." "Let's start out with why Eddie and Dale being here is that much different than Shirley or my other wives being here. Are you saying two is harder on you than one is?" "One is already hard. Two is bound to be harder, plus, I'd be worried about all that other stuff, the racial problems it might cause down here. Forgetting about me, I don't think you gave any thought to how dangerous it could be to bring Eddie and Dale down here. They could get hurt, even killed. There are still a lot of people that can't accept the new ways, crazy people, some of them." "I didn't even think about it, but that's because the whole idea of something like that is strange and ugly to me. This isn't the fifties or the sixties, Cindy. That battle has been fought. I know there are still some diehards, people that want to keep the racial hatreds alive, but if we didn't bother anyone else, and we stayed pretty much to ourselves, how much danger could there really be?" This was the point where Cindy started crying again, and I still didn't know why. I hadn't accused her of anything. I was interested in knowing what there was that bothered her. "If you want to know whether I'm bothered about Eddie and Dale as people, Kenny, the answer is I'm not. I didn't socialize with any coloreds when I was in school. They stayed pretty much to themselves, and we stayed to ourselves. There was some mixing, but not really that much. What there was, it seemed like it caused more problems for everyone concerned. I thought about Eddie and Dale, as possible people I'd be sleeping with, and, right now, mostly, it scares me, because I don't really know them at all. I felt the same way about Brenda and Shirley, but I got to know them, and then it didn't seem like it was such a scary thing. With Emily, it was different, and we didn't ever get comfortable together. Maybe we will later, after I get to know her better. Brenda and Shirley told me what Joyce told me, that I don't have to make any decision, about anyone, until I feel comfortable with them. I know Dale isn't that comfortable with Brenda, Emily, and Shirley." "We're not talking about being sexually comfortable with Eddie and Dale. We're talking about whether you're prejudiced against black people or not." "Well, I'm not. I'm not prejudiced against Chinese people either, although I don't hang around with them. All I'm worried about is having something happen down here. I might be leaving to go live with all of you, but my whole family is going to be staying here." "I'm glad to know that. Now that you told me a little bit about how things are here, maybe I'll talk to Dale and Eddie. I don't want them hurt either, but I don't want them afraid to go somewhere just because there are people around who are too ignorant to let their prejudices go." "It isn't just here, Kenny. I heard as many hateful things said in Los Angeles, back when I went to school there, as I ever heard living here. Some of the hating and ignorance is on both sides too. My Daddy said it has more to do with money and social status. He said poverty produces ugliness, without regard to any one set of racial characteristics. It isn't only us here in the South." I knew she was right. I had heard plenty of racial slurs and anger over in Kansas, and even in Nebraska, from both sides. There were angry people, again on both sides, who seemed to fan this racial tension. What I was doing with Cindy was something like that. I had raised the racial question. It was one of the first things that came to mind when Joyce told me that Cindy said she had a problem with Dale and Eddie. If she had said she had a problem with Emily and Brenda, I wouldn't have reacted the same way. No one was completely immune from prejudicial behavior. "Does it bother you that I love Dale and Eddie, or that I have sex with them?" "Yes, it does, and I'm not going to lie about it. I wish you'd stop doing things with both of them. I don't like you being with Joyce, or Emily either, or any other woman but me. This is something I do need to work on, but not on what you were worried about." I had a feeling that I'd hear a lot more about that from Cindy. It wasn't something that troubled me overmuch. All my wives had originally felt the same way, except for Joyce. Now, they had all formed alliances and connections with each other that were every bit as strong as what they had with me. Stronger, in the case of Emily and Brenda, or in the case of Dale and Eddie. Dale hadn't made as many connections as Eddie had, and neither had Shirley or Emily. Joyce and I had connections with all of them, and through us, they were connected to each other, if through no other way. Cindy was already connected with me, Joyce, Shirley and Brenda. This was a good beginning. I was almost certain that Emily would make her own connection later as well. I'd wait to see about Dale, but I knew Eddie would want to find out about Cindy for herself. When that happened, we'd learn a whole lot more. We had a pretty quiet dinner. I was still exhausted from the earlier sex, and the emotional tension of our later discussion. All I wanted to do was make it through dinner, then go back to bed for a good night's rest. That was why I wasn't saying much more than complimenting the casserole, and asking if anyone wanted something more to drink when I got up to get myself more milk. ------- Chapter 44 "Kenny, do you know anything about real estate development?" Cindy had put her fork down on the plate, and had used her napkin before asking me the question. "I know a lot of people make millions of dollars doing it, but that's about all I really know. I inherited some real property from my uncle, and my mother has some income property, and also some raw land that she likes to keep. I know she pays a lot of property taxes on the real estate things she owns." "What about building houses and shopping centers, one of those planned community developments?" "Nope, I don't know anything about that. Why are you asking?" I already had an idea, but I wanted her to tell me why herself. "Daddy has some land, and he was trying to get it developed. I thought you might know somebody he could talk to." "Well, I already suggested someone to him, but he didn't like my suggestion." "Who?" "I told him to do a joint venture with your mother. She has the money, and he has the land." "Sure, but it was her money he used to buy the land. He can't ask her for any more help." "Why is that? If it's a good project, why wouldn't he go to her? My parents were separated once, thinking about getting a divorce, and they did a joint venture together, a golf academy. Going in together on it like that, it ended up helping them to work out some of their differences." "You don't know anyone else? No one?" The way she said it, I had a pretty good idea she wanted me to say I might be interested. I wasn't going to tell her that. If anyone else in my family might be interested, it would be Mama, and I didn't think she'd want to get involved in a real estate project so far from home. "I really don't. Developing isn't something I'm very interested in right now. I'm pretty sure I heard your uncle Phil say the bottom kind of fell out of the real estate market around here. Does your father think it's coming back any time soon?" Cindy looked over at Shirley. I could have told her that Shirley didn't know anyone who could develop eight thousand acres of land. That kind of development took years to get all the necessary approvals. Millions of dollars would need to be spent just to get to the point where the builders could finally begin construction. For a project that large, it would probably need to be handled in several phases, not all at once. "He didn't say. He did tell me that my mom had called him, saying she wanted her money back. He doesn't want her getting more upset with him than she already is." "Maybe he'd be better off selling the land, letting someone else hold on to it, until the economy around here starts making that kind of developing profitable again." "He told me he'd sell if he could, then he said the market is too soft for him to sell the land now." "He can always sell, if he prices the property right. I can't imagine not being able to find someone to buy it if he really needs to sell. Maybe he can break the land up into smaller pieces, then sell off different parts of it. This isn't something I know very much about." "Joyce said I should talk to you. She said you have lots of contacts, and you might be able to help him." Another interesting piece of information, I thought. I wondered how this particular subject happened to come up in their conversation? "Joyce doesn't know much about developing planned communities either. There are companies, all over the country, that specialize in that type of developing. I think your father should go find one that might be interested in discussing it with him." I could see that this conversation was starting to get frustrating to Cindy. I wondered if Joyce had told her I'd offer to help her Dad out, if she asked me to? I wondered if that was a part of the reason for Cindy deciding to come back to stay in the house with us? I didn't like the way my mind was coming up with these thoughts. "Could you at least think about finding someone to maybe help him out? I'd rather he and my mom didn't get into it again over this money." "I need to make a call home, Cindy. Let me take care of that first, then we'll all go to sleep, and I promise I'll give the problem some thought this week." I waited for her to nod to me, to indicate her acceptance of my offer. When she did, I got up and went back to the living room, ready to call home. Shirley was already on the line, having left earlier, when Cindy and I first started talking about real estate. She was already speaking to Derek when I came into the living room. She handed the phone over to me, because Derek wanted to say hello to me, and ask me when I was bringing his Mommy back home. Derek and I also talked about this bird he had been throwing rocks at in the back yard. He hadn't hit it yet, he said, but he was coming pretty close. I almost launched into a speech about the consequences of hurting things, but I decided to hold back from it. At his age, it was doubtful that his aim was good enough to hit a bird anyway, and I didn't want him worrying about complex problems, like death, before he even started going to school. Most boys threw rocks at birds. I knew I had, and I knew too, that I hadn't ever managed to hit one. After five minutes talking with Derek, I handed the phone back to Shirley. I moved over to sit on the sofa, waiting for her to finish with her phone call. "Kenny, do you want to say anything to Joyce before I hang up the phone?" This must have been fifteen minutes after I had finished talking to Derek. I nodded that I did want to, and Shirley started walking towards me, bringing the phone over so I could speak with Joyce. Usually, if a man does something like that, you know you're going to be speaking on that telephone in just a few seconds. With a women though, that isn't necessarily true, or even the norm. I sat there, for another ten minutes, waiting for Joyce and Shirley to finish talking about some kind of new catalog that Joyce had received earlier, in the mail. Finally, after exhausting that topic, Shirley said her goodbye, handing me the phone. "What did Cindy tell you when you asked her about Eddie and Dale?" Obviously, Shirley had told her that Cindy and I had discussed the subject. Joyce seemed very anxious to find out what I'd learned. "That it wasn't anything to do with her own feelings, except that they were two more women she didn't want me sleeping with. You're on her list too, so you better watch out." "Do you think that's all it is?" Joyce sounded concerned still, not asking me about Cindy preferring that she and I be exclusive bed partners. "Well, she's worried about them being here, but I don't think it's because of any feelings against them, or her having problems with their color. She doesn't want any trouble here, for Eddie and Dale, or for her family, after." "You think everything's okay then?" I heard Joyce wanting to be reassured, hoping I'd put her own fears to rest. "I'm going to wait and see. I hope so. Cindy also told me you said she should ask me about developing her father's land. Was that because you know how helpful I like to be, or was it because you needed to come up with a good reason to make Cindy decide she wanted to come back here?" "Kenny, you need to quit thinking like that. Cindy was already back with you and Shirley before she mentioned one word about that land of her father's. She said she was worried about him, and about what might happen with her parents if they started fighting again. We started talking about what was causing them to be fighting, that was when she told me about the land. Did you know that one of the farms that is part on that land was being farmed by the parents of the boy who raped and hurt her?" "No, I didn't. Underwood is a common name in this area, just like Macklinson is. It doesn't surprise me though. I remember the boy's name was Colin Underwood, and that the land was called Underwood something." "Cindy's worried about it. She thinks her mother is going to sue her father, to try to get her money back from him. She's afraid it will lead to even more embarrassment for him. She doesn't want that to happen, because the last time, her father got all depressed about how things turned out. Can't the land be developed? Cindy says it would be a good place for houses." "I don't know. I guess it could be, but people don't like to spend a lot of money putting together projects, unless there's already enough demand for what they plan on building. Right now, according to one of Cindy's uncles, the demand just isn't there anymore. No one is building too much around here." "What about someone buying it from him, as an investment, like the properties you and your father bought that time we were all vacationing out in California? Maybe we should think about buying it from him ourselves, for all the children? I've heard you say that land is a very good long term investment. How much would doing that cost us?" "It cost Gene four million, but that was when he thought he could turn right around and sell it. I would imagine he might let it go for less than that now, but I'm not going to ask him." "You have the money, why not do it, Kenny?" "I can't go around buying up other people's mistakes, Joyce. That isn't how you're supposed to do things." "Maybe it should be how we do things. If you don't want to buy it from him, then please tell me how much money I have available now?" I knew that she wasn't going to let me off the hook on this, not after she asked me that particular question. I knew Joyce, and I knew money wasn't really very important to her. She'd spend whatever she thought she had to, gladly, if it meant someone she cared about wouldn't have to suffer. She wasn't a practical person about money like I was. "Are you sure this is what you want us to do, Joyce?" I tried to put as much resignation in my voice as I could manage. I knew that Joyce would keep after me, until she finally got her way, or until she talked my parents, or someone else, into buying that land from Gene. "Its what I want, Kenny, but I'm not going to try to force you to do it. You can decide, and then I'll support whatever decision you make, just like I always do." Translated into plain English, what she had really said was that she was willing to allow me to pretend it was what I had decided, or what she and I decided on, together. The only way this would change was if I tried to get tricky later, deciding not to go through with the purchase. Joyce had decided we were going to buy that property, helping Cindy's parents avoid further hard feelings over money. What Joyce and Cindy didn't know, would never know, not if I had it my way, was that I was actually excited about buying those eight thousand acres of land. I'd have suggested doing it myself, if I could have thought of even a halfway plausible explanation for why I wanted to do it. Getting a large tract of land like that, already together in a single large parcel, this close to a city, had to be a good thing. It was also a great investment, especially if you were a strong enough owner to be able to afford to hold it for whatever length of time necessary to assure a profitable outcome. I could do that, but I hadn't been able to figure out a good justification for wanting to. Now, because of Joyce, I didn't have to. All I had to do was let it seem like I was giving in and allowing my wife to once again have her own way. I was already a past master at doing just that. I tried to contain my excitement, after getting off the phone with Joyce. I went off to look for Cindy. I took a quick glance at my wristwatch. It wasn't even nine o'clock yet. If I finished telling Cindy what Joyce was making me do, quickly enough, she might still have time to call Gene with the news about what I told her I was willing to do for her. I found Cindy sitting on the bed, with little cotton balls separating each of her toes. She was waiting for the nail polish to dry on her toenails. "Joyce said to tell you hello. I told her about your father needing to either develop or sell that land. I'm not saying I agree with what she wants to do, but you should ask your father how much he'd take for that land. How much for an all cash offer?" "You need to ask him about that, Kenny. I know he'll be happy with whatever you can give him. He just doesn't want my mom being angry about that money anymore." "I've already got a number in mind, so you better tell him I won't even consider going above that number, not one dollar more." "What's your number?" She looked like she was trying to figure out a way to hop off the bed and come give me a kiss or two, to express her gratitude. Instead, I was the one who dropped down on the bed, putting my face down between her slightly spread legs. I put my lips down into her soft pussy hair and softly spoke my number to her. "How much? I couldn't hear that, Kenny." I went searching for her clit, with just the very tip of my tongue. When I located it, I gave her four quick flicks with it. She still didn't get it. I had lost sight of what I was trying to communicate to her, so I simply put my tongue in her opening, and started licking her down there. A whole bunch of licks. "Twenty two million? Oh, Kenny." I lifted my face up out of her pussy "Four million, Cindy, not twenty two. I'll bail him out of this, for you, but I'm not letting him make a profit when I do it." Satisfied that I'd made my point, I went back to eating her again. "He only spent three and a half million, Kenny, not four. He kept the rest back as a reserve. I'll tell him you'll give him three and a half, okay?" I was too busy to answer her, but I nodded my head up and down, glad to see that she was looking out for my interests. Cindy never got a chance to call her father, not until the next morning. When Shirley came in and saw what I was doing to Cindy, she wanted some of that for herself, so she straddled Cindy's face and settled in for what she hoped was only the very beginning of a nice long night. I can't speak for either of the ladies, about how late each of them were up, but I know I was fast asleep before ten thirty. Combined with our earlier session, I dropped off, totally exhausted. I vaguely remembered hearing Shirley yelling something later, after I'd already called it quits and rolled myself away from them. She'd never done that with any other girl, not when I had heard her. Gene called me just after ten the next morning. He sounded pleased with things, telling me that Cindy had called to tell him he should call me. He said she had told him to ask about an idea I might have for developing his land. "How much are you in that deal, Gene?" "Most of four million I'd say, just a little shy of it." I smiled when he told me that. If he'd been truthful with me, I probably would have offered to pay him the three and a half million, and we would have been done with it. I guess it was natural that he'd want to negotiate the best deal for himself that he possibly could. Since he hadn't said three and a half million, we'd both have to play the negotiating game until we could come to an agreement. I was pretty sure Cindy had already told him that I'd agreed to pay him the three and a half million. That was what she told me she'd be doing before I left for work. "That's a lot more than what I'd heard, Gene." "Where did you hear an amount from? I'm not a person who likes to have his financial activities talked about." I was sure that Gene suspected that Cindy might have told me the amount he had paid. I could tell him she had, and end the negotiation. That wouldn't have been as much fun though. "I think his name was Otis Davis, Lena's husband. He works down at the Hall of Records? Titus Tucker introduced us, and we started talking about one thing or another, and somehow, your name came up in our conversation." "Well, that purchase price they use didn't count all the money I had to pay out in closing costs, or the back taxes. I paid a pretty steep fee to have the property surveyed again too. I was talking about all of it together, because that's what I counted when I told you how much I'm into the land." "Does that also subtract out all the money you made from renting out the land to be farmed?" I loved being able to drop that little piece of information on him. "Where did you hear I was doing that?" I could hear Gene's slight hissing sound as the wind came out of his sails. This was the fun part. I knew where we'd finally end up, but I wanted Gene to feel satisfied that he never had a chance to get a penny more than he did. He'd be unhappy if he went away feeling like he could have done better in the sale. "Phil told me. Said you were making enough to carry all your other expenses, just from that." "I'm not going to try to fool you, Kenny. I'd like to get out of that property without it costing me too much. Why don't you just go ahead and make me an offer for it?" "Three million should do it then. You still have most of the money we paid you for your company stock." I wanted to toy with him, just like he was toying with me. "Kenny, I'm not a young man anymore, and I'm out of work. I need that money to live on, until I decide what I'm going to do for work." "My father is looking for someone to run our new plant in Nevada. You should give him a call, see if he might be able to use you for that." I knew Gene was already beginning to regret his decision to quit Macklinson's. He might think he had the inside track to coming back, but I didn't want him over confident about it. If he did come back, I wanted him open to all the changes we'd be making. "Cindy mentioned a figure to me, about halfway between what I'm asking, and what you're offering. Since it looks like we both could be sitting on the phone all day, without either of us getting this thing settled, why don't we try to save some time? Let's just make it three and a half million, Kenny, with you handling all the purchase expenses?" "I kind of liked that young lawyer we hired to handle the stock purchases and the bank settlement. Let's go ahead and use him for this too. I'll have a check sent to an account he'll open for us, and we'll close when you get all the paperwork completed, and the deed notarized for me. I'm buying the whole eight thousand acres from you, Gene, so I expect it will turn out that you're selling me everything you bought last year." "The Underwood place was only seventy seven hundred acres and some change, Kenny. That's what I thought we were negotiating about. I already owned that other two hundred and forty acres. I bought it at a tax auction, right before I got the big piece." I hadn't known there were two separate parcels. Eight thousand acres was what I thought I was negotiating for. That was the number I'd been hearing all along. This needed more clarification than what he'd just offered me. "What did you pay for that two hundred and forty acres?" "I'm not selling it, Kenny. That was originally Macklinson land." "Well, all of it is Macklinson land right now, and its going to stay Macklinson land too, unless I get all of it in this deal we've been discussing. Where is that two hundred forty acres located? Is it bordering on the Underwood property, or is it separate from it?" Gene didn't answer me right away "It's right behind it. It touches it, but only on the little side. All we ever could use it for is a little bird hunting. There are some trees on the hilly side of the property, so it wouldn't be good as farmland anyhow. Half of it is too hilly to be of any use to anyone." "I've got to go, Gene. If the land means so much to you, let's both go out and take a look at it. If it doesn't look like it belongs with the other land, I might be willing to let you keep it, as long as we can come up with some price I'd think was fair." "When are you going to have time to go look at it, Kenny? I'd like to get this deal done as soon as we can. Lee is starting to kick up a fuss with me, and I'd like to give her a date when she could expect her money back." "It looks like I'm going to be busy, either here, or back at home, for at least a month or two. If you're in such a big hurry, just include the other piece in the sale, and I'll go look at it when I can. I'm sure I'd be willing to name you a fair price to buy it back from me, after I've taken a look at it." I was getting very curious about that land. I decided to ask Kyle about it, when I saw him later in the day. After I finished talking to Gene, I called my father, and we were talking about the trip to New York he'd be taking. I mentioned that I was probably buying almost eight thousand acres of land within a few miles of the baking plant. When I told him I was taking the money for the purchase out of money currently sitting in my personal trading account, my Dad asked me if I had enough in there to do that without jeopardizing my trading abilities. "I've built it up to over twenty seven million Dad, Spending less than four million isn't going to affect it any." He expressed his surprise that my own personal account had grown so large. When I told him some of the figures for the charitable trust accounts, Brenda's account, and the children's trust accounts, he was even more surprised. "Hans and Gerta's account is more than two million now. I told you I've been able to make more trades now, because of the new pricing programs. When I get some of the grains trapped inside one of my boxes, I trade it like crazy, until it moves out of either one end of the box, or the other." "From what you're claiming now, Kenny, you've been making far more money trading our grains, more than all of the rest of us do from producing the actual products to sell." "I wasn't claiming anything. I thought you already knew that, Dad. That was the main reason why I wanted to trade on all those other bakery's grain needs. Don't you remember when we were thinking about doing an IPO, by spinning off all the bread bakeries? We were going to put the stock we kept into the three main charitable trusts, then use that income to fund all of our charitable giving. We decided to just keep things how they were, because our trading profits just from trading our own grain needs came to more than what the net bakery profits to the trusts would have been. This was way before I made all those improvements in my trading program." "I remember it, but we sure weren't talking about making fifty million dollars a year, Kenny. As I recall, that amount was less than a million dollars." "What was that, around five years ago? I'm not making fifty a year now, not even close to that. The money that I have now, in my own account, is money I've accumulated since then, from the extra I haven't needed to use to pay for our living expenses. The charitable trust money earnings have to be disbursed every year. All the rest of the personal accounts, we just pay the taxes, and keep investing whatever we have left over." "You're almost twenty five now, Kenny. What are you planning to do when I turn over all your trust assets from Bunny's estate? You'll have quite a fortune to invest when you get control of that money." I was happy that he reminded me about my main trust. I'd been a little troubled about what would happen when I turned twenty-five. My life was already very complicated, just keeping the personal situation functioning. Between the family, the group homes, food program and all my trading, I felt like I already had all I could handle. This was why I was feeling the strain of being involved full time in the family business too. I wanted less responsibility, not more. "I was going to ask you about that. You've been doing well by keeping it invested for me, and I haven't had to use anything, not since we set up the charitable trust accounts with the money you advanced me. If I could, I'd like to keep all that money together, just like it is now. Joyce and I don't need it for anything, and I like having it kept separate from the money I make with my trading." "Are you saying you want me to keep managing those assets?" I could hear, in his voice, that my father was shocked by what I was telling him. To him, controlling money was the same as owning it. He liked to play with it and make it grow. He spent less money than I did. We hadn't ever spoken much about my trust fund money. Once a year, a statement from my Dad would be sent over to Frank Clooney's office. Frank would then call me, to quote me a number to express the return the trust had earned. This was usually about nine to eleven percent each year. Dad had always earned a decent return on the trust fund assets. A lot of this was stock investments, but he earned a better return on my money by making loans to our companies, and by financing new equipment with it. There were other investments, but a lot of the trust was invested in some fairly liquid assets. "I'd feel better if you would, and I know you like to have money available, just in case you find something you can turn a quick profit with. If you weren't managing it, I'd just have to go out and hire some bank to do it, and I think you do a lot better job than they would. You know you could always take that management fee Uncle Bunny set up for you to get. Frank says you never charge me a dime for acting as trustee." "I already have a good income, Kenny. It isn't as if I need to charge my own family for looking after these kinds of things." "That's right, Dad, and think of all the money I'm going to be saving when I don't have to pay your estate taxes on all that money you could have been charging me. Do you know if there's a way to bypass Joyce and I, to leave all that money directly to the children? I'm already working on trying to do something like that by setting up trading accounts for all of them. Frank said the tax headaches won't be as big for all of us if we keep gifting out the maximum to each of the children, then paying the taxes out of their yearly earnings, because we'll be using each of their lower tax brackets. What I'd like to do is find something really long term to put them into, something that wouldn't show any current income, but would mature in thirty years or so, and then be a hefty sum. I think I'll put that land in all their names, jointly, then sit on it, and let the agricultural income pay all the taxes." I got off the telephone with my father, surprised that we'd been talking for almost an hour. There were a lot of small things I needed to take care of. I'd gotten my Dad to agree to send me two of the computer guys, and he also said we could buy whatever equipment we needed, to computerize the various departments in the offices. He also had given me permission to send up people to be trained, in Bolling, so they would gain some familiarity with how things were supposed to be done. Accounting at Macklinson's was far different than what I was used to in Bolling. There, they had breakdowns for every possible cost. In Birmingham, the accounting department dealt in something called 'abouts'. "How much did we spend last month on radio advertising, Miss Leland?" " 'About' twenty five hundred dollars, Mr. Parsons, but that was only in the Birmingham area. If you want to know how much we spent all over, it will take me 'about' a week to get you that information." In Bolling, I'd have called over with the question, and have a breakdown sitting on my desk in five minutes, listing the monthly radio advertising expenses, for each of the past six months, in every market we advertised in. On a separate page, I'd have the national total, all of it accurate to the penny. In our type of business, information such as this was critical for making informed decisions. Not having information like that available here, most of my advertising decisions were really seat of the pants guesses. We also had no single individual in charge of coordinating our advertising budget, or our promotional expenditures. Gene and his two brothers had handled that themselves. To be effective, advertising needed to be closely coordinated, with a definite, uniform, purpose in mind. I had a pad of note paper on my desk, that I used to write down the changes we needed to implement at Macklinson's. Every single day, I ended up managing to fill up another page with some changes I thought we needed to make. At two o'clock, Cindy called me, wanting to know if I was able to take some time off from work. She told me it was to meet a friend of hers. I was telling her how busy I was, and how tight of a schedule I was on, when she told me the friend she wanted me to meet was a regional market buyer for radio advertising time, in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. I immediately told her I could break away to meet her for a couple quick drinks somewhere downtown, at three thirty. Cindy named a place, and gave me the driving directions. Cindy's friend turned out to be the older sister of a childhood playmate of hers. Her name was Carole Grantly, and she was twenty seven years old. She'd been a radio market buyer for the past seven years. Cindy mentioned to me that Carole had recently broken off a long term personal relationship. It had been a four year engagement to a man who turned out to have no honest interest in redeeming his promise of marriage. To make this bad situation even worse, Carole was employed by the father of the man she'd recently broken up with. We met inside the restaurant Cindy has chosen and ordered only our drinks. I asked her some questions about her professional background, which she answered to my complete satisfaction, With Cindy's positive endorsement and glowing recommendation of her, before five o'clock, I had a brand new head of promotions and advertising for Macklinson's, and Carole was able to get out of an uncomfortable work and personal situation. Cindy was happy to have helped me. I hadn't remembered mentioning my unhappiness with the company's advertising program, but I must have, because Cindy had set up the introductions so I'd have a chance to meet and interview Carole, with the idea of the two of us being in a position to help each other out. I headed straight back to the office, as soon as we were finished meeting with Carole. I'd gone back just to run off copies of the fifteen plus pages of changes I'd accumulated thus far. When I got home, about half an hour later, I gave Cindy the copy of my list, explaining what it was, and telling her I'd appreciate any ideas or input I could get from her. I also told her I'd be happy to go back on my promise about not hiring any more Macklinson family members in October. This was my way of asking her if she wanted to come to work with me, to act as a resource locator for me. I didn't know the area or the people, and I was finding it more difficult than usual to get people to volunteer their thoughts and ideas to me. She told me she would be glad to do it, but only if I gave her a ride to and from the plant each day. I didn't question her reason for insisting on this condition. I simply agreed to do it, because it didn't seem like it placed any real burden on me. I found out differently, the next morning, at five thirty, when Cindy woke me up, telling me I needed to hurry if I wanted to meet with a woman who knew all about accounting and was experienced with working with computers. When I asked her why I needed to do it so early, she told me it was because this was the only time the woman could meet with me. She also said this was someone who was intimately acquainted with the company, someone who also happened to want to come to work for us. That was enough to get me up and hurrying to be ready. That was the first time I met Patty Jennings, Cindy's Aunt Patricia. It was also the day I found out that Macklinson people didn't allow their women to meddle in their family business. Patty was a real find. For the past twenty-five years, she had been working for a Big Eight accounting firm in Birmingham. She believed she had been unfairly shut out of the family business her whole life, except for owning stock, after her father's death. Now that the business been sold to us, she was anxious to come to work there, wanting to modernize and improve our accounting operation. I found out that both she and Cindy had spoken quite a bit about me, and how Cindy thought I was so different from other men. We quickly agreed on a date for her to start, and had no trouble at all with reaching accord on the salary she asked for. I told her that my father had already authorized bringing in all new equipment for the accounting department, including getting everything set up to run on computers. Patty was thrilled, telling me that she had access to some proprietary software that she had helped develop, software that would make coordinating things throughout the company a whole lot easier. I noticed a lot of heads turning when Cindy and I walked into the administrative offices together that morning. I was still finding it difficult to understand the Macklinson family ban on allowing their women to work in their business. I had asked Cindy about why it was all right for her father to send her up to Kansas, to investigate my trading system and the grain brokerage business I was running. She told me that Gene hadn't had a choice, because no one else in the family had her experience or knowledge of trading techniques. The rule against family women working applied only at the plant. Kyle's wife and Jerry's both worked, just not for the family business. Laura, Gene's ex wife, owned several businesses of her own. Cindy took a seat off to the side in my office. She had the copy of the list I'd given her, and was poring over it. "Kenny, I need to make some phone calls about this storage building for behind the mixing rooms. You have it down for fifty feet by eighty feet, but you didn't write any other specifications for it." I had the plans for the short term grain storage area we put in at most of our plants. It was easier to bring over enough of each ingredient to keep things running for two or three days, while still keeping the primary grain storage facilities some distance from the baking operations. This was for health and safety reasons, as well as being easier to load and unload everything from a single storage point. Primary grain storage was accessible by truck and rail. We used grain chutes to transfer ingredients from the short term grain shed to the mixing rooms. It was a speedier and more efficient process. Macklinson's used a different system, transferring ingredients in portable metal bins. These bins that were six feet wide by ten feet long, and about five feet tall. It was a clumsy, labor intensive, system, mainly because the bins needed to be washed out and inspected after every transfer was made. They were ferried back and forth by means of a modified fork lift. "Cindy, you need to let that one alone. I've got someone coming down to build it for us. It's a unique design, and we have our own specialized building plans for it." I was going to show her a set of plans so she'd know what I meant, but Danielle called on the intercom to let me know the people had arrived to install my price data feed lines. I got up and signalled Cindy to get up also. Where she had been sitting was where I planned on setting up my trading desk. We both went out and met the two installers who'd come to do the work. It took about fifteen minutes to explain where I wanted the feeds set up, and to answer their questions about the different options I had for splitting off the data feeds. After that was done, I told Cindy to grab her copy of the list and come with me. I had selected three things for her to handle. The first, and by far, most important to me, was for her to redesign the way all of the administrative and support offices were currently set up. It was just a sprawling mess from what I'd been able to observe. It was as though people had been allowed to plant themselves wherever they wanted to. I wanted all that changed, and the entire floor completely reorganized, so that there was less running around to find people, and so whole departments were kept together. I took twenty minutes showing Cindy what I meant, pointing out particular modifications I wanted made. One of these was to eliminate the current changing room, break room, lunchroom combination that sat right in the center of the administrative offices. To get anywhere, you had to walk around this huge area. I considered this space to be very valuable, but felt it was being wasted by the use it currently was being put to. We had a perfectly fine employee break room, and a complete lunchroom, just one floor below. It served all of the production people from the baking floor, but there was adequate room there to enlarge it, to serve the administrative staff as well. About ninety percent of the administrative employees were women, and only about ten to fifteen percent of the production staff were women. There were six rest rooms on the administrative floor, three for men, and three for women. On the baking floor, there was a large changing room and bathroom for the men, and all the women working on the production floor had to walk upstairs, to change, or to use the bathroom facilities. There was another restroom for men, upstairs in the break room, right next to the ladies bathroom. I told Cindy that I was bringing in some maintenance workers from Bolling to make whatever changes she ended up deciding on. I told her I wanted one restroom for men, and another, much larger one, for the ladies on the administrative floor. Downstairs, I wanted a large changing room, with female employee lockers, and a nice bathroom for all the ladies. I also wanted a much smaller, no frills, bathroom for the men there. On the production floor, I wanted a small bathroom put in for the women, and to leave the much larger men's facility pretty much like it currently was. "When are these people you're bringing down going to be here?" I could see that Cindy was excited by the project I'd assigned her. It was something she could sink her teeth into. She was anxious to get started on her redesign. "I'm shooting for next Monday. By then, you should have some sort of drawings made up, showing where you want the departments divided up. When you get done with this, I want to see some sort of organization that makes sense. Also, you're my personal assistant now, so whatever you tell people, I'll back you up on it. Don't be afraid to do what makes sense, even if it steps on some people's toes. I want all the department heads in with their own departments. No more of these big cushy offices, with fancy wooden doors to keep them isolated from their own people. I'll need to approve the plans you come up with, before they start making any changes." I had talked my Dad into letting me have two of his maintenance people, for a month. I was planning on bringing in a team of local building people, to handle most of the actual tearing down and rebuilding work. Mostly, I wanted our own people to keep an eye on things, to make sure it turned out the way we wanted it to. I envisioned gutting out most of the existing walls, and setting up new, more accessible, open work areas. The way it was, there were walls that separated almost everyone. That wasn't conducive to what I hoped for. When I got back to Gene's old office, the installers had already finished with their work, and I had eight new wires coming out from the wall, with a big telephone switching box on the other side that separated the data signals, and directed them down the correct path. I went to find Kyle, who was with his friend, Sonny, asking them both to help me carry up some computer equipment from the trunk of my car. We managed everything in two trips. While we were doing the moving from the car to the office, I got a chance to find out a little bit about Sonny. He was quick and witty, and seemed excited at the prospect of doing something other than monitoring temperature gauges, and pushing baking racks in and out of ovens. I was feeling a little bit better about Kyle's picking him as an assistant. One thing that impressed me about him was his curiosity. He asked a lot of questions about what kind of thing I was setting up in my office. "I buy all the grain for the baking plants, for here, and all the baking plants we owned ourselves, before we bought Macklinson's. I trade different commodities back and forth, trying to keep my overall grain costs down as low as possible. I also do some grain brokerage for some independent bakers that my father has ties with." "You the one they sent Cindy up to take a look at?" Cindy was away from the office, trying to get a handle on the work I'd assigned her. Sonny's question puzzled me. "Gene sent her up to find out if I was capable of doing what I told him I could do." That was about as noncommittal as I could answer him without ignoring his question totally. "Kyle told me she's sweet on you now. She's a nice girl. Kyle also told me you have a bunch of other women." I looked over at Kyle, he looked like he'd been kicked in the stomach. "Was there a question in there, somewhere, Sonny?" I saw Sonny look over at Kyle before turning back to answer my question. He didn't seem quite so enthusiastic after seeing the look on Kyle's face. "No, no question. I just meant that she's a nice girl, and you don't want to be taking advantage of her, not if you're already spoken for." I saw Cindy walking slowly back towards us. The office door was open, and Kyle and Sonny both had their backs turned to it. "I'll keep that in mind, although, as I'm sure you'll agree, Cindy's old enough to make her own decisions about things like that." Cindy was almost at my office door when she heard me speak her name. She stopped immediately, waiting to hear what else I was going to say. "I've known her all her life, Mr. Parsons. I was just saying how I'd hate to see her get hurt. That's all I meant." "She's here now, maybe you should tell her what you're worried about." I pointed over at the door, and both Kyle and Sonny turned around to look at her. "What are you doing here, Sis?" Kyle was the first to speak. "I work here now. I'm Kenny's new personal assistant. Aunt Patricia is coming to work here too, next month." "Aunt Pat? Daddy won't like that, and neither will Larry or Phil." Kyle had turned back to face towards me again when he said this last part. It was as if he assumed his family was still in a position to decide things like this. "Kyle, you're going to have to get used to the fact that this isn't their company anymore. Things are changing, and none of them have any say at all in what changes we decide to make here, or in how we operate this plant." Kyle's eyes were looking bigger, Sonny seemed uncomfortable to be there with us now, possibly believing this was Macklinson family business, not his. "Are you doing this to see if it will make them start to see things your way?" Kyle didn't look like he wanted to end this discussion. In spite of what I'd told him, I think he still believed this was his family's company, that his father and his uncles were still the real power at Macklinson's Bakeries. He obviously had concluded that it was only a matter of time before they were all working here again, back in charge of everything. He wasn't alone in that belief. My father had expressed a similar opinion to me. I wanted all three of them back, plus all the other Macklinson people who had quit, but not on their terms, only on mine. "Kyle, I think you're a little slow on the uptake. I don't need any of them to see things any way. I'm running Macklinson's right now, and when I decide to leave here, whoever I leave in charge, in my place, will be doing what I tell them to do. Your father and your uncles will never have the final say on any decisions made at this company again, no matter if they come back to work here, or if they don't." I could see that Kyle was having a difficult time deciding whether or not he wanted to speak his mind about what I'd just said. He looked like he was trying to hold back from saying something. Sonny looked like he was praying that Kyle wouldn't speak again. I looked at Cindy, but she was looking right at me, paying no attention to either her brother or Sonny. "You can't do that to the three of them. This is all they have left. They put everything into running this company." I already had a good inkling of what he meant. All three of the Macklinson brothers had ended up getting divorced, and mostly living alone. Gene had Cindy before, and Phil lived with Billy Ray, his son, and Billy Ray's wife. As far as I knew, Larry still lived all alone. "I only did it to Larry, the other two decided to do it to themselves. You have to remember, Kyle, there are a lot of changes that we need to make. It could be that your father, Larry, or Phil, won't want to work in an environment where they no longer have the final say. Change isn't always welcomed by the people who used to make up all the rules. We have to make our changes, then see how your family ends up able to accept them. They all have to forget that this used to be a place where they could write their own rules." "I thought I was supposed to be writing the new rules for the marketing and distribution?" "You are, but they won't just be your rules, they'll be ours too. They'll need to be looked at first, and approved, by me, before they ever start to get implemented. You report to me, and I report to my father. I still follow his rules, because he has the final say, in everything." "Who do I report to, if you rehire my father and uncles?" "You still report directly to me. Even if I leave here, and put someone else in charge, you'll still be reporting to me. What you'll be doing for us here, that might end up being something we'll be putting in all across the country. If it is, then you'll probably end up reporting to more people, but none of them will be here at this plant." "What about Sonny, Henry, and Wayne? Who will they report to?" "To you, Kyle. That doesn't mean they won't be in contact with other people, just that you will be the one they report to, and you'll be the one assigning them tasks to complete." I could see that Kyle was beginning to feel better about things. The same was true for Sonny, but I had no idea why any of this would make that much difference to either of them. I didn't report to anyone but my father, but I still needed to answer for whatever I did. Unless you were like my father, there was always a boss you needed to answer to. Fifty people reported directly to my father, and through them, all the rest, indirectly. My father reported back, and though it wasn't the same relationship, he was still accountable for what he did, or failed to do. "I don't take any orders but from you?" Kyle looked at me hard, seeming like he wanted to force the answer he wanted from me. I could think of a hundred exceptions to that being the case, but I knew what assurance Kyle really wanted. "That's right, just from me." "If people say different than that, can I send them over to talk to you?" "You don't have to send them to me. Tell them that you report to me, and if I wanted you to do what they say, I'd have told you so myself." Kyle and Sonny left after that, smiles on both their faces. I wondered how strong a hold Gene and his brothers had kept on all those sons and nephews of theirs? Would giving Kyle permission to stop taking instructions from them turn out to be a big mistake on my part? I had a feeling it wouldn't take me that long to find out if it was. ------- Chapter 45 "Is it true?" Gene had called me bright and early on Thursday morning. I was at the computer, tinkering with the signal attenuation program I used for integrating the price feeds together. There was a relationship reference point I used that could only be achieved by lowering the metals and raising the currencies, in relation to the grain prices. It was the relationship ratio that interested me, not the actual price each was trading for. "Good morning, Gene. Is what true?" From the tone of his voice, I knew something had upset him badly. "Patty. Is it true she's coming to work for you at the company?" "Oh, that. Yes, that's true. She's starting sometime after the fifteenth of next month. She's retiring from her other job. It will be nice to have someone in accounting who can speak in precise numerical figures." "You're going to have to choose, Kenny. This has been a family tradition with us. You can't just come in like this and try to put in all these senseless kinds of upsetting changes." Gene was starting to get himself all worked up. I had noticed this tendency in all the Macklinson men that I'd had any real dealings with. It was as if they deliberately ramped up the level of their emotions. This made every confrontation more heated and emotional than it needed to be. "You better just try to calm down for a minute, and think about what you're trying to accomplish with this phone call, Gene. I'll discuss these things with you, but only if you can speak calmly and rationally." "I'm not the one who isn't being rational." Gene bit off the words as he spoke them. I could feel him trying to rein himself in though. "It sounds like both our families have conflicting traditions, Gene. In my family, we hire anyone we think can get the job done for us. We're mostly interested in making things run better, so we can make more money for ourselves. I'd be interested in hearing an explanation of your reasoning for me not hiring your sister." "I already told you, it's tradition. My father decided that it wouldn't be good to have our women in the business, because business should be run on logical thinking, not emotional feelings." "Well, I agree with part of that, but Patty didn't strike me as being an overly emotional person. In fact, she struck me as being just the opposite. Twenty five years with the same employer, and she never found it necessary, or appropriate, to resign, not even once. That does make her different from most in your family, but not in a bad way." "Hardly the same thing. Patty is not your typical Macklinson woman, but she is the exception, not the rule." "What about Cindy? You think she's another exception?" "Why bring her into it? This is about Patty, and what it will do to any hope you might have of having any of the Macklinson people return to work." I wondered if it had been Patty who had called to tell Gene of her having been hired by me. Maybe Gene didn't know that I'd hired Cindy too. "I hired Cindy a couple of days ago. She's the one who first talked to Patty for us. I've got her working on redoing the office floor right now. We're starting to make some big changes here, Gene. Give us another month, you won't be able to recognize this place." "You know, Kenny, this is precisely the attitude I find so galling. You make these wholesale changes, without having first thought about their impact, or their effect on other people. It is a dangerous way to approach business down here." "My father tells me the same thing, Gene. He thinks I need to take time to study all my ideas about changing the way we do things. I think he's right, at times, but, if I listened to him, all the time, I wouldn't get anything accomplished. Its just two different philosophies at work. The way I think about it, if I make a change and it doesn't work, I can always play with it, until it does. I don't mind having to undo things from time to time. That's just my way, and it seems to work better for me than not doing anything does." "You can't undo it, if hiring Patty makes all the other Macklinson people decide to stay away from the company." "That is beginning to sound suspiciously like a threat, Gene. Is that how you want it to sound?" "No, it isn't a threat. What I'm telling you is what I already know would happen, if you were to go ahead and actually hire Patty, or keep Cindy working for you there. You can't just go fly in the face of seventy years of family tradition." I sensed that Gene was only being candid, telling me what he honestly believed would happen. I also sensed that Gene still didn't have as firm a grasp on his position, relative to mine, at the company. He was still acting as if he were someone with authority over the decisions being made. "I think I understand you, Gene. Basically, you're saying I need to make a choice. Either have the Macklinson men here, or keep Cindy and Patty on as employees." "I'm afraid that's really the only choice, Kenny. For myself, I wish things were different, but I'm afraid they aren't." Gene seemed pretty certain that I'd look at what I'd be losing if I couldn't have any of the Macklinson men back, then decide that I had to follow his family's tradition. I didn't see it that way. In fact, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try to finally get through to all the Macklinson men. Things had changed, and they either had to accept those changes, and learn to live with them, or go off and do something different with their lives. "I guess I'm going to choose the women then, Gene. I've got no use for people who can't change when they need to. Macklinson traditions aren't important to me. Making this business better is important. I'm becoming convinced I can't accomplish that by having you or your brothers involved in it. As far as your sons and nephews go, they have to decide for themselves what is more important to them. Anyone who works for us, they need to do what we tell them. If doing that conflicts with their values or beliefs, then they should just stay away from us." "That's certainly clear to me now, Kenny. You know Kyle and Steven will choose family over working for you? Nobody is going to come out ahead from you taking this unreasonable attitude." "You're wrong about that already, Gene. I feel like I'm going to come out ahead. I don't want people here that can't work within our framework. We set the policy, and you get to decide if you can co-exist with it or not. You don't make policy anymore, we do." "I give it another month before your father calls me himself, asking for all of us to come back to work." "If he does that, I'd be the first one to call and congratulate you. Right after I did that though, I'd call my father and negotiate to buy Macklinson's from him. He'd sell it too, because if things were going badly enough that he'd want to give you that call, then he'd be only too happy to unload the company. Since I own forty percent of his company, and, since he's my father, I seriously doubt he'd do that, even if I messed things up so bad we'd have to shut this operation down. He'd probably tell people it was a good lesson for me to have learned." "Is this trouble between us going to have any bearing on our agreement for you to purchase the Underwood property?" "Not from my end, Gene. This isn't personal, you know. This is a conflict of philosophies, a disagreement over how the business needs to be operated. To be candid with you, I'm glad we got this out in the open today. I've been trying to convince you that things are going to be run the way I want them to be, and you don't seem to believe what I've been telling you. I feel like we finally resolved everything today. I can just move forward with things now, knowing that we both understand our differences are completely beyond repair." "I can't help believing that you're making a mistake." "If I am, it won't be my first, and it won't be my worst. I know I can live with the consequences any mistake of mine will cause me. You should make certain you feel the same, before you counsel the kids to stand with you, Phil, and Larry on this. There are already some of you I've decided I won't ever take back. Right now, Phil, Billy Ray, Jerry, Doug, and the other Jennings boy are the only ones who need bother to apply to be taken back here. If Kyle or Steve quit again, they'll be done forever here too." "What did Jesse do to get lumped in there with Larry and me?" "He's too much like his father. I think I can work with the other kids, but not Jesse." "You keep digging your way down deeper, Kenny. You have no real justification for excluding Jesse." "I don't need one. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Gene. You think I need to justify everything, to try to get your approval for it. You've taught all these kids the same thing. I don't have to satisfy you, your brothers, or any other Macklinson. You don't have to satisfy me either, not unless you happen to work here." "It isn't right to force a man to choose between his job and his family." "Then stop doing it. Let the boys decide for themselves, without first having to pass some Macklinson family unity test. I can do without all of them, if it comes down to that. I'm pretty sure that isn't what you want." After Gene and I got off the phone, I decided to call my Dad again. It seemed like I was calling him almost every day, telling him that one or more of the Macklinson people had a conflict with my way of doing things. This wasn't the way he liked to manage things. He preferred having the people he put in charge taking care of these types of problems themselves. I still wanted to talk to him, because I figured this was still training for me. If I was wrong in what I was attempting to do, I wanted him to tell me so. I didn't want to wait until the situation was damaged beyond repair. I spent fifteen minutes, filling him in on everything that had taken place, and telling him what Gene had said to me. Each time he asked me a question, I tried to answer it as honestly as I could. "I don't think you were as diplomatic as you might have been, Kenny. Gene isn't stupid, you didn't need to explain every single little thing to him like you did. Sometimes, letting them draw their own conclusions is preferable." "I've tried being subtle, Dad. None of them seem to believe me when I tell them what I'm going to do down here. They all think they can keep doing what they've always done. Even now, I'll bet you that Gene still thinks things are going to go back to the way they were. I'm betting he's going to make Kyle and Steve quit, just to try to prove to me that he can do it." "If he does, you have to follow through with what you told him. The main thing for you to keep in mind is, you're the one in charge down there, not any of them. If they can't believe it, or they won't, that doesn't change the reality of it any. Part of your problem with dealing with them might be that you don't really believe you should have to prove that to them. I think that's why you've been so insecure about the actions you've chosen to take. You asked for my advice, so I'm going to give it to you. Quit negotiating with them. Stop taking their phone calls. You've already explained yourself. They have to change, not you. Wait three months before you have any further conversations with any of them." "That means that I'll be stuck here for at least three more months." "Yes, but you should be able to spend no more than a day or two each week down there. Everything else, you can handle over the phone. Find someone you feel confident you can work with. Give them the daily responsibilities to keep things running the way you want them to. Macklinson's is your project, but I don't expect you to be there all the time. You need to oversee the changes you're making, but you don't need to be on site to do that. Find someone." That was just like my father. He already knew I was having problems keeping on top of everything myself, so he tells me to find someone else to dump all of this on. For a minute, after he and I got off the phone, I was very tempted to phone Joyce, to ask her to come down to Alabama, to help me out. I knew she and I could work together. I was sure that would get my father's attention. I might have done it too, if I thought, for even a minute, that Joyce would agree. I started thinking about bringing Michael Sparkman down. He was involved with handling special projects for my Dad now. Even more than I was, Michael was a person who shot from the hip. Like me, he wasn't troubled if things didn't turn out that well at first. If my father was right, and the problem down here was with the Macklinson family, not with me, then having Michael here acting the same way I did, wasn't going to harm anything. Michael was even younger than me though, and I had come to believe that part of my lack of credibility, with Gene and his brothers, was my age, and lack of experience. If I did bring Michael down to Alabama, it would mean I really was giving up on reaching an accord with all of them. I tried to figure out how I could be absent from the plant, yet still know what was going on. I wasn't sure that Michael would be willing to operate with me looking over his shoulder all the time. In the past, this had been a cause of friction between us. This was the main reason why Michael had been turned into a special projects person. I decided to call him, to feel him out about the possibility of coming down to work as my assistant. I had decided to start out with both of us being here, for at least the first two weeks, then have me gradually disengage, so that he could see I was ready to give him greater autonomy. This would also make it easier for him to report to me while I was back in Kansas. He would take my being physically absent as a vote of confidence for his being able to work without me. It was worth trying. I was planning on flying back to Bolling the next day anyway, so I'd have Joyce invite Michael over to our house over the weekend. We could talk and I'd be able to find out if he and I were compatible with the direction I wanted to move things. I called Joyce and told her what was happening, including my father's suggestion, and that I was considering Michael Sparkman as my new assistant. "That would be a mistake, Kenny. Mike's too much of a cowboy now. He'd go down there with a gunslinger's mentality. He isn't ready for something as complex as what you're doing down there. You need someone with less ego, someone who won't mind being your caretaker down there." "Do you have someone in mind? Who do we know that could do the work, but not mind being a second fiddle?" "If I tell you, you have to promise not to just laugh. Think about it first, before you say anything. All right?" I didn't like the sound of that. My first thought was she was going to suggest either herself or Emily. My Dad wouldn't agree to losing Joyce, and Emily didn't have the experience, interest, or training, to be an effective caretaker. Besides, a large part of what I was trying to accomplish was to put me back with all of my family, not separate one of them from the rest of us. "Okay. Tell me, who?" "Ellen could do it." "No way! Ellen doesn't know the first thing about running a company. She has no experience, no training." "She wouldn't be running anything. You would. All she would do was be a caretaker, reporting everything back to you. You know how you phone your Dad or me? When we talk, you tell us everything that happened, and we discuss it with you. You tell her what to do, what to look for, and she would call you anytime anything happened that she didn't have clear instructions on how to deal with." "What about her mom? You think Edith will let Ellen fly off to Alabama? She gets nervous if Ellen's in a different room than her." "No more. She and Ellen don't even live together anymore. Edith has her own boy friend again, and Ellen was living with Greg, until about a week ago. She's still upset about him, and she's talking about quitting now, because she doesn't want to be around him anymore." "Joyce, I'm not giving her a job just to get her away from her ex-boyfriend. She's totally wrong for what I have in mind." "Kenny, Mike was totally wrong, not Ellen. You want to still be in charge down there, you just don't want to spend so much time away from here. Ellen is really good about remembering things. She doesn't need to be the one making decisions, but she can relay those decisions to other people, if someone else is making them. She would be your eyes and ears, and you could trust what she tells you. This is perfect, because, otherwise, we're going to lose her anyway. I'd rather send her to Alabama for a few months, than lose her completely." I listened to Joyce, thinking about what she was saying. She was right about one thing, I did want to still be in charge of Macklinson's. I knew all the main changes I wanted to make already. I was becoming more convinced, enough to really consider giving it a tryout. I'd still have to see if Ellen and I could work together the way we'd need to. There was also something that appealed to me in having a women being the person essentially filling Gene's shoes. I had planned on him being my caretaker, but that wasn't possible now. While I was thinking about what Joyce had suggested, I realized that I had already planned, at some sub-conscious level, to remain more or less permanently in control of Macklinson's. My problem was figuring out how I could juggle that with everything else I was already committed to doing. I had developed a real taste for being in charge. I knew I needed to gain management experience, I just didn't want to pay the full price my Dad had for gaining it. I didn't want to have to give everything else up to do it. Was there such a thing as a part time CEO? Macklinson's was destined to end up as our largest single division, and the only one to incorporate both cereals and breads, with vending product production. Next to my Dad's job, this one would be the most coveted. I wondered if my father had planned things the way he had, with some thought about whether this job would be enough to tempt me away from the direction I'd been heading? Joyce remained quiet while I worked some things out in my head. There were a lot of things I needed to think about. It was turning into a much bigger decision than I'd been thinking about. "Joyce, has my Dad said anything to you about any plans he has for me with the company?" She laughed. "We talk about it. He wants you ready, but he's also afraid you won't ever want to give it as much attention as it needs. I think he's starting to come around more to your brain trust idea, but he still says that one person needs to be in charge. He doesn't think you can be successful running a business by committee." "Neither do I. I'm starting to see things a little differently now, because of what I've found down here. There is such a thing as too many people making separate decisions, all binding a company's actions. There has to be one person in overall authority." "You should tell him that. It would ease some of his current concerns." "If I told him that, I'd have to admit to him that the best person to be in overall authority is you." "He already knows that you and I are going to share that authority, Kenny. He says we already proved that we qualify as being one person." "Tell me again how this thing with Ellen is supposed to work. Is she supposed to be like my secretary, or more like a vice president?" "Neither. She will be you, when you aren't there. You make the decisions, and she'll tell people what you've decided, making sure that what you tell her to do gets done. All you have to do is make sure the two of you understand how to communicate together, and that everyone down there knows that talking to Ellen is the best way to talk to you when you aren't there." Cindy came back to my office, after I had finished my phone calls with everyone. She had all kinds of notes and drawings, including old blueprints of the building. In all the talk about assistants, and me not having to spend as much time in Alabama, I hadn't factored Cindy into any of my planning. I wasn't even sure how she would take the news about what Gene and I had spoken about. "Let's go off somewhere for some lunch. Things have come up, and we need to talk." We went out to a little cafe in a working class neighborhood. Cindy had a salad, and I opted for the house special, a sandwich, with cole slaw and fries. I'm not sure how many different kinds of meats and cheeses were in the middle of the sandwich, but it was a big, fat, sandwich, and it was very tasty, as well as filling. "I spoke with your father this morning. He's very upset about your aunt coming to work for us. I told him that you were working with me too." "I knew he would be upset. Was it bad?" Cindy looked worried as she sipped at her glass of tea. "Not that bad for me. I have already decided what we need to do, and it didn't have anything to do with whether my decisions upset your father or not. If it does, that's his problem not mine. He ended up telling me I needed to make a choice, because the men wouldn't agree to work with the women." "Are you firing me?" Cindy looked worried when she asked it. I realized then she didn't know me that well, not if she seriously thought I'd cave in to her father's demands. "No. I'm just telling you that your father was upset, and it looks like he's going to do what he can to keep both your brothers, and all your cousins, from coming back to work for me. He hinted, pretty strongly, that he might get Kyle and Steve to quit again too." "They both need those jobs. I wish he and Uncle Larry would just let everyone else decide things for themselves. There doesn't need to be all this family upheaval, every time someone gets a little upset." "That's what I told him too. I also told him I wasn't going to hire him, Larry, or Jesse back, that they were done with ever working for the company." Cindy raised her head from her salad to look at me. She nodded her understanding, then went right back to eating it again. "You don't seem too upset or surprised by this." "I knew it was going to come down to this when you first hired me to come to work for you. That's one of the reasons I called Aunt Patricia. I figured it would be better if we both joined at the same time, because there was bound to be some big family reaction when they learned we did it. You should let me talk to Kyle and Steve, Kenny, before they make up their minds about what they should do." "I guess its fine if you talk to them. It sure couldn't hurt, and I'd really hate to lose Kyle. I already told Kyle he couldn't ever come back if he quits the company again. I hate it that your family has decided we need to have all this turmoil, but I'm never going to allow them to tell me who I can hire, or who I can't. I've told them all along that they have to go by our rules, not us by theirs. They didn't accept that." "I thing some of the boys would come back to work, even if Daddy and Uncle Larry asked them not to. The married ones would, I'm pretty sure. Billy Ray needs this job, and I think Uncle Phil has been telling him he shouldn't have quit when everyone else did. Nobody has any insurance, and Uncle Phil is the only one who gives any of his own money to some of the boys." "They all still have their company benefits, Cindy. I checked when I hired Steve and Kyle back. The premiums have already been paid through the end of November. I had the women who handles employee terminations hold off on putting anything through to our insurance carrier, because it might cause more problems and paperwork if some of them do decide to come back next month." "That's good then, but someone needs to explain that to them. They all think their insurance has been canceled." "There's other things we need to discuss, Cindy. Since your father isn't coming back to work, I need to make other plans. I don't want to end up being down here full time for any lengthy stay. My Dad said I should hire someone to be here so that I could come down only one or two days a week. I talked to Joyce, and she thinks it would work if she sent down this girl that works for her now. Someone to be a caretaker when I was gone. I want you to be with me, so I hope you'll agree to fly in and out when I do. You'll still work with me like you do now, but you'll be wherever I am." "That's fine with me, Kenny. I've been feeling good being with you, and I really like what you've got me working on too." "We won't be leaving like that for awhile though, except for the weekends. That means that we'll be staying over at the rental house like now. I talked to Joyce, and Dale and Eddie are still wanting to come down next week. Joyce talked to them about what you've been afraid of. They both said they didn't want to give up their turn. Joyce said she thinks we should let them decide. You have to decide what you're going to do next week. Joyce suggested you could either go to your father's, or else stay in the guest bedroom. It isn't very likely that Dale will be interested in having relations with you, but Eddie is a whole different story." "You still think there's something racial, don't you?" Cindy's expression looked like she was hurt. The conversation we'd had before hadn't cleared up her concern about my suspicions of her. "No, what I think is just what you told me. You aren't comfortable with them yet. Dale isn't comfortable either, but I don't automatically think it has to do with you being white. What I was trying to say was you have a choice. If you decide to stay at the house, you can expect Eddie to try something with you. If you stay with your Dad, this won't be an issue." "Are you planning on inviting me to come home with you this weekend, Kenny?" "Of course, you're always invited. I was planning on it. What did you think I meant when I said that you'll be wherever I am?" "I didn't think about it, I just was happy that you said it. I want to be where you are too. Maybe I can get to know Eddie and Dale better this weekend. I've hardly had any chance to sit down with them to start to get acquainted." "Well, you won't have any trouble getting acquainted with Eddie. She's a lot like Joyce when it comes to liking any kind of sex. You might have to tell her to slow down with you." "Maybe I won't want to tell her to slow down. I think some things are changing for me now. I used to worry more about what things looked like to other people. This was part of the reason I stayed away from getting too involved with people. Boys scared me, and they still do, except for you, but, being that way with other girls felt uncomfortable in a lot of ways too. Being around you and the other girls, no one thinks anything about who we're kissing or touching. It doesn't seem that important, only that we're enjoying ourselves. I feel very free now, in a way I didn't ever feel free before. I used to feel guilty when something happened, or even when I just wanted it to happen. I didn't feel that way with you and Shirley. I did with Joyce, and with Brenda too, but not with Shirley. I don't think I'd feel guilty with Joyce or Brenda now." "That's a good thing, Cindy. There isn't anything to feel guilty about. Just remember feeling free is fine, but you have to feel free both ways. Free to do or not to do. I don't expect you to force yourself to do what you aren't comfortable doing. You aren't being tested by any of us. You can say no, if it isn't what you want." "I've been saying no, for too long. I've been afraid to do anything else but say no. This is the first time in seven years that I've been able to get up in the morning, looking forward to saying yes. Maybe that's why I'm not that upset about Daddy and Larry, or about Eddie and Dale. I'm not as afraid of everything as I was. That's what I mean about feeling free." I could feel her happiness as she told me that. We both knew it wasn't that she felt absolutely free. It was relatively free, but that was so much better than feeling afraid and feeling like an oppressed victim all the time. It was going to take a lot more time, and Cindy might never recover fully from her earlier ordeal, but it all looked a lot brighter to her now. It wasn't only me, and I knew that now. Shirley and Cindy had forced that recognition on me, in the bedroom. It was the way we all were together that Cindy had responded to. I think it was seeing me with Joyce, Emily, Brenda, and Shirley, and seeing that we were all part of the same relationship. We were all different, in looks and personalities, but we were all connected too. It was seeing the same connection, over and over, that she was responding to. In the beginning, everyone seemed to only focus on the sexual aspects of my having four wives. They didn't understand that the sex was only a part of the connection we had with each other. There was the love and support, the certain knowledge that someone else was there for you, willing to do what they could to help you achieve your goals. All that we had was being shared. It wasn't perfect, as none of us were perfect. We were all made better though, by the support and the cooperation each willingly gave to all the others. None of us could have accomplished half as much as we did, without the active help and the encouragement we'd been given by all our mates. I think Cindy had first started realizing this when she'd come back, after I brought Shirley down with me. She had left, but, when she came back, things were still the same. At some point she realized that we weren't all acting as individuals, but as separate parts of a bigger whole. It was the whole that she had finally given herself over to, and had just begun trusting. It was a trust that would only be strengthened by continued contact and interaction with all of us. I hadn't managed to convince the Macklinson brothers to subscribe to my vision of how things needed to be, but that was probably mostly my fault, because of the way I pushed ahead with my own agenda, without consulting them, before announcing my changes. It was their fault too, because their tactics, in response, only ended up increasing the tensions between us. I asked myself if I would have changed things very much, if I'd known, beforehand, what my actions were going to end up costing all of us? The answer was a resounding no. My father was right, when he insisted that a single, unified, vision needed to prevail. At some point, I had decided the one vision that needed to prevail was my own. Possibly not the best management technique for achieving consensus, but effective, if you didn't mind shaking up the status quo. I had learned that I couldn't run away from the commitment I'd earlier given my parents. I now understood that I needed to find a way to integrate that commitment in with all the other responsibilities and lifestyle choices that I'd already made. My life was becoming filled with all the many different commitments I had thus far accepted. I wouldn't be able to lessen the number, apparently, but I could attenuate and 'tweak' each new incoming one, so that the overall effect on my existing lifestyle was to leave it in some sort of balance. I wanted a life that was livable, and one that was productive, but, at the same time, manageable. I hoped I'd be able to fulfill my responsibilities, and continue being as happy as I now believed myself to be. ------- Chapter 46 Friday night, in the living room, the eight of us were all gathered together. I had spent an hour, after dinner, in with all my children, playing a little, but mostly making sure that I had a chance to spend time with each of them, holding the youngest ones in my arms. They were growing so quickly, changing it seemed, every time I was gone, even if only for a few days. I had been explaining the progress being made at Macklinson's, and the difficulties I was experiencing by needing to deal with having some of my careful plans derailed. Cindy confirmed what I told the others about the Macklinson tradition concerning not allowing their women to work in the family business. "Did you father tell you about the newest offer that bond company made to him, Kenny?" Joyce had changed the subject pretty abruptly. She would only do so if she thought it was important. I hadn't had any chance to really speak with her alone, since we'd all gotten home, right before dinner. "No. I talked with him this morning, and he didn't mention anything to me." "They said they are willing to make all the changes he requested, except for having the cash flow supervised with a neutral party trustee. They agreed to only using the income to pay the bondholders, but they say it isn't legal if they aren't the custodians of the collateral and income flow that are primarily securing the offering." "That was the key element in those requested changes. The offering is like a limited partnership, and the bond company serves as the general partner. They can effectively amend the rules any time they have the support of two thirds of the offerings limited partners. If they control the receivables, there isn't anything we can do to protect our interest if they went ahead and voted to treat the income differently than what we initially agree to. We could file suit, but they would be in the position of saying they were acting to protect the interest of the limited partners. I don't like it." "You need to talk to him then, because he's flying to New York on Sunday. He doesn't think they will do anything, because the agreement he's thinking about signing says they can't." "I'll go see him in the morning. Do you know if he's still planning on keeping his appointments with those other people? He isn't planning on signing anything right away, is he?" Joyce didn't know. I could tell she was worried that I'd make too big of an issue of it with my Dad. Joyce was always reluctant to show any disagreement with my father, or with his decisions. She would usually tell me things though, knowing I'd speak with him about any concern I had. If she did this, it almost always meant she had her concerns as well. ------- Cindy had chosen a seat on the same sofa where Eddie and Dale were sitting. The three of them were discussing Birmingham, and seemed to be relaxed and comfortable together. Brenda and Emily informed me that I was scheduled to spend the night with them, explaining that Shirley and Cindy had me all to themselves all week, and Eddie and Dale were going to be with me all of the next week. When I asked about where Joyce fit in with their planning, I was told by Brenda that Joyce had already made other plans. Emily pointed over at Cindy, smiling at me as she did so. Nobody raised any objections, so I assumed it had all been worked out in advance, with all involved having reached agreement. I did get a chance for a few minutes alone with Joyce, later in the evening, and she confirmed that she would be in with Cindy and Shirley that night, and I would spend Saturday night with Cindy and Emily. She didn't seem worried about anything, so, again, I assumed everyone had agreed to having it like this. It was after ten thirty when Emily and Brenda got up, telling me it was time for bed. As soon as I got up, Cindy got up and came over to stand beside me. It looked suspiciously like she hadn't been informed about the sleeping arrangements that had been made. I looked over at Joyce, assuming that she would get things straightened out. In the past, these things were mostly set up beforehand. "Cindy, you're in with Shirley and I tonight." Joyce was smiling as she closed the distance with Cindy. I didn't like the glare that Emily was already directing Cindy's way. I was already beginning to get a sinking feeling about what might be developing here. "I sleep with Kenny. That's what he told me." Cindy took my right arm in both of hers, moving in close by my side. She held my arm tight enough that I could tell she was upset already. I didn't remember telling her any such thing. I did remember saying I wanted her to travel with me, to be where I was, but this wasn't what I'd meant when I said that to her. "I didn't say we'd sleep together every night, Cindy. That isn't something that would work. I want you with me, but not sleeping together every night." She released my arm and took a step backward. She looked like I'd slapped her. When Joyce attempted to give her a hug, Cindy pushed her away roughly. All of us reacted when we saw that happening. I moved over to help Joyce retain her balance, while Eddie and Dale jumped up from the sofa, hurrying over to stand between Cindy and Joyce. "Cindy!" Three or four of us must have shouted out her name at the same time. As soon as I heard it, and saw the look that she got on her face, I knew we had managed to frighten her. Joyce must have seen it too, because she raised her hands to silence us all. "Let's all sit down and calm down. We'll discuss it. I'm sure its only a communication problem. We'll get it all sorted out soon." Joyce was motioning Cindy and I over to the sofa that Cindy had previously been sitting on with Eddie and Dale. "You sit down there with Cindy, Kenny. We'll let Cindy explain what she thought was going to happen. Sometimes, we forget this is all pretty new for her." Cindy seemed to regain some of her lost composure and moved over to the sofa, sitting down on the middle cushion. I sat down immediately to her left. Joyce went to her other side, sitting on the end cushion. Everyone else found places for themselves to sit. When we were all seated again, Cindy looked over at me, but she didn't say anything. "Cindy, you had to know I wasn't going to spend every night in bed with you? Tonight is Brenda and Emily's turn. Tomorrow night, it will be you and Emily and me. Sunday night, back at the rental house, I'll be with Dale and Eddie. This is how it works out. Otherwise, it would be playing favorites, and that wouldn't work." All eyes were on Cindy. No one knew how she was going to react to this. The truth was, I was the one who probably should have spoken to her about this back in Birmingham. I didn't, because these were the kinds of things I'd grown used to having Joyce handle for me. She seemed to know just how to put things, anticipating what people would say or do when it came to working out these sleeping arrangements. "You said we'd be together, Kenny. I don't know why it has to be different here than it was back home. You can pick one, and that's who we'll sleep with tonight." I was beginning to see evidence that Cindy had personality similarities with her father and uncles. Maybe it was like that with the whole Macklinson family, I didn't know. They get an idea in their head, and there was no way to change them from it. "That isn't what I said, and it isn't what I meant. I've always said that you could join us, but I wouldn't ever give up what my family and I already had. You can be a part of us, but you can't come between us. What you're asking for is something that can't ever happen." Emily started to say something, in what we all knew to be her confrontational tone. She was quickly silenced by all the angry glares sent her way. We were trying to defuse the situation, not pour fresh fuel on the fire. Emily shut right up, but her angry stares back at us left no doubt that we'd be hearing more from her, and very soon too, about us not letting her talk about this. "Kenny, I really thought it was going to be us together when we came up here. If I knew it wasn't, I'd have stayed in Birmingham. I shared you there, and I thought that was what we'd be doing here too." I knew Cindy was only pretending to not understand. There had been nothing ambiguous or confusing about what I'd said to her about me having other wives and commitments. At the very least, she was trying to take advantage of a loop hole of her own devising. It wasn't going to work with me, and I was getting angry that she was attempting it. I realized she had grown up in a family that chose to fight their battles this way. I wasn't going to permit her to do this. Just having to go through things like this with her would sow seeds of dissension among the rest of us. We already had enough pettiness and jealousies surrounding us, without adding more to the mix. "Cindy, I want you to listen closely, because you need to hear and understand what I'm saying to you. You were invited to join our family, not just me. I'm not going to keep having this same type of trouble that we're having here tonight. Every one of us here shares with all the others. Before you, we were seven. If you can't share, or if sharing is too big of a burden for you, then we can go right back to being seven again." "What about Dale? She doesn't have to share." "Maybe I meant a different kind of share. Dale shares Eddie, Joyce and I with Emily, Shirley and Brenda. You don't see her insisting that she spends every night with anyone. No one else is doing that, only you. No one is telling you that you have to have sex with anyone you don't want to, or that anyone has to have sex with you. We all agreed to limit ourselves to only having sex with the other members of the group. We have made exceptions even there, like with Ellen, or Eddie and Dale, before they actually decided to join with us." "You said I could choose, and I choose you." "That's fine, but I have two others that I've chosen tonight. When you choose me, and I choose you, there isn't a problem. Tonight, Joyce and Shirley both chose you to be with them. You get to decide whether you want either or both, or else you can sleep alone, or choose someone else instead. This is how we do things. No one is being forced." "If I knew you were going to do this, I wouldn't have come here at all." "I'm too upset and tired to fly you back tonight, Cindy. You can either stay here tonight, or you can go over to my mother's house and spend the night there. I'll fly you back home in the morning. I don't seem to have much luck trying to get any of the Macklinson family to live with the conditions I have available to offer them. I'm going to bed now. Let Joyce know what you decide to do." I got up and started walking to the staircase. Emily was the first one to jump to her feet and follow me. Brenda got up slower, and started walking over to the staircase too. We were halfway up the stairs when I heard Cindy say something, then Joyce answered something back to her. At the top of the stairs I looked back, and Cindy was turned to Joyce, and Joyce had her arms around her, comforting her. In Emily's bedroom, things didn't go as well as the two girls had planned. I wasn't really in the mood for making love, and Emily and Brenda were arguing about whether or not I'd been too cold towards Cindy. Emily thought I'd been too easy on her. I wound up in bed alone with Emily when Brenda made a few harsh comments to Emily and I, before leaving for her own bedroom. I would have left for mine too, but I wasn't sure who might be in my bed. I didn't want to go back there and find Cindy in bed. Joyce came to find me at seven the next morning, telling me that Cindy had opted to sleep alone in Shirley's bedroom. Joyce and Shirley had slept together, but Joyce blamed me for spoiling everyone's mood. Cindy waited until ten o'clock before coming down to the first floor. She was carrying the travel bag she had brought with her from Birmingham. I was talking to Joyce in my little home office when Cindy knocked on my open door. "I'm ready to leave, Kenny." I didn't say anything to her. Joyce stood up and walked over to the door, and I picked up the phone to call our maintenance hangar to request that they prepare the plane for us to leave within the next forty five minutes. I wasn't sure how I felt. It seemed like it was a combination of feelings. I was acutely aware that I had absolutely no interest in trying to get Cindy to change her mind. Cindy and Joyce had gone off somewhere when I got off the telephone. This didn't help my mood any. I was tempted to make another call to Bolling to see if they had another pilot available to fly Cindy back to Birmingham. When I stood up and walked out to the living room, Brenda, Shirley, Joyce and Cindy were waiting there for me. They had all decided to make the trip down to Birmingham with us. Emily, Eddie and Dale weren't around. I decided not to ask Joyce any questions about whether that meant anything or not. I didn't care to know. "If we're all ready, let's go. I want to be back here in time to spend some time with my Dad before he flies to New York tomorrow." The trip down to Birmingham was routine again. All the wives stayed in the back, with the curtain drawn between us. When we got to the Birmingham airport, Joyce told me that she and the other girls would drive Cindy to her father's house, so she could pick up her car. I was supposed to stay with the plane while we refueled and got ready for a quick turn around. I knew, even without them telling me, that Joyce, Shirley and Brenda believed I was handling this situation in the wrong way. They hadn't had my experience in dealing with the whole Macklinson family. To them, this seemed a small problem, one that could easily be talked out and solved. I felt differently. I had enjoyed very little success trying to talk any Macklinson into accepting anything they didn't already wish to agree to. I had grown weary of trying to do it. On the trip back, Joyce sat up front with me. Brenda and Shirley pulled the curtain separating the cockpit from the passenger section back. They were sitting in the two front passenger seats, ready to help Joyce out if she had forgotten to point out any of my past mistakes in the way I'd handled the earlier situation with Cindy. It made for a long and uncomfortable return flight. Right before we flew over Kansas City, I had finally reached the limit of my tolerance for enduring their abuse. "That's enough! All of you were right there the whole time. You could have spoken up before the situation got as bad as it did. Cindy knew she wasn't going to sleep with me every night. She was just trying to see if she could get more of what she wants. I don't want to play that game with her. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with trying to convince her she needs to be a part of our group. She already knew what our family was about before she started all of that last night. She wants us to change things just for her, and I'm not going to do that." "She was really trying her best to fit in, Kenny. All she needed was a little understanding, and a little more time to get used to things." Joyce had barely waited for me to finish my sentences before starting right back in with me. "I'm sorry, Joyce. I'm fresh out of understanding, for her, and for her whole family. She has all the time she needs to get used to things now. I'm done with her, and I'm probably done with her whole family. I think we'd all be better off if we don't keep picking at each other over this. We made mistakes, I'm sure, but not the one she's trying to make us think we made." "No one is saying she's right, Kenny. What we're saying is you didn't need to jump right in like that and give her an ultimatum." Shirley was one of the quietest people when it came to how the family was operated. If she believed I'd been too hasty, then, probably, I had been. Joyce might continue to run right past the stop sign I'd given the three of them, but I was surprised that Shirley had done so too. I didn't believe I'd been too hasty in drawing the conclusion I had about Cindy being too much like her relatives. This similarity didn't bode well for the possibility of her and I being able to get along together. Where I might have been too hasty was in not preparing the rest of the family first. I could have accomplished this by stating all of my concerns before saying what I did to Cindy. I hadn't set the stage properly for it. "Look, I'm getting ready to land the plane, so I really need to concentrate now. When we get home, I need to see my father, then, after, we can hold a family meeting and discuss this together." That pretty much ended our conversation. Joyce and the others left to sit by themselves towards the rear of the plane, no doubt discussing the situation among themselves. After I dropped the three of them off at our house, I drove over to Mama's. I spent half an hour with Hans, Gerta, Mama and my Dad, just letting them know that I was doing well, and catching up with how they were all doing. After that, I asked Dad if I could speak with him about the trip to New York. We went into his study. "Sit down, Kenny. I guess Joyce told you about the new offer the bond company sent me?" "She told me that they still insist on controlling the cash flow from all the acquisitions. That's primarily what I wanted to ask you about." "Control them, but with some fairly severe restrictions placed on the uses they can put the income to." "Joyce mentioned that part too, but, once you give them effective control over those cash flow assets, we'll be the ones who need to justify any misgivings we might have. The other way, using a third party trustee, if they wanted to make any changes in how they used the money, they'd be the ones needing to justify it first. I don't trust them. That's what it comes down to, and I'm very hesitant to do business with people I don't trust." "I'm assuming that you do still trust me?" There was a bit of frostiness in my father's tone. If I hadn't already crossed the line with him, I was getting close to it. This is probably what Joyce had been afraid of. "Of course I do. I know you're anxious to get this money for the expansion. I don't see the big rush to use these people when they've already shown a lack of business ethics. I didn't come over here to fight though. I came over to offer you a different plan. A plan where all of us can trust the people involved." My father sat back in his chair, his hands clasped over his stomach. He was waiting to hear what I wanted to say. "Take all my money from Uncle Bunny's trust. If that isn't enough, Mama will loan you the rest. Think of it as a bridge loan. This way, you can start on the expansion right away, then set up a good financing plan later, after you already have known assets to put up as collateral." "You think this is a better plan than what I'm working on?" My father didn't look happy. I knew he had issues with putting too many eggs in a single basket. In any business opportunity, there is always some element of risk. "I know it's better for me, because if you do it the way I'm suggesting, I can quit worrying. The other way, I'll stay worried. Even if the worst thing you can think of happened, I'll know it wasn't happening because someone was trying to cheat us." "I think you'll find that your mother is far less anxious to commit her assets than you seem to be." "Let's make that the test then. If she says no, or even if she's too undecided to give you a definite yes answer today, you are free to make any financing deal you choose to. If she does agree though, you stay away from doing any business with that bond company." "There is more at stake here than where we get our financing, Kenny. Until today, these types of decisions have always been left in my hands. Even when Bunny still lived, no one questioned my competence in steering the finances of the corporation. You being here this afternoon, telling me what you have said, calls your faith in my competence into question. I'm certain that this is something I will not tolerate." "If you think I'm here to question your competence, you're mistaken. I'm here to offer another choice, one that you should see as a clear vote of confidence. I'm more than willing to risk all of my own money on this confidence I've placed in you. I'm pretty certain that Mama feels the same way. Both kinds of financing might work out well for us, but, this way, I will sleep better at night. It isn't your competence I'm doubting, it's their intrinsic honesty I'm calling into question." "Very well. We'll put your mother to the question. I want you to let me ask it of her. I don't want to make it be a question of emotional import. You have about two hundred fifty million in your trust account, excluding the value of your company shares. I will query your mother as to whether or not she chooses to supply the remaining two hundred fifty million. Should she not say yes, immediately, I will proceed with arranging financing for the expansion without further input or suggestion from you?" "Absolutely, Dad. I wasn't even suggesting that you needed to listen to me, only that I'd feel better if you did." I stood up and was smiling. My father stood as well, but there was no smile on his face. "Unlike you, your mother understands the advantages to be had from searching for outside capital for expansion. You will be asking her to assume an unnecessary risk, a risk she will correctly refuse to assume." "I believe you're wrong, Dad. Mama has absolute faith in your abilities, as do I. Like me, she'll jump at the chance to be fully invested in your economic vision." We walked out of Dad's study, heading over to the library, where we both thought Mama would still be. She wasn't there, but we did find her in the kitchen, talking with Gerta. "Bertie, Kenny has come up with a notion, one he insists that I make inquiries about with you. He is concerned about the company we're negotiating with to raise our expansion capital. He suggests that you and he each put up half the necessary expansion funds so that we can move ahead with our plans immediately. He's willing to wait until our expansion is underway, before having me seek out another source of permanent funding for these expansion assets. This would require an investment, from you, of two hundred fifty million." Mama looked over at me. She was smiling, but it wasn't an amused smile. It seemed less free than a smile of happiness too. It appeared strained to me, like she felt she was being put into an uncomfortable position. "Two hundred fifty million? From each of us? That is a lot of money, Thomas." She was speaking to him, but she was staring right at me. I tried not to give away, with my facial expression, the fear that gripped me. I had assumed she felt the same way I did. Neither of us had ever come close to losing anything by having Dad investing our money. Much of the wealth we both enjoyed was due to all the years of his highly satisfactory performance in growing those assets. "I think that is a splendid suggestion, Thomas. Why don't we do that? Gerta, could I trouble you for one more of those tiny berry pastries, and another half cup of this decaffeinated coffee?" I let out the breath I'd been holding. As soon as I did so, Mama and my Dad started laughing at me. I was having a glass of milk and a few of Gerta's pastries, while Mama and Dad told me that Mama had been the first to suggest that idea to him, because she too had misgivings about the wisdom of doing business with that bond company. The joke was on me, but I didn't mind. I had gotten what I wanted, at the same time, avoiding what had been bothering me. I left to drive back home, this time knowing that what was awaiting me wasn't going to be an outcome that would be as satisfying as the one I'd just managed at Mama's. 'It doesn't have to be that way.' I told myself that as I drove. I had seen, from the way my Dad had acted, from the way Mama had acted, that things don't have to be any particular way. I had expected more resistance from Dad, and less from Mama, although in her case it was feigned resistance. I had taken a position, with Cindy, and with all the Macklinson family. It was a 'my way' position. I didn't think I was wrong about wanting to change things, or even in how I wanted to make those changes. It was the way I presented the necessity for these changes to them that could have been greatly improved upon. The same thing was true with Cindy. Joyce, Shirley and Brenda were correct. While what Cindy sought could never be, there was no reason for me to have taken such a closed and arbitrary stance with her. In the end, I had given her no real options, just like I had done with some of the decisions I announced to Gene and his family. There were better ways to take the actions I felt I needed to take. By the time I pulled up in front of my house, I'd convinced myself to at least try to be reasonable at the family meeting. I would listen to all their opinions, as long as those opinions concerned a better way for me to have tried to convince Cindy that she wasn't going to get what she said she wanted. I got out of my car and walked into the house. The gang of six was camped in the living room, ready to do battle, and to take me to task for the way I'd handled the whole Cindy situation. Even Emily appeared to have switched sides for the purposes of this meeting. I came in smiling, not nervous like they probably thought I'd be. "Did you have a good discussion with your father?" Joyce was watching me when she asked the question. "Very good. Mama and I are going to finance the expansion ourselves. Later, if he decides he wants to, Dad will find another method of raising the capital, to get our money back out of the deal." I could see she was relieved, just like I was. "We need to talk some more about what happened last night with Cindy. We've been talking here, while we were waiting for you to come back, and we're all convinced that you didn't give Cindy any choices. She didn't have a chance to find a way to come to terms with what you told her. You can't expect someone to just change the way they think in an instant. Even if Cindy didn't really believe you were going to sleep with her every night, you didn't have to force her to leave because you didn't want to talk with her about it any further. Emily thinks it was something else she wanted, and this was just the point where she wanted to start her negotiations with us." "I certainly could have handled things better. All of you are correct." They looked at me like I'd suddenly grown horns on top of my head. "This isn't funny, Kenny. You can't just pretend to agree with us to end this discussion." Emily seemed upset that I hadn't tried to act the same way with all of them that I had with Cindy. She must have prepared a strong argument for whatever case she wanted to make. "I don't think its funny either, and I'm not just pretending. You're all right, and I'm just admitting it. I didn't even think about the possibility that there might be a huge difference in the way I negotiate things, from the way they're used to. It's an interesting idea, and it might even be the key to all the frustration I've had in trying to get any of them to do anything I've asked them to do. You all know that I tend to try to steamroller people sometimes. It usually works for me, and it definitely saves me a lot of negotiating and arguing. I never have run into so many walls of absolute resistance before." "Don't try to change the subject, Kenny. We want to talk about Cindy, and what we need to do to get her back to how things were before last night. She was doing so well. Shirley says she was actually happy all last week." Joyce looked over at Shirley for confirmation of her statement. Shirley gave it too, with a crisp nod of her head. "Okay, let's talk about it. Does anyone have any ideas? First though, before we begin asking for these ideas, does anyone here want to try to make a case for letting Cindy have her way about sleeping with me every night?" No one wanted to suggest that to me. I was happy that no one did, because I knew that wouldn't work. "Joyce should call her and talk to her. Find out if she had something else she was trying to get from us. Dale thinks she might have just picked a fight to cover up for her not wanting to be with us when we come down to Birmingham." Eddie was smiling, content to repeat her sister's thoughts. "That's fine with me. I think it should be either Joyce or Shirley. If Dale is right, I doubt that Cindy would admit to it. I asked her several times if she had a problem with Eddie and Dale being black, and she said she didn't." "If I call her, I'm not going to ask her about Eddie and Dale. I think it's enough if we find out whether she was trying to negotiate, and what she hoped to gain by doing so. We could be doing that now, Kenny, if you hadn't closed off the discussion." Joyce didn't appear ready to stick to the topic I had chosen. "I admitted you were right about that already, Joyce. If you want me to, I'll get on the phone, when you call her, and apologize to her. I really believe I made a serious mistake in how I handled myself last night. I'm willing to accept the blame for it. Right now though, I'm looking for ideas on what we should do to reopen our dialogue with Cindy." "Would you be as concerned if something like this happened with me or Eddie, Kenny?" Dale surprised me with her question. It was a good one, but it revealed much to me about how Dale shared Eddie's earlier opinion about what had caused me to want to add them as wives too. Somehow, both believed that Cindy was more important to me than they were. I knew I had to answer the question. "I'd be more concerned, Dale. In the beginning, when I asked you and Eddie to be our wives, it was because I felt a strong connection with you both. At that time, Cindy's real connection with our family was only through Joyce. That's changed now, and she's connected through Brenda, Shirley, Joyce and me. The reason I'd be more concerned, if it was you or Eddie, is because I know you both better, and I know if you left, you probably wouldn't be coming back. I don't feel like that about Cindy. I think it might be something like her negotiating for something. Her whole family seems to think everything is open to negotiations. Before you guys mentioned that it might have been a negotiating tactic with Cindy, I believed that her whole family was unable to grasp what I kept telling them. I would say things, but they kept acting like I never meant anything I was saying." "So, this other thing you just said, about Cindy being connected in more ways now. Were you saying that she's ahead of me now, because she's been with more of your other women that I have?" Dale didn't sound happy, but it was a good question. "I wouldn't say ahead. There isn't an ahead or a behind to this, Dale. I think Cindy has more connections with my other wives than you do. It isn't just sex either, its relationships. Sex changes relationships. Don't you feel closer to Joyce than you do to Emily?" "I guess I do, but I feel closer to Brenda than to Emily too, and Brenda and I haven't had any sex." "Okay then, do you feel closer to Joyce than you do to Brenda? Is there anyone in the family you haven't had sex with that you feel closer to than someone else in the family that you have had sex with?" Eddie laughed and pushed her sister playfully. "Give it up, Dee. You know he's right. I already told you that you're missing out on a real good time with that Emily. She gets done with you, you don't need to be trimming nothing for any swim suits. She's a vacuum and a lawn mower, that girl." Eddie was having some fun with Dale. Eddie was connected by sex with every one in the family. Joyce had been telling me that she and Eddie often met each other in their nightly forays. They had also started working together, enjoying the added excitement of seeing each other engaging in acts of debauchery. They spurred each other on to even greater heights. None of the others were complaining, and Brenda seemed to really enjoy having either two or three women providing her with attention and sexual pleasures. "We need to get back to this needing ideas for how we can salvage the situation I got us into with Cindy. So far, all we came up with is having Joyce or Shirley call her. I think it needs to be sooner rather than waiting for her to build up any further fear or anger. We need to let her know that we want to try to find out if there's anyway at all we can work this out. At the same time, we need to let her know that I won't be sleeping with her every night." "She seemed to really like being with Shirley, and Shirley is free and alone quite a bit. I think she should be told she can always count on having someone she wants to sleep with. When I was having problems with the whole group thing, that was what Brenda kept telling me. It was important for me to remember that. It isn't just Kenny. Let her know that there is a lot more to the family than just Kenny." Emily made sense. I had also begun to notice that, since my vasectomy, the girls hadn't been as anxious to spend so much time with me. We still got together regularly, but now they were more content to be with each other too. Even Shirley was beginning to venture forth a little more. "Cindy has a problem with multiple partners in bed with her. She never had any experience doing that before. It's hard for her to be relaxed. She told me it was becoming easier, but she worries about not being able to refuse if Kenny decides he wants to do something with someone else too." Shirley was trying to introduce a new possibility to us. In a lot of ways, she seemed closer to Cindy than the rest of us were. Maybe more trusted would be a better way of saying it. Cindy didn't feel as threatened by Shirley, believing that the two of them had similar interests and appetites. When Shirley had gotten aggressive though, Cindy seemed to relish it. "Did she use the word worried, or did she say afraid when she said that about me bringing in another girl?" Cindy hadn't seemed as worried with Shirley as she had when we were together in bed with Joyce. As for afraid, she only seemed afraid of me, and that was before we had actually made love. "She's worried, but that wasn't how she said it. What she said was she didn't know how she'd react if you and someone else tried to get in bed with her. She was thinking about another girl, but one she didn't know as well as she now knows the girls who've been to Birmingham." "Eddie or Dale, because she's already been in bed with Joyce too." "I think she meant Dale, because of some things she told me about Eddie. I think she's afraid of being in bed with a girl who doesn't want to be in bed with her." Shirley was obviously worrying about whether she was violating the confidentiality she believed she owed to Cindy by relating all these things to us. "What did she say about me? Don't tell me that girl's been pining for little Dee Dee? All she ever had to do was just ask me, and I'd have dropped this old hag sister of mine, and flew myself down to Alabama to be at her side. Joyce already told me she tastes just like I do, and I've been hardly able to wait to find out for myself." Dale pushed back at her sister then, unable to keep from laughing at what she was saying. That was one of the things about Eddie, she had a real open and playful spirit. She seldom seemed serious, but when she was, you didn't want to be the one she was being serious with. "I think we should let Eddie call her. I know Cindy was hoping to spend time getting to know her this weekend. She wanted me to ask Joyce to keep Dale busy so it wouldn't be all three of them. Cindy is sensitive about people being made to do anything they don't really want to. Everyone's been convinced now that Dale doesn't like having sex with any girls, except for Joyce and Eddie." Shirley was looking right at Dale when she spoke. It sounded to me like something of a challenge. Shirley was coming out of her shell, and it was easy to see it now. Everyone in the room knew that Shirley was making an offer to Dale. In all the time the sisters had been with us, other than with Joyce, Dale had remained aloof from the other wives. Most nights she slept with Eddie, but she did sleep with Joyce and me, usually together. At other times, either Joyce or I would go to bed with both the sisters. Those were the times when Dale seemed most relaxed and receptive to each of us. "I already told Dee that you was hoping she'd sneak in some night and try to climb you like a tree." Eddie grinned over at Shirley when she said that. She and Joyce had both spent time in Shirley's room together. Shirley usually got worked up by Joyce first, then Eddie came in later, when Shirley was more open to anything sexual. Even a few months before, Shirley wouldn't have propositioned another woman, like she just had with Dale. I remembered Shirley saying she wanted to show me she could be more like Joyce in bed. Maybe I wasn't the only one she was trying to show that to. "I guess we're all agreed that someone should call Cindy. I don't care who does it, but I think it should be done right away." I didn't mind continuing our discussion. It was getting fascinating in some ways, but I didn't want to lose sight of finding out if we could salvage our relationship with Cindy. "If you do get in touch with her again, you can tell her she can spend the first night in with Eddie, while I'm in getting re-acquainted with Kenny. As for this long tall girl, this screaming girl here, this is the first I ever heard she was maybe interested in me. Now, its like she's challenged me or something. I wouldn't mind being right in the room there with her and Kenny sometime, to find out what he's doing to her when he gets her all excited like he does. I don't know who all will be climbing on who, but, it could be fun just to find that out." No one said anything. That was how shocked all of us were. If what Shirley had said surprised us, and it had, hearing Dale pick up the challenge like she had, even left Eddie at a loss for words. "I'm going to give her a call, Kenny. You stay close, so you can tell her you're sorry. Shirley, you come in with me and Kenny tonight. If anyone is going to climb you tonight, it will be me. I think Eddie is starting to wear off on you. Make sure you and Dale don't say anything else before I come back to hear you." Joyce got up and went into my office to make the phone call. After she left, no one said too much, but there were some smouldering looks being exchanged, between Shirley and both the sisters. Shirley again surprised me by not turning away from either, and by not making an excuse to get up and leave the room. "Anyone else got any complaints about me that we haven't addressed yet?" I figured I may as well let them get it all over with while we were sitting here waiting to hear the outcome of Joyce's phone call with Cindy. "Last night shouldn't count as our night, Kenny. We were all too upset and mad to do anything with you. Tonight should be our night." Emily was being Emily again. What she really wanted was for Brenda to stop being mad at her, but she'd never just come right out and admit that to anyone. "I was there, Emily. It isn't anyone else's fault that you weren't in any mood to take advantage. Besides, its really Brenda you want to be with tonight. Why don't you just tell her you wish she'd stop being mad at you?" A few minutes later, I saw Emily reach over and touch Brenda on her forearm. A minute later, she whispered something that only Brenda could hear. Brenda finally turned and said something to Emily. Whatever it was, Emily nodded enthusiastically, and a minute or so later, the two stood up casually, then walked up the stairs together. We waited until they were both out of earshot before we started laughing at them both, and making ribald comments about what was going to be happening. I turned back to Shirley, but she was still flirting with Dale and Eddie. She was doing something with her eyes, like she was looking them both up and down like a guy would. It was getting me turned on. I would have really liked to have seen Shirley being double teamed by Dee and Dee Dee. I could picture it happening, and soon too. "KENNY!!!" My master's voice. I got up from the sofa, worried that I'd miss something between those three too. I went into my office to see what Joyce needed from me. "Here, tell her you're sorry, and tell her to be waiting at the house tomorrow when you get back to Birmingham." Joyce handed me the phone. "Cindy? How are you? Listen, I'm really sorry about letting things get out of hand like I did. I should have let you explain better what you were trying to say." "You should have. What I wanted was for you to be with me if we did anything with one of the girls I didn't know very well. I was afraid, if you weren't there, that something might happen that would bother me. Joyce explained that it was supposed to be either you or her with me while I was in Ridgeline this time." This was different than what she had been saying I had promised her. "I have a problem, Cindy. I don't know if Joyce explained it to you or not? It must come from when I was growing up in the orphanage, because I didn't talk to too many people back then. Sometimes I take what people tell me, literally. I'm not very good at listening between the lines to discover what they really meant to say. If you tell me something, you have to spell it right out for me, otherwise I'll miss what you're trying to tell me. I was wondering if I'm having the same kind of listening and speaking problem with your father, because we don't seem to be communicating very well at all." "Daddy does think you're a bit slow, Kenny. He's trying his best to speak plainly to you, but you keep seeming to miss what he's telling you." "What did he really mean to tell me when he said that none of the Macklinson men would work if I hired you and your Aunt Patty?" Cindy laughed. "You understood him right that time. That's what he was trying to tell you." "What could I have said back to him, to let him know I wanted the Macklinson men to come back to work, but I was going to keep you and Patty, no matter what any of the Macklinson men thought about it?" Cindy didn't say anything for awhile, then she started speaking again. "You need to give him a good reason for letting you have your way, instead of him getting it his way." Already, my head was beginning to hurt. Was Cindy really telling me that there was some communication breakdown? Was every no I was getting from them only the opening salvo to a negotiated deal? I didn't think I could stand to spend many hours of my life sitting through these types of negotiations. I knew for sure I didn't want to. "Which of your brothers or cousins is best at working these types of negotiations out?" "I guess that would be Jesse, among the young ones, but Uncle Larry is the best of all of them at getting his own way. Daddy says Larry could talk a mule into skinning himself." I sure didn't see that from the times I'd spoken to Larry. As near as I could remember, he and I had never had a conversation where anything constructive had been agreed to. "Are you going to be at the house when we get back there?" "No, because you're the one who sent me packing." I came a little close to hanging up on her right then. I would have if it had only been the two of us that were involved in things. "What do I have to do to make things right, so you'll come back home to us?" Cindy made a cooing noise that was part giggling and part excitement. "I'll be here at Daddy's house. If you were to come by to talk to me, I wouldn't slam the door in your face." I could tell that she was convinced we were making good progress in our negotiations. I didn't see it that way. "Dale and Eddie are coming down, and I wouldn't feel right leaving them all alone at the house. Maybe I could drop by on Tuesday or Wednesday, and we could have that talk? Maybe I'll see you at work on Monday, and we can talk then?" "Am I still working at the company?" "You are unless you quit. I know I never fired you. I hope you aren't the kind who quits in the middle of an important job?" "I thought we should talk first. I don't want us fighting out in public, or at the office." "Well, I did agree to give you a ride to work, and then back home each day. I could swing by your Dad's house, early on Monday, to pick you up. Maybe we could talk on the way into work?" "Too much of a strain on our systems, Kenny. It would be better if we got it all settled before we left for work." "I'd like that, but I don't see how we could do it. Do you have any ideas on what could work?" This was a strange conversation we were having. Since Cindy seemed to be the only one who had the slightest idea about what was necessary to get things back the way they were, I needed to let her take the lead. "If it was just so we could talk about things, I don't guess it would hurt things if I went to your house early on Monday morning. We could talk while you were eating your breakfast." "We could do that, but Eddie and Dale would be there too. That wouldn't bother you if they heard us?" "It wouldn't bother me if they heard us. It isn't like we were out talking with strangers listening in." "Good, that's settled then. you just let me know what time you'll be coming over, and I'll set my alarm to get up on time." "There's a lot to get done at the office Monday morning. Aren't those people supposed to be coming, the ones that your father is lending you?" She was right about that. We had two of the maintenance guys from Bolling supposed to be there at seven. I'd forgotten about that. "Yes, they'll be at the plant before seven. They'll expect us to be there to show them what we want them to do. If I get up at five, we won't have more than twenty minutes to talk before we need to leave. That probably won't be long enough. How about if we just go to work without talking, then we can ride home together, after work, and have time to talk about everything?" "We can't do that, Kenny. Things would be too tense between us then. We need to have our talk before we work together." This was beginning to seem unsolvable to me. We were already talking, and I'd apologized to her right off the bat. "I'm sure you're right about that. Look, why don't we both think about if there's another way we can have our talk before work starts on Monday. We should be at the house before six tomorrow night. If you think of anything that could work, either call me here, or at the house in Birmingham, okay?" "I'm glad you want to get this settled with me, Kenny. I was afraid, at first, that we wouldn't get a chance to. Now, I'm more hopeful." "I'm more hopeful too, but that might be because I don't have even the foggiest idea about what is going on here. This isn't how we handle things like this here in Kansas." "How do you handle it there?" "Well, I'd admit I was wrong, and then you'd say you forgive me. After that, we would tell each other some 'I love you's', then we'd get in bed and have make up sex until we went to sleep." "We could do that, except Dale and Eddie will be there. I'm sure that they'll both want to be in bed with you their first night here." "No, only Dale. She wants me by herself Sunday night. She said you could sleep in the other bedroom with Eddie. Monday night, I'm pretty sure Eddie expects to sleep with me, but she doesn't mind if we aren't alone together. The more the merrier, as far as she's concerned." "This is why things don't ever work out with us. You're too busy to have another girl in your life." "Dale and I won't be going to bed until after ten o'clock. We'd still have time to talk before it was bedtime. We could go in my bedroom, for privacy, then talk about anything we needed to say to each other to get this thing settled. After, you could either drive back to your Dad's house, or else sleep in the guest bedroom, with Eddie." "You don't think Dale would mind us spending time talking together like that?" "I don't think so. She never minded it before when I talked to any of the other wives before she and I went to bed. Mostly, she wants to make sure that when I do go to bed, I pay attention to what she wants. If I talk with someone else first, it usually makes me pay attention to her for a longer time, which she usually needs to happen." "If I thought we would have enough time to settle this problem, I'd rather come over Sunday night, to get it resolved before Monday morning. We do have a lot to do on Monday." "Good. I'm looking forward to it. I'll make sure that Eddie and Dale understand we'll be talking until right before bedtime. I'll see you sometime after six o'clock tomorrow then?" "We're just going to talk, to get this settled, right?" Cindy seemed happy again. I concentrated, trying to divine how I was supposed to answer her question. "We'll just talk. You'll let me know when we're all done talking, right?" "It shouldn't take us that long. The important thing is to keep talking, Kenny. You sometimes end our conversations too abruptly." ------- Chapter 47 Eddie, Dale and I left Bolling a little before three on Sunday afternoon. The weather was a little rough, and we had some turbulence that seemed to worry Eddie at first. Dale went back to sit with her though, and things smoothed out once we had achieved our regular cruising altitude. Dale came up after an hour back there with Eddie, and I gave her a brief lesson in how to pilot an aircraft. She was an apt pupil, listening well and asking questions when she needed more clarification. "You should take some lessons, Dale. I've got that other single engine plane sitting in the hangar back in Bolling. All it does is sit there. Once you got qualified, you and Eddie could fly back and forth to Oklahoma to see your family more often." "You don't think I'd be too short to fly a plane? You know how Dee Dee and I had to get our seat fixed just to drive that Honda. How would we be able to fly an airplane?" "I'm not sure what they can do, but I know they can do it. There are shorter people than you that fly airplanes. We can modify the pedals and change the seats if we needed to. If you're interested, I'll ask the people that maintain the planes." "I'd try it if Eddie did too. It looks like fun." We stopped talking for awhile, a companionable silence as we both watched the dark clouds off to the west. "What you said yesterday, about Cindy being more connected than me. Do you think Brenda and Emily believe I don't like them? That's kind of what I got from what Shirley was saying." I didn't know if I was the right person to discuss this with Dale. I knew that Joyce would have welcomed an opportunity like this. She was very worried that Dale had kept herself too distant from the other wives. Part of it was Dale not wanting to engage in building sexual relationships with other women. Part of it was that Dale was very reserved, while Eddie was so outgoing. The contrast made Dale's reserve seem so much more apparent. "I think they see how Eddie is, and they can see you aren't like her when it comes to liking all kinds of sex. No one knows how far they can take things in your presence, because they don't want to offend you. Yesterday, when Shirley said those things, did you notice how shocked we all seemed?" "I was just as shocked. Dee Dee tells me sometimes that those two girls think I don't like them. It isn't true, I like them all fine. I just don't have the same interests in girls that they do. Do you think Shirley was saying that to make fun of me?" "No. I think she considers you a challenge. When we first formed our group, Shirley refused to have anything to do with having sex with any of the other women. She was going to leave us because of that. All of the others had already done things with girls, but Shirley hadn't. She said she didn't have any desire to be with another woman. We practically had to force her. Even after, when she had sex a few times with all of them, Shirley didn't care that much for doing things with girls. I think she's starting to change now. Part of it is being more comfortable with girls, but part of it is feeling like she was being left behind when we added three new girls to our family." "She doesn't want Cindy getting ahead of her either?" Dale was doing nervous things with her hands. She seemed upset by the direction our discussion was taking. It was obvious that Dale still felt there was some scoring system involved with the connections I kept speaking about. "Cindy can't ever get ahead of her. We have the connection of the shared children. In some ways, that's the strongest of all the connections. There is no ahead or behind though, only connections. Think of it like having good friends. For some people, one good friend is enough. Other people need more. Shirley wants more friends. I think she understands that sex is usually only a small part of a total relationship, but it opens up some other paths to making the relationship stronger, more meaningful. Joyce does that better than anyone I've ever seen. She loves all of us, and it seems to cover all areas, not just being in bed together. Shirley wants to be loved and accepted like Joyce is. For her, it has been a slow journey to bring her to that point. Slow or not though, she's the first of the original wives to understand that Joyce is the happiest person in our family." "What about Dee Dee?" "She's a lot like Joyce, but to her, these relationships aren't as complete yet. Not anything like they are for Joyce. Eddie likes to play. Emotionally, she doesn't seem as deep to me. I love her, but its harder to take anything she says or does seriously. I love you too, Dale, but you're too serious most of the time. You need to relax, to let yourself be more playful. Like yesterday, when you said that about being willing to be in a bedroom with Shirley and me, did you notice how quiet it got? No one expects things like that from you." "Dee Dee is more serious about things than you think she is. She plays at being so easy to get along with. Its her mask, what she hides behind. Sex is simple for her, but relationships, that's a different thing. I've been watching all of you, for a long time now, and I'm beginning to see how everything is. I understand you and Joyce, and I know you only want good for all of us. I've been thinking about what you said about having different kinds of connections. I liked that, liked how you could come right out and admit it to us like you did. I understand it too, because I feel so much closer to Dee Dee than I do to all the rest of you. You come second with me, Kenny, then Joyce, so I understand about this connection thing." "I hear a but in there. But what?" I knew we were into intimate sharing now. This wasn't a casual conversation about family dynamics anymore. "But Dee Dee. What you said before about her always playing? She plays, but not with everyone. She isn't playing with you, or with Joyce. I've seen her playing, and when she was serious. That girl's serious about you two. She has the same connections as me. What she does with the others, that doesn't really count for her. It isn't love like she has for us. I think you need to adjust your whole connection philosophy, Kenny. What Emily and Brenda have, it isn't the same as what Joyce and Brenda have, not to Emily, and maybe not to Brenda either." "No, you're right, it isn't the same. It's a connection though, and that's what we need more of, not less. You believe in connections, and you can see what I'm saying is correct. I'm willing to help make it easier for you to connect with the others, Dale, but you need to make an effort yourself. From what you've already told me, you understand that these connections strengthen the group. What you need to learn, is that you're a part of this group, and they strengthen you too. Eddie always understood this. You think when I say she's playing, that I mean I think it's just sex with her. That isn't what I meant. Sit down with her and ask her about Shirley. Three months ago, both of you felt pretty much the same way about her. Now, I'm willing to bet you that Eddie speaks about Shirley differently. That's the connection. It doesn't start out as strong as it gets later, after more happens to make it grow." "How can you help me make these connections? You can't make people like other people." "You can't? How much of what Eddie told you about Shirley has changed how you feel about her yourself?" Dale looked at me and smiled. "I think it would be easier, less of an unnatural situation for you and Shirley both, if I was with the two of you a few times, at first. Shirley used to have a problem with orgasms. It was a problem with her being able to relax enough to let herself get excited. She reminds me of you, except, with you, I think it has more to do with trust." "It has to do with attraction and desire, Kenny. I felt that with you from the first time I saw you. It was strong too. I knew I could go to bed with you, right from the beginning, and that it would be good." I smiled at her, then I reached over to touch the bare skin on her leg. I wanted the contact with her, a part of the connection we both shared. "It has to do with being connected, and it has to do with others that you are connected with also being connected. You and I, we had a natural connection. You call it attraction, and a mutual desire. It doesn't matter what you call it, because we both felt it, and it made it easier for us to really form our connection. The one we have now. Have you ever noticed how much easier it is for you to cum when Eddie is in bed with you? I have a theory, based on my experiences with Joyce and me being with one other partner. The sex is always better for me that way. Joyce says it is for her too. My theory is that we use the connection Joyce and I have with each other to break down the barriers that are still in the connection we have with whoever the third person is. I think you do the same with Eddie. I also think Eddie and Joyce do that when they are in with someone else, double teaming her." "You think your connection with me would strengthen my connection with Shirley?" "Yes, and hers with you. I know I can bring each of you to orgasm when we get together. I also know your first orgasm is the hardest to achieve. After, you're more relaxed, not worrying about as much. Shirley's that way too. Once she gets started, she really lets herself go. My task would be to make sure you both got started, then help the two of you do things together that wouldn't feel awkward." "You almost have me convinced. Do you think the same thing would work with the other women and me?" I didn't think Brenda would mind trying, and I was pretty sure that Cindy planned on being with all of us at some point. Emily I wasn't sure about. She might object, just to be different. With Emily, I thought I might need to make it a punishment thing. I'd have to tell Dale about Emily's submissive sexual nature, and her desire to be punished. I'd do it though, because it would be good for Dale, and Emily would love being made to submit to us. "Tonight, Cindy is supposed to come to the house. We need to talk over our recent problems. I'll be in the bedroom with her for a few hours, but you and I will be together when it's time for bed. I'm hoping that we can finish talking and will end up making love at some point. Later, we'll make love together. Cindy will either go over to her Dad's house, or go in the guest room with Eddie." "You're going to make sure you save enough for me to be happy? I wouldn't like it if you came to bed too tired to be with me." "Have I ever done that to you? I don't think so. In fact, I'm hoping the time with Cindy makes it last a lot longer for us. I can shower after Cindy leaves, or I can stay like I end up, and let you find out, before Eddie, if Cindy tastes like she does." "You can take your shower. I can wait to find out about that other thing. Do you think Cindy is going to go home, or stay with Eddie?" "If I was to take a guess, I'd say she'll stay. We both need to get up at five to get down to the plant because we're meeting some people there at seven. Like I said too, Cindy looks like she's planning on having sex with all of you, at one point or another. She's the most worried about you, because she's afraid you won't want to." "I would do it, if you would be there with us. It sounds like the two of us are worried about the same thing. Part of my problem is shyness, and worrying about how I look to people. This is more true with people like Brenda and Emily. That Brenda is so good looking, I don't even like being in the same room with her." We landed in Birmingham, and drove over to the house before six o'clock. Eddie had fallen asleep on the plane, having to be awakened by Dale, after we had landed and were ready to deplane. Dale kidded her about having passed out from being so afraid of the turbulence. When we got to the rental house, Cindy wasn't there. She arrived about thirty minutes later, but this had given me a chance to show the girls where everything was, and had allowed all of us to unpack and be sitting in the living room when Cindy did arrive. She had her own key, but she hit the door knocker anyway. I went to let her in. The first thing I noticed was all she carried was her purse. No suitcase with her overnight things, and no sign of her big briefcase where she kept all her drawings and plans for the modifications we were planning for the administrative office floor. We ended up hugging and kissing at the door, like two people who hadn't seen each other for years. I invited her in and we both went to the living room so that Cindy could say hi to Eddie and Dale too. The three of them made small talk for a few minutes. I guessed that Cindy would stay there doing that all night unless I said something to prevent it. "Cindy, if we're going to have our talk, we should get to it. I need to be in bed before ten o'clock, because we need to be at the office bright and early." Cindy blushed a little at that, and Eddie laughed. It had the desired outcome though because Cindy turned away from the sisters and walked over to where I was standing. I took her hand in mine and gently led her back to my bedroom. Once inside, I closed the door, for privacy, although I knew Dale and Eddie wouldn't be disturbing us during our talk. "I'm glad you came over, Cindy. I've felt bad about how we left things on Friday night. Joyce and the rest of the girls said I should have listened to what you were trying to tell me. Let's sit here on the bed, and you can try to tell me what you wanted to say up in Kansas." "We pretty much covered what I meant on the phone, Kenny. I thought you wanted to talk to tell me what you had decided." "What I decided? Okay, I guess we should start with how I need to listen better, so I understand what you say. I told you that I hear things in a literal sense. If you tell me you're cold, the first thing I think of is the temperature of wherever we are at the time. If you say you think something, then that's what I believe you think. If you want something from me, you need to ask for it, not say something entirely different, then expect me to know you really meant this other thing." Cindy looked at me. I think she thought I was planning to continue. She waited, expectantly. Finally, she just asked me. "Is that it?" "That's it. I should also mention that there was something good that came out of our misunderstanding, which was I found out I had this communication problem. It isn't one problem though, its several, and I'm planning on finding ways to correct them." "You think we're done talking now?" Cindy didn't seem satisfied with what had been said. "I think you should tell me what else we need to get straightened out. I'm willing to listen to you, to let you take the time to explain what it means to you. We can work on interpreting things until we both hear the same thought expressed." "You're making fun of me now." "No I'm not. This isn't the time for making fun. I think this is serious, and I'm treating it very seriously. Tell me what has you worried, and we'll try to deal with it together." "For one thing, I don't like having to share you with all those other people." "What needs to change so that you would like it?" "I don't think I'd ever get to liking it." "Okay, what needs to change so that you would be willing to put up with it?" A smile appeared on Cindy's face when I asked her that. For the next twenty minutes she outlined all of her fears and insecurities. Brenda and Emily were too good looking. Joyce was too smart. Joyce was my real wife, and she had all those children with me. I didn't seem to make any attempt to get along with her whole family. The list was long, and almost none of it contained anything I could, or would, do anything about. She didn't offer any advice about what I could do to change things either. I finally asked her if she was done. "Those are some of the things, off the top of my head, but there are others." "I can see we have a lot of things to work on. That thing about Emily and Brenda being so pretty, I don't think you have to worry about that. You're just as pretty to me, but in a different way. Look at Joyce. You know I love her as much as anyone else, but you have to admit, Emily, Brenda and you are all better looking women than Joyce." "That's obvious, Kenny." Cindy didn't seem to mind that it was obvious to me that she was better looking than Joyce, or to mind me including her name in alongside Brenda and Emily's. "I know it is, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Joyce has things that Emily and Brenda won't ever have. Like you said, she's very smart, smarter than me, and by a whole bunch. You might not be as pretty to some people as Emily and Brenda, or seem as smart as Joyce is. That doesn't matter, because we all love you just as if you were. You have your own special things which none of the others have. Who has your good manners? Your family traditions? Look at how easy it was for you to take on this remodeling project like you did. Brenda wouldn't even have attempted something like that." I knew I was babbling about things. She hadn't left me any choice though. "What about what I said about you not making an effort to get along better with my family?" "I was coming to that. Let's look at the evidence for that. It might not turn out to be what you think it is. First, didn't I come down here and decide to pay your whole family money, instead of waiting and letting them go bankrupt first? We'd have saved a ton of money doing it like that." She looked at me and nodded. "Didn't I also agree to buy that land from your father, so he and your mother didn't have to get into more of a fight about him owing her that money?" She nodded again. I could see I was doing better with this one. "Then, I did hire Kyle and Steve back, plus I made sure all the rest of them still had their benefits until we get all our problems together sorted out. I also hired you and your aunt, and I'm trying to get your father to accept that. All these things are evidence of me trying to get along better with your family." "I can see you did all those things, but, you still aren't getting along with them, are you?" "No, I'm not. That doesn't mean I'm not trying, or that I've given up. Its like it is with us. We haven't finished with this problem yet, but I haven't given up on us doing that. You need to keep after me to let me know what we need to try next, because I'm willing to work with you on these things you've identified." Cindy and I had inched closer. Whenever I named off something I'd done that was good for someone in her family, she had moved closer to me. I was beginning to think that all of that other stuff, about the looks, and about Joyce being smarter, had been only diversionary window dressing to hide her real agenda. I might not know how to communicate with her, or any of her family, but I could read her body language, and see what she was responding positively to. "That's what I keep saying, Kenny. We need to not end our conversations too abruptly. Like with my family. I see the points you're making, and I'm willing to take back what I said before, about you not making an effort to get along with them. If you don't mind my saying so though, you aren't going about it the right way." Cindy was close to me now, and when she said that about me not minding her saying so, her hand reached out for mine, and brought it over to her lap. I didn't pull away, allowing my hand to slip out of hers, so it landed right on her thigh. I knew she could feel it there, and that she welcomed the contact. "No, I don't mind at all. That's part of why we're in here talking like this. I truly do want to learn how to go about it in a way that works for all of us. I'm thinking that what you're trying to explain is how I should go about changing the way I deal with your family, so we can all get along better." "That's exactly it. I know it isn't easy for you. It isn't easy for anyone, but it can be done. I talked to my mama, and to Aunt Patricia, and they both agreed with me that you might be the only one who could learn how to do it. You could help them, and change them at the same time. Maybe not Daddy, Larry or Phil, but all the rest of them." "I could try, but this isn't like any of the other things you mentioned, Cindy. I couldn't really do much to change those other things. Maybe we should talk more about this family thing, because it seems like we both want the same thing. Are you telling me that if we can make progress on this, we can work out the other problem that you and I are having?" "We already have worked that out, Kenny, by us sitting here talking. Can't you feel the changes between when we first came in here and now?" I did feel a few changes. One of these was the change I felt to my dick. It had grown over the past ten minutes. Another change was to my head. I didn't have a headache anymore, and I felt like I understood the message behind Cindy's current manipulative attempt. I was being offered a trade. Cindy and I both wanted each other, and I was also pretty sure that Cindy wanted all the rest of what went with being a member of our family. The problem to her way of looking at things was, I had failed one of her tests. The family test. I had failed a lot of tests, with all of my other women in the past, and I was certainly no stranger to being manipulated. Women didn't think of it as manipulation. To them, it was retribution, making things right so that the relationship was back in a state of equilibrium. Usually, it was Joyce who would come to me to explain what needed to be done. I had gotten to the point where I just listened to what she told me, and complied with any demand she considered fair. I preferred going through Joyce, because she made sure none of the demands were too far out of line. I knew I was going to have to get Cindy aware that there was a chain of command for these little retributions, and to convince her that it was better if she took future necessary adjustments by way of Joyce. This time though, because I really did want to find a way to get along better with her family, I'd try to handle the negotiations on my own. "I think the two of us can work this out together, Cindy. We both want the same thing. I'm only sorry it took us over an hour and a half to get to this point. Its already eight o'clock. Since we seem like we're both in agreement now, this is the part where we both should say 'I love you' and then get ourselves busy with some make up sex." "I'm not ready for that yet, Kenny. We still haven't decided on the part about you not leaving me alone if one of the other girls thinks she has the right to make me sleep with her." Cindy had lifted my hand off of her thigh and moved back away, about a foot from where she'd previously been. In a way, I was glad she had brought this up. It was something we had to deal with, and this was as good a time as any. "Okay. I'm glad you reminded me about that one. I hope we can get it all worked out before ten, because I already promised Dale that she and I would be together at ten. I had hoped we could have gotten together first, because I'm feeling very warm thoughts about you right now. You're right though, this is something we need to address, no matter how long it takes us." Cindy moved right back, even closer this time, putting her hand right on the lump in my trousers as she did so. "All you have to do is tell me that you won't leave me alone like that, that you wouldn't let two girls try to make me do things with them at the same time, if I was alone with them." "I could do that, and I'm saying it to you right now. I don't think they would try that without you saying you wanted them to. I think Eddie was hoping you could spend the night in her room tonight, if we got all our problems settled first. Ever since Joyce told her that your pussy tastes just like Eddie's does, she has been wanting to find out for herself." "I should probably go home tonight, Kenny. I wasn't really planning on spending the night. You said we'd just be talking." Her mouth was saying one thing, but her hands didn't seem like they were in agreement. Cindy had a hand running through my chest hair and traveling over my pectoral muscles, while her other hand had a tight grip on my cock. "I'm going to be even more disappointed than Eddie then. Being in here with you again has made me very horny. I was really hoping I could make up with you and then fuck you hard, like we did that last time with Shirley. I wanted to fill your little pussy up with all my cum, so Eddie wouldn't be able to find out what you tasted like tonight." Cindy was already showing unmistakable signs of high arousal. It wasn't long before I was showing her I'd meant it when I told her I wanted to fuck her again. After I came the first time, I went down on her, but I could still taste her, even with my cum there too. I told her she still tasted like Eddie, then I fucked her again, even harder this time. I really pounded into her, satisfied by then that she liked it harder like that, and that it didn't bring back any unpleasant memories for her. As many times as she came, and the way her cums kept getting stronger, I knew she was enjoying our make up sex. I was too. At nine thirty, I got up from the bed, telling her I needed to shower before Dale came to bed at ten. That was when she told me she had a small bag out in the trunk of her car, and asked me to go outside and bring it in for her. I threw on some pants and took the keys she handed me from her purse. When I came out of the bedroom with only my trousers on and Cindy's keys in my hand, Eddie and Dale were both laughing at me. When I came back inside, a minute later, carrying Cindy's bag, it was my turn to laugh. Back in the bedroom, I heard Cindy taking her own shower, so I naturally went in and offered to wash her back. She seemed to be taking a lot of trouble making sure her pussy was clean, and that all my cum was drained out of it. When I mentioned that she was undoing all my hard work to frustrate Eddie, she blushed, but I could tell she was just as anxious as Eddie to find out if what Joyce had said was true. We spent some time kissing, and doing all those little things people do when they are currently pleased with each other. I walked Cindy over to Eddie's bedroom and put her in bed, kissing her good night at five before ten. Eddie and Dale were both still in the living room. I went back and got in bed, noticing that someone had already come in and changed the sheets. I figured that had to have been Dale, and it made me laugh. I was a little tired, but it didn't take much effort on Dale's part to get me back up to full readiness again. We spoke in whispers about how things had gone with Cindy, and Dale told me how excited Eddie was at having someone new to be with. I told her about how Cindy had made sure to clean any trace of me out of her pussy. We laughed some more. After though, we got down to some serious business. Dale always took having sex with me so seriously. For her, each orgasm with me represented a hard fought victory over the earlier disappointments she had suffered in the past. I knew how to relax her now, and also had good, reliable, indicators for judging each state of arousal as she passed through them. Dale was harder to get up past the point where orgasm became an expected culmination. Harder, but more reliable, once she reached a certain point. Shirley sometimes stalled out, and we would have to begin the whole process all over again, after first waiting for the numbness to subside. Not Dale. Once we were at a point in the countdown to orgasm, liftoff was assured. That night, we reached that point fairly easily. Dale seemed more responsive to my touch and easier to bring up to an orgasmic area. Now it was simply a question of how strong they were going to be. This was another area where Dale differed from other women I'd had sex with. Her orgasms had the widest variance in strength and intensity of any woman I'd been with. This time, her first one was a strong one. I stopped fucking her long enough to let her legs get relaxed and for the tightness to leave her stomach muscles again. While we were waiting, we started talking about what I'd done to Cindy earlier. When I told her that I'd been rough and demanding the second time, and then described how she'd moved around under me, I could feel Dale's pussy responding to my words. The talking was turning her on. "I think Cindy's going to turn out a lot like Emily. Emily loves to be held down and fucked into submission. The rougher I am with her, the better she likes it. You can't possibly fuck Emily hard enough for her to not want it even harder." I felt her having tiny spasms on my cock when I described this too. Because Dale was so tiny, I'd always been a little gentle with her, careful not to bend her into positions where she might be hurt. Eddie, although just as tiny as her sister, I treated differently. She loved being taken roughly, from behind. She was especially receptive when I did that while Joyce held her face trapped between her thighs, making her lick her as I pounded into her from behind. I felt like Dale's pussy had provided me with all the confirmation I needed to begin treating her more like I treated Eddie or Joyce. I grabbed at her hands and lifted myself higher up over her. Her hips naturally had to follow as I leaned my face down and started back with my fucking motion. I had my face down there so I could talk to her as I kept pounding away inside her body. I told her about what I wanted to do to her big titties, and how it felt when I had her trapped like this, knowing she couldn't escape. I told her I could do anything, and she wouldn't be able to stop me. Her response to this treatment was amazing. I was so happy that I had experience with both Joyce and Emily, especially Emily. I recognized that her attempts to escape were part of whatever fantasy she had playing inside her head. I gave her room to struggle, but made certain that all of her struggle was futile, and totally unsuccessful. When her first huge orgasm hit her, I kept on forcing myself into her, never stopping the litany I whispered into her ear. I had grown more graphic in my descriptions, talking about how I might want to take her ass like that as well, describing how I would turn her over on her stomach and force her to take my big cock in her ass, without any prior preparation. It didn't seem to matter what I was saying to her. I wasn't even sure she could still hear me. She was making her own noises, responding more to what was happening inside her head than what I was doing to her. Her final spasm was one that sent both her arms and her legs into rigid spasms. I felt her thigh muscles contacting on my biceps, and could feel her arms doing the same while I held them in place. When she went limp, I'd been expecting it. Emily and Joyce had both had those arm and leg spasms. Emily had lost consciousness right after, on several occasions. This happened with Dale. When she relaxed, all of her relaxed, and she went from full spasm to total limpness, in the blink of an eye. She was out. I had started cumming myself as she went into her final spasms, and I only finished up after she went completely limp. It seemed strange, and I hastened to remove myself from her pussy. I left her on what was usually my side of the bed. She was in more than a wet spot. It was more like a tiny lake. I got up to get a towel, hoping to save the mattress from being irreparably damaged. Even with all the effort I put into cleaning up those escaping juices, I wasn't able to wake Dale up. It wasn't that I was trying to, just that I wasn't trying not to do it. I went and got a second towel, lifting Dale's leg and putting the folded cloth under her leaking pussy. I got in bed right after that, hoping to fall asleep right away so that I'd have at least four and a half hours of sleep. I checked to make sure Dale was still breathing. She was. When the alarm sounded at five, I had a tough time making myself get up. I was sore. My arms and my legs both ached. Dale was on the bed, positioned just like she'd been when I put the towel under her a few hours before. I checked again, and she seemed to be breathing fine, so I got up and started getting myself cleaned up for work. I had just gotten in the shower when Cindy joined me. The first thing I noticed when I turned around to kiss her was that Eddie had marked her with Hickeys, on both her breasts and thighs. I stared at them until I realized that Cindy was uncomfortable. Then, I bent down and kissed each one, before running my tongue through her still wet slit. "Did you get any sleep, Cindy? I only got about four hours." She shook her head that she hadn't gotten much. "Look, I know these guys my Dad is sending down, and I can take them around and show them the basics of what we want done. They need to go over and meet with the construction crew we hired, and then go look at some of their previous work. It will probably take them all day just to do that much. Why don't you stay here and get some rest? It will give you a chance to get better acquainted with Dale and Eddie. Tonight, I think we should go out somewhere to eat." "I can't let you do that. I've got everything all set to make my presentation to them. If they ask any questions, you won't know what to tell them." "I'll tell them that the person I put in charge of the project is taking a well deserved day off, because I made her take it, and that the four of us will be meeting first thing tomorrow, after they've had a chance to see what kind of crew they'll have to work with. Believe me, these guys won't be able to decide much before they have a good handle on what their crew is capable of doing." She finally allowed me to talk her into it. After we dried each other off, I started getting dressed, and Cindy went back to the guest bedroom. I went out to have a quick bowl of cereal, then went back to my bedroom to check on Dale one last time. Between the time I had left the bedroom, and the time I came back to check on her, no more than ten minutes, she was gone. I checked the bathroom, and she wasn't there either. I found all three of them sleeping in the guest bedroom, with Cindy in the middle, squeezed in tightly between them. I had to leave, but I wished that I didn't. I kept looking at Dale's hand, so casually draped over Cindy's arm. Her hand was already resting on Cindy's breast. I didn't believe in those kind of accidents. Once more, I thought about calling in with an excuse about needing to come in late. Finally though, as I'd known I would, I turned away from the three of them and walked out of the house. I really hated getting into my car and driving off to work. I wondered how much I'd be able to accomplish at work that day. My mind wasn't on work, it was on new connections. ------- Chapter 48 The week with Dale and Eddie in Birmingham was filled with many different kinds of feelings for me. First, it was busy. There was so much to do, and it seemed like every waking moment had multiple claims on it for my attention, It was fun too. In spite of her earlier misgivings, Cindy, Dale, Eddie and I spent most of our evenings out, eating in one restaurant or another. We got some looks, and turned some heads, but, for the most part, we were all lost in ourselves anyway. We paid very little attention to what was happening outside our own little circle. Cindy and Dale became friends right away. Although they teased each other with some sort of mating dance ritual, they failed to connect on a sexual level right away. They both knew they would, eventually. Instead, they talked. It seemed like they talked for the entire week the four of us were together. Their friendship amazed Eddie more than their having sex would have. I saw it as the beginnings of a courtship, and gave both of them enough space to continue to allow it to become more fully developed. On the Macklinson front, I took the initiative. Gene and I met at the lawyer's office where we both needed to sign some papers to transfer the property over to the trust I'd had Frank create for my twelve children. While there, I invited Gene to ride out to the second, smaller land parcel with me, so that we could take a look at it together. We did that, in his Jeep, and afterwards, stopped off to have lunch together. I could see, from having visited the land itself, that Gene had spoken the truth when he said it wasn't farm land. It was ridge land, with second growth trees and a lot of undergrowth that made it ideal for birds to nest. There were plenty of rabbits and squirrels as well. It was connected to the Underwood property by a ninety foot corridor of common border on the South end of the small parcel. The title search I'd been given showed that Tom Macklinson had sold the property back in 1934, to a Georgia couple. It had been resold in 1961, then again in 1984. Gene had bought the property at a tax auction the year before, for twenty seven thousand dollars. I had waited to comment until after we had been seated for our lunch. "If you want, Gene, I'll call the lawyer and tell him we decided to not include the two hundred and forty acres in the sale. I'll only do it under two conditions though." Gene looked at me suspiciously. "What conditions? That piece of land isn't really very valuable, Kenny." "I can see that. Like you told me before though, it's Macklinson land, and you'd like to keep it in the family." Gene nodded. Our drink order came, and both Gene and I stopped talking long enough to sweeten our iced teas and add some lemon squeezing's to it. "I've thought about it, Kenny, and it would be worth forty thousand dollars to me to be able to keep that property in the family." "I had in mind a different sort of trade, Gene. I want to propose an exchange of cooperation. I want you and your brothers to stop agitating about me hiring Patty and Cindy, and I want the three of you to quit doing anything to interfere with Kyle, Steve and the rest of the boys going back, and staying at, work. Those are my two conditions." I could see that Gene hadn't anticipated me asking for anything along those lines. We spoke some more, about the whole family tradition history, and about how most of the Macklinson sons and cousins had decided to quit on their own. Gene told me that Patty had already called Phil, Larry and him, and had told them she wouldn't stand for any of them to be in her way over doing what she'd already decided to do, and that was work at Macklinson's. "Patty made it pretty clear that she didn't want to have anything more to do with all of us, if we didn't let her have her own way with this. Cindy takes after Patty that way. She has her own beliefs, and she won't listen to good advice. She's a lot like Lee that way too. All of them are too strong willed for my taste." "I've been talking to Cindy a lot, and she's got me convinced that what you said was right, that I don't understand how things work down in this part of the country. She's been trying to help me communicate better. She told me it wasn't so much what I was doing, but how I went about getting it done." "She has the right of it, Kenny, but I've told you that myself, more times than I like to remember." Our sandwiches came then, some kind of pork in barbecue sauce that was very tasty, but messy to eat. The two of us dug into them, putting further conversation on hold. It took us each about ten minutes to demolish our sandwiches. "Cindy told me I should sit down with you and ask your advice about how I should have handled things." This was really the critical part of our talk. If Gene decided to tell me I was wrong in changing things, then he and I would have little further to discuss. I was confident that the changes were necessary and good, and that they would make the overall operation both stronger, and more profitable. Gene had waited some little while before responding. I was sure her was deciding on which way he wanted to go with this. "You know Kyle and I are close, Kenny, and we always have talked a lot about the business. He likes to tell me what he's thinking, and I tell him my opinion about his ideas. He's been telling me about this new thing you've got him working on, and how he's already started getting things lined up for it. You've got him excited, I can tell you that much. I've never seen him so worked up about something he was doing." "I was happy to learn that Kyle and Steve hadn't quit when I got back." "Larry and Phil, they've been seeing the other side of it, mostly the boys who have been getting pretty close to being up against it, now that their incomes being turned off. For all of us, not just them boys, our work has been more than just the money. Mostly, its been the way we've all kept together. I'm telling you this as part of my way of saying that I've already been giving this a lot of thought. I've seen both sides of this, and I'd like to make it better if you'll let me." This was different than what I'd expected. He wasn't talking about business so much as he was talking about family. He was speaking as a father, brother and uncle. I wasn't certain about where he was heading with it, but I liked the frame of reference he was using. "I think we both want to make it better, Gene. For my part, I'm perfectly willing to admit I've made some mistakes, and maybe part of the reason was I didn't understand some of the warnings that you tried to give me. I tend to usually concentrate only on results, and that usually means needing to beat down any resistance or objection to what I'm trying to do. I'm starting to believe, because of what happened here, that this might not be the best way to approach these things." "Some of us are starting to think that what you said about keeping family and business issues separate was good advice for us to take too. Larry is mostly the one who keeps telling us that now. We can't keep visiting family problems at work or work problems in the family. This is new to all of us, because the business and the family have always been closely intertwined until now." Once again Gene was heading off on a different angle than the ones I'd been prepared for. The problem with it was that we weren't heading in the same direction. I didn't want to be the first one to pick out one of the flaws he was admitting to, so we could examine the issue more closely and arrive at some understanding. Apparently, Gene felt the same about the shortcomings I was admitting. "If things were back to before we had all the trouble, I can think of some things I would have handled differently. For one thing, I'd have tried to find out what it was that you and Larry were fighting about?" Gene laughed. "We always fought. Larry always got his way, in the beginning, it was because he was the oldest. Later, it was because it mattered more to him to get his way. We all just got used to letting him do what he wanted to. It was just plain easier all around." "Laura told me that she was going to marry Larry, before you took her away from him?" Gene colored up right away. It looked like he was going to get angry. "I just couldn't help myself. I tried not to feel that way about her, for the longest time. When it got close to them being married, I just had to let her know what a mistake she'd be making by marrying him. It was the hardest decision I ever made, and it got all the more complicated, and painful, when the two of us discovered the feelings we each had for the other. See, when I went and told her not to marry Larry, I had no idea that she had strong feelings for me as well. No idea at all." "It must have been hard for Larry?" "Hard? You don't have no idea. That man wanted to kill. If we had stayed anywhere that he could put his hands on us, he would have too. We went and hid in Georgia first, then down in Florida, until she caught with Kyle. We were gone for six months, and the only thing that kept Larry from going ahead with his plans for murder was my daddy blaming him for me being gone from the company. Told him to stay away until he found a way to bring me back to work. That was when Larry found out that Daddy was putting me above him in the company. Part of the reason for it was that Daddy was so mad at Larry for letting his personal problems get in the way of our running of the company. It was some tense after I came back. I can tell you there were lots of times when I wasn't certain that Larry wasn't going to go ahead and kill me anyway." "I can understand how it would make him pretty angry. You're his brother." "That's true, but you don't understand how it was with us when my father was alive. We didn't act like family. He always set us to competing about everything. We fought all the time. Phil and I would team up to protect each other, but something would happen, we'd get to fighting each other ourselves, and then Larry would end up beating up on both of us, separately. It wasn't a good thing. We didn't grow up like a family should." "That seems to be changed now. You all act like you're joined at the hip or something. Smack one Macklinson, and they all bleed." Gene laughed again. A sardonic laugh. "Larry's doing, mostly. It was a year after Lee and I had run off together. Kyle was born by then, and Daddy was already showing signs that he was sick bad. Daddy kept me close to him, telling me what I'd need to know to run things after he was gone. He had almost continual pain by then, from the cancer eating at him, but he wanted things to keep going good after he died. "Larry had taken up with Grace by then, and she was already making him forget some of his anger at Lee and me. Phil was dating Grace's sister, Faye, and that looked like it might be serious too. Them both dating sisters like that, it made them feel closer, and they were in love, which made them both think differently about things. Larry started talking to Phil about how we all needed to change in how we treated each other. By then, all of us knew Daddy didn't have too much time left." "All through this time, when Larry was so mad at you, did you both work together at the plant?" "When I came back we did. Like I told you, Daddy stayed close to me. He kept Larry from bothering me too much about what happened with me and Lee. When Lee started showing with Kyle, I think Larry realized then that none of his being angry was going to change things. He eased up some then, and some more after he and Phil started dating Grace and Faye together. "After Daddy died, I knew we either had to get things settled, or else we needed to split up the company. We had another bakery over by Atlanta then, this was before the fire that destroyed it. I told Phil what I was thinking, and he started telling Larry that I was planning on moving to Atlanta, to be closer to Lee's family, and that I wanted to split up things so that I got the smaller bakery over in Georgia, and he and Phil kept the one that was here." "So, you almost split up the company?" "No, we did do it. I moved to Atlanta. I stayed there for over a year, running my business and everything was fine. Larry and Phil both got married, and they were doing good down here. We kept to ourselves, them down here, and me over there. That was when Lee got pregnant, with Jerry, and Phil's wife was pregnant with Billy Ray. When Grace got pregnant with Steve, Larry started in talking about how it was a shame that none of us could get along like brothers should. It was him that talked me into coming back home again. He said he would let bygones be bygones, if I came back and we could all work together. I talked to Lee about it, and she agreed that we should." "It was Larry then that acted as the peacemaker? He's the one who wanted to keep the family together?" "Changed and together. We all had to change, Kenny. We needed to stop fighting and competing to make it work. It didn't always work, but it mostly did. We took advantage of each other's strengths, and, for the most part, it made all of us stronger. We started growing soon after I came back. The company had been strong under our father, but it got stronger when we started working together. "What hurt us later, was we stopped growing. We were all satisfied with what we had. It was more than enough to feed three families. After the boys started working full time, we realized that we needed to grow again. By then it was too late, because we had competition, and all our income was being used on paying out salaries so we could all live good." I knew what he meant. Growth cost money. From what I'd already learned, Macklinson's had distributed their annual profits, to satisfy Patty and their mother at first. After, they continued doing it because it was their tradition. They ended up with more than enough to live well, but nothing left to pay for expansion. Without expansion and growth, yearly profits became pinched with the salaries they were now paying each of their male children. With having to fight off Consolidated's competition over a three year period, they had further weakened themselves to the point where the operating account was barely able to sustain their current production needs. "Getting back to what I said earlier, if I had known some of the family history between you and Larry, I might have looked for a different solution after Larry threatened to quit. He must have expected both you and Phil to support him when he said that, but neither of you did. Why?" "Mostly because all of us have been arguing about what we need to do about them boys of ours. Larry wanted to keep things like they had been. Phil and I both thought they needed to change. What we'd been doing wasn't working, and a lot of the kids weren't happy with how they were being used." "I got some of that from Kyle. In fact, he seems to think you all were doing it deliberately, putting them in jobs they either weren't suited for, or didn't like." "Kyle has always had his own way of seeing things. All of us agreed that we needed to keep him from out pacing all the others. If he got to do that, some of the others would want their own way too, to show what they could do. If that happened, they'd all be back to competing, just like we had back when Daddy was still running things." "Trying to do your best is a good thing. Kyle should try to be as good as he can be. So should all the others. That isn't competing. That's excelling. Look at Phil. Everyone tells me he was really excellent at keeping all the machinery running. Larry was just as good in scheduling and production. You had your own areas of excellence. Achievement doesn't necessarily have to mean competition. Even a certain amount of competition can be a good thing." "It wasn't for us, Kenny. We fought all the time. It kept us from being close like family should be." "Was that only from the competition, Gene? Since I've been down here, I've seen all of you fighting with each other still. It could be that all of you have personalities that thrive on conflict. You need to channel that into more positive areas. Give them all challenges that keep them too absorbed to leave them time for fighting. Wait until next week when you meet Joyce. Watch how she keeps things on the go. I don't have time to fight with her. As soon as I find something I want to pick a fight with her about, she has me running off in three separate directions, trying to put together information on some idea she's given me. She does the same thing with all of the others, not just me." "Give me an example. It seems to me that Phil and Larry were kept pretty busy all the time. I know I was busy, but that didn't mean we wouldn't fight about things." "I don't know if this is a good example or not. Now that the three of you aren't working for the company, how are you getting along? Are you still all fighting with each other?" "We get along all right. We still can't agree on what we need to do, but our main conflict right now is you, not us." "My main conflict right now is with trying to figure out the best way to get Macklinson's positioned for all the growth we're planning on having with this big expansion we're undertaking. I'm conflicted because I know it would be a lot easier if I had people I could work with who were knowledgeable about the baking business, and all the differing local customs. I can work with people who don't have local knowledge, but I'd prefer to do it the easy way, by using the resources I thought I'd have available to me. That means Macklinson people." "It doesn't have to be such a problem." Gene was smiling. I think he felt I was coming to him admitting my defeat. This was usually the point where I'd let him know that wasn't the case at all. Doing that hadn't worked well for me, so I tried a different way. "You would think it wouldn't be. Here we have a whole bunch of people who are able to do what I need done, plus we have a clear goal in mind. Add to this the fact that so many things have already been identified for them to do in order to achieve that goal. The conflict seems to be over accepting one single vision for achieving that goal. That seems to be the only problem, at least to me it does." "I can't say I agree with that. I might if things were set up differently. Right now, I see the way things were set up as being the main problem. If we got that straightened away, I don't think having one vision accepted would be any problem at all." I didn't know what Gene meant. At first I thought he meant the problem was with me being in charge instead of him. If he meant that, then he was in for a disappointment. There wasn't anyway we were going to turn over a five hundred million dollar expansion effort to someone outside our inner circle. It would either be my father, Joyce or me that directed the expansion, and probably all three of us for some of the parts of it. "What set up changes do you think should be made?" I really tried not to put any sign of anger or negativeness in my voice when I asked him. I kept remembering how things had gone with Cindy, after I let her explain what she wanted from me. It hadn't turned out to be what I'd feared, not after we stripped away all of the extraneous camouflage she had surrounded it with. "Well, first, I want to tell you that I really admired what you told Kyle, about how he only had to report to you, and how his people only reported to him, when it came to doing assignments. It makes a lot of sense, and its something we never practiced when we ran things here. I really like that set up, and I think Phil and Larry would as well. None of us have ever liked being told what to do by the others. Sometimes, just because we don't like the way someone said something to us. That day when Larry said he'd quit? He wasn't just talking to you, he was talking to all of us, and he was fighting a different fight altogether. If he'd been alone with you, he wouldn't have had to be so unreasonable." "You think I wouldn't have had to fire Larry if he and I were talking together alone? I did talk to him alone, after you walked out, and he wouldn't answer me when I asked him a simple question." "That was because he was already mad at me, and because it wasn't just a simple question. He couldn't tell you that he was at work because I told him I was going to quit if he didn't come back. He couldn't tell you that, because I had just had another fight with him about something else, and I'd decided to quit anyway, because I knew I couldn't do what you wanted me to do, and still deal with how Larry was, not both at the same time." I took a sip of my new glass of iced tea. Trying to gain myself some time while I digested what Gene had just told me. In a weird way, I understood what he was telling me. I had encountered similar situations with Joyce and my other wives. I couldn't answer one question, because, if I did so, it would raise other problems for me that were more serious than the problems with not answering the first one. I'd never lost a job because of it, but I had pissed off a few people from time to time. It was the price I paid for having such a complicated living situation. Gene was letting me know his family situation might be at least as complicated. "I think we might want to consider having you, Phil and Larry each reporting separately directly to me. This could cut down on some of the conflict the three of you seem to be having." Gene nodded his head. His smile telling me that I was on the right track. "Maybe I should also have separate meetings with the three of you, where we could go over how you think each one of the boys should be used now? In the end, I'd be the one to make the final decision, but it would still be better if I got input from each of you." I watched Gene's face and body for signs of how he was reacting to my words. He didn't grab my dick like Cindy had, but I could tell he was getting excited too, just in a different way. I was relieved for the difference, and happy that I was beginning to understand how to communicate with him. "If you did that, Kenny, I don't think you'd have too much trouble getting good work from all of us. I really don't." "Once the three of you got used to the idea that there was going to be one vision leading the company as it expanded, do you think the Macklinson men could also get used to the fact that this vision included having Cindy and Patty working for the company too?" "I certainly think so, especially since Phil and I already are convinced that we better get used to it. Larry is the one who mainly thinks things hadn't ought to change. Of course, Larry has a daughter too, who you've never met. Sherry is very close to her aunt Patty, and Larry does dote on his daughter. If Patty didn't already succeed in making him get used to it, I'm sure that reinforcements are going to be called in soon. Cindy told me that Sherry might threaten to drop out of UAB and not finish up her senior year, if Larry doesn't stop kicking up such a fuss." "I take it you believe it wouldn't be an issue in the future?" "Like I said, he dotes on Sherry, and he knows he can't stand in her way when she tells him she wants something." We'd already been sitting together at lunch for more than an hour. It had been as productive a meeting as we'd ever enjoyed together. I signaled our waitress for the check. As I did so, I noticed Gene starting to fidget around in his seat. "Was there something else you wanted to talk over with me, Gene? Something we didn't already handle?" "Two things, Kenny. The first one is personal, and is a little delicate. Lee asked me to find out, because she thought it would be less embarrassing if I asked you. Both of us are assuming it happened by now, but she wanted me to come right out and ask you. Have you and Cindy had marital relations yet?" Gene's face was red. His body language told me that he'd prefer having all his teeth pulled without taking something for the pain first, over needing to ask me that question. I admired Laura Lee for being able to get him to do something he so obviously hadn't wanted to do. It wasn't a question I hadn't answered for other girl's fathers before, Emily's, Brenda's and Shirley's. The only question was how I wanted to phrase the wording of my answer. "Gene, if you're asking me if Cindy and I have had sex, then yes, we have. Several times, and always very successfully. As for the marital part of your question, Cindy's been offered a place with us, as one of our wives. She hasn't fully committed to it yet, other than to say she wants to be wherever I am." "You know about what happened to her with Colin? I'm sure she spoke with you about it. We're all supposed to pretend we don't really know about it. I don't know the why or the how of it, but I do know it changed her, and put a dark cloud over that girl's life. I'd give almost anything to see her finally recover from that time in her life. Lee talked to her doctors, and to the surgeon who operated on her. We got information on some of her injuries, not just the infection, but she wouldn't ever talk to us about that time. Patty talked to her, and Lee got some of what we do know from her." "I heard he had died, in some kind of a farm machinery accident. From what I heard about what happened, I hope it was a long and painful death." I didn't want to discuss any of what Joyce had told me beyond that. I wanted Cindy's dad to know that I didn't condone what had been done to her. "I guess I'm happy with what you told me, especially the part about it being successful. I'll tell Lee what you said. The second thing has to do with business, and it concerns, Jesse. I don't know where you got the idea that Jesse was Larry's son. Jesse is Phil's boy. Steve and Doug are Larry's boys. Phil's upset that you singled Jesse out as being too much like Larry." I thought about what he said. First, what difference did it make if Jesse was Larry's or Phil's son? My problem was with Jesse's attitude, not his parentage. Second, I thought we'd already agreed that the whole thing should be a do over, because of our earlier communication problems. I didn't want to be either flip or condescending with Gene though. "It's good that you mentioned Jesse, because Cindy told me that Jesse was good at communicating. I think I was under the impression that Jesse was Larry's son, but I never knew him very well before the trouble. It just seemed like he was negative most of the time, like Larry. If what Cindy told me is accurate, maybe I should try working with Jesse myself? He could advise me about how I should put things to all of you." "Jesse's a good boy, all of them are. The thing is, Phil's hopping mad about you singling out his boy for not being eligible to come back to work. He says it proves you've got it in for all of us. I think we need to tell him something to settle him back down." "Tell Phil I admit I was mistaken, and that I apologize, which I do right now. It was an honest mistake about who Jesse's father was, and I admit I didn't have enough information to be making that kind of judgment about him. I'd like to have Jesse stop by the office tomorrow so we can have a chance to talk, just the two of us. I'll apologize to him in person then." "That should do it. It takes a big man to admit when he's been wrong. I'll make sure Phil hears everything you've told me. I'm beginning to believe what Cindy's been telling all of us, that you'll turn out to be just fine when you've learned our ways, and how you're supposed to act." Gene smiled over at me, believing that what he'd just said would be taken as a compliment by me. "I'm beginning to believe what she's been telling me too, that you'd be willing to change as soon as you were shown a much better way." The smile I was sending back at him was telling him that I might be listening better, and understanding more, but that I hadn't changed that much about demanding that things were going to be done my way. "A little of this and a little of that, that's usually the best way, and I expect it will be how we end up finding out how to work all of this out together. There's always plenty of different ways to get the job done." Gene had stood up, watching my face for any sign of give or bend in it. "I'm always in favor of getting the job done, and as long as it gets the job done and ends up making us more money than the other ways I know, I can be pretty flexible. If there's a difference of opinion about two ways though, we'll probably want to go with whichever way I think makes us the most money. As long as it maximizes profits, I'm in favor of a little of this and a little of that." Apparently what I'd said was enough for Gene, because he was all smiles again. "I'll send Jesse over to see you in the morning. If you were to put him back to work right away, that would make all of us feel better about things." "Then he's as good as hired right now. The thing is, I'd like to be able to get back to worrying about how to get done all the things I need to have ready for expanding. My Dad got that money for us, and I know he isn't going to want to waste a single day in getting things started." "He was able to raise that five hundred million dollars you were mentioning before? Already?" Gene looked incredulous. I knew how hard he'd worked over the past few years, constantly trying to get the money to hold things together. To him it had to seem that things came too easy to my father, and to me. I wanted to keep him thinking that. "Mama and I decided we didn't want to wait to begin our expansion, so we just loaned him the money ourselves. It seemed like a good idea, because it lets us start right away, and it doesn't encumber any of the new assets. We can use them to finance our next expansion." "We would get along a lot better, Kenny, if you didn't always use your money to drive home the differences between us. Lee tried it for twenty six years, and it never worked on me." Gene wasn't smiling. I knew he understood what I was doing. Now I knew why he resented it. "Money is different things to different people, Gene. For me, its only a means to solving certain kinds of problems. Some of these problems were mine, and some were other people's. I don't use my money to make people feel like they're less than me. I use it to make things better, or easier, for me, and for the people I care about. I wonder if you and your wife didn't each have a different understanding about what she was doing and what you thought you were seeing done? I know of at least two occasions when she was using her money to let you know she loved you." "Which two?" "When she bought those shares from your mother and gave them to you, and when she loaned you the four million to buy that land. What else do you think she was doing when she did those two things?" "We were divorced when I borrowed the money to buy that land. She didn't love me anymore by then." "Are you sure, Gene? That's a lot of money to just loan someone." "I told you we were divorced by then. You don't divorce people you still love." "You did. Why couldn't she have done the same?" I walked over to the front register to pay the check, leaving Gene standing by his empty chair. I was convinced that Gene and Laura had their own communication difficulties. I was also beginning to believe that Cindy was using me for a lot more than what she had admitted to. I was glad that I already wanted to own the Underwood property. If I hadn't wanted it, I would have felt real bad about the deal that Cindy and Joyce had probably made. I was once again reminded of how tenacious Joyce could be when it came to getting whatever she wanted. She was ruthless, and nearly unstoppable, when it came to getting what she wanted from me. Her one saving grace was that she always gave me so much more in return. Joyce had her own little faults and flaws, but she never shortchanged anyone, not that I remembered. I got back to the office at around three o'clock. Cindy was in conference with my maintenance John, and Steve Lusby, from the Bolling crew. When I looked in the doorway, Cindy was pointing at things on the drawings, and John kept shaking his head, acknowledging that he understood. "Cindy, if John tells you he has it, just go on to the next thing you want to go over with him. He won't disappoint you." John and I smiled at each other, and I continued on towards my own office. Five minutes later, Cindy came in. "Are you sure they understand what I'm telling them?" "If they nod that they understand, they do. Don't worry. If anything starts being built that's different from what you told him, all you do is make them stop until you see John. These guys are good. They do things like this all the time. Don't worry." "Did you get that land thing finished with Daddy?" "Done and done. After, we went out to look at the little parcel he bought at the tax auction sale. I decided to give it back to him." "What do you mean give it back? You mean you sold it to him, right?" "No, I mean I gave it to him. He was right, it was Macklinson land, and it didn't have anything to do with the Underwood property." Cindy gave me the kind of look I was used to seeing from all the other wives. I called it the "How could you be so stupid" look. I'd seen it often enough to recognize it instantly. "You know this is just going to encourage him to believe you don't know a thing about what you're doing, don't you?" "I got what I wanted for the property. I'm satisfied I got way the best of the deal." "You said you gave it to him." "I did. I gave it to him, but with two conditions, both of which he agreed to." "What conditions are those?" "I got him to agree to quit being bothered about you and Patty working for the company, and to have him and your uncles quit standing in the way of having the boys come back to work." I felt pretty smug. "Aunt Patricia already got all of them to promise to be still about us working here, and everyone wants all the boys back here working. He would have paid a lot of money for that land, Kenny. You let him gyp you out of it." "He offered me forty thousand dollars for it, but I still think I got the better deal my way." "You go on thinking you got the best of him then, because if you keep trading with him like that, the family will soon be owning all of this again." Cindy swung her arms around to indicate she meant the whole baking plant. "That isn't all I got either. I also found a way to talk to him. We understand each other better now. I know more about how he thinks. We worked everything out." I was still smiling at her, and I could see she was irritated by my smugness. "You'll see. When you do, don't come crying to me." Cindy flounced right out of my office. It surprised me that she wasn't asking me questions about what I'd done to get things worked out with her dad. I started getting caught up with the paperwork on my desk. I noticed a note from Danielle that I was supposed to call my father, so that is what I did first. Mostly, he wanted to let me know that he'd told Frank to set up a similar deal to what the bond company had been offering, except this time with me and Mama as the sole holders for the financing collateral. He said he hoped we wouldn't take advantage of him by diverting any of the pledged cash flow over to our own uses. I told him that I'd concluded the land purchase with Gene, but I held back from telling him anything about the progress we were making. At four thirty, Kyle came into my office and sat down in the chair in front of my desk. "Kenny, you won't believe the day we've had today. Take a guess as to the dollar difference on all the routes today, as opposed to what they did one week ago." I remembered then that Kyle had been beginning to have the route drivers purchase the new product for distribution to their existing accounts. From his question, and from his enthusiasm in asking it, I concluded it had surpassed even his high hopes. "What the drivers bought, or what they actually sold?" "Doesn't matter. All of them called in saying they'd sold out. We only started with thirty one drivers today, because it was set up to be completely voluntary. All thirty one sold out. Tomorrow, it looks like we'll have half again as many drivers wanting to sign up. We could get all of them if we wanted to extend credit to the ones who can't afford to expand their line." "Go ahead and do it. Tell them we'll finance them a hundred percent for one day's worth of product, only for one month, then just fifty percent financing for the second month. Do it for anyone who wants or needs it, but only for drivers who have been working for at least three years. If the others want to be financed, they'll need to post some security, like their route rights." "Are you serious? This isn't how we do things. Do it now, and they'll expect you to do it if they have regular problems in the future." "Kyle, we want to get this thing moving as quickly as we can. Usually, when you open new products in an area, you support it with a big ad campaign, or some price promotions. We're not doing that. We aren't risking anything, not really, and all it will cost us is the loss of use of whatever money is tied up in product inventory for one day. Do the math. If we didn't offer this financing, you can see how much sales revenue and profits we'd be losing. We're doing this as much for our benefit as for the drivers." "This isn't how we've done things in the past." I almost said something negative, but, instead, I stopped myself. I needed to learn how to communicate with them better. "I wasn't aware that you thought it was always good to stay with the old way, Kyle." That stopped him, but only for a second. He looked at me and smiled. "That's why I asked, Kenny, because when I go home later, they'll all tell me that too. I was just asking, so I could tell them whatever you told me. If they know I asked the same question, they'll feel better about things." "Tell me this, Kyle. Did any of those thirty one drivers that took out the new inventory make less than a hundred dollars in commissions today?" "They couldn't have. They each had thirty six cases of the new stuff and all their regular bread and rolls that they usually take. A few drivers didn't have room for all of it, so we gave them a case of each and told them to come back for the rest, after they had made some room. At nine cents a unit commission, that comes to seventy seven dollars and seventy six cents, just from that new product. They all had to make at least a hundred each." "Did any of the drivers sound upset about making this extra money? Did they seem to think it was too much extra work?" Kyle was grinning as he shook his head no to both questions. "Tell your dad and uncles that, Kyle, but only if you want to. Remember, you don't have to answer to anyone but me now. If they ask you questions you don't feel like answering, you can send them to me. I want you concentrating on opening new accounts, and on increasing the sales of our existing route people. Anything else, you don't want to worry about. You did a great job getting everything ready so quickly. I'm very pleased with the progress so far. If you think you're ready for more help, you can call your cousin, Wayne, and tell him he can start back whenever he's ready." I could see Kyle enjoyed my praise, and he also liked getting the go ahead to hire his cousin. One of the problems I was having had to do with setting salaries for any of the returning Macklinson boys. I'd been through all the personnel files and they were all on the books for between thirty eight and forty one thousand a year. Some, like Kyle were obviously worth more than that to the company, but others were being overpaid for the jobs they'd been doing. Jerry, Kyle's younger brother had been paid thirty eight, but Wayne and Jesse who had been sharing duties as the night line supervisor between them, were each was making forty thousand. Donny Calhoun did the job, during the much busier day shift, for twenty four thousand a year. Obviously, Wayne and Jesse were both overpaid. "I'll call him tonight. What about his pay?" I didn't want to deal with that already. I knew I was going to be giving Kyle a big boost in pay, a salary commensurate with his new position and title. I didn't want to be placed in a position where I had a top heavy salary schedule just to keep from offending all the members of the family. On the other hand, I thought I should wait and speak to Phil, Larry and Gene before getting into any of that. "Tell him we'll be making salary adjustments later, for all of you, but for right now, we'll keep it what it was before he quit. Make sure he knows its only temporary, and subject to being changed by us." "We all knew that you probably weren't going to let us keep the extra salary they gave us right before they sold the company. With Wayne, because he's still single, he could probably go all the way back, but some of us, we can't go back to living on any fifteen hundred dollars a month. I know I can't do it." "You don't have to worry about that Kyle. With this new job, you'll be making more than you were getting when the company sold. I want to be fair, but I can't keep paying people twice as much as the job is worth to us." Kyle nodded that he understood, then he left. He seemed happy knowing that his own income was secure. I went over to payroll and had them give me a copy of the pay records for all of the family members. I found out in a hurry that Gene, Phil and Larry had all voted themselves big pay raises, right before they called, offering to sell out to us. The brothers had gone from forty eight a year to ninety each. All of the kids had been making between fifteen and eighteen hundred a month before having their salaries more than doubled, only a week before Gene's phone call. It was my fault for not having checked pay records before now. Part of the reason for my not thinking to do that was that the salary structure for Gene and his brothers was on the low end of average for their job titles and duty descriptions. I'd known the boys wages were a little high, but I'd put that down to simple nepotism. No wonder Kyle had wanted to work outside in sales. I looked up Jesse and Wayne's old salaries, and both were at fifteen hundred a month. Kyle had been at fifteen as well. The ones making either seventeen or eighteen hundred, already had children of their own. The difference just about paid their extra insurance premiums for the family plan option on the company health plan. I made a mental note of these things too. I was planning on sitting down with all of them soon, one at a time. I would be well prepared for those interviews. One thing I was certain of, Larry and his brothers would be taking a pay cut. I wondered how they'd like it when Kyle was making more than any of them? ------- Chapter 49 Cindy and I were out the door early the next morning. The first part of the actual remodeling of the offices was getting underway, and she was wanting to get in early enough to be there to oversee the work being done. I had already fielded twenty complaints from various people, mostly about them being told they needed to relocate. I wished I had an extra dollar for every time someone had told me things weren't done this way at Macklinson's. I told all of them the same thing, that Cindy was the person to speak to if they had any complaints about the changes being made. Meanwhile, I carefully reviewed and approved every change that would make it to the contractor for implementation. I thought she'd done an excellent job with her design plan, and I made sure to tell her so, often. At nine o'clock, Jesse Macklinson showed up outside my office door, wearing a nice clean shirt and new looking Levi's. He had even gotten a haircut since I'd last seen him. That had been when he came in to quit on the afternoon they all did. He'd looked scruffy then, as well as acting surly towards me when he told me where I could stick my damn job. This time, he looked better, also happier. Gene had already mentioned that all of the boys had been unprepared for the loss of their incomes following their hasty actions. "Jesse, just the man I wanted to see. Come in, have a seat." I waited for him to sit down, then I started right in with my apology. I apologized first for any inconvenience my lack of communication skills might have caused him, and for my confusion concerning who his father was. I didn't apologize for the comments about his attitude being too much like his uncle's. "I asked Gene to have you stop by, hoping we could figure out a way to put aside our past differences and get you back here working again." I stopped speaking and left the rest of it up to him. I didn't know what Gene or his father had told him, and I wanted to see how resourceful he was when it came to communicating with me. "I do want to come back to work, we all do." "Well, good. If you do come back, what kind of work do you see yourself doing?" "I thought I'd go back working the line at night, so Donny could come back and supervise the day shift line." "I think we're already set for the line supervisor jobs. Miss Kitty has been doing well running the day line, and Donny says he's just as happy working the late shift. I've got people from Nashville that can spell them on their days off." Jesse started looking all around the office, a bit restless, I thought. He also began to look worried. "Uncle Gene said you might be using me to keep things straight with some of the others?" "I said that to him, because Cindy mentioned she thought you might be the best one for helping me communicate better with your cousins. She thinks you have a lot of potential." "I talked with Kyle, and he said we'd all be taking a pay cut?" Jesse had abruptly changed the subject on me. It was easy to see he was attempting to get information from me to share with his family. This was tempting, but I wanted to save this discussion for the elder Macklinson men. "I've been reviewing all the pay records, but I haven't really decided what to do. I'm going to do something, make adjustments, but I want to have an opportunity to think about it first, and get some ideas before I make any final determinations." Jesse looked disappointed with my response. That was all right with me. He was here to be interviewed by me, not the other way around. He probably already knew, from Gene, that I was going to allow him to come back to work. "The pay isn't as important to me as getting back to work is, Mr. Parsons. I'm ready to work wherever you need me." "Good. For now, until I decide what I'm going to do about pay, we'll keep yours where you were when you quit before. The first task I have for you might be a hard one for you to do, but it has to be done. I need you to go talk to Kyle and ask him for a list of whichever of his cousins, or his brother, he's decided I shouldn't hire back again. He and I talked about this already, because he told me he didn't think he could fire some people, even if I told him he had to do it. Those are the names that will be on the list he'll give you. Don't go see those people. All the others, I want you to go visit them, and find out if they're ready to come back to work yet. Can you do that?" "What about my father, or my uncles? Are their names liable to be on that list?" "No. They'll be in a separate category from the younger people. If they come back to work, and then someone needs to let them go, I'll do it. This is only the younger ones that Kyle might put on the list. I think Wayne is probably already back at work, because Kyle told me he needed him, and of course Kyle and Steve. With you back here, that leaves only three left that you might need to talk to. If Kyle puts your name on his list, you better come back here right away. If not, you can leave and go talk to whoever isn't on Kyle's list. Kyle is downstairs now, talking to some of the loading people. Why don't you go try to find him before he leaves?" Jesse left right away. He didn't look too happy. I was pretty sure Kyle wasn't going to put anyone on the list. I was fairly certain that this had been discussed with all the Macklinson people in the week since I'd first had my talk with him. Since Gene hadn't mentioned it when we had our talk at lunch, I figured they'd worked things out concerning what to do about that. Ten minutes later, Jesse returned, a big grin on his face. He told me that Kyle had told him he didn't have anyone whose name should be on the list. He surprised me by asking me a number of questions about what he could tell his brother and cousins when he spoke with them. Most of these were concerning the jobs they'd be doing, and when they could start work again. I told him they could start the next day, but they needed to see me so I could give them a temporary assignment. I mentioned that I needed to talk to the people coming back, and to some other people as well, before deciding what I wanted the rehires doing. He then asked me if it was true that everyone still had their work benefits, even though they'd quit. I told him that was true. At noon, Jesse called me, wanting to know if his brother could come in that afternoon to speak with me. Billy Ray had worked with Phil, his father, doing maintenance on the night shift. By all reports, he hadn't been well suited for the tasks he'd been given. No one had come right out and said it to me, but Billy Ray appeared to be the one Macklinson that some might consider less than successful in his work history. I picked up on this by listening to some of his peers, and from his relatives as well. Kyle had laughed when telling me about Billy Ray's failures as a route salesman, and Donny, the line supervisor, had told me that Billy Ray had ruined several large batches of batter when he had been working in the mixing room. I told Jesse to tell Billy Ray I could see him at two thirty. Fifteen minutes later, Cindy came to my office, and invited me to take her out to lunch. I knew she was extremely busy, and I could hear hammers and saws working over at the other end of the administrative floor. I was busy as well, trying to finish a report on I was doing on our six month projected vending sales from this office. I needed it for Joyce, and for my father. I put the report I'd been working on aside, smiling when I told her I'd like taking her out to eat very much. Not surprisingly, the main topic of our conversation over lunch turned out to be Billy Ray Macklinson. I heard about how nice a person he was, and about how helpful he'd always been to everyone. I felt like she was trying to set me up to date him, not give him his job back. I found out his wife's name, Maravelle, the names of his two young children, Frank and April. Not once did she mention any of Billy Ray's possible work related shortcomings. I listened for fifteen minutes before I finally had to stop her. "Cindy, do you have some good reason for telling me all this personal information about Billy Ray? I'm considering hiring him back, not marrying him." She looked nervous, not looking me directly in my face like she'd been beginning to do, more and more, as our relationship blossomed. I knew someone had called her, someone in the family, trying to get her to smooth the way for Billy Ray. I wasn't expecting her to admit it to me though. "Daddy called me. He asked me to explain about Billy Ray to you. He thinks you might judge Billy Ray too pessimistically" "This is what you've been doing for fifteen minutes?" "Don't be like that, Kenny. Daddy is trying to help you, that's why he called me. Uncle Phil is worried about Billy Ray, about what it might do to his self confidence, if he's the only one who isn't permitted to rejoin the company. They want you to hire him back, and put him to work doing something he knows how to do. He's a good driver. Daddy says you should let Billy Ray drive the grain cart. He told me to tell you that Phil will realize you're serious about wanting to get along with the family, after you do this for Billy Ray." "That's what Gene thinks, but what does Cindy think?" I thought it was a fair question. She had accused me the day before of being gypped by Gene. I wanted to hear what she'd say if I asked her what she thought of my going along with this suggested move. She didn't answer right away. In any event, I was already planning on doing away with the grain cart and the open bins. My Dad was sending down one of the big grain dumpers we used at our short term grain buildings over at all the other plant sites. They held about eight times as much as one of the little bins we were using now, and they were easier, faster, and a lot safer for us to use. With them, we could do all our loading and unloading through the fill hoses on the sides of the storage building and the top of the dumper. I had a crew coming down later in the week, and we'd already filed our building specs and blueprints. As soon as we got approval of the plans, we'd commence the construction of our new storage building. "If it was me, I'd do this for them, Kenny. They already know you're going to cut back on their salaries. If you do this, it would make it easier for them to accept that. Just make sure they know that this was you making a friendly gesture to them. They know about Billy Ray. They don't expect you to have many plans or uses for him." I was troubled by her saying that. Was Billy Ray going to end up being a problem for me? Was he going to be a dead weight I'd have to carry in return for getting the desired Macklinson cooperation? "I thought giving that land to your Dad was a friendly gesture, but you said it was only me proving to them that I didn't know what I was doing. I think you said they'd get the company back if I kept doing things like that. So, which is it?" "Kenny, this is how we do things. We're a family, and we take care of each other. Billy isn't dumb or anything. He just hasn't found whatever he's good at yet. Except for driving. He's a really good driver. He can drive almost anything. He used to race some when he was younger, until he had all those crashes." She wasn't helping her case much. Did I want a driver who had crashes? "He's coming to see me this afternoon. I said I'd talk with him. You tell your father this company isn't a bottomless pit where he can stash all his unproductive relatives. I'll expect to see some signs of Macklinson cooperation, and very soon too." "Kenny, all of us love Billy Ray to pieces. We all want to help him however we can. You helping him will be another good sign to all of us. You'll see, they'll take good notice of you doing this." We went back to the office, with Cindy hurrying right away, anxious to get back to overseeing the construction work. I was sure, even as busy as she was, she'd somehow manage to call home to let Gene know that her lunch mission had been a complete success. Billy Ray was led in by Danielle, promptly at two thirty. He and I had a nice, if a somewhat rambling, chat for the first twenty minutes or so. We talked about Cindy, Patty, Kyle, the NFL team in Atlanta, and the fact that both of us had daughters who were named April. When he saw I wasn't the one who was going to bring the topic around to his being re-employed, he went ahead and brought the subject up himself. "Jesse came to see me this morning. He said I could maybe come back to work?" "Did you want to come back to work here, Billy Ray?" "Well, sure I do. Daddy told me I was foolish to have quit like I did, but all the rest of them did it, so I did it too. He said I should go back and ask for my job back, especially after Kyle and Stevie got hired on again. Vellie, my wife? She's been after me to go back too, so I wanted to come right in here to ask you if I could maybe start back tonight?" This far into our conversation, I still hadn't detected any obvious reason why Billy Ray might be any different from his brother, or from any of his cousins. He wasn't as quick as Kyle was, but not too many other people were either. He talked fine, and he seemed personable to me. I remembered when he had come in to quit, he'd seemed upset that he was doing it. "Someone told me you were a good driver, Billy Ray. Is that true?" "Maybe not for racing, but for anything else I am. Is that what you want me to do?" "I'm not sure if it is yet. Have you ever driven a grain dumper?" "Like the grain cart? Sure, I've driven that a lot. Nothing to one of those." "No. This is a big front draining dump truck with a feed hose over the top of the tank. It's like a dump truck, but it lifts up and forward with a gravity feed to the grain storage shed. It operates on hydraulics, and you need to get out and set the connections for loading and unloading. Its like operating one of those tow trucks, where you use hydraulics to lift and pull the car onto the bed of the tow truck." "I've driven tow trucks, both kinds, and I've operated hydraulic lifts before too. I don't see where I'd have any problem. Can I see it for a minute or two? If I can see it, I can tell you whether I can drive it or not." I explained to Billy Ray that we didn't have the dumper yet, but he could see it before I ever went and assigned it to a different driver. "Is there a different job you think you'd be better suited for than driving, Billy?" "I like to paint and draw, but there's no call for that working here. That's what I'm best at." "Really? What do you like to paint?" "I can paint almost anything, if I can see it for a little while first. I like doing portraits, and painting pictures of race cars. I do people, horses, dogs and cats. Did you see the painting of my Granddaddy Tom, hanging over the fireplace at Gene's house? I painted that when I was a kid, maybe fifteen or sixteen. I'm not a real artist or anything, because I can only paint what I can see. I don't paint things from my mind, like the real artists do. I need a picture of what I'm supposed to paint. I'm better off if I can see whatever I'm painting, in person though, from all the different sides." I didn't remember seeing the painting he was referring to. I might have seen it, but if I did, I hadn't paid attention or even noticed it. It was interesting to find out about his having something like art as a hobby. I made a note to make sure I looked for that painting the next time I was over at Gene's house. I had another idea while I was thinking about the painting at Gene's. "Billy Ray, do you think you could paint a picture on one of the walls of the new conference room when its ready? I'm thinking of having you do a picture of your grandfather, with his sons and Patty around him. Could you do that, do you think?" "How they all are now, or like they were in the picture from back when Aunt Glenda got married?" "You have another aunt?" "Not now, but I did. She was older than Uncle Gene, Aunt Patty, and Daddy, but she died from the pneumonia. I wasn't even born yet when she died. It was a nice picture, taken at the wedding reception. They were all standing together, outdoors. I could do a painting easy from that. How big would you want it to be?" "Like a big wall mural. Maybe seven or eight feet high, and as wide as you need it to make it proportional. There's twelve foot ceilings over where you'd be painting it. I think they're planning on building the room out, either tomorrow, or sometime over the weekend. How long would something like that take you?" "If you wanted me to paint it on the wall, I'd need to prepare the wall first. You're talking wall board right?" I nodded that I was. "I could probably do it in a week, maybe a little less. Did you want me to include Aunt Glenda?" I thought about it. I decided to include her, because she wasn't any less alive than Tom Macklinson was, and if it had been my sister, I'd have wanted her included in the picture. I told him to go ahead and paint it with her in it, but to put all the men in the back, with their father, and both girls right in front of him. "I want you working on painting that picture, Billy Ray, but I don't want you telling anyone what you're doing. Not even your wife. I want it to be a surprise for them. If they ask you what you're doing, tell them you're training to be a grain dumper driver. I'll get my wife, Joyce, to send us a manual for operating the dumpers. That will show you how everything works. When it gets here, I'll have whoever drives it down show you everything about driving and operating them. After you get a few chances to drive it you'll know what to do. That will be your main job, but, you only need to drive the dumper for a few hours a week. What else do you like doing?" "I'm just going to get a few hours of work? I need something with regular hours, like before. Did you mean what I like for work, or something like fishing, hunting or drawing?" "You'll get enough hours, Billy Ray, don't worry. This is full time work we're talking about. You'll do something else when you aren't busy operating the dumper. That other question, about what you like to do? I meant do for work." "I'm good with numbers. I can count most things." I looked at him, wondering if he could really be that good with numbers. It seemed doubtful that he would be. Again, he talked fine, and he seemed able to focus well enough. I didn't have too much trouble accepting that he was a decent driver, because Cindy had said he was. I could even believe that he might be a decent amateur artist. I thought about calling Patty, to ask her if she thought she might be able to use Billy Ray with her over in accounting. I didn't want to get myself off on a bad foot with her even before she joined the company. She wasn't even scheduled to start with us until the next month. I was just about to ask him if he had any interest or training in bookkeeping or accounting when I had a much different idea. One of the things I didn't particularly like about all the trading I was doing was the account reconciliations this necessitated. I usually spent too much of my time working on doing that, after almost every trading session. Even with the computer, this was a very time consuming activity. I had to keep up with it, because it needed to be done so I'd be able to keep track of what I was doing. This wasn't just for keeping track of trading profits, it was also for the grain brokering I was doing. I was constantly adjusting my open positions with the grain needs in mind. I was very adept at doing it, but it still took as much time and effort as I was spending on giving for the actual trading. The reason I didn't have someone else doing it for me was I didn't feel comfortable trusting anyone with all the sensitive information they'd need to be able to access in order to complete the reconciliation. "Billy Ray, do you know anything about computers?" "No. I can type though. I did seventy words a minute back in high school. Corrected words a minute too. I'd be a little bit rusty now, but I bet it'd all come back to me quick enough once I started back in doing it. Did you want me to type things on a computer?" I brought Billy Ray over to my computer terminal and began showing him the confirmations for the automatic trading program that had been operating on its own all day. I didn't show him the actual trading program, just the files where the confirmations from each broker were stored. It had been a relatively slow day, as far as the number of trades we'd made. I looked in each file first, then pulled up my spread sheet program, showing Billy Ray how I entered each trade confirmation. I showed him how to see if it was a sale or buy confirmation, and the numbering system each broker was using to keep track of my trades with them. Each day, all the open trades from my previous trading sessions were already entered on the next page of my spread sheet, because of a carryover feature I'd had added to the software. "You need to match up the transaction numbers. If you don't already see it on the spread sheet, you type it in under here." I typed in the seven digit number for the trade. "Then, in this square, you type either a "B" or an "S", for buy and sell. In the next box, you enter the contract month, the next, the commodity being traded, then the number of contracts. In this next box, you enter the price the trade was made at, then leave these next two boxes blank for later. Now, let's take another one." I kept going back to the first broker's confirmation list. We had to wait until the fifth trade confirmation before we came to a purchase that closed out an opened earlier sale. I showed him where to put the purchase price, and how to subtract the sales price from the purchase price. The difference went in the last box. I did the rest of the reconciliations from that one broker myself, taking my time to make sure Billy was following everything I was doing. A few times, I needed to stop and run through something again. Once, when I'd had a losing trade that had been closed out because I had programmed the automatic trading script to close out positions where the grain price had broken out on either the upper or lower edges of the box I'd formed with either one of the metals or any two of the currencies. I showed Billy Ray how to show a negative amount on the spreadsheet. When all the data had been entered, then double checked against the confirmation notices, I showed him how to figure the gross profit or loss, and to factor in the trading commissions, for a net profit figure for that day's activity with the broker. I told him that each brokerage company sent out monthly transaction confirmations to my accountants and to my home address. The information I developed doing my own was mostly being used to help me decide on where I stood on a daily basis. I spent another half hour questioning him about everything I'd done. He seemed to have caught on to it rather easily. I closed both files, saving the spreadsheet under the current date, after transferring all of the still opened trades onto the next days spreadsheet. I opened the next file of reconciliations from a different broker, then opened the new spreadsheet page we needed to use for it. I got up and told Billy Ray to do what I'd showed him before, entering this new data onto the new spreadsheet. I went back to my own desk and started working on the report I'd left when I went to lunch with Cindy earlier. I expected to be interrupted with questions, but I wasn't. I looked over at Billy Ray every few minutes, but he was concentrating on what he was doing. It took him about an hour before he called over to say he was done. It would have taken me about fifteen or twenty minutes, but I'd had a lot of practice with doing it. I wasn't sure I would have been able to do that much as quickly, back when I first started doing it on a computer. I could still do it faster, using a sheet of paper and a pencil, but having the information on the computer allowed me to play with the numbers, to see where I was making my most profitable trades. I could merge all of my data too, and that helped me with the weekly and monthly profit statements, and for the allocations I made to all the various trusts and accounts I used for my trading. I went over and checked on every figure, unable to discover a single mistaken entry. That was excellent, and I felt myself getting a little bit excited. It wasn't that I hated the need for reconciling all the trading accounts, it was all the time I spent putting the data into the right places, so that I could do the actual reconciling itself. It was drone work, and I'd been thinking about hiring someone to help me avoid doing it. It was only my worry about having someone stealing my trading secrets that kept me from doing so. I let Billy Ray do the transcribing and data entry on four more brokerage accounts, then I checked all of them with him. We did find one error, but it was Billy Ray who caught it, and then he pointed out the correct way for doing it. The error was in an entry I'd made, back when the trade was first initiated, two trading days before. I had him quit before he had finished entering everything. I had all the duplicate confirmations in Ridgeline anyway, and I tried to take care of it there, on the weekends, if I couldn't get everything done during the week. "So, do you think you could do all that reconciling, drive the dumper and still have time to do that painting assignment I gave you?" "Would I do that computer thing in here, or somewhere else?" "In here. That's very confidential information. I trade with a lot of money using this program, and it's important to our future profits from trading these commodities that no one knows how I'm doing it." "Is there a set time when I'm supposed to be doing this? Like night shift or day shift?" "I'm going to put in a second computer terminal for you, over there." I pointed to a space over on the right, by the door to the office. "We'll do all the reconciliations on that computer terminal. You'll need to wait until after three o'clock for the trades to be finished, unless I'm trading markets in the west. I don't trade them usually. When you've done it awhile, you should be able to do it all in two or three hours. I can wait for the rest of the data for today, just as long as I already have an idea about how things went. I only need the sheets from two or three broker accounts before I leave for the day. The rest you can finish up in the morning. You can come in at eight, and then leave at five, with an hour for lunch, at whatever time you want to take it." "So I'll be working days again? This is from Monday to Friday?" "That's right. Did you prefer working nights?" I was worried. I knew finding a job that Billy Ray could handle would be a big plus with Phil and Gene. Between the driving and the account reconciliations, I knew we could keep Billy Ray gainfully engaged. The painting, while it was interesting, would just be an unimportant little bonus for me. "No, that isn't what I meant. I mean I don't mind working nights, not if that's what you need me to do. Its just that Vellie was always saying about how come I had to work the night shift, when I'm married, with two young children at home. Some of the others in my family, ones who don't have any families, they got to work the day shift jobs. She'll be pleased with me working days again. I hate to ask you this so soon, but we've all been hearing some rumors, and Vellie would skin me if I didn't bring it up while we're here talking now. Its about my pay? We've been hearing that you were going to adjust us all back down to how it was before. I guess we could make do if we had to, but I need to find out, so I can tell Vellie, and she can decide about going back to work at her parent's store or not." Billy Ray had been getting eighteen hundred a month before the big raise to forty one thousand a year. I was planning on adjusting all of the younger Macklinson men backwards, except for Kyle. Him, I was going to raise up quite a bit. Not as far back as the fifteen to eighteen hundred though. I thought I'd probably end up with none of them making less than twenty-four to thirty thousand a year. I was feeling a little bit whimsical about Billy Ray's salary though. The thought of having someone handling my reconciliations every day, something that would free up at least a couple hours of my time every afternoon, was very attractive to me. In addition to working on the reconciliations, there was the dumper driving he'd be doing. He'd be putting in at least ten to twelve hours a week, just driving the grain and flour back and forth for us. I'd talk to my father about it, explaining how I'd be using the time I'd be saving. It would definitely be helping me to have more time to spend on working on the upcoming company expansion. I didn't think he'd object to having to pay a reasonable price to get that. If he did object, then I'd make up the difference out of my own trading profits. I could easily afford to do that. "Well, I looked it up before you came here this afternoon, and I've got your pay listed as being forty one thousand a year. It looks like all of you Macklinson family people got an incredible pay raise just a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make some changes, to put things back to closer to where they were before all those big raises took effect. 'But, for one or two of you, like you and Kyle, I'm going to have to consider giving out raises. The dumper driving and the account reconciliation work are both important jobs I needed to fill. I'll be honest with you, Billy Ray, I wasn't sure you could do both those jobs. I wasn't even thinking about hiring someone for the reconciliations work until after you mentioned you were good with numbers. You know I said I needed confidentiality about the trading account figures? That includes everyone, your wife, brother, father, uncles, cousins. You can't be talking to anyone about what you're doing here in this office. If I found out you were talking, I'd have to let you go." "I'm not a big talker, Mr. Parsons. I'd tell people you have me working on a special project, one I just can't discuss. You said I might get another raise? Or, did you mean that it would just be a raise from what I was getting before?" "I was thinking about forty four thousand a year. You can tell your wife and family what you're making now, but I'd rather you didn't tell the other plant employees how much you were making." This got the positive reaction I thought it might. There was something I'd learned at an early age, while in the orphanage in fact, and that was to look for ways to find uses for whatever other people didn't want. I'm not saying that Billy Ray was unwanted, but he wasn't the first name on everyone's lips when challenging tasks were being handed out. Billy Ray was more aware of this than I was. I was sure Phil was aware of it too. How could he not be? Show me a father, any real father, and I could prove this to you. I wasn't just being cynical by knowing this would help me with the rest of the family too. Billy Ray would have to earn his money, because I'd make sure that he did. Part of it was me interceding because I could, and because I had empathy for someone who had been labeled like Billy Ray had. Yes, I'll admit it too, like I had been labeled before, over at the orphanage. Maybe he had his reasons for not succeeding in some of his other efforts. Maybe he'd end up failing to take full advantage of the special opportunity he was being given now. I was betting he wouldn't though, because it isn't any fun being at the bottom of any barrel. If you ever got an opportunity to get up to the top, you weren't likely to let yourself sink back down to the bottom again, not without doing everything in your power to resist doing that. "You aren't funning with me, are you? If I go home and tell Vellie that I'm back to working, and with another raise, she'd be pretty broken up later, if I was to have to tell her you didn't really mean it." "Billy Ray, I don't kid around about business. After you get to know me, you'll know I don't. I said these were important jobs, and important jobs usually pay good money. Kyle has been given a very demanding job, a critical job, and he'll be paid accordingly for doing it. Except for Kyle, the older Macklinson men, and your Aunt Patty, I'm nearly certain you'll be the highest paid member of the family that's working here." "What about Cindy?" "Cindy? I'm pretty sure she only makes about ten thousand a year. What made you think of her?" "They said she was your girlfriend. Isn't that so?" "More than just a girlfriend, but I don't consider her job as important as some others. All my wives make two hundred a week, except for Joyce. She makes a lot more than I do, but that's because she's more valuable to the company." "Your wife makes more than you do?" Billy Ray's voice made it sound like he thought I was pretty pathetic, someone to be pitied, to have my wife earning more than me. "Her salary is a lot higher, but she doesn't own stock like I do. Plus I have other, outside, income, like some of the trading profits. She could make a lot more than she does, but she takes it easy on us because she knows she's going to get it all after I die anyway." "Now I know you're funning with me. I heard you had like a few hundred million dollars." "I did have, but I just lent a lot of it to my Dad. I'm not broke now, but most of what I have left is tied up in company stock." "Forty four, right? I can tell her I'm making that much when I go back home?" "That's right. Be here at eight tomorrow. You can dress casual, no suit or tie, and I'll expect you to finish up whatever we didn't get to today. Stop off in personnel, and tell them you're back as of today. Have them call me to confirm your new salary. Welcome back Billy Ray. I hope we'll both be happy with what we've worked out together today." "I'll do my best not to disappoint you, Mr. Parsons, and I'll be here on time too." "I'd appreciate it if you called me Kenny, Billy Ray. If we're going to be working here together, it would make things easier. I'm not very formal." As soon as Billy Ray left, Cindy came hurrying over to my office. "Did you hire him back? He looked happy when he left, although he didn't stop to speak with me when I waved at him." "I not only hired him back, I found two important things he can do for us. Well, one is for us, and one is for me, but it's almost the same thing. I'm happy that it worked out as well as it did." "You did well, this time, Kenny. This is turning out really well. I talked to Daddy, three times, while you were in here with Billy Ray. He was afraid something had gone wrong, or that Billy Ray did something to upset you. Why were you in here so long?" "Billy Ray needed to prove to me that he was able to do something I needed done. He showed me, but it was something that took awhile to get all figured out. He did it though. He'll do fine, I'm sure." "What did he do?" "It's complicated. I can't really discuss it with you, because it's kind of a trade secret." "I saw the two of you huddled up in front of that computer. Are you teaching him how to trade like you do?" "Cindy, I already told you all I'm going to tell you. He's your cousin. I'm sure if he wants you to know, he'll tell you about it himself." "He is, isn't he? You know, if you were going to have anybody do that for you, it should have been me." Cindy appeared hurt and angry. I could understand one or the other, but not both. "Look, you have a job, and it isn't trading commodities. I'm paying you good money to do that job, not to try to peek through my office window to spy on what I'm doing." "I'm being paid? How much?" "Of course you're being paid. How much were you making at your last job?" "Fifteen hundred a month, but I was due for another raise, and we got Christmas bonuses." "That much? Well, I can't afford to pay you that much, but you have free room and board with me, plus you get to travel on the weekends. I won't even mention all the good sex we're throwing in. Add up what all of that is worth, then add in another two hundred a week on top of that. I'm sure that is easily the equivalent of fifteen hundred dollars a month." "You're nuts, Kenny. But, since I didn't know I was being paid at all, I'm not going to complain that the pay is too low. We need to leave here pretty soon because we're supposed to all go over to Aunt Patty's tonight. Mama is going to be there, and there's going to be a little Georgia style rice and beans, with some real homemade Southern cornbread. Mama and my aunt want to get to know Eddie and Dale." "Not get to know them like you got to know Eddie, I hope?" That got me a slap on the arm and then a nice makeup kiss and a few quick gropes. We left the office, heading down to the car. I was surprised that it was after six thirty. I'd been in with Billy Ray for over three and a half hours. It was time well spent, but I hadn't gotten as much done on my report as I'd planned to, and if we were going over to Patty's house, I wouldn't be able to get anything done at home either. Cindy was playful on the ride home to pick up Dale and Eddie. She was in a good mood. Part of this was from spending the day watching her drawings and layout plans coming to life. Part of it was from seeing the steady progress being made in getting her family back working at the company. The last part of it was because she was beginning to feel more comfortable with the way things were going with her personal life. Discovering that she had little or nothing to fear when it came to integrating herself into our family. For her, this was turning into a week filled with reassuring discoveries. She liked working and sleeping with me. Dale and Eddie hadn't ganged up on her. In fact, if anything, I was starting to sense that Cindy was beginning to worry that Dale didn't find her attractive enough to be sexually interested in her. She hadn't said anything to me about it, but the signs from both of them were definitely there. Dale was worried about the same thing. In the mean time, Eddie and I were reaping the benefits of having our way with both of them. Cindy and Dale were both more responsive to the two of us. Part of the reason for this was all their pussy footing around as each waited for the other to make the first overt move towards a sexual joining. ------- Chapter 50 We didn't get to Patty's house until almost eight that evening. Cindy had called over there to let her aunt and mother know we were running later than we'd expected, due to some work related delays. Dale and Eddie were dressed and ready when we walked into the house. Cindy and I just changed our clothes and freshened up a little before heading right back out the door. I would have to say the evening started out promising. The food was good, and both Patty and Laura went out of their way to try to make Dale and Eddie feel welcomed and among friends. Patty had been married for about nine years, having two sons during the course of the union. Like all three of her brothers, she had put her own business interests ahead of her marital and family responsibilities. In her case, her husband had retaliated against her inattentiveness by entering into a long series of extramarital affairs. This behavior kept up until he found someone willing to put him and his sons ahead of her own career ambitions. Patty believed everything had worked out for the best. Her one sadness was the realization that her relationship with her sons never fully recovered after she and their father had gotten divorced. Laura was her usual self, acting gracious and charming one minute, and then making some cutting comment the next. She kept all of us laughing by regaling us with some humorous stories of incidents that had occurred during her twenty six year marriage to Gene. Underneath the humor though, there was a deep undercurrent of sadness that was apparent to us all. We could almost feel the sharp sense of disappointment she felt at having failed to keep her marriage intact. Patty described for all of us her late father's desperate machinations to try to keep Larry from killing Gene, after the two young people had run off and eloped together. "It might not have been so bad if Larry had known that Lee had always had strong feelings for Gene. When it happened, he blamed only Gene, believing it had been done from spite alone. It wasn't until much later that he began to believe it hadn't only been Gene that had gone after Lee. You didn't make it any easier either, Lee, by not telling Larry how it really happened." "I tried to tell him, even before it happened, but he wouldn't listen to a word I told him. He'd made up his mind about us being married, and that was it. I should have stood up to him better, but, honestly, even before Gene came to me, I knew I wasn't going to go through with marrying Larry. I didn't plan on marrying Gene when he and I ran off. I was just trying to escape from being forced into marrying Larry." You could tell that both Patty and Laura were enjoying themselves. It had been a real shock, and a desperate scandal when it had first happened, but the passage of time had a way of making the near tragic begin to sound humorous. I doubted that Larry would have laughed. I could only imagine how he felt when he'd first learned the women he planned to marry had run off with his brother. I also knew that Gene didn't recall any of what took place during that period with even a single iota of humor. "Had you been intimate with Larry? Before you ran off with Gene?" I knew it wasn't a very polite question to ask, especially with her own daughter sitting within two feet of her. Patty gasped when she heard my question. Dale stopped eating and looked over at both Laura and me. Eddie giggled and smiled. Laura finished chewing before answering me. "Larry and I were never fully intimate, Kenny. Had we been, I'm sure things would have turned out differently. Gene was my first. I'd done some petting, both with Larry and other beau's, but if you were a nice girl back then, you came to your wedding night pure, in the clinical sense, at least. Gene and I didn't quite make it to the justice of the peace before it happened, but that was only because of their ridiculous insistence on a three day waiting period for the marriage license to be issued." "Do you think what happened is what causes Gene to keep deferring to Larry?" At this point, I wanted to find out as much as I could about Macklinson family dynamics. "Larry's the oldest. I think that has more to do with it than anything else. Gene and Phil both grew up being dominated by Larry. They're just used to it. Phil less so than Gene." Laura spoke quietly. I felt sure she'd had many occasions to think of the possible reasons for Gene deferring to Larry's wishes. "Lee, I think you're wrong about that. It wasn't always like it is now, or even how it was when you and Gene first came back home to Birmingham. I think its because Gene still feels so guilty. Guilty about you, but even guiltier because Daddy chose him over Larry, to run the company. All the boys grew up knowing that Larry, as the oldest, would take over running the company, if anything ever happened to Daddy. That all changed when Gene ran off with you. That's when Daddy said he knew that Gene should be the one to run the company. I was there the night he told Larry he'd picked Gene instead of him. He told him not to even think about coming back to work until after Gene came back too." "Did he tell Larry why he was doing that?" Laura seemed stunned by what Patty had said. When she asked the question, I could see her looking over at Cindy nervously. I think she was afraid of the answer Patty might give her. "Daddy never gave reasons for what he did. He just did it. Larry asked him why, but Daddy just got up from the dinner table and waved Larry away from him. I remember Phil was almost as upset as Larry, but he knew better than to say anything." Laura abruptly changed the subject, asking Eddie if she or Dale had encountered any problems when they went out with Cindy and me to restaurants. Eddie laughed and described several incidents that I hadn't even noticed. I guess it was mostly a case of me not having my guard up, looking for any stares or changes in people's conversation as we all walked past them. "How do all of you work out the details for sharing Kenny? I asked Cindy, but she refuses to discuss it with me." Laura was back on the offensive again. I was actually happy that Gene wasn't there with us. I knew what his reaction would be to her asking me that particular question. "Do you mean here now, or when we're all back in Kansas?" I could already tell from Eddie's question that she was going to be having some fun with Laura. Cindy and Dale both seemed disquieted, and I knew why. Of all the people Laura might have asked that question of, only Eddie was likely to give her a response, and then only in hopes of shocking both Laura and Patty with the answer. I think Laura was beginning to realize she was liable to get answers she didn't really care to hear. "I meant in a general sense, not the actual specifics. Do you draw straws, or does everyone go in turn?" Laura was looking over at Cindy, and she didn't like the expression she was getting from her daughter. I stayed still, not wanting to be part of any of this. If I could have thought of a good reason to do so, I'd have excused myself and left the room. Since I couldn't, I did the next best thing and silently willed myself to be invisible. I don't think it actually worked, but no one was looking over at me right then. "The competition is fierce. Seven dogs, and only one bone among us. It's a good thing its one of those big, hard, bones. On a good day, as many as four of us get to feed on it. I'm not saying there aren't any fights, or that we don't turn on each other on occasion too. Kenny knows how to keep us content with what he's able to provide. If we get to missing him too much, we console each other until its our time again. For some of us, that's our favorite part of it." Eddie seemed pleased with her answer. I knew it had been milder than it might have been. The color had drained from both Laura and Cindy's faces. Patty's face had turned a crimson shade, and she'd started having a coughing attack, like she'd swallowed a drink down her wind pipe. I felt slightly uncomfortable as well. I looked over at Dale, hoping she would be able to rein in her sister. Dale sat there with no expression on her face. We might as well have been discussing the weather for all it showed on her facial features. "I see. There must be jealousy and competition. I know I couldn't do what you do." Laura sounded defeated, only trying to salvage something from the topic, before moving on to safer ground. "I was merely curious as to the methods you might be using." "Dee and me, we were both on the pill, until we found out that Kenny got himself fixed. Now, we don't use any method at all. Feels better too, not having to worry about anything." I knew, as did Dale and Cindy, that Eddie was just having fun at Laura's expense. I wanted to help Laura out, but I didn't know how I could accomplish it. "I did hope to see children from Cindy soon." My vasectomy, and Cindy's hiding that knowledge from her parents, was still a sore point between Cindy and her mother. She couldn't end the discussion and not comment on her disappointment at Cindy's failure to disclose my unsuitability for fathering grandchildren for her future enjoyment. "Our mama feels the exact same way about it. Only thing that keeps her from being after us to find another man, one who can give her some grand babies, is knowing how happy we both are with Kenny. Especially Dee, because Kenny is the only man who can ring her chimes. Mama knows how important that is to a woman. Besides, we're all up to our necks in little babies running around underfoot in that big house. I'm thinking about giving that little Derek a kinky little perm, and then rubbing some of that dark tanning cream on him. If I fixed him up to pass, mama would parade him all through Chickasaw, even with all those cute little freckles he has all over his face." The room was quiet. Laura was embarrassed, and Eddie was getting a look from Dale. I finally thought of something to say. "Laura, did you get your money back from Gene yet?" I knew that Gene had picked up his check at the lawyer's office, because I'd approved the dispersing of it when the law office had called me. "I haven't received it yet, but he called to tell me he was ready to pay me off. I understand I have you to thank for making this repayment possible?" "Cindy more than me. She's the one who used her feminine wiles to talk me into doing it. I have no idea what I'm going to do with so much land down here. Joyce wants to put it in a trust for the children and just sit on it." "It might take twenty years, but you'll do well with the Underwood holdings. Gene is well rid of that land though. He had no real plan in mind when he bought it. Planning was never his strong suit." It surprised me to hear her say that about Gene. I was sure that Laura knew him better than anyone, and if she had concerns about his planning abilities, I wanted to know about it. "What is his strong suit?" "Implementation, I think. Yes, I'm sure that's it. You give Gene a fully developed idea, and he can implement it for you. Just make sure there are no other conflicting sources to muddy up the water. In the first years after old Tom died, the company flourished. Gene did fine, because he had a well planned strategy, all laid out nice and neat for him. Time destroyed that simple plan. Events and changing economics mandated that Gene's plans change to keep pace with this new economic reality. When things changed, Gene had difficulty adjusting to working without a clear set of instructions. Instead of working a new plan out himself, he started listening to everyone else. That was a sure recipe for disaster." I wanted to ask her more questions. I wanted to test her theory out with information I'd gathered myself from watching Gene, and from poring over the company's performance records of the past twenty plus years. I knew then that I needed to look at what had happened with the company in a new light, to determine for myself if what Laura Lee was telling me was consistent with the change in Macklinson's Bakeries operating results. There had been an impressive period of growth after Gene had taken over for his father. The company's size and sales had more than quadrupled. Gene had explained the slowdown in growth as having been no more than a case of he and his brothers having grown content with leaving what they already had intact. What if Laura was right? Had Gene been successful in growing the company because he was simply following his father's plan? I had been blaming the stagnant operating results on Larry's interference in decisions outside his own small area of competence, and on Gene not being strong enough to push ahead with his own ideas. Suppose Larry's negativity was only a consequence of his understanding Gene's severe limitations? "In retrospect, should Tom Macklinson have chosen Gene to take over the company?" I looked at both Laura and Patty when I asked the question. With her experience in corporate accounting, Patty was in a unique position to answer my question. I was interested in Laura's answer too, because I knew she still loved Gene. "Of the three sons, Gene was probably best suited, by temperament, to run the company. Larry has too big a temper. He can't stand not having his own way about things. You've seen how intractable he can be." Laura had wanted to be the first to answer. I wondered what she was trying to keep Patty from saying. I looked over at Patty, trying to encourage her to offer an opinion. "I think Larry would have been a better choice. Not that he was any better suited to running the company, because he wasn't. Gene would have been a better support person for Larry than Larry was for Gene. There was always that emotional component from Larry towards Gene. A lot of it would have been avoided if Daddy had put Larry in charge. Daddy was worried that Gene wouldn't come back if Larry was put in charge, or if he did, that Larry would still do something to harm him because of Gene and Lee, and what they did to Larry." "Gene didn't do anything to Larry, and neither did I. Larry did most of it to himself by refusing to believe what I had been telling him. Gene was caught right in the middle. Patty, you know Gene didn't do anything to change my mind about marrying Larry. This is why none of you can ever let go of things. You make up your own minds, in spite of evidence that you're wrong, and then you cling to it, just like it were an established truth. I told Larry, three months before the thing with Gene happened, that I'd never marry him." "Lee, even if you did tell him, you didn't tell anyone else. To everyone else, it looked like you and Gene had decided to run off together and have a fling. Larry was made to look like some jilted bumpkin. You made him appear small in Daddy's eyes. Because it was Gene, his own brother, it made it a hundred times worse." The two women stared at each other. I saw the rift, and learned how it wasn't just the male Macklinsons who banded together. After almost thirty years, when it came down to it, Laura Lee was still an outsider in Patty's eyes. This was true as long as it concerned any conflict involving one of Patty's brothers, or any of their children. It was a blood thing, and it was a pervasive trait. Laura Lee was family to Patty, but she wasn't blood family. "Kyle's wife is having a baby, Laura. That should make you happy." I wanted to defuse the tension in the room. Laura Lee didn't impress me as a woman who would back down easily. In a way, she reminded me of Mama. Strong willed and stubborn. I had a definite feeling that I wanted to keep Patty and Laura on the same side of things. I had a need for both of them to be united. "Trudy and I have never seen eye to eye. I was against Kyle marrying her, and she's never forgiven me for it. Steve's wife and I don't get along well either. Both my boys should have done better for themselves. I doubt I'll be very welcome in either of their homes. Since Gene and I split up, all the children have taken his side of things. I had my highest hopes set on Cindy." Laura looked like she was on the verge of tears, but I was certain this was just an act. I'd seen my mother use this tactic to control my father and Uncle Bunny in the past. She'd tried it once or twice with me, but I'd ignored her tactics and continued with whatever viewpoint I already held. "Do you remember "Sissy", Laura? That's my little girl with Emily. You met her when you came to Ridgeline to visit with Mama. Did you notice then that her hair coloring and skin tone was a lot like Cindy's? Joyce and Emily both commented on it to me. Emily says "Sissy" looks more like Cindy than her. Kids can't ever have too many people that love them. You're welcome to be "grandma" to any of our children. "I also have almost two hundred children in group homes all over Kansas. There isn't one of them that wouldn't be absolutely thrilled to have someone like you come by and show an interest in them. I'll tell you something else too, Kyle and Trudy aren't the kind of people that would stand between you and any children they might have. I don't buy your explanation at all. I think it's you looking down your nose at your daughters in law, not the other way around." "You don't understand. It's the blood connection, knowing your line is continuing. It isn't just about any child. Do you feel the same way about all children? I doubt it. It's only natural to favor your own. This is true in all cultures." "There have been cultures where all children were tribal children. Where it didn't matter who your real mother or father were. You're right in thinking that all of my children are special to me. Where you make your mistake is in thinking it matters overmuch to me who the mother or father of my children were. I'll grant you that there's something extra special about the ones that live with me, but there's something special about every child in my care, no matter who the parents might have been." "You are a product of unique circumstances, Kenny. You can't judge people by your standards." Laura wasn't going to back down from her earlier assertion. She had this quality of needing to be right. It was difficult to get her to change her viewpoint. Perhaps, impossible. Almost certainly, it wouldn't be worth all the effort I'd need to expend to attempt to change her mind about this. "We're all products of unique circumstances. As to judging people by my standards, you're probably right. My point was you have access to plenty of young children to lavish your love and affection on. Insisting that they be blood relations only limits the selection. Insisting that their mothers be able to meet your lofty expectations just constricts it even further. Trudy is going to have your first grandchild. How much or how little you interact with that grandchild is going to be dependent on your attitude more than on Kyle's or Trudy's. I'm pointing out some available options to you. You need to make your own decisions." It was only after we stopped talking about grandchildren, and were focussed on the topic of future company expansion, that Laura allowed me to see another side of her. So many of the questions she asked, and her comments about how certain changes would be necessary for progress to be made, signaled to me that she had a breadth and depth of understanding about the company that I'd never have suspected. Her wording was studied and precise, too complex and structured to simply be comments springing from any free association of ideas taken from remarks the rest of us had already made. She had obviously put an awful lot of thought into what she was saying. I was impressed. I knew that had been her intention too, to impress me with her sound grasp of the steps necessary to embark on a successful expansion. "It would never work, Laura. Gene wouldn't sit still for it." I had delayed making any comment until after she had completed her thoughtful presentation. "What would never work?" Again, she tried to go back to appearing both innocent and confused by my remark. I knew then where Cindy had picked up the trait she used on me so often, and with such disarming success. "I'm not going to bring you into the company. If I did use you to help us with any part of the expansion, it would never be in any situation where you worked directly with Gene, Larry, or any of the other male Macklinsons." I could see by her quick facial reaction to my words that I had guessed correctly. I found it interesting that she had hoped to use me in some way to achieve whatever ambitions she had as far as Gene or Larry were concerned. She was certainly more complex and devious than I'd earlier believed her to be. I stole a quick glance over to Cindy too, wondering, not for the first time, what her whole agenda might be. Nothing was ever what it seemed with her. It was the same way with their whole family it seemed. The one constant I had found was their willingness to all stick together against anyone they considered an outsider. It was also becoming very apparent that Laura Lee was still an outsider to the family, even to her two male children. Only Cindy seemed able to bridge the chasm separating Laura and Gene. She was turning out to be more of her mother's daughter than I would have first believed. "I could do a lot better job for you than either of them, Kenny. When Gene listened to me, things went a lot better for the company. It was only after he quit listening that things started falling apart." I heard the sincerity, and the desperate need in her voice. I didn't understand it, but I heard and recognized it for what it was. Cindy looked embarrassed after her mother's plea. Patty too looked unsettled and embarrassed. In her case, I think it was because she didn't care for Laura being a guest in her home, then using our social get together as a forum for undercutting both Gene and Larry. It was pretty obvious that Patty was a true blue Macklinson. She was willing to go against them to further her own desires, but wouldn't be involved as an accomplice against them, not on Laura Lee's behalf. "There's enough trouble and confusion already. I'm trying to sort things out and make them simpler, not add complications. If you want to hold sway over Gene again, you're going to have to find your own way to get back in a position to do it. I won't intercede by using the company for you to do so." "That wasn't what I was asking for." Laura bit off her words. She was obviously becoming upset. It would have been much better if she'd come to me, privately, to let me know of her interest, and the ability she possessed to help us with our expansion. "If you do want to get back with Gene, in my opinion, you're going about it in exactly the wrong way. It's your pushiness, and your willful insistence on having things your own way that he most rebels against. He doesn't want another Larry in his life." Laura reacted like she'd been slapped in the face. I was trying to be honest with her. From what I'd been able to observe, Larry and Laura both treated Gene about the same way. In spite of this, it was very obvious that Gene still loved Laura, and she him. It was also just as obvious that they wouldn't reconcile without some massive shift in the way each treated the other. The same was true for Larry and Gene. What they had worked out together hadn't benefited the company. I didn't know if they could change the way they interacted with each other. I hoped the separated chain of command would help. My goal was to have no older Macklinson reporting to another older Macklinson. On the drive back home, I had to listen to an earful from Cindy about the things I'd said to her mother. From what she was saying to me, I had confirmation that it was her intention to use me to help get Gene and Laura back together. She was manipulating me in several ways, trying to get me to use either my money or my position to accomplish her wishes. Up to a point, I'd go along. She thought she had been really successful in getting me to do her bidding, like with me buying that land from Gene, or me hiring back Billy Ray and her brother and their cousins. If I were to confess to her that these were all things I'd already wanted to do, it would have taken away some of her sense of accomplishment. I didn't mind going along with most of it, but I wanted her to know I wasn't like her father. "I've given you your way on a lot of things, Cindy. Putting Laura in a job where she has influence over your father isn't something that would ever work well. It never has worked well. He already sees himself as having to resist all her efforts to buy him, to not let her use her money to control what he has to do. What he wants is to be in a position where he gets to be the one to dictate the terms to her. The last thing he needs is for one of us to raise Laura up, and to put her in direct competition with him." "You don't know them like I do, Kenny. They are both so unhappy being apart like this. They need a push to get shoved back together, so they have a chance to work out their problems." Cindy seemed convinced that she was correct. I'd seen no evidence that any of the Macklinson family had doubts about their near infallibility. That was a serious shortcoming, in my opinion. "I guess I didn't make myself clear to you then, Cindy. I'm not going to give your mother any job where she is working directly with your father, regardless of which of them would be in charge. You can use your own resources to try to help them, but I'm not going to use any of mine. Not unless I see an advantage for me in doing so. In this particular case, I don't see any advantages, and I do see several possible disadvantages." "My mother could be a great asset to your company. She has a plan, you know? This wasn't something she just thought up over at Aunt Patricia's tonight. She's been thinking about this for a long time. She knows Daddy better than anyone else. She made a mistake before, divorcing him, but she knows how to get him back." "I concede she has a plan, and even that it might be a great plan. Her problem remains that I have no interest in letting her use the company to bring her plan to fruition. More than that, I won't allow it. She needs to come up with a plan that doesn't involve her working at the company with your father." "We were all getting along so well, Kenny. Everything was getting back to where it should be. Why do you want to ruin it all?" She wasn't being as subtle as either Joyce or Emily would have been. In this, she was acting more like Brenda might have. She assumed that she had me wrapped tightly around her little finger, and that I'd hurry to satisfy her every whim. Well, she certainly wasn't the first person to believe that. "No one gets everything they're after, Cindy. Sometimes you just have to accept the disappointment of not getting what you wanted. This is one of those times. Instead of concentrating all your energy and feelings on this disappointment, think about all the other things that went your way these past few days. Be satisfied with all the progress you helped bring about." "I can't. You don't understand how much my mother was counting on you being able to see what a good thing this would be for everyone. You being like this ruins everything." "I guess you can look at it like that if you want to. It doesn't make sense to me to do it that way, but you have to do whatever you decide is necessary. Now what?" "What do you mean?" I saw that Cindy had been surprised by the way I didn't try to avoid discussing the potential repercussions for my announced decision. She probably thought I'd try to negotiate with her. "I mean what are you going to do about this? If what I've said ruins everything, then it stands to reason you are going to do something to retaliate for my doing that. I've disappointed lots of people over the years, and they always have some ideas about what they need to do to make me sorry for doing it. What are you planning?" "I haven't thought about that. I was hoping we could talk about it more. Maybe you'll change your mind after we talk about it." "Nope. I had already decided, even before tonight. I don't want your mother working for the company with your father. It would be bad for a whole host of reasons. You've seen how those two get when they're around each other. I don't want to bring any of that into the business." "You can't really know that until you try it." Cindy obviously didn't want to get into a discussion about my punishment for not giving in to her. Dale and Eddie were sitting in the back seat listening to Cindy and me talking. I could hear them whispering together, but not what they were saying. "Then we'll never know, because I'll never try it. I want you to stop trying to change my mind about it now. I've decided, and I'm not going to change my mind." It was very quiet in the car for the remainder of the drive home. When we got inside the house, I went into the living room, but all three girls headed back to the bedrooms. I assumed there was a war party meeting going on back there, and I wanted no part in it. Whatever Cindy decided would be fine with me. I had already known that I was going to have to rein her in sooner or later anyway. If it hadn't been this thing with Laura, it would have been something else she wanted that I didn't feel like going along with. I waited for forty minutes, until almost midnight, to walk back to my bedroom. The lights were out, but I could see someone was in bed with their head under the covers. I got myself undressed in the dark, going into the bathroom to brush my teeth and empty my bladder before climbing into the bed on my side. I made no effort to reach out for whoever was in bed with me. I figured it would be Cindy. There would have been no reason for either Eddie or Dale to have hidden their heads under the sheet. I had a stiff boner from thinking about what I might have in store for myself. I'd been worked over by experts trying to get me to change my mind about numerous decisions. Joyce and Brenda were the best at doing that to me. After two or three hours of either of them working me over, I'd usually agree to almost anything. Usually, they weren't asking me for anything I wouldn't have been willing to give them if they'd told me, in the beginning, that it was very important to them. Mostly, they did it because they enjoyed the process. It was for fun more than just to get me to reverse a decision. With Cindy, I knew that wouldn't be the case. I was waiting for ten minutes before I started feeling a toe edging up from my ankle to my knee. I made no response to it. I didn't believe in being too cooperative from the very beginning. I held out from showing any response at all until I felt a small hand reaching for my crotch. I let her squeeze my dick a little before I put my own hand over hers and started moving it slowly up her arm. When I ran into Cindy's hair on her shoulders I was certain, for the first time, that it was her, and not one of the Pipkin sisters. I was determined not to speak until after she did. I might have groaned a few times, but so did she, especially when I ran my hand back down between her legs and checked her pussy for signs of moisture. She was wet. She quickly shifted her body beneath the covers, after I'd checked her, until I felt her warm breath outside my briefs. It didn't take long after that before we were locked in a nice little sixty nine position. She kept control of herself after we both had cum from the oral ministrations. She even moved back over to her side of the bed. I liked oral sex, and always had. It had always been more of an appetizer though, not the main course. When Cindy moved away from me after we'd both cum, I began to understand her strategy. I wondered if she'd been coached, or had devised the strategy on her own? So far, I had no complaint I could make about anything she'd done. It was turning into some kind of chess match though. I thought she'd refuse my advances if I moved over to her side of the bed. If I didn't try though, that would still make it seem like I was the one being petulant. Either way, I'd be the one in the wrong. Good strategy. "Thank you, Cindy. I love you. Good night." I turned over on my other side, so my back was facing her and went to sleep. At the beginning, I thought I was only going to pretend to be sleeping. When I woke up at six the next morning, Cindy wasn't in the bed with me. I stopped off at the other bedroom, but Cindy wasn't in there either. She wasn't even in the house. When I opened the door and checked outside, her car was gone from where I'd seen it parked the night before. I was in the office before eight, planning on only spending half a day there before leaving for Kansas. Dale and Eddie had promised to be packed and ready to leave by noon. I already had my bag packed and had left it sitting in the trunk of the car. I had walked around the remodeling project area without seeing Cindy. After Billy Ray came up to my office and started working on the trade reconciliations, I lost myself in my own work. It was after eleven before I left the office again to see whether Cindy had come into work or not. I found her over in what would be the new conference room, having a heated discussion with two men from the outside building crew we'd hired. She seemed upset, so I approached her rather cautiously, wanting to find out what the problem might be. "Kenny, they've messed with our plan for locating all the different departments. They say that John approved the changes. I can't find him anywhere, and I've had to stop the work until after I find out why he let them make changes to our plan." Cindy was upset. I was happy it wasn't me she was currently upset with. "John went into town to look for some things he says we needed. Apparently the supplier has them on back order and didn't inform him of that fact. He should be back any time now. John mentioned something about needing to make changes because we didn't allow enough room for the accounting department where we had it scheduled to go in. He wants it on the other side of the stairwell, because there's more room over that way, and it will be closer to the computer and the printers. He said the noise would be better if we keep all those machines together. I think he was looking for you this morning before he approved the changes." "I had to go see my father about something. I didn't think it was going to take me so long. You should have told John to call me at Daddy's house." "Well, I didn't know where you were, and I didn't notice any message about you coming into work late. From what I understand from John, it was simply a matter of there being too little room for all the desks and equipment over where you wanted to put accounting. We wanted to keep the whole department together. The way you had it, we would have needed to put Patty's office over by the production staff cubicles." "We did that for a reason, Kenny. Aunt Pat wanted to be over by where cousin Wayne will be." "We undid it for a reason too, Cindy. We want to be able to keep whole departments together. The way I understand things, Wayne will be out working with Kyle anyway, not working upstairs in production. This is a business, not a social setting for your family to get together and enjoy each other. I didn't hire Patty so she could try to get in better with her children. I hired her to run my accounting department. To do that, she needs to be right over there with them. I just hope you haven't made any other decisions for the remodeling based on these kinds of considerations." "Wayne is going to be doing accounting work for Kyle. By rights he should be in Aunt Pat's department." Cindy wasn't giving in easily. For some reason this was important to her, but I didn't know why. "Wayne is in marketing, just like Kyle and Steve. Stop trying to change things around so that you get your way with this. I expect you to act professionally. What you're doing isn't very professional. Did you pack your bag for the flight to Kansas? We're leaving here before noon." "I thought I'd stay here this weekend. There's still a lot to do with the planning, plus I need to go see my mom and talk to her about what you said to us about her not working for the company." I knew right away that this was Cindy firing the first salvo. I also knew it was important that I react well to this opening gambit of hers. "We'll miss you. I'll miss you. Why don't you call Joyce for me and let her know you decided not to come home this weekend? Tell her to set up a meeting for me for tomorrow with Frank Clooney. I need to make some changes in the children's trust accounts." I tried to make my voice sound neutral while telling her all of this. I didn't want her to know her not coming with us to Kansas was affecting me as much as it was. "You don't mind me not coming with you?" "Of course I mind, but I think you know best what you need to do. I'll see you either Sunday night, or Monday morning. Joyce and I should be back here by five thirty or so on Sunday night. It would be a lot better if you didn't make any effort to keep your mother's hopes alive, because I won't be changing my mind. Did you get the chance to say goodbye to Eddie and Dale? If you don't tell them goodbye, they're liable to think you're mad at them too." I walked back towards my office, hoping she'd follow me so we could say a proper goodbye. That's when I remembered that Billy Ray was still sitting in my office. This whole thing could have been so much simpler. "I'm not mad, Kenny. If I was angry, I'd have said something to you by now. I'm disappointed for my parents, but I'm not mad. Do you think that's why I left so early, or why I'm staying here instead of going back with you?" "If I thought that, I'd ask you if it were true or not. What I think is what you told me. I know how busy you are with this remodeling, and I know you want to try to help your mother too. I just wish I'd had time to prepare for you not coming with us. Still, I'm glad you're taking this project so seriously. The next one is going to be a lot more complicated." We said all the correct things to each other. Both of us knew we were lying through our teeth. I was going to miss having her with me, and I was sure that Joyce was going to give me a hard time because of this as well. Someday, we'd both feel comfortable enough to be open and honest with each other. For this time, we'd have to rely on putting on our false fronts. I knew that Joyce was going to take over for me as far as orchestrating our ongoing relationship with Cindy. She'd have few other choices, when I came home without her again. I knew she thought I was deliberately undoing all of her good work in getting Cindy prepared to be with us. I could already see that Cindy was going to be more an ally of Joyce's than of mine. The odds were being tipped out of my favor more and more each day. At the rate things were going, I'd be lucky if even I could manage to remain loyal to myself. I was already more than half convinced that I should step back and cede all my authority to Joyce. Something kept me from taking that step though. I trusted Joyce, but not totally. I'd never be able to trust anyone totally. I waited in my office until after eleven thirty, even sending Billy Ray off to run an errand for me, just in case Cindy decided to drop in to tell me goodbye. She never did come, and when I left, I steeled myself to keep my eyes from searching around for one last sight of her. When I arrived at my car I was proud of the discipline I'd shown. I didn't even notice Cindy sitting on the passenger side until after I was almost inside the car. "I decided I needed to see the family more than I needed to stay here and make sure the remodeling turns out okay. I called my mother a few minutes ago, and she seems all right with how we left everything. I still had my case in my car, so I'm packed with enough stuff to get me through the weekend." "I'm happy you decided to come with us. I was already missing you." "I'm probably not going to get any chance to be with you in the bedroom this weekend. All the others will want to get their turn with you." "Don't be so sure of that. Joyce is going to want her turn with you, and she always likes it when I come in to give her a helping hand. I'm sure that Brenda would agree to share you with me too. Brenda isn't that good with other girls unless I'm there to get her going. She can be pretty selfish that way." "My parents were both wrong about you, Kenny. I was wrong too, I guess. Sometimes, I think you really don't care about me, or about any of us. Did you buy that land from my Daddy because of me, or because you wanted to buy it anyway?" "If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have come near that property. I paid way too much for it. You don't spend that much money without having good reasons for doing so. I'm pretty sure the children will make a lot of money twenty or thirty years down the road, just by holding on to that land until developer's are begging to buy it from them. On the other hand, I bought it because I knew you wanted me to make some demonstration to show you that you were important to me." "My mother says three and a half million dollars isn't that important to you. She told me I had to wait to see if you would make some sacrifice that really meant something to you." "Maybe she's right about that amount of money not being that important, overall, to me. I didn't buy the land to show you I thought you were worth that much money to me. I bought it so you'd know that I'll try to help you with any problems that are in my power to solve for you. The thing last night, with your mother, had no chance of working. I'd have done it if I thought there was some chance that it would work." "Daddy said the same thing to me. He said he wouldn't work at the company if my mother worked there with him. He reminded me of all the other ways you demonstrated your good intentions, like hiring Kyle and the others back. That wasn't why I decided to go to Kansas with you, though." "No, I didn't think it was. I'm guessing you decided to come with me because you're dying to know about the next project I have for you. Am I correct?" Cindy laughed, and scooted over closer to me. "Are you going to tell me?" "No. First we have to finish with this project. We should be done by next week. After that, I'll tell you all about it." "Can you tell me if it has to do with me helping you with your grain trading?" "No." Cindy made a face at me before realizing she wasn't sure what my no had meant. "No, it isn't about me helping with the trading, or no, you aren't going to tell me?" "Yes." She spent the whole trip back to the house trying to trick me into telling her, but I was strong. I was able to keep from telling her. I wondered if she would try to coax the information out of me while we were in the air. If she did, I was going to demonstrate the advantages of our autopilot to her. We were wheels up and heading back home at a little before one o'clock. With the colder air and a strong head wind, we didn't get to Ridgeline until after five. All Cindy got for her efforts to get the secret out of me was a mouthful of my cum. Even that took awhile, because I was a little distracted from trying to come up with what that project I'd already promised her was going to be. One thing I knew for certain was that it wouldn't involve my grain trading program. I had to make sure that Joyce explained to Cindy about why I was bringing Ellen back to Birmingham with us. I had spoken to Joyce everyday during the week, telling her to prepare Ellen in advance that there wasn't going to be any more sex between her and me. Joyce said she wanted to discuss that with me before either of us made a firm decision. I already knew I was going to try to stand firm on my position. Our having sex with Ellen would, almost certainly, lead to unwelcome complications. I didn't want any additional complexities or confusions. The thing was though, Joyce usually got her own way when these types of things came up. I was hoping that Cindy being in the house would distract Joyce from the Ellen situation, if only temporarily. If you ever want to have a chance to prevail over Joyce, in anything, you have to be totally committed to your position. Anything less, and you'll stand no chance of getting your position to win out over hers. Even with a strong commitment to a position, your odds aren't that good. My only hope was in forcing Joyce to choose between two choices she didn't want to have to make. Joyce could compromise. Not for long, but I hoped it would be long enough for her to see that my fears were justified. I was going to tell her I'd only take Ellen as my assistant if we had this no sex understanding. If we couldn't agree, I'd simply remain in Birmingham until I found someone who could do what Joyce was hoping Ellen could do. I was hoping that Joyce would choose having me in Ridgeline more than for just the weekends. ------- Chapter 51 Hans was at the airport with the limo to pick us all up. I was a little surprised and disappointed when Joyce didn't pop out of the limo too. Hans must have noticed my disappointment. "They're all over at the company. Your father is in the middle of negotiating a new purchase. A big one. They've been talking togrther for months. Now, suddenly, they're in a big rush to get the sale completed." "Who is it? One of the bakeries out on the West coast?" "No. A company called Alliance Vending Corporation. They are located mostly in the Southeast. I think they're based in South Carolina, but I'm not sure. I know its the subsidiary of some conglomerate in New York. Your Mama told Gerta that it was going to cost three hundred forty millions to buy them out. She's worried about being able to come up with so much money. Your father is trying to raise the money with his banking contacts in New York." I asked Hans to swing by the plant to see if my Dad and Joyce were still there. It was only ten minutes out of our way. On the way there, I explained to Cindy, Eddie and Dale about the possible new acquisition. I had never heard of this vending company, but I already knew that vending was the area where we were growing the fastest. It made sense for us to buy more locations if the numbers were decent. I knew my father wasn't going to overpay for anything he bought. It had to be a great deal if he was putting everything else aside to pursue it like this. We got to the plant and saw my Dad's car, Joyce's. Brenda's car and Shirley's were there too. Seeing this, I asked Hans if he needed to get back home right away for anything. "No. I can go over to the deli and pick up some things for Gerta. I was going to go in the morning, but this will save me a trip. You want me to pick up some sandwiches and drinks for you?" After Hans dropped us off, we went upstairs to Joyce's office. All the other girls were there, and the children, but Joyce was over at my Dad's office. I quickly made my way over there, not stopping to spend any time with the other wives and my children. I expected to be gone for fifteen minutes or less, just wanting to stick my head in to say hello to Joyce, and to my father. It didn't turn out like that. "Kenny. Come in, come in here. You're just the person I needed to speak to. Things are really moving quickly right now. Joyce and I have been putting out feelers to a company called Trans Apollo Holding Corporation, trying to find out if they have any interest in selling off one of their holdings, Alliance Vending. It was Joyce's idea, because Alliance is already a strong presence down South, where we're going to be expanding. Buying a company like that would bring us some instant credibility in that part of the country." "Hans mentioned some of this, but he made it sound like you're in final negotiations, not just feeling them out." My Dad got an annoyed look on his face. I knew it was because Hans seemed to know more than my father thought he should. It was Dad's fault that he did though. He talked to Mama, Mama spoke with Gerta, and Gerta told Hans. Dad was a lot better in the way he now treated Hans and Gerta, but he hadn't quite gotten to the point where he thought of them both as family. All the rest of us had long since gotten to that point. "Trans Apollo started it by calling us this morning. They suddenly sound anxious to unload some assets in order to buy a company they think is a much better fit for them. They've offered us Alliance for three hundred and forty million dollars. Joyce and I both believe it is a bargain at that price. Unfortunately, they need an instant answer from us, and I can't commit to the purchase without first lining up the financing for it." "How closely have you investigated this Alliance? Are you sure it doesn't have big problems we don't know about?" When I asked that, Joyce spoke up. She hadn't said anything to me other than a big smile when I first stuck my head into Dad's office. "They're a well run company, Kenny. Too conservative though, only growing at three or four percent a year. This is primarily because their sales team is too small to be able to give them full market coverage. Their main emphasis is on taking care of their existing accounts. New accounts are usually gotten through referral. They haven't been going out and making any real effort to expand any of their markets. This is part of what makes them such a good bargain for us. Sales is our core strength in vending. Some of their line of products will complement our current lines too. My opinion is that they are a near perfect fit for us. The only problem is finding a way to come up with the money to buy them." "Why can't we use the money from Mama and me? This is expansion too. Buy the company, then Dad can head off to New York and renegotiate our credit facility with the bankers. I'm assuming this Alliance will throw off earnings like we get from the Lucas Company, right? Same profit margins and all?" "I've thought of doing just that, Kenny, but this means delaying our Southern expansion plans, and we've already begun with redoing some of the plants and ordering in new equipment. We've already committed more than a hundred million of the money from you and Bertie. I can't really justify putting our current plans on hold in order to make this purchase now. In the long run though, to answer your other question, Alliance should turn out to hold the same margins as the Lucas Company. That is mostly owing to the different nature of our two core businesses, and the lessened competition we now face with our vending operations." "It seems to me your choice is very clear and simple to make. Do you want to pass up an investment in a business that returns fifteen percent margins in order to expand in an industry that returns only two or two and a half percent margins? It doesn't make sense to not purchase this Alliance company if the price is right. Once we own it Dad, you can approach our bankers and get them to raise our credit facility enough to support our original expansion goals. If you can't, we'll find another way to raise the money. If anything, this is going to make our company even more attractive to bankers. They look at margins, you've told me this a hundred times. Look at how much easier it was to get a generous credit line after we started including the Lucas Company earnings in our P&L's to the banks." "That was as much a factor of the growth rate of our sales and earnings as it was the margins we were holding." Dad seemed to be arguing only to draw me out further with new arguments in favor of doing what I had recommended. "Joyce just said this Alliance's only weakness was an inadequate sales and marketing team. Once we turn Rob Lucas and Shirley's dad loose on them, this weakness will turn into a strength. When it does, the growth rate will be there." "I envy the optimism of youth, Kenny. To you, nothing seems impossible. That is how companies get into trouble though. We're back to the philosophical differences between us. I prefer having all of the possibilities covered before I commit to an action. You prefer to commit and then overcome any unforeseen consequences as they arise. I'm uncomfortable with this shoot from the hip mentality of yours." "I think Kenny's right this time, Tom. You do too, or you wouldn't counter with this philosophical differences argument. Kenny's talking about huge returns on profit margins, and makes a strong case for choosing the investment with the highest profit potential. He's paid you a compliment when he claims he has absolute faith in your ability to arrange the financing we'll need later for the bakery expansion effort. We need to put our expansion dollars to work where they'll have the best opportunity to grow the fastest. Acquiring Alliance just popped up for us suddenly. We've been pursuing them quietly for months though. We need to take advantage of the opportunity when it comes to us like it has." Dad looked at both of us. He picked up his phone and looked around for a phone number before he started dialing out. "Franklin, this is Tom Parsons. I'm sitting in my office with most of my board of directors. We've been discussing your proposal." My Dad stopped talking for a minute and listened to what was being said to him. "I appreciate that, Franklin, and that's why I convened this board meeting so hurriedly. We've discussed it at great length, and it comes down to there being a conflict between our existing expansion plans, which we've already begun, and using these same funds to go ahead and consummate this purchase from you. We can't possibly do both at this present time. I've already committed over a hundred million dollars to the expansion we were planning on doing until you called me with your offer." Again, there was a pause while my father listened to what the other person was saying. This time, the speaker on the other end spoke for some three or four minutes without pausing. "That is a generous concession. We do have that amount of cash on hand, but it would exhaust our expansion capital. Three hundred and twenty million is very attractive. I'm glad you didn't offer it to me for three hundred million even, because, if you had done, I'd have said yes right away. As it is, I'll need to run this past the board." There was another, much shorter pause. "Very well, we have a deal. I hope you'll be as happy with whatever asset you intend to purchase for yourselves." After Dad hung up the phone he was beaming from ear to ear. "Did he go to three hundred million?" Joyce blurted her question out before I could ask him the same thing. "Yes, we're closing in New York next Tuesday. Three hundred million was too good to pass up. Three twenty was as well, but when he offered it to me for that I had a strong feeling that he might go even lower. Kenny, I hope you remember that it was you who urged me to take this action. I'm fearful that you'll find it frustrating when the money isn't instantly available for you to implement your own expansion efforts." "I don't think so, Dad. Really, I'm expecting you to come up with the money for it anyway. I didn't have any set timetable in mind for putting the integrated plan in place. There aren't five people who even know what we're planning for Macklinson's, not the full extent of it. The only one I've told very much to is Kyle, and he's going to be pretty busy getting his own end of it set up down in Birmingham. The rest of them are too used to not having the money to expand their business. I feel bad for some of the plant workers who lost their jobs at the Consolidated plants. Maybe we should bring some of them back in and put them to work on the old equipment, until we get the money to retrofit those plants. Even if it was only break even for us, it would save the labor force in the area. The biggest problem will be for us to remember to not hire more people than we'll be able to retain after we set up the newer, more automated, baking plants." "You could do something like that if you want to. It shouldn't be too expensive to get the ovens back up and operating again. It wouldn't make sense to invest too much though. I'm afraid you'd have to handle the administration out of the Birmingham office though, payroll and everything else. It might put a strain on your people." "I hired a really well trained accountant down there. Cindy's aunt. She is very good with computers, and she knows how to handle complex projects. I'll turn her loose on setting things up for that. I've even got some people in mind for going back to interview personnel for the reopening of some plants." "Now we have to go talk to your mother and explain how we squandered most of the money she lent me for our Southern expansion on something we just purchased on a whim." "I'll bet you anything that Mama will love it. Tell her we bought something that will make us more money than all the other bakeries we own put together." Joyce spoke up again after I got through saying that. "Tell her this company is a lot bigger than the Lucas Company. Tell her we'll be selling them all their new vending equipment by purchasing it from that company she owns with David and Craig. That will make her happy. We had gotten to the point where we couldn't keep up with their production output. With Alliance added into the mix, this shouldn't be a problem to us for at least four or five more years." "Are you happy with this purchase, Joyce?" I knew she was, but I wasn't sure why she was so excited by it. "Happy doesn't begin to describe it, Kenny. I've been so worried that we were going to be unable to feed the growth from putting the vending products in retail stores. Having more production wasn't the only problem. There was an issue with the shipping costs because you can't package vending product like our bakery goods. It costs more to ship vending boxes, unless you put them in as space fillers with the other shipments. With everything coming out of Omaha, our shipping costs were hurting us. With this purchase, we can hub out of Columbia, and now we can open the Texas plant we got from Consolidated, and turn it into a vending product bakery. All we'll need is another plant out in the Northwest, and my shipping problems will be solved." "You never mentioned any shipping problems Joyce." My Dad sounded concerned. He didn't like being kept in the dark about any company problems. "It wasn't a problem, Tom, more like the high price of doing business with Kenny's expansion into convenience markets. It was a logistical situation that had me baffled. It costs more than twice as much to ship vending product by itself as it does when we use it as filler for other shipments. With all the hubs we now have, we were able to limit the extra cost in shipping from Omaha to the first destination hub. After it arrives at a hub, we throw the vending product on bakery shipping orders, as space filler. This saves us a lot." "How much is a lot?" "Millions, really. We bill out all the mixed product shipping to the bakeries, not to the Lucas Company." Joyce seemed pleased with her explanation. My father didn't look happy, and neither was I. No wonder the Lucas Company profit margins were so high. They were free loading a good part of their shipping off on the bakery shipment costs. "How is that a fair representation of the actual shipping costs?" My Dad asked the question. Joyce stopped smiling when he did. "It costs the same to ship the bakery goods either way. All we do is fill up the empty spaces with vending product going the same way. It is an added bonus for us that we have a way to take advantage of what would otherwise be wasted space. It doesn't harm the bakeries. They'd pay the same amount, regardless." Joyce was right. Still, her method of accounting didn't take into consideration the actual division of the costs for moving freight. My father suggested she charge the Lucas company half as much as it would normally cost to ship the same quantity of vending product by itself. Joyce said she could do that, but she didn't see why she needed to. It was all company money anyway. "Joyce, it is in our interest to have the traditional bakeries be as profitable as possible. Anything that can be done to increase their profitability helps us. If apportioning freight costs this way ends up with an extra million in profitability to the bakeries, that amount makes a bigger difference, percentage wise, than it would coming from the Lucas Company." "This is more like five million than one million, Tom. And, it's going to be growing by a lot soon. If we do it the way you suggest, the profit numbers for Lucas Company are going to skew down quite a lot." "Perhaps, but it will reflect the reality of our actual costs more closely. We are already taking fullest advantage of our rail shipping. I can't believe our shipping costs will be so onerous as to put us out of having a profitable situation with the vending operations. If your estimate of five million proves correct, that will be a real shot in the arm to our core bakery profits. In many ways this is good news to me, even though losing that amount of profit from our vending operation will be an unfortunate offset." "Do you need me to go back and make adjustments for past shipments too?" "No, just with everything going out from now on. What I want you to concentrate on is finding some way to lower the shipping costs from Omaha to our hubs." "I know one way to do that already, but I'm hesitant about suggesting it to you. It won't sound like it makes any sense at first, but I've played with the numbers, so I know it would work." "Don't tease us, Joyce. Tell us what your idea is." I was smiling. I loved it when Joyce thought of something that seemed counter intuitive. I had no doubts that whatever she proposed would work. It always seemed to. I'd grown used to her finding solutions where others only saw problems. "Ship all the bakery product through Omaha now, and through Columbia and Texas when we start shipping out of those plants too. We'll ship the vending in the open spaces instead of loading and shipping straight to the hubs. The money we save on shipping this way will be a lot more than the added cost of shipping up to Omaha from here or the other plants close by. It will also qualify us for a deeper volume discount when the product flows through Omaha. Our Omaha rates are what we use to negotiate with all our other hubs. They match whatever rate Omaha gives us." "You're certain this would result in a net savings to us?" My Dad sounded skeptical. "Not a huge net savings, but if we applied everything so it benefited the regular bakeries, it would be a huge difference to their bottom lines. That's what you said you wanted to encourage. The Lucas Company would remain the same, as far as the freight costs they pay now, but this would mean quite a bit of savings for the other bakeries. If we tweak everything as much as we can, and apply the added shipping discount to only the regular bakeries, it might be as much as fifteen million dollars in savings. We'll have about five million in additional freight costs from bringing the bread and rolls up to Omaha, and there will be another half day delay in bringing the product to the hubs. It will look like the bakeries are earning an extra ten million dollars a year." "This will mean we should put our hubs as close to the vending product bakeries as we can, and if we open new bakeries, we should consider this when fixing on a location?" "The hubs, yes, but new bakeries only matter if we're talking about Omaha. Our nationwide freight rates are predicated on our Omaha rates. After this last rate discount, we'll already be at maximum rate drop. This is their lowest volume rate they can offer us. New bakeries should be located close to a vending product bakery, because each of them will be near one of our hubs." "How certain are you of these figures, Joyce? Ten million extra doesn't just fall from the sky like that." "I've been working on this ever since I sent that first batch of vending product to Kenny in Birmingham. I knew it was going to change things around if we had a big sudden increase in the demand for our vending products. Freight costs have always been a big consideration. Rob and Virginia never had to worry about freighting their product anywhere. It was all done with their own trucks, and all locally. It was only after we started shipping all over the country that the freight costs became a big factor to us. The railroad deal made it a lot better for us, but it was still always a big cost component for us." "Does your estimate of ten million include the extra five million after we begin apportioning freight costs fairly to the Lucas Company shipments?" I knew Joyce. She still wasn't convinced she should charge the Lucas Company for using something our other bakeries weren't able to use themselves. I didn't want her trying to keep things the way she had done them before. She was liable to try that, because that was how she did things, her way. "I didn't think you'd still want to do that after we started paying all the old freight costs directly to the other bakeries. Shouldn't the Lucas Company save something from this too?" "Come on, Joyce. You said it yourself, we already own all these companies. Dad should get to post profit wherever he needs it. He's the one that has to go out and convince the bankers to lend us the money so we can continue to grow. It will make it easier if we can point to a more balanced earnings platform. To do that, we need to spice up the earnings of the bread bakeries, if we can." "That means another five million then, but it also means five million in extra expense for the Lucas Company. That's going to tarnish their rate of earnings." "We'll still show year over year earnings growth, Joyce, and that's the figure they pay the most attention to. Our sales are projected to be going up over thirty percent next year. A lot of that will be from the sale of our products to the convenience stores. This is another number they look at closely. If profits are up and sales are up, they won't worry about an increase in freight expense, especially after we tell them it is a change in accounting to reflect our actual costs." "Take five million out of the bottom line at Lucas, and its going to be a noticeable drop." Joyce was so tenacious. I loved that about her, but it troubled me too. "Add fifteen million to the bakeries bottom line and it will be an incredible improvement. You have to remember that we are financing the whole of our operations. Earnings that are robust in our core industry are rare. Three percent gross profit will scream out at them. We're already the most efficient large baker in the country. Add fifteen million to our annual profits, and we'll be the envy of all the other operators. Banks usually fall all over themselves to be involved with an industry leader. That will be us, if you can actually produce that extra fifteen million for the bakery operations." Joyce was smiling. This was one of the things she worked so hard for. She knew her work made a difference, was appreciated. She already had a reputation among all my father's acquaintances. She'd also been contacted by several company's trying to steal her away from us. "Fifteen for sure. If Kenny can get the program up and running for putting vending product on the convenience store shelves in time, it could be a lot more than that next year. I just hope someone else is going to break the news of this new freight expense to Virginia. Whoever does it better make a point of telling her that its only an accounting change, and it won't affect her performance ratings or her annual bonuses." "I'm afraid you're the best person to do that, Joyce. I'll leave it in your hands to explain it to her in a way that doesn't get her too upset. Might I suggest, when you break it to her, that you explain that you've been giving her what amounts to a free ride all these past years? If you present if correctly, she should be grateful that you hid her true expenses for as long as you managed it." My Dad was in earnest when he told Joyce this. He didn't appreciate finding out that his bakeries had been shouldering an unfair percentage of the total shipping expenses. I knew this was something that would rankle him. I decided to step in and move the conversation back to where I thought the real emphasis should be. "You know, Dad, if it wasn't for Joyce and her deal with the railroad, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about saving an extra fifteen million dollars. We sure wouldn't have purchased a three hundred million dollar company like we just did this afternoon. If you had come to her and told her to work on a plan to make the baking companies look more profitable, this is what she would have suggested. It doesn't make sense to have access to a valuable resource like Joyce, and then blame her because you weren't using her as efficiently as you might have." Joyce moved over closer to me so that I could put my arm around her. She made her face look wounded and vulnerable. She was a master at playing these roles with all of us. "I didn't mean to imply any blame. I was suggesting a path that Joyce might pursue in explaining these accounting changes to Virginia. As for all the rest of it, no one appreciates Joyce more than I do. I'm constantly amazed with the things she comes up with. If anything, I'm piqued at myself for not spotting the irregularity in our freight cost allocations." "You'll forgive me for saying this, but, to me, now isn't the time to feel bad about anything. We've just made a great acquisition and found a way to make all the bakeries look like a lot better earners than before. This time is when we should be celebrating. Call Mama and tell her you have some wonderful news for her. Tell her we're all coming over for dinner tonight, and you'll tell her all about it." "Do you think Gerta can cope with such short notice?" "I'm sure she can. She always does. Besides, Hans just made a deli run after dropping us off here. If nothing else we can eat sandwiches, or else order some take out. The important thing is to go home and celebrate this triumph. We don't do enough celebrating. We should do a lot more of it. We've been very fortunate, you know?" "You think I should present it to your mother as a triumph? Isn't it a little soon to be declaring it a triumph?" "It isn't too soon for me. Is it too soon for you, Joyce?" She smiled and shook her head from side to side, indicating it wasn't too soon for her. "We don't think it's too soon. I think Mama might accept your decision to blow off a hundred and fifty million dollars of her money better, if you tell her, right from the beginning, that it's a triumph." "Yes, there is that. Now that you put it that way, it does feel somewhat like a triumph. We'll try presenting it that way at first, as a triumph. If that doesn't fly with her, I'm going to tell her it was all your idea, and that you forced me to buy Alliance." Dad was actually smiling at us when he said it. I remember thinking that he better be careful, because he was almost beginning to loosen up a little. I really believed that he was beginning to enjoy making somewhat quicker decisions than he ever had before. I hoped it was because he felt protected by having us for back up in case he needed to call for assistance. For Dad, actually making a decision to spend three hundred million, in less than a day, was a huge departure. I hoped that Joyce really did all the due diligence she claimed to have done. If not, and something turned out to be very wrong with this new acquisition, my father would never forgive us. Still, it was an exciting time. We had done something together that few families ever had a chance to do. I was proud of my Dad and of Joyce. I was also proud that they had allowed me to be a participant with them, even if it was mostly in a small, advisory, role. Dinner that night was a lot of fun. Gerta was in her element. She conscripted anyone who had the least little bit of culinary skills. We got to the house by seven, and by eight, we were all sitting down to a wonderful meal. It seemed like most of the things being served were appetizers, but there were so many of them that all of us wound up feeling stuffed to the gills. At the table, conversation was lively. Dad, Mama, Joyce and I wanted to talk about the big acquisition. All the rest were in a more playful mood, and I noticed that Brenda was really putting the moves on Cindy. Usually, Brenda played the role of the seduced, not the seducer, but not this time. Some of the things she was doing was making me hot. I'm sure she was using the fifteen or twenty things that she'd found most effective when they'd been used on her. There was a lot of soft touching, to emphasize what she was saying, and, she had moved over to the very edge of her chair so that she was practically sitting in Cindy's lap. It seemed to be working too. Cindy looked like she was being seduced, like she was looking forward to being ravaged too. It was a little distracting to me. I had been trying to bolster Dad's presentation to Mama, nodding in agreement every time he mentioned another benefit we'd get from having Alliance Vending as our newest company. He outlined how the new acquisition was going to enhance his ability to negotiate a newer and much larger credit facility with the bankers we dealt with. He didn't need to do much selling with Mama. She already was quite comfortable with his judgment in these business matters. She loved hearing about new profits though, and loved being entertained with all his attention focused on her. As I'd gotten older, and more experienced with women, I finally realized it was the attention Dad paid her when he was discussing business with her that made Mama get hot. He could have been discussing gopher poisons with her and it would have had much the same effect. She was always starving for his attention, so that, when he gave it, it went directly to her groin and hips. I recognized the signs she was starting to give off. I knew Dad was going to get lucky in bed after we left. I tuned out of Dad's conversation and started paying more attention to what Brenda was doing. If anything, she was sitting even closer to Cindy. It took me a moment to see that Cindy had moved over to the edge of her chair also, closer to Brenda. I saw that Brenda had rested one hand on Cindy's thigh and was using the other hand to play with Cindy's hair. It seemed very natural to me. I looked over at Emily and saw that she was watching Brenda and Cindy just like I was. She didn't look at all upset or jealous by it. Shirley was looking at me, smiling at me. She looked like she was a girl sitting at a dance, hoping a boy would come over and ask her to dance with him. I got up from my place at the table and went over to Shirley and beckoned her to get up. After she got up, looking at me quizzically as she did so, I took her hand and led her over to the library. When we got there, I turned on the stereo to some slow music I thought we could dance to. Once I felt satisfied with the music playing, I took her in my arms and started dancing with her. "How did you know?" "That you wanted me to dance with you?" "No, that I hoped you'd start paying attention to me. I was afraid you were only going to pay attention to Brenda and Cindy, and what they were doing." "I didn't know. When I looked at you, I thought it would be nice to have a few dances with you. We used to dance together a lot more when we were kids. I always loved dancing with you, because your size feels so good when we're dancing together." "I always thought it was because your dick fit right up against my pussy. With all the other girls it ends up pressed against their stomach." "Not with Joyce. My dick hits her in the neck when we dance." "It does not! Kenny, why did you tell me that?" Shirley was laughing though, and that was what I'd wanted to accomplish too. "I thought it was funny. For your information, I've danced with Joyce while she was sucking my dick. It usually hits her chest though, not her neck." I had my dick head nestled against her thigh. I was waiting for her to begin shifting around so that it pressed against her crotch. We were interrupted by Brenda and Cindy. They came in and started dancing together too. A few minutes later, Eddie, Dale and Emily joined us. Eddie started dancing with Emily who was quite a bit taller than her. Five minutes after that, Mama came in with my Dad and Joyce, and she started dancing with my father. It was starting to get pretty crowded. When Joyce and Dale started dancing, Shirley and I stopped long enough to start moving the furniture out of the way. After we had cleared everything over so that the couch and both chairs were against the walls, there was plenty of room for all of us to dance. Hans came in and started making drinks for all of us. It was turning into a real celebration soon after that. I danced with Mama and Gerta, and all of my wives, but I paid the most attention to Shirley. Much more than I did to any of the others. I was consciously aware of trying to "put the moves" on her. Brenda's seduction attempt with Cindy had inspired me. I wasn't the only one inspired either. I noticed Emily dancing with Dale, an unusual thing in itself, but, the way she was moving against Dale it left no doubt in my mind that she was trying to get her turned on. Mama and my Dad were the first couple to excuse themselves. Dad pleaded the necessity for a good night's rest so that he would be fresh to formulate an itinerary for his trip to New York. Mama encouraged us to keep dancing without them, and said she'd see all of us over the weekend. I was dancing with Shirley when this happened, and I told her that we should take a break from dancing and go for a walk. "Kenny, it's too cold to be walking outside. We'll freeze." "Who said anything about going outside? I was thinking about walking up to my old room and see if my tool collection is still there." Shirley's face turned crimson, just like I'd anticipated it would. We hadn't played or kidded around like this in too long. Shirley was right in saying that she sometimes got lost in the shuffle. She seldom complained, or caused anyone any problems. She wasn't very assertive of her rights. I knew I needed to be more pro active in seeing to it that she got her fair share of my attention. I hadn't been doing that. "We could sneak away for a little privacy. Go up to my room. We can lock the door, then pretend we're still high school kids like we used to be. We haven't played with that big oven screwdriver in a long time." "I thought you took it back to maintenance. That's what you told me." "That was another one. I found out they had a few spares they never seem to need. You can never tell when you're going to need a big tool to open up something. I'm not even sure its still up there in my closet. I haven't lived here for years. Should we go check?" Shirley was still blushing, but not as much. All the time we'd been having this conversation, we'd been dancing, and I could feel the little movements she was making with her hips, trying to stimulate firmer contact with my dick. I probably didn't need to bring up that thick headed screwdriver. It did add something to the seduction though. We'd both had some amazing times together in my old bedroom. I thought it would be a good thing if we added another, more recent experience, to our lives. "If we leave, everyone will know what we're doing." "So?" "I think Joyce had plans for you tonight." "Joyce and I will be together all next week. Tonight, I just want to be with you." We were halfway up the stairs before I realized Shirley was crying. She was also dragging me along with her up those stairs, hurrying towards my room. No one had said anything to either of us when we left. Inside the room, the first thing I did was throw the bolt on the door, ensuring our privacy. Next, I took my wife in my arms and started kissing her like I really meant it. This was something else we'd gotten out of the habit of doing together very often. I'd first realized it when I had been on the bed making out with Cindy. I missed the kissing, The more innocent acts of loving that seem to get bypassed when seduction is already assured. From her welcoming response, Shirley had missed it as well. Shirley tried to steer me directly to the bed, but I was curious about whether my collection of screwdrivers would still be where I'd left them. They were. Shirley and I made use of them, and it seemed to stimulate both of us. She was in excellent voice that night too. Some of our children were old enough to understand some of what she was screaming. All of the girls in the nursery watching the children, over in my old bedroom, were certainly old enough to understand. It didn't matter to me, and Shirley was incapable of refraining from making those comments, even if it may have mattered to her. I outdid myself, even if I do say so myself. I wanted to coax as much out of Shirley as I possibly could. I kept at it long past the point where I would have normally called it quits. It was like reliving a good part of my childhood. I was fucking her doggy style at about four in the morning when I told her that I'd found someone in Birmingham that really wanted to fuck her with me. I told her I was seriously considering inviting him over the next time she came down. Twenty seconds later, her orgasm was so strong that she lost all consciousness. I got up and took the tools into the bathroom for a good cleaning. After, I showered and then went over and collapsed on the side of the bed away from Shirley. I fell asleep, wondering if Shirley's outbursts had any effect on either my parents or Hans and Gerta. It had affected me. Right after I went to sleep, my right hand started shaking violently. It woke me up. I had to turn over, onto my side, and trap the hand between my knees to still the shaking. It scared me. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I didn't know if it was a reaction from my muscles, after too much stimulation, or some kind of palsy or even epilepsy. When I woke up, later that morning, whatever it had been was gone. It seemed better to just try to forget it, to tell myself it was only a muscle spasm. Sometime during the night all the other wives and the children had decamped. Shirley and I sat down to a wonderful breakfast with Hans and Gerta. Gerta apologized for having overslept, but Hans had fun making comments about all the noise of the night before, and saying it made it very hard for him to get his rest. "If you want me to, I'll have a talk with Mama and ask her to hold the noise down in the future, if it disturbs you so much?" "Hah! You think I don't remember who makes those noises? No one else makes so much noise." "I think you're mistaken Hans. All my wives scream like that. In fact, I've heard Mama scream too. Only Gerta never seems to scream. I always figured you used a gag on her. I hope that's what you're doing. I'd hate to think you don't give Gerta any reason to be screaming." "Maybe he did in the old days, before the back problems. Now, if one of us screams, it's probably my Hansi, and it usually means he twisted his back the wrong way." All of us shared a good laugh at Hans's expense. He laughed too, knowing we were only teasing him. I had reached my arm across to him to try to convey that what I said had been spoken in fun. When I did that, my muscle spasm returned like it had earlier that morning, this time in full force. All four of us sat there at the little table in the kitchen, watching, horrified, as my hand and arm twitched uncontrollably for several minutes. As quickly as it had come, it left again, leaving me with two perfectly functioning arms and hands. Again, it had been my right hand that had been shaking. "Mein Gott, Kenny. What was that?" Gerta recoiled in alarm when she said that. I was shaken myself, but not as much as she seemed to be. "I don't know. It happened to me last night like that too. For no reason, it just started shaking. I don't know what it is. I'll go see a doctor next week and get some tests done. I'd appreciate it if none of you said anything until after I've had a chance to get the tests done. I don't want to alarm anyone until we know for sure what it is." "You can fly an airplane, Kenny? Suppose your hand starts shaking like that when you're landing the plane?" Hans too was worried. He was always thinking practical thoughts though. "I should be fine. I only need one hand on the yoke to land a plane if it comes down to that. It doesn't seem to affect anything other than my right hand." "Maybe so far. You should get it checked out before you go up in that plane again. We don't need any accidents to happen." Hans spoke evenly to me. I understood he was offering me a compromise. His silence in return for my promise not to try to pilot a plane until after we found out what was causing this problem. "Okay, that makes sense to me too. I won't pilot the plane when we go back to Birmingham. There are preventative maintenance things that can be done to the plane if they bring it back here to do them. I'll get myself checked out in Birmingham this coming week. I don't want you worrying my parents with this, okay?" "Okay. You call here when you find out. Tell Gerta. We won't say nothing until we hear back from you." Hans and Gerta both nodded their acceptance of that deal. I looked over at Shirley. She hadn't said a word since it happened. She noticed me looking at her. "You should tell Joyce at least. I won't say anything to anyone, but you really need to tell her." "I'll tell her before we leave to go back to Birmingham. Don't tell any of the others though. I don't want people to be all upset and then have it turn out to be nothing more than a muscle spasm." Shirley agreed and we got up to drive back to our house. Gerta came around and gave me a hug. She was sniffling, like she was trying to hold back the tears. When Hans came up and hugged me too, I started getting worried. It hadn't looked that serious to me. It didn't hurt or anything. I was sure it was just some kind of muscle spasm. One good night's rest and I'd be as good as new. I wasn't even twenty five yet, how serious could it possibly be? I had always been very healthy. I felt as strong as I'd ever felt. Even so, it was disquieting to me. ------- Chapter 52 From the report I received from Joyce, after Shirley and I returned home, Brenda and Cindy had spent the night together. Joyce hadn't learned yet whether their interaction had been a success. That was always a worry with Brenda, because she would sometimes just be the passive recipient of whatever attention her partner wanted to lavish on her. Luckily, there were other occasions when Brenda really got into it. For Cindy's sake, I hoped it had been a case of the latter rather than the former the night before. Joyce also confirmed that Emily, Eddie and Dale had all spent the night together. She laughingly admitted to having spent part of the night in Dale and Eddie's room too. She claimed that the night was definitely a success for Dale, in terms of how her body reacted to Emily's bold assaults. "I don't think that will be the last time that Dale and Emily get together. She enjoyed the way Emily was able to physically control her. I think Emily enjoyed being the biggest person in the room. She has this mean streak too, you know? She likes to make you do things to her. You know how she gets wild if you hold her down and force her? She gets just as wild if she does it to someone else. Last night, she tried that on all of us." "She only tried it?" Joyce smiled and blushed when I asked her that. "When it was one of us against her, she was able to do whatever she wanted to. After, we all ganged up on her, and then she got the same treatment she'd been dishing out to us. She liked it both ways. When I left, she was sleeping with Dale wrapped up in her arms. They both looked so innocent. If you had walked into the bedroom after they were asleep, you wouldn't be able to believe the things they'd been doing to each other earlier. I don't have to ask you how it went with Shirley. Before we left last night, all of us could hear her screaming. We had to try to get the little ones and the nursery girls out of there in a hurry. I think Shirley's screaming got everyone even more excited. It's hard not to think about sex when she starts saying those things like she does." "We had a great time. I didn't get much rest until around four thirty. I think I overdid it a little. After we got finished for the night, one of my hands started shaking, for no reason. I think it was a muscle spasm, like a cramp or something. It looked funny. It did it again, while we were eating breakfast this morning. I don't think it's anything to worry about, but I'm going to have someone check it out next week, in Birmingham." Joyce looked a little concerned. I'd tried to present it to her as casually as I could, trying to minimize her worry. There really wasn't any reason to be concerned until I found out more about what the problem might be. At that point, I thought there was a pretty good chance that I could get a few more hours of normal rest and there wouldn't be any reoccurrence of the hand shaking. I took a little nap before lunch. Joyce laid down with me, but she left sometime after I fell asleep. When I woke up, I felt better, more like my normal self. At lunch, Joyce reminded me that I had a two thirty appointment with Frank Clooney, over at his office. I wanted to make some changes in the trusts that Joyce and I had set up for all the children. There were individual trusts for all of them, but we had also created a master trust, where each of the children had an undivided one twelfth interest. Frank had told us that it made sense for us to attempt to reduce the size of our estate even while we were young and healthy. This trust was one where we parked long term assets that generated income which we didn't need. Frank had mentioned a provision in Uncle Bunny's bequest to me that allowed me to designate a different beneficiary should I elect to forego some or all of my inheritance. When he had first brought it up with me he told me that it was a provision included to give me the greatest possible flexibility when it came to structuring my assets. He mentioned many possible tax advantages of transferring portions of my inheritance to others. Uncle Bunny's estate had already paid the estate taxes. This amount wouldn't change regardless of who the ultimate beneficiary's ended up being. Uncle Bunny had given me the ability to change his designated bequests. Frank hadn't mentioned this provision to me until after I had reached the age of twenty one. He didn't say it, but I believed that Uncle Bunny had left him a separate set of instructions that he used as a guide in how and when he presented certain information to me. The meeting with Frank lasted for over two hours. I told Frank to transfer all of my stock in the company over to the children's trust, changing the provisions for the trusteeship so that my father was the trustee should anything happen to me, and that Joyce would take over as the second successor trustee, should anything happen to make it impossible for my Dad to continue serving. My father already had voting control over my stock holdings, including the ability to pledge all company assets to secure financing. What I was doing was effectively removing the stock from my own estate by putting it into my children's estate. Frank had recommended that we set up beneficiary distribution so that a child's interest in the trust ended at his or her death, until and unless I had already predeceased that child. In this way, we wouldn't have to deal with one of the children having an estate problem in the event of an early death. The trust was for my living children, after my death. It was much simpler for taxes that way. I had to make this election before my twenty fifth birthday, according to the provisions in Uncle Bunny's bequest. After that time, all interest in his remaining estate devolved itself directly to me. With the acquisition of Alliance Vending, using most of the money I'd lent my father for expansion, the stock I had just approved divesting, represented about ninety percent of my total net worth. I knew I'd get the money back, someday, for the loan I'd made to the company, but I wasn't exactly strapped for cash regardless. Still, I felt a lot lighter in the wallet after leaving Frank's office. Back home, I had a nice late afternoon with all the wives. Joyce and I did get into a minor argument about Ellen, about my decision to curtail any sexual relationship with her. Joyce maintained that it served no purpose to keep her outside what she referred to as our inner circle. "Joyce, I've made up my mind about this. It doesn't have anything to do with Ellen, not really. It has to do with casual relationships. I'm not going to be sleeping with everyone that works with us. We aren't kids any longer either. Our children are growing up pretty fast, and I'd like to be able to explain our lifestyle to them someday in a way that makes some kind of sense. I want to love every woman I make love too. I don't love Ellen, and I'm not going to love her. You can sleep with her, if that's what you want to do, but I'm not going to." "It isn't the same, Kenny. I could agree with you about this if we hadn't already slept with her, but we have. How do we explain that we're changing the rules now?" "We don't need to. Just don't invite her to come spend nights with us. If she brings it up herself, tell her that the family has gotten too big to allow us to indulge in recreational encounters. She'll understand. She might not even ask. She hasn't been here in months. Has she complained?" "I've been talking to her about going down to Birmingham. She was in that other relationship, so we didn't see as much of her then as we usually would have. The only reason she'd agree to go to Birmingham is you. If she doesn't go down there to work for you, she'll quit." "She can come down and try that thing you were recommending. I don't see why that means we have to resume something we've already pretty much quit doing. The bottom line is that I'm through with sleeping with her. If that has to mean we lose her, then we'll just have to accept that." "Tell me why you're the one who always gets to decide these things, Kenny. Sometimes I have to do things I wish I didn't, but I do them because it helps with what we're trying to get accomplished. I need Ellen. If we lose her for good, we're losing someone who is very valuable to me. I don't see any harm in us inviting her to spend time with us like we did before. Not all the time, just once in a while, so she feels like a closer part of us." "If she really was a closer part of us, that might make sense. She isn't though, and she won't ever be. I'm trying to explain to you that I'm already spreading myself too thin. It makes no sense to do what you're asking, not when I'm unable to spend as much time as I'd like to with all of the women who are a close part of our life." "I'm saying that Ellen should be a closer part of our lives." "I hear you, Joyce. I just disagree. I already said you could sleep with her if you want to. Any of the wives who want to can. I'm not going to though, and you need to just accept that fact and move on." Joyce didn't reply. I knew I hadn't convinced her. I knew she wasn't done trying to get her way either. At least the lines had been drawn, and we each knew where we stood on the issue. I felt like I had accomplished the main chores I'd scheduled for myself for over the weekend. I spent all the rest of the late afternoon and evening playing with my children. We roughhoused together in the play room, and I was a little surprised with how well they all worked together to subdue me when we were wrestling. They were becoming an organized team. Little Bertie and Bunny were the team planners, and Derek, as the biggest, was the enforcer of their edicts. He was the first one they threw into the fray, using his size as a diversion so they had the time to position all the others. No matter how I tried to counter their attacks, they always found a way to immobilize and defeat me. Even the smallest were assigned roles. I was impressed. I noticed that both sets of twins were more like their mother than me. They were more organized and purposeful, goal oriented and persistent. The older set were also a little ruthless, willing to absorb some punishment to achieve their objective. None of my children acted much like I remembered acting, and I was so thankful that this was true. All of them were far more social than either Joyce or I had been or were. You learn a lot about children's personalities by playing with them. Even the youngest were old enough to seem like little people to me. I was sitting in the nursery reading to the three oldest kids when my hand started shaking again. Derek thought it was funny, and started laughing. The twins didn't laugh. They watched my face, hoping that my reaction would tell them whether it was something to be worried about or not. I tried to smile at them and make a joke of it. "See, you beat all the rest of me, but my right arm still wants to wrestle you some more." I reached out with it tickling them with the uncontrolled movement. When I did that, Bertie and Bunny broke out laughing like Derek had. After the hand quit shaking, all of them were after me to make it do it again. I tried shaking it like the tremors before, but it just wasn't the same. I kissed them all and told them to sleep good and I'd see them in the morning. When I got to my bedroom, Cindy and Joyce were waiting for me. For the first time I could remember, I begged off from fooling around, explaining that I was worn down from some bug or something, and I needed a good night's sleep. "Did it happen again, Kenny?" Joyce had real concern in her voice when she asked me that. Cindy looked puzzled, not understanding what Joyce was asking. I nodded to her that it had. "Like the other times? Did anyone else see it?" "Not as long this time, maybe thirty or forty seconds. Derek and the big twins were there. I was putting them to bed, reading them a story. I made it into a tickling game with them. I don't think they were too worried about it. They wanted me to make it do it again." "What are you talking about, Kenny? Do what? What happened?" I turned to Cindy to answer her questions, but my body decided to answer her all by itself. That damn hand started shaking and flopping around all on its own. The three of us sat up in the bed watching the eerie display. I was just as fascinated and transfixed by the disjointed movement as they were. Joyce started crying, and that made Cindy start up as well. I wanted to cry myself. By now I was reasonably certain it wasn't something with a simple explanation, and it didn't look like it was going to go away on its own. I could also see I didn't have any hope of keeping this quiet now. In less than twenty four hours, eight people had seen me having one or more of these episodes. They were too frequent and too unpredictable as to when they'd occur, for me to be able to conceal them. "You're not leaving here until you get that checked out, Kenny. I mean it too." "Joyce, don't be silly. I need to be in Birmingham. There are good doctors and good hospitals down there too. I've already decided not to try to fly the plane myself, so we'll have one of the other pilots fly us down. All it is so far is a hand shaking. Don't make it into any big thing before we need to." "Is it always the same hand?" Cindy asked me this. "So far it has been." We looked at my shaking hand. This was the longest it had continued shaking. It had been a couple of minutes already. I reached out and put the hand between Joyce's legs, trapping it there. "Kenny! What are you doing?" "We may as well get some benefit from all that movement." Joyce didn't think that was funny, and she opened her legs up again, moving away from my hand. She never took her eyes off the shaking hand though. "Make it stop, Kenny. Sit on it or something." I realized that Joyce was a lot more upset by this than Cindy seemed to be. I took my hand and reached for Cindy's thighs. She opened them willingly, then squeezed them shut herself, trapping my hand up past the middle of her thigh. It felt very warm between her legs. Just as she did so, the tremors stopped. I left my arm trapped there anyway. It felt good where it was. "It wasn't that big a deal Joyce. I was just trying to have a little fun. Make a scary thing a little less scary. You don't have to be so afraid of it. All it really amounts to is some unplanned shaking. It doesn't hurt or anything. "It must have scared Bertie and Bunny. It scared me to death." "I told you they were laughing. We made a game of it, and that's how they ended up treating it. They kept after me to do it again." After all the excitement, there was no way I was going to be able to just go to sleep. I was too keyed up from what had happened. I already had my hand between Cindy's legs, so I started kissing her and fooling around. At first, Joyce stayed aloof from what was going on. That didn't last very long though, and in a few minutes, she and I were engaged in our usual double teaming tactics. It ended up being a very satisfying sexual encounter, and not just for Joyce and me. Cindy really got lit up from all of the coordinated stimulation. Joyce got increasingly rougher and more demanding as she observed Cindy's reactions to my increased physical demands. Cindy liked being bitten, something that I didn't know about before. Eddie liked giving her Hickey's, but Joyce bit her all over the place. Hard nips too, not just pretend bites. Some left marks, and I was surprised by the depth of Cindy's response to this treatment. She seemed to be having really intense orgasms, one right after another. It was Cindy who finally pushed us both away from her, begging us to let her rest. I hadn't managed to cum yet. I pounced over on top of Joyce and pushed myself as fully as I could into her. It had always amazed me how easily Joyce was able to switch roles. She managed to mold herself into whatever I needed at the moment. She went from being the hunter to the prey in an instant. At some point our lovemaking stopped being something we were doing out of pure physical need. This was when I realized what her true fears about my shaking hand earlier meant to her. She wrapped her hands around my neck, holding onto me for dear life. I felt her fear, her desperation, as she clung tightly to me. Even when I had achieved my release, she refused to allow me to roll off of her, holding me tightly to her body. This wasn't role playing or an act. The one certainty I'd always had with Joyce was her love for me. It didn't mean that she would defer to my wishes in all things, or that she wasn't going to be ruthless in attempting to get her own way in areas we disagreed about. What it did mean was that she valued me, even above herself. She always had been like that. She saw her life as mostly being about taking care of and assisting me. I saw it differently, so did everyone else we knew, but Joyce was consistent in her response to anything that seemed like it might be harmful to me. She fought against those things with every ounce of energy she could command. I had no doubt that the Birmingham medical community would soon be bombarded with demands to first find out what was wrong with me, and then to fix it. I had presented Joyce with her new primary project. All else would go on hold for her, until such time as my situation was understood, then resolved, to her complete satisfaction. In a way, as I finally was released so that Joyce and I could spoon together, I knew I'd done the right thing by bringing Joyce in on the shaking hand problem. Even if it hadn't been deliberate on my part, I'd activated the one force that would absolutely not rest until the cause and the remedy of my condition was found. I could forget it now and concentrate on what I needed to accomplish. I'd delegated the shaking hand problem to Joyce. She'd make sure no stone was left unturned to get to the bottom of it. ------- My mother and father came over to have an early lunch with us Sunday morning. Joyce had already called and told Mama about my shaking spells. That was how she started referring to them, as spells. Of course, my parents were concerned. By now, all my wives had been informed about my hand, and all of them had been caught staring at it, as if they expected it to perform for them at any second. It made me pretty self conscious. I found myself hoping it would do it again, just so everyone would have their own chance to see it for themselves. I didn't enjoy being the circus freak for them. I'd already called the airport and lined up a pilot for us for the return trip to Birmingham. The flight back was uneventful for us. I sat back with Joyce and Cindy, and we planned our week. Joyce was in charge of setting up an appointment for me with a doctor. Cindy had suggested that Joyce speak to her mother about which doctors to choose. I told Cindy to try to finish up with her part of the remodeling of the administrative floor during the coming week. I had finally come up with her next project. All I would tell her was that it would involve some travel and that she'd be gone, by herself, out of state for at least a week or two. Since Joyce had already made the decision to convert the Consolidated plant in Texas over to a vending product production plant, I thought it would be a good idea if someone went there and looked over the current facility. We already had the layout plans for the plant, but didn't know too much about the roads, rail access, distance from other resources, things like that. I wanted Cindy to do a survey for me to get me all the answers to the questions I'd already come up with, and any others she could think of that might need to be answered. I made a mental note to talk with Joyce when she and I were alone again. I thought it would be a good idea to involve Shirley more in what we were doing. I wanted to propose that Shirley and Cindy travel together to Texas to handle the assignment. I thought it would be better if the girls went as a team, and I really wanted Shirley to start thinking of herself as a valued part of this aspect of our family. Emily and Brenda were heavily involved in the group homes. Joyce, Eddie and Dale were involved in the day to day operations of the company. Shirley helped with taking care of the children, did a little to help with the group home kids, but wasn't truly engaged in anything that had her complete attention. I thought she needed something that would bring her some satisfaction, and, maybe, challenge her. She was very bright, but not overly enthusiastic about anything so far. We needed to find her something to get all excited and passionate about. Sunday afternoon and evening was mostly me relaxing at home. I hadn't had any reoccurrence of the shakes since the previous night. I had some reading I needed to get through, so I sat in the living room reading, while Joyce and Cindy stayed busy with making something to eat, and whatever else they were doing. Dinner was pretty plain fare, some kind of pork and cabbage dish over pasta. Cindy said it was a joint effort when I inquired about who had supplied the recipe. Joyce laughed and made a comment to Cindy, too low for me to hear what it was she said. At ten, we retired for the evening. Cindy and Joyce spent some time fooling around, but I didn't involve myself in their mischief. They didn't make any effort to involve me either. I slept well. I got up at six and went into the bathroom to get ready for work. I had another short shaking episode in the shower. Nothing really, about thirty seconds of the shaking hand, and then nothing else. I didn't mention it to Joyce or Cindy at breakfast later. Cindy and I drove to the plant at seven thirty. Joyce stayed at the house to take care of some work she needed to do, and to have a phone available for her to call out on. I gathered, from breakfast conversation, that finding me a doctor, and an immediate appointment for a check up, was her primary interest and intent for the day. Everything else was what she planned on doing to fill out the remainder of her day. Joyce called me at eleven thirty to tell me that I needed to meet her at three P. M., over at University Hospital, between 6th and 7th Avenues. Cindy was there with me, and she told me she knew where we needed to go. She gave me the name of the doctor we'd be seeing, telling me that Laura had called him herself to get me in for an immediate consultation. I wasn't happy with how that sounded, and not with Joyce lighting a fire under Laura either. The last thing I needed were all of our employees running around thinking the boss was really sick. I told Joyce that Cindy and I would meet her there at three. When I got off the phone, I went right back to working on the proposal I was preparing to set out the terms I wanted to have in place for the reopening of the Nashville Consolidated plant. I was sending back three of the people that my father had sent me from there, to interview and hire the very best of the previous plant employees. All the workers we'd gotten from there were doing very good work for us, filling in until we got things resolved with the Macklinson family. I'd had several informative talks with the two senior production people from Nashville, and I had been struck by their fear that we were going to end up losing the best plant people in Nashville. Several times they'd mentioned that the good ones could get new jobs anywhere, and it was only the laggards that would still be around if the plant stayed closed for too long. I didn't know how much of this was simply an attempt by them to get me to hurry things along at the Nashville plant, and how much of it was their genuine fear that the best people wouldn't be available when the time came to reopen the plant. I had decided that it made more sense to tie up these best workers if we could do it without it costing us too much. We had done quite a bit to improve and upgrade things at the Lucas Company plant while keeping the whole thing operating on two shifts, while we made those improvements. My father and Joyce both agreed with my plan for protecting and preserving the best of the old Consolidated labor force. They agreed, but both of them had warned me that I couldn't afford to lose a lot of money doing it. I needed more bread and roll production in the Southern area anyway. My father was helping us out with some of his plants, but he wouldn't mind not having to do so. He was always in favor of more production growth anyway, believing that he could find new markets if he had the product to put in them. The proposal I was writing up would get the Nashville plant back up and operating, using the best of the equipment already in place there, plus whatever we could bring in from the Texas facility as well. I knew that a lot of brand new baking and packaging equipment was being sent down to Texas as soon as my Dad gave Joyce the final approval for her converting it over to vending product production. The timing for that would be delayed with the acquisition of the Alliance Company, but I knew most of the equipment had already been ordered and paid for. The same company that had built our new Omaha plant was going to do the renovation on the Texas facility. Joyce had mentioned, on the flight down to Birmingham, how critical it was that we get Kyle's program operating both here and elsewhere, in order to create enough new demand to justify all of my father's expenditures, money he'd already committed before we purchased Alliance so unexpectedly. Joyce was becoming more like me when it came to taking action first, and then trying to make that action be justified by producing whatever was needed to make it work best. My Dad referred to that as flying by the seat of your pants. It irked him that either Joyce or I believed it had any place in a business climate. Joyce and I had scored some points with him using our methods, and he'd taught us a few lessons too, when our methods had ended up causing us a host of problems. Our greatest results came from tempering our optimism with his conservative approach. With the three of us involved in making decisions, things had usually gone pretty well. As the time got closer to when we needed to leave for my medical appointment, I found myself becoming more unsettled. I knew I really wasn't prepared for anything major to be involved in causing my spells. I had too much to do, and too many people and programs depended, at least in part, on my continuing good health and productive activity. I wasn't emotionally prepared to receive any bad news or prognosis. Dr. Gardinier was a specialist in both Internal Medicine and Neurology. He was somewhere in his sixties, about five ten and a little overweight. He had a large head with a deep fringe of snow white hair, shaped in a horseshoe pattern around the sides of his head. He wore little glasses, like Ben Franklin's in some drawings I'd seen. He was serious and efficient, while remaining friendly and good humored. We got off on a real good foot when he insisted on seeing me by myself. Joyce didn't like it at all, and Cindy seemed somewhat unhappy as well, but Dr. Gardinier insisted that he wasn't going to conduct an interview with a patient while a large entourage were all standing around distracting him. Joyce didn't trust me to be open and forthcoming with the doctor. Cindy was probably hoping to gather information about my condition for her family. We spent fifteen minutes getting my vital signs taken, and this included being measured for height and being weighed. Next, he took an oral history of my health up until the present. I told him I'd had my tonsils removed when I was either eight or nine and had measles and chicken pox at the orphanage when I was in second and fourth grades. I told him I wasn't aware of any allergies and considered myself in excellent health, other than the spells that had begun over the past two days or so. He made me describe the shaking, asking me many questions about what I was doing when they occurred, how long they lasted, and whether or not there were other feelings I had left out that might somehow be associated with the shaking. I answered everything he asked, being as honest as I knew how to be. I even told him of the short spell I encountered in the shower that morning. As I spoke I watched him making notations on a pad in front of him. "This is a puzzle, Mr. Parsons. Most medical problems are. The more relevant information you can give me, the easier it will be for us to solve the puzzle. Tell me about any past drug use you've engaged in." "I really prefer Kenny to Mr. Parsons, Doctor. I have tried beer, and some wine. More wine than beer though, usually only with my meals. I've never tried pot, pills, cocaine or stronger illegal drugs like that. About all I've ever had was aspirin and some cold and cough syrup." "Very well then. Have you ever been subject to convulsions or any sort of seizure before?" I told him about that time I'd kind of flipped out when Shirley and I had our troubles, back when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. I described everything I could remember, from what Mama, Gerta, and Shirley had told me. While I was telling him this I remembered that the doctor Mama had called to the house had given me some kind of drugs to make me calmer and ease my depression. I told the doctor about this too. I also told him about the time when I'd gone off by myself, for many months, after Joyce and I had our problems, and about how I'd been unable to cope with too much emotional disappointment. I described myself as being emotionally brittle, giving other examples from my life and my responses to those experiences. He listened to me, he was a great listener. He also asked a lot of questions and gave me a bone conduction test on the sides and back of my skull, after I told him I'd recently noticed that my hearing on my left side wasn't as acute as it once had been. In all, we were in his office, alone together, for more than an hour. All this time he was jotting down notes when I said things he wanted to remember. "Kenny, I'd like to set up some tests for you to take. I'd like to have you here for an entire day, so we can get most of them accomplished in a single visit. Most of the tests are to rule out different conditions, so we don't spend a lot of our valuable time running down dead end leads. Everything we rule out will only bring us that much closer to finding out what the real problem is." "I can come in on whatever day you can set this up for, Doctor. From what I've already told you, have you heard enough to make a good guess about what it could be?" "I don't make guesses. I've already narrowed down many of the possibilities, but there are still many that haven't been ruled out from your data. I'd hazard that we'll probably find the problem resides somewhere in your central nervous system, possibly a tumor of some sort. If it does turn out to be a tumor, then we'll need to develop a lot more information about it. For right now, I'm comfortable with taking a somewhat relaxed pace in our puzzle solving attempts. I've seen no indication that leads me to the belief that we need to proceed with undue haste. "Rest assured that we will discover what the problem is. When we do that, we'll decide, you and I, what to do about it. In the meantime, get yourself plenty of rest, and refrain from overdoing the sexual gymnastics until after your tests have been completed. I don't mean no sexual activity, but limit it to something less than the record setting pace you've been describing to me. I think I can set all these tests up for either Wednesday or Thursday of this week. My secretary will phone you after everything has been arranged, and all the tests scheduled. You'll need to arrive here in a fasting state. After some lab work, and two or three other tests, someone will bring you something to eat." I left his office feeling somewhat better about things. I'd described everything to him in great detail, and he didn't seem that concerned. It helped that he didn't appear either anxious or in a hurry to do anything of a radical nature. He acted as though it were a routine situation, not a medical emergency. "What did he say it was, Kenny?" Joyce had run over to me as soon as I left the doctor's consulting room. "He thinks it could be too much sex. He thinks I should drop down to about once a week, on either Saturday or Sunday, in the mornings." I tried to keep a straight face, but I couldn't bring it off. Joyce slapped my arm. It was a hard slap too. "He's going to schedule some tests. He said it wasn't anything to get too concerned about, not until after we find out more about what it could be. He seems very confident that he can find out too." I rubbed the sting out of my arm while I told her what the doctor had said. "When are you getting these tests, today?" "No. He said it will take a little time to get everything set up. I'm going to be here all day. He thinks Wednesday or Thursday. His secretary will call me." We walked out of the hospital building. I had discovered it was a teaching hospital, and one that was well thought of in the area. I was satisfied that things were being set in motion, so that this problem, whatever it turned out to be, would get handled. It was too late to head back to the office, so we drove straight home. I rode with Cindy, letting her drive the car. She didn't say much on the drive back to the house. She hadn't said anything at all while we were in the hospital either. As soon as we got home, Cindy told me she needed to go over to her Dad's house to pick up some things she would be needing. She said she'd be back before it was time for bed. The cynical part of me thought she was hurrying back to her family to give them a report on my health situation. While I didn't like people speculating about my health, I did realize that the Macklinson family had a lot riding on what happened with my health and well-being. When Joyce realized Cindy had taken off, she asked me to take her out for dinner, just the two of us. That's what we did, going to a nice restaurant, one where Cindy had taken Dale, Eddie, and me the previous week. We both had steaks, and ordered a bottle of wine that our waiter had emphatically recommended to us. We relaxed and talked. I realized that Joyce almost never got a chance to be off somewhere alone with me, away from the children, the job, and all the other wives. It was obvious that she enjoyed being there like that, alone with only me. When she asked me to order up a second bottle of wine, I told her I couldn't do it for two reasons. "What two reasons?" This was one of the few times when Joyce sounded like she'd had too much to drink, where it was affecting her speech. "Dr. Gardinier doesn't want me drinking too much before all the tests." "Okay. I wasn't thinking about that. We don't need more wine then. Order us something that's fruity, some kind of juice. See if they have pineapple and mango juice together. What was the second reason?" "I can't afford another bottle of wine, not at these prices. They charged us twenty five bucks for that one bottle." "We can't afford wine at twenty five bucks a bottle?" "No, we really can, I was just making a little joke." "Did loaning your father all that money for the expansion take up all the cash you have? I've got some money from all my paychecks I've been saving. I think its over a quarter million dollars now. We can use that money for awhile." "It was just a joke, Joyce. I've got millions sitting in my trading account. You've got millions in that account we set up to trade for you and the kids. I did do something on Saturday, with Frank Clooney, something I've been thinking about for the past year or so. I put my company stock in the kid's main trust account." "You did this on your own, without discussing it with me first?" Joyce had sat up straighter when the import of what I had just said hit her. Who controls that trust?" "I control the trust, and Dad controls the stock, just like he always has. If something happens to me, Dad is the new trustee. All this does is take the stock out of one trust, and put it in another. I was running out of time to do that. You've never said anything about these trust assets before, Joyce." "What do you mean running out of time. Did the doctor tell you something you haven't told me?" "No. My trust expires on my twenty fifth birthday. Legally, I have one birthday, but I prefer to celebrate the other one, in August. You know that. Frank said I should make a decision and act on it before the other birthday comes up, because that would be the one that controls these legal age things." "So who owns all your stock now?" "The trust does, like before. This trust has all the kids as beneficiaries, not just me like before. Frank says we'll save a ton in taxes, by bypassing our own estates." "We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, Kenny. Don't you think you should have asked me about that kind of decision before you made it?" I hadn't thought about it. I didn't think it would matter to her. We already had enough money to last us for all the rest of our lives. The stock wasn't money we'd ever be spending. The company stock was only an accounting and estate consideration for me, not an actual, negotiable, monetary instrument. This was very true for me. The company was a trust that we held, at least that was what it was as far as I was concerned. I certainly had no plans for ever selling the company again. We'd done that once and it turned out fine for us, but money was only money, and the company was a big part of our family, a part of who we were. "It never occurred to me, Joyce, but I can change things back if you want me to. Frank said I have to sign some things and Dad has to sign off on this as well. I think you have to sign too, agreeing to act as Dad's successor trustee, if something ever happens to him. Do you want me to call Frank and tell him to forget it?" "I didn't say that. What I said was it was an important enough decision so you should have consulted with me about it before deciding about what you were going to do." "I'm sorry. I'm asking you now though. Is it okay with you if I transfer our stock ownership into the main trust for the kids?" "Is this for all the kids, including Derek?" "Of course. What did you think?" "I was merely asking. What about the group homes? Did you make any arrangements for them, just in case?" "There's almost a hundred million dollars in various charitable trusts, both ours and Mama's. Frank says that should keep things in very good shape for any foreseeable future time period. I've been accumulating other income, outside the charitable trusts, so we wouldn't have to distribute it as earnings every year. Mama and I have been putting an additional ten million dollars into the charitable trusts each year. Frank says we have enough now. You're the trustee of most of that money, don't you read any of the statements they send you?" "When am I supposed to have time to read them, Kenny? Don't you know how busy I've been? Emily and Brenda tell me if they need any money for anything, and then I give Frank a call. Isn't he reading the statements? I know Mama reads her trust statements every month." Frank generates the statements. He keeps track of all that for us. Someone is supposed to be checking to make sure he isn't doing anything he isn't supposed to with the money." "Frank wouldn't do that." "No, probably not, but we have a responsibility, to the children, to check to make sure he doesn't. It isn't something we can just take for granted. Getting back to the company stock, what do you want me to do with it?" "What you did sounds fine. I just thought you should have said something to me. I'm going to have my statements mailed over to Mama. She likes going through those things. It will give her something more to do. She spends too much time sitting in the kitchen talking to Gerta." I thought about what Joyce was telling me. She was right I thought. Ever since she sold off the golf learning center, she hadn't been nearly as active as she had been used to being. When we got back home, it was nine thirty, so I called Mama. I didn't know if Dad had taken her with him or not. I hadn't asked him about his plans. Gerta answered the phone. She said Mama was still at home, but said she'd already gone up to bed. I asked Gerta why Mama hadn't gone to New York with my Dad. "He never asked her. That's why she's in bed already. You know how she loves visiting New York." "Ring her room, Gerta. I need to talk to her." "Did you see a doctor, Kenny? Is it bad news you need to tell her?" "I saw a doctor, but I don't have any news yet. They're going to be making some tests. Buzz Mama's room and tell her I need to speak with her." a few seconds later, Mama came on the line. "Kenny, I'm here. What did the doctor say?" "He said I should get some rest, and then take a few tests. How long is Dad going to be in New York?" "All week. I've got his room number if you want to call him." "No. Listen, can you fly down here tomorrow, Mama? Joyce has a lot to do, and Cindy and I are both pretty busy with changes at the plant. I need someone who can help me get everything scheduled so we all know where we're supposed to be. Go over to our house, before you get Hans to drive you over to the airport, and get Shirley to show you where Joyce keeps all the charitable trust statements. Bring the four or five most recent statements for each trust. I just found out Joyce wasn't even looking at them." "Where would I sleep? What kind of scheduling are you talking about?" "You'll sleep in the guest room. It isn't fancy, but the bed is all right. If it would be easier, bring Hans and Gerta. I'll put Gerta to work cooking, and Hans can help you get around to everywhere you need to be." "Where will they sleep?" "We'll rent a car for Hans, a big one, and they have nice hotels within five miles of this house. We're only talking a week here. You have them packed and ready in the morning. I'll call the airport and make sure the plane is ready to leave at eight. I'll get Cindy to make a reservation for a nice room for Hans and Gerta, close by. You call Dad and let him know where you'll be." "I have other things here I need to take care of, Kenny. I can't just leave town on a moment's notice." "Mama, this is Kenny, not Dad. I don't accept those kinds of excuses. It will be a lot more fun down here with me this week. I promise to keep you busy. You haven't even seen the company plant down here. Laura's here too. I'm sure she'll want to show you Birmingham and Atlanta while you're here." "I've been to both cities before. Atlanta, many times before. I just don't know if its the right thing to do, traipsing off to Alabama like this." "Mama, you know Joyce can't cook. Cindy's no better at it. I've got these hospital tests coming up and I'd like to get myself a few decent meals this week. You'll be back home Friday afternoon. Its nice outside right now, maybe fifty degrees out. It was over sixty here when we first flew in. Bring your golf clubs if you have time to stop by the country club. Bring mine too, and we'll go out and hit some balls at the range at least. I saw people playing here on Friday, when we went to the airport. If we decide to play, I'll spot you three a side, for a five hundred dollar Nassau. Automatic two down presses." "Kenny, you've never offered me strokes before. A five hundred dollar Nassau, with three a side. Are you sure?" "I'm sure. If the weather holds, we might get in two or three rounds. Same terms each time." "The pro shop is open at six thirty, even during the off season. I can have Hans run over to pick up our clubs while Gerta and I are packing. This must be important to you to give away your money like that?" "A man needs his mother when things get complicated. I'd feel better if you could come down here." "Oh my. Of course we'll be there. You'll take care of the plane and the pilot for us?" "I'll take care of all that. You just be at the airport before eight o'clock. I'll have the car rented and Hans and Gerta's room booked before you guys arrive here. Tomorrow night we'll all go out to eat, but after that, I'll be expecting Gerta to cook every meal for us." "Kenny, tell me the truth. You really don't know anything more about this shaking business than what you've already told us?" "I don't know anything else. If it turns out to be something though, I'd feel better with you and Gerta here. Joyce will need you too." "Don't even think like that. Of course its going to all turn out to be something very simple to fix. You're young and healthy. I'm only coming down for the weather, and for the chance to pick up some easy money. I don't take checks when it comes to gambling losses. You know that, right?" "Of course. I'll have the cash, just in case. I hope you'll bring your cash too, because I prefer cash as well." "I just hope Gerta and Hans haven't turned in. There's a lot we need to get done before we leave." "Okay, Mama. I'll let you go so you can tell them what you'll need. They'll be up all night, and you'll be getting some rest while they get none." "Nonsense, dear. I'll make a little list before I forget anything. I'll give it to Gerta tonight, and she'll send Hans on a few errands tomorrow morning, early, while she's preparing breakfast for the three of us. No one will miss a minute of their rest." After I hung up the phone, I noticed Joyce standing behind me. She came over and hugged me to her. "She's coming?" "Her, plus Hans and Gerta. We need to call for the plane to be ready, and to get a nice room, at a good hotel, for Hans and Gerta. Mama will stay in our guest bedroom. She's going to send Hans to pick up all the trust statements for the past six months, so call Shirley now and have her get them out and ready for him. You call Shirley, and then I'll call the airport maintenance people right after you're off the phone. Someone is always there at the hangar, until after midnight." Joyce picked up the phone and dialed our Ridgeline home number. As she did this, Cindy walked in the front door. While Joyce was talking to Shirley, and the other wives, I filled Cindy in on the plans I'd made to bring Mama down. As soon as Joyce got off the line, about fifteen minutes later, I called the airport and set things up for the flight down to Birmingham. Fortunately, none of the preventative maintenance required any down time for my plane, and I was told it would be ready to take off at eight the following morning. After I got off the phone, the three of us went in and got ready for bed. I tried to take it easier, really I did, but Joyce and Cindy weren't willing to be put off for a second time. I'd never seen Cindy being the aggressor before, but she was this time, and Joyce was the one she got aggressive with. I made her pay a stiff price for manhandling my little darling though. A very stiff price. From the way she responded to me pounding into her from behind though, I was afraid that Cindy would find other occasions to attack poor Joyce. It turned out that Joyce was only playing possum, waiting for Cindy to get carried away enough for her to escape her tongue. She got off the bed and left the room, heading for her suitcase. I knew what that meant, but I was sure that Cindy had no idea about what lay in store for her. I had already turned over on my back and was letting Cindy ride my hard dick from up on top. She seemed quite content to ride for a short time, then take these little breaks where she just sat astride me quietly. It was during one of these breaks when Joyce returned with her strap on in place and a wicked gleam in her eye. I saw that it was the thinner dildo she had strapped on, and that it gleamed from all the lubricant that had been used. I grabbed Cindy's ass and started moving her back and forth on my cock while I pulled her head down to me. I kept her hips sliding back and forth on my dick, making certain to stimulate her clit with the friction of the movement. This resulted in her trying to spread her legs even wider, attempting to increase the contact from our pubic bones, also raising up her cute posterior in the process. That was all the invitation Joyce needed. In a thrice she had mounted the bed, and worked her way behind Cindy's body. Cindy started laughing, thinking that Joyce meant to wrestle her off of me, to take her place. The first unsuccessful poke with that lubricated dildo sent that idea right out of her thoughts. She started resisting, finally understanding what Joyce was planning to do. It was too little resistance, and came too late. Joyce was in position and in place to do what she wanted. With her second or third thrust, Joyce had gained easy entry. Cindy continued resisting, but not for too long. I had kept up with my thrusting and upward hip movements. I could feel Joyce establishing her own, complementing, rhythm. She and I had done this many times before. We already knew what worked the best. I felt Cindy's fear and anger turning into lust tinged finally with open and naked desire. When I tried to stop and rest a little, Cindy wouldn't allow it. Later that night, Cindy talked me into taking her ass with my own much larger tool. She swore she'd never participated in any ass play, not with any of the girls she'd had relationships with. New to it or not, she turned out to be one of the people who just love having their ass used. She had several strong orgasms, without even a finger on her clit to provide some additional stimulation. Later, towards the end of our session, Joyce crawled under Cindy and began licking her clit feverishly, while I pounded into Cindy's welcoming ass from above and behind. That orgasm was her strongest. I was glad Mama wasn't there to hear some of the things coming out of that innocent girl's mouth. I was even happier that Gene or Laura weren't there. After, while the three of us rinsed off in the shower, I could see that Cindy was very embarrassed. "Tomorrow night, we'll do that to Joyce. Mama will be here. We'll see how she likes being fucked in both holes at once, with Mama trying to get some sleep in the next room." "You think that would bother me, Kenny? I want her to know how happy all of you make me. You can do it to me in the living room, with her watching us, I wouldn't mind." "You don't mean that, Joyce?" Cindy seemed horrified at the thought of what Joyce had said. "I mean every word of it. Mama and I have a special relationship. I know all she cares about is that the two of us are happy with each other. Seeing me happy would make her happy. Don't worry about me doing anything in the living room though. You liked having Kenny's big cock shoved up your ass tonight, I could tell. Shirley can take it all pretty easily too. Emily can take it all, but she needs to be forced to take it. I guess its something that you either like or you don't. I like it too, but I'm too small to take all of it. I can with my pussy though, and that's important too." "What about Brenda, and Eddie and Dale?" I couldn't believe the way these two were calmly discussing the ass fucking preferences and capabilities of all my wives like this, so casually. "Brenda doesn't like it. A finger is fine, if you're eating her, or if she's really turned on already. Kenny's had it in her ass a few times, but she doesn't enjoy it, so he almost never does it with her. Dale and Eddie are both too small to take it all the way, in both places. What they can take, they both enjoy. Eddie likes the dildo I used tonight on you. Dale isn't into that as much. She'll do it with Kenny there, but it isn't one of her favorite things to have done to her. I never saw anyone cum just from having their ass fucked before. I didn't know people could do that." "I've seen it before. Bea used to cum, really strong, just from having my dick in her ass. I didn't even have to move, just put it in, and let her squeeze it." "Who is this Bea? Do I know her?" "Kenny never told you about Bea? I'm surprised. He makes it sound like she knew everything there was to know about sex. She acts that way herself too." Joyce sounded just a touch bitter about Bea. Maybe I had brought her name up in too many conversations about sex. Still, she had taught me a lot, and Joyce had benefited as much from that teaching as anyone else, except, possibly, me. I often thought I hadn't shown Bea enough gratitude for all that she'd done for me. Gerta was in contact with her, but hadn't been successful, in convincing her to return to Kansas, where we could get her some help with her substance abuse problems. I made a mental note to speak to Gerta, about Bea, when I saw her next. I wanted her to step up her efforts, to take some action before it was too late to do anything. I realized, with a start, that I was beginning to think about worst case scenarios. I told myself to stop doing that. The last thing I wanted to do was to start thinking gloomy thoughts. Things were going to work out well. For Bea, for me, for all of us. Naturally, as soon as I had that thought, my damn arm started acting up again. Joyce cried out and looked very worried. Cindy took my hand in both of hers, and then pressed it between her legs. The shaking lasted for over a minute. When it finished, Cindy stood up on her tip toes and kissed me. "Thank you, Kenny. That felt so good." Cindy seemed to have a genuine smile. Joyce wasn't smiling, but she did stop crying, and started to relax. For the first time, I felt a little twinge, high up in my neck. Not a pain exactly, but something unusual in any case. I didn't welcome this added symptom, but I told myself to call Doctor Gardinier's office in the morning to report this newest finding. I was sure he was going to ask me what I'd been doing in the hours since I'd left his office and the time the spell had returned. I didn't mention any of this to either Cindy or Joyce. ------- Chapter 53 Hans, Gerta, and Mama arrived in Birmingham before noon. I was at the office meeting with Kyle and his crew, trying to flesh out the details of his planned campaign to open as many new convenience outlets for our vending product expansion. Kyle had objected to calling the snacks vending product, saying it seemed to confuse the route people and the store owners and managers. He preferred Quick Snacks as a name, and had begun referring to them as that. I liked the name as well. Convenience and quick seemed to go together well. There was already a definite trending towards fast, convenient, living. People were getting used to doing everything on the run. Using drive through windows to buy their take out food, do their banking, and even drop off and pick up their dry cleaning and laundry. Kyle had put together a team of nine salesmen for the greater Birmingham area. It was a pilot program, solely for the purpose of seeing what sort of market penetration we could get attempting to aggressively open new accounts. Kyle was planning on opening at least fifty new accounts per day with his crew, and would be out in the field with them every day, monitoring their performance. Part of his program involved passing out awards and incentives for top performers. I had authorized advancing him five thousand dollars to make purchases for these awards and prizes. The money was going to be recovered from the funds he charged purchasers of the sales routes he'd be creating. Of course, he couldn't sell them until after they had been opened and developed. I didn't try to change anything about his optimism and enthusiasm. His can do attitude was exactly what I was hoping to see spread throughout our Southern operations. Joyce had already begun with her reminders to me about how important it was to our expansion plans that Kyle succeed with his method of creating steady demand for our vending snack production. It was these higher margin sales that were needed to continue to fuel our ambitious Southern expansion plans. Joyce had told me, at breakfast, that she had pencilled in an increase in gross vending sales of one million dollars per month, beginning with the first of the upcoming year. That number translated into opening a huge number of new outlets every month. More than Kyle could achieve with the sales force he was planning to have out in the field. I wanted to get him thinking about multiplying his efforts, but I didn't want to throw out numbers so large that they would frighten him, or cause him to have doubts. It was a fine line I had to be walking with him. Preliminary product re-order figures from the convenience stores were pointing to each outlet averaging about two hundred fifty dollars a month in gross wholesale terms to us. This was figured on the thirty cents per unit that we were getting. To add a million dollars in sales a month, we'd have to open four thousand new accounts. Kyle's people were planning on working five day weeks, so that was going to be approximately a quarter of what our minimum goal needed to be. We had two months to prove Kyle's program a success and quadruple his sales force. The problem was going to be with hiring and training good local sales people. "We need to bring in some of our personnel people, and our sales training staff, to help you get this program off the ground, Kyle. We need to be opening two or three hundred new outlets a day, not fifty. I think we need to spin off the whole route driver account sales program for someone else to handle. Who do you know that would be good at training new route drivers?" "Kenny, there aren't that many places we can open around here to get that many new accounts. What you're asking for can't be done. Route people aren't going to be paying for a route that's a hundred miles from here. It can't be done." "I wasn't talking about just around here. I meant all over this area, from Texas to Florida, and as far north as Oklahoma and South Carolina. We've got to get teams hired and trained, then set them to opening up new routes for us to sell. Birmingham is only a pilot program to prove that your program really works." "You don't mean right away though, right? We're going to set this up first, then branch out from here?" "We can take it slow if you want to, Kyle, as long as we're opening at least two hundred and fifty new accounts a day by the end of the year. Remember now, I already told you we'll do the hiring and training of the new sales crew to put out opening new territories. All you need to do is work out the best way to open up the new accounts." Kyle didn't say anything to me, but I could tell he felt somewhat overwhelmed by what I'd just told him. We wrapped up our meeting right after that, with me telling Kyle I wanted daily performance reports on my desk before he left for the day. He nodded that he'd heard me, but I was a little worried that I had thrown his world out of balance. This would be a good test of his resilience. I'd give it until the end of the week to see how he managed adapting to my surprising new demands. Joyce had been trying to light a fire under me, and I needed to pass the flame along to Kyle. After the meeting, I called Gene at his house, trying to find out if he had any special schedule or order in mind for me to work him and his two brothers back into the workplace. We spoke for awhile, and it became obvious that he had already heard about my health situation. He asked me questions that demonstrated his worry. "Look, Gene, I'm only one guy in a really big company. My Dad has three or four people he could send down here to take over for me if it was needed. This isn't going to be any big problem for Macklinson's Bakeries. I'm already scheduling tests to find out what the problem is. When we find out, we'll deal with it. I don't want to waste my time speculating about it. So, who do you think I should bring in to interview with me first, you, Phil or Larry?" "Maybe it would work for the best if you brought Phil back first, Kenny. Then, maybe me, and save Larry for the last. I know Larry's very interested in hearing, from your own lips, that he doesn't have to answer to anyone but you." "Okay, that makes sense. Should I call Phil myself, or do you want to be the one to tell him he should come in and talk with me?" "I think it would be better if you called him, Kenny. There's still that thing about none of us having to report to one of the others. If Phil is going to be your man, he should be called back by you." I got off the phone shaking my head. These were all grown men in their mid to late forties at least. I shouldn't have to play these kinds of games with them. It would be a lot more efficient to call them all in together and just have the one meeting. I stopped myself, again, realizing that was only my way. I'd learned my lesson already, that my way didn't work with these men. It was time I tried something that might work. I picked my phone back up and dialed Phil's number. He answered me on the first ring, like he'd been waiting right by the phone. I took that as a good sign. "Hey, Phil. Kenny Parsons here. The reason I'm calling is to let you know that all of the boys are back at work now, and to say I'm very sorry about that mix up about Jesse from before. We've gotten it all settled now though, and they're all back here. It's working out well for all of us." "Well, that's good to hear. All those boys need to have something to do. I wanted to thank you about Billy Ray too. He's really happy that you went and found something he could do to be a part of the company again. I hope he does a good job for you. If he doesn't, you let me know and I'll give him some sparks to light him up again." "No worries about Billy Ray. I'd have to say, of all the Macklinson boys, that Billy Ray and Kyle are my two most valuable workers. I get a lot more work done with Billy Ray in here helping me. The other thing I called to talk to you about was to ask you if it might be possible for the two of us to meet, and get our own situation settled. I'm making some changes in two of the Consolidated plants right now, and I'd like to have some equipment input from someone who knows his way around an oven. We're planning on reopening the Nashville plant right away, and I need to think about sending my equipment maintenance guy back to our Delaware plant. They've been missing him a lot." "I'd be willing to discuss it with you, but, of course, it would depend on what you needed done, and who I'd have to be working with." Phil was already making it known to me that he had changes he'd want from how it used to be. I hoped he meant not having to listen to Larry and Gene, and not something else that I might not be able to give him. "Well, we can talk, and you can tell me what you'd need. I'm a reasonable man, I think, and I already know you can make these ovens and machines keep working. Jerry Davis, that's the man I brought here from Dover? He found us a whole slew of replacement parts for our old equipment. Maybe, if you come down, you and he could take a look at what he got for us. It would give you a better idea of what you'd have to work with." We agreed on a time when he would come to the plant later that afternoon. I had Jerry paged and brought him up to my office. I told him that Phil was coming in to talk, and asked him to show him the spare equipment room so he could see all the spare parts we now had. "Does that mean I finally get to fucking go back home, Kenny? This whole fucking area is the shit's. I can't fucking understand half of what these fucking people are saying. It's like they're fucking talking with their fucking mouths full." Jerry was smiling, pleased with himself and the knowledge that he could soon get back to his Delaware crew and equipment. "It might mean that, by next week. There's still the matter of your brother. How are you going to fix it so that Phil wants to keep him on? Do you think Jim is good enough at what he does?" "I hope you're fucking diddling me with that kind of question. I know you can't be fucking asking it seriously. Fucking Jim knows more about this shit than fucking anyone. Except for me, of course. If he stays off the fucking sauce, he'll be all right. If he doesn't, then fuck him. He got his chance, and that's all I fucking promised him." "I'm going to be needing someone really good at our Consolidated plant back in Texas. We're going to be putting in all new equipment, most of it highly automated. The equipment factory's will help us train the maintenance crew before the new equipment goes in. I'd be willing to send Jim and two or three of the old Consolidated guys for that training, but I need to have a pretty good idea that he wants this kind of job and responsibility more than he wants to go back to drinking. Do you think I can depend on him?" "Fuck, you don't ask for much, do you? What do you expect me to tell you, Kenny? This is my brother. I can tell you he hasn't been drinking since he got here, and that he understands that the booze has cost him just about everything he cared anything about. What I can't do is tell you that he won't start drinking again." "Well, I've already decided to take a chance on him. I want you to think of it as a big part of the bonus you earned by coming down here and holding this place together for me. I appreciate it. Try not to fuck things up for me with Phil when he comes in to see you. I want you to tell Jim that he really needs to behave if he wants to keep this shot you've gotten for him. I'm giving him the chance you asked me for, but I won't hesitate a minute to throw him out if he takes another drink of booze. He has to know that up front, because he didn't come to me with a clean slate. You think he might get back with his family if he ends up back in Texas?" "I hear him on the phone with Shannon and the kids four or five nights a week. He sends them every penny he has. She hasn't quit on him yet, and I hear him sweet talking her most nights. If she wasn't still interested, she wouldn't listen to him telling her what he does. I think she's just waiting to see if he takes care of this job or not, and whether he keeps himself off the sauce for a while longer. I know she was happy when he sent that big check to her. It let her get all caught up on things, and that was half their problem, the money." "I'd hate to see him mess this up, Jerry. I don't know him that well, but he seems like a hard worker to me. I'd give him one chance, but that's about it. I hope he's ready this time." "Well, nothing we can do but hope. If he isn't ready, then he probably won't ever be. I think he is though. He doesn't have any physical cravings now, so if he goes back to it, then he's just mental. Can't do anything when somebody's mental." "Okay, time to go back to work and earn all that money we're paying you. Remember, if Phil doesn't hire back on, you'll be here until after the first of the year. Treat him gently." I laughed when Jerry flipped me the bird. I was going to miss having him around. He was a calming influence on me. People on the baking floor were in awe of the way he spoke and did things. Jerry didn't work in half measures, and he didn't do anything quietly. There was a difference in tempo when he was running around on the floor. Things must have gone well with Jerry and Phil, because he had a smile on his face when he came through the open door of my office. The first thing he did was stop to speak with Billy Ray, who was busy with my trade reconciliations. Billy took him through an explanation of what he was doing in a period of less than five minutes. I could see that Phil was impressed with the ease that Billy Ray sifted through the data he had inputted to his computer. It looked quite impressive to someone unused to computers. Billy Ray did have good manual dexterity too, and he typed a lot faster than I could ever manage. He had gotten into an easy routine now, almost always getting all his work done before five o'clock came around. Usually, I had synopsis print outs to take home with me every night, Billy Ray's idea. It let me see, on a single sheet of paper, mostly how things had ended up for each particular trading day. I felt like I was staying on top of my record keeping too, and that made it seem more important to me, one less guilt for me to carry around about not getting all of my responsibilities handled. Phil came over and shook my hand. He was still smiling, and he looked like he was impressed and proud of what his son had demonstrated he was doing. "He looks like he has that all down pat." "He does. He and I need to sit down soon and figure out something more he can do to help us out around here. I've got some ideas, but he'll probably want more money for doing it." "He makes enough. Some of the other boys were remarking on it, about how Kyle and Billy Ray seem to be getting preferred treatment." "I guess Billy Ray and I will get to decide how much is enough, Phil. Not anyone else's business. As to Kyle and Billy Ray getting preferred treatment, that's only natural, since they're the two who do the most for the company. I already know I'm going to need to raise Kyle way up. He's liable to be making more than anybody if his program pans out like we're hoping it will." "More than all the boys you mean?" "More than everybody. That's what I said, that's what I meant. What Kyle's working on will generate millions of dollars in new revenue for us. Nobody else with the company impacts our earnings as much as Kyle might." "Are you thinking about raising him above where Gene, Larry, and me are?" "So far, the three of you are all unemployed, Phil. I thought we were going to sit down and discuss how we can change that for you? I'll handle Gene and Larry separately. Right now, lets talk about you." "You think I should be paid less than Kyle is?" "I can't afford to pay you as much as him. The job you'd be doing isn't worth that kind of money. I don't make that kind of money, and I'm the owner's only son. We pay based on what the job is worth to us, not on how old the worker is, or how much experience he has with doing his job. You need to worry about what you're being paid, not about what the others are getting. I could see that Phil was fixing to dig in with his feet and be stubborn. I decided that I'd have to learn how to speak to him in a less confrontational way. "I'm not sure I like what I'm hearing." "Well, did you get the tour from Jerry Davis? You had to like some of what you saw." "Yes. He's good, and those parts he found, it will make things go a lot better here from now on. That part of it was fine. It's this other part that troubles me." "The part I already told you wasn't your problem to be worried about?" "How much were you planning on paying me? If I did decide to come back to work?" "That's putting the cart before the horse, Phil. If you do want to come back to work, we'll pay you a fair wage. Jerry Davis is a top mechanic, and he runs a big plant in Delaware that is bigger and a lot more modern than this one. We pay him a lot less than what you and your brothers voted yourselves before you sold us the company. The job he does is the same one we're hiring for. It pays sixty thousand a year, no matter who has it. If you want it, then we want to have you. If you decide you can't work for those wages, well good luck with finding a better offer. You won't get it here." "Sixty thousand? Are you telling me that Kyle is going to be making more than sixty thousand dollars a year? That's just ridiculous." "Why don't you go home and think about my offer, Phil? If you did come back, you'd be reporting only to me. Gene and Larry wouldn't have a thing to do with your department, or with how you ran things. I'm the only one you'd need to keep satisfied." "What about Gene and Larry? Are you going to pay them more than me too?" "I'll pay them whatever I think their job is worth to this company. That's my decision, not yours, Phil. I'm trying to make changes so that everyone concentrates on what's their business, not somebody else's." "Can I wait until after I find out what you're offering Gene and Larry?" "You can wait as long as you want to. That doesn't mean I'll keep the offer open or save the job for you. Jim Davis, Jerry's brother, he's a damn fine mechanic too. All those Simpson parts were his at one time. If you decide you can't make up your mind, I'm planning on offering him the position. That will leave an assistant position open, but it doesn't pay nearly as well." "I won't be anyone's assistant in my own plant." "I didn't know you had a plant of your own, Phil. I thought you sold it to my father awhile ago. Just to set your mind at ease, Billy Ray and Jesse are both doing good work for me, and I won't hold it against them if you and I can't come to terms." "Sixty, and you won't tell me how much Gene and Larry will be getting?" "That's right. You go home and think about it for awhile. I'll keep the job open until Friday. If I don't hear back from you by then, I'll assume you decided not to take it." "If I decided I'd take it, when would I start back up?" "You can pick a time, as long as it isn't too long from now. Did you want to go somewhere on vacation or something?" "No, it isn't that. I can come in tomorrow. You don't negotiate like I'm used to. With you, its all business and cold like. Folks around here, we ease up on these kinds of things. Makes the whole process easier to swallow." "Give me an example of what you mean." "Like before, when we made small talk about Billy Ray and Kyle and the rest. It started out good. As soon as I asked you a few questions, you had a change of attitude and started snapping at me. I was only trying to be friendly." "I was being friendly too, Phil. If I'd wanted to be mean, I'd have told you that both Kyle and Billy Ray were going to be making more than you." "But you'd have just been funning with me, Right?" "No. Billy Ray has some skills that I value highly. If it turns out he can do this extra work I'm going to show him, I'm going to raise him up. If I do, he'll be making sixty five." I could see that Billy Ray was being quiet, trying to hear everything that was being said. I saw Phil looking over at his son, seeing him in a different light. That almost made it worth the extra twenty some thousand a year I had practically committed myself to. I rationalized it by telling myself that I would have been willing to pay Phil the extra twenty, if he hadn't pissed me off with his tending to everyone else's business about salary. "That was mean, but I think I understand why you said it. You want me to stay out of worrying about how much any of the others are making. Okay, I'm in. I'll be here tomorrow morning. Seven thirty all right with you?" "Fine with me. I'll have Jim come in at six, that way the floor will be covered." We shook hands and Phil left my office. After he was gone, Billy Ray expelled his breath loudly. "Damn, I didn't think he'd sit still for that kind of talking to. You sure do know how to rile him. That last part, about raising me up again, that almost made me lose it. I know I didn't ought to be listening in on your private conversation like I did, but I just couldn't help it." "I didn't say it to rile him up, Billy Ray. I really do have something else I think you could be doing. Something very important. It would mean we'd have to get someone else to drive the grain dumper, but it would also mean a big promotion for you, like I told your Dad." "I'll be willing to try anything, Kenny. There's some things I'm not very good at, but I can do a lot of other things." He was certainly willing, and I already knew he was a very hard worker. He didn't seem to need to take many breaks, a lot less than I needed when I worked on the reconciliations. "Why is that, Billy Ray? Before I got to know you, I had a much different impression about your abilities. Since you've come back, I've learned what a good worker you are. How come more people aren't as impressed as I've been?" "It's mostly from back when I was a kid. I was some wild before Vellie settled me down. I did things without thinking, and I did stupid things, like wrapping my truck around trees, or driving my father's truck into a pond because Wayne said I wouldn't dare do it. Stupid things, so that's the way everyone mostly treated me, like I was stupid. They did it here too, giving me jobs no one else wanted. If there was a dirty job needed doing, call Billy Ray. They didn't expect much, and I didn't give them much. I could have done better, and Vellie kept saying I should have, for my sake, not for theirs. It was too late though. Everyone had already made up their minds about me, even Daddy." "I'd like to change their minds, Billy Ray. I'd like that just fine, but I'd need a lot of help from you to do it. What I'm thinking about is very important, to me, to this company and to my whole family. It isn't exaggerating by much to say that thousands of people depend for their jobs on what I can do. I'm talking about the grain trading and the grain brokerage business I operate. There's a lot of paperwork involved in the brokerage accounts I handle. They send us their needs for the future months, and I need to do a lot of trading to make sure I can give them the lowest possible grain prices, and still come out of it with a profit." "It looks to me like you make a whole lot of money from the trading you do, and not just from trading grains. What could I do to help you with any of that? I don't know anything about the grain business." "You don't have to know anything. That isn't the part I'd be needing you for. What I want from you is to communicate with all my grain customers, to make sure they get all their requirements in on time. Then you have to schedule everything for me, on a big board or something, so I'll know, with a glance, where we stand on every order, everyday. I do all the buying and selling, you keep track of what everyone needs, and when they expect it. You'll need to arrange delivery dates too, and to do that, you'll need to coordinate with Joyce, one of my wives." Billy Ray laughed when I called her one of my wives. "This is a critical part of my trading business, Billy Ray, and I can't afford any screw ups, not even one. There are timing and financial problems that come up all the time if you don't keep a tight rein on our trades, and on the cash prices in every grain market we trade. It all has to be closely coordinated. A mistake could cost me a year of your salary. You'd need to check, then check again and again." "I don't think you ought to trust me with something that important, Kenny. I wouldn't mess up on purpose, but, most of the time, when I did mess up, it wasn't on purpose either." "I've been concentrating on the bad parts first, Billy Ray, because I wanted you to know this was serious business we're discussing, and the stakes are enormous. On the other hand, it isn't that complicated if you do it methodically, just like you've been handling the reconciliations. You have to be sure. If you aren't sure, then get me to check it over for you. We'll do it that way at first anyway, just so we're both sure its right. If you do it well enough to make me satisfied you'll be able to handle it on your own, say by the first of December, we'll make it permanent and raise you up to sixty five thousand a year." "Would I still be paid through the company payroll?" That was a good question. I knew Billy Ray by now, and I knew he wanted to work for Macklinson's like the rest of his family. I could pay him myself, but he'd be saving me more time so that I could use it to work on Macklinson's business. It was a close call. "You'd still work for the company, just like before. The only change would be the amount on your pay stubs." "Except for Kyle, I'd be making the most of all the kids then?" "Except for him, you'd be making the most of all of them, not just the kids." "I don't know what to say. This isn't like how things usually are for me. It's the opposite. I'll try my hardest. If my brain can figure it out, you won't have to worry about me not trying hard enough, that's a promise." "Good. It will take me a day or two to get everything switched down to this office. It won't matter where I am, all the orders and the confirmations will come to this office. You have to get in three big lockable filing cabinets before the weekend. I want everything you're working on locked up, every night. You and I will have the only keys to open the cabinets up. If the reconciliation information was confidential, what you're going to be getting from now on is absolutely top secret. You can't discuss it with anyone. If people ask you, direct them to me. We're going to keep working well together, Billy Ray. "In a few months people are all going to have a different opinion about you. I'm having a few people coming to dinner tonight, over at Fleming's, you know where that is?" Billy Ray nodded that he did. "I want you and Vellie to join us, at around seven o'clock. Nothing fancy as far as dress goes, anything with a tie and jacket. I'm going to invite Kyle and Trudy too. My mother will be there, and my aunt and uncle from Kansas. Its their first night visiting, and I thought I'd introduce them to some of my key people from work. Now that you're going to be doing this other thing for me, Billy Ray, you've become one of my key people." ------- Chapter 54 Billy Ray excused himself, saying he needed to call his wife to get a babysitter lined up for the evening. I called Cindy over to where I was standing at my office door and told her we needed to change our reservations from a party of six to a party of ten. She said she'd take care of it, so I went back in my office to phone Kyle's wife to invite her to Fleming's personally. I still remembered that she had gone out of her way to phone me, thanking me for promoting Kyle, then apologizing for the fact that he'd just quit along with all the others. I thought that had been a display of real class, and I wanted to meet her again when Laura wasn't around to stir things up. It took some persuading to get Trudy to agree to join us for dinner. I explained that it was mostly a dinner to introduce my mother and aunt and uncle to my key people. She wanted to know who else from the company would be there. "Cindy and me, you and Kyle, Billy Ray and Maravelle. My wife, Joyce will be there, representing the home office." "Your wife works for the company too?" "She's my boss, both at home and with the company. You have to meet her." "You're having Cindy and your wife at the same dinner party?" Her voice sounded hoarse, like she was strangling or something. I was absolutely sure that everyone in the Macklinson family already knew every piece of my personal business as it pertained to my domestic arrangement. She was being duplicitous with me. "We've shared beds together, Trudy. I don't think sitting down to dinner will be a strain on either one of them." She laughed, delightedly. "I wondered if you'd admit to it. There are a lot of us in the family that have questions about Cindy's uhh, sincerity. She has seemed much more comfortable with girls in the past. Her business, but we've all been worried. We don't want anything to happen to sour you on our family." I didn't know which way to take that, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. "You needn't worry about that. Cindy has disclosed her past background to all of us. I'm already well on the way to changing her opinion about men. All it took was finding a man competent to satisfy her needs." "That would be you?" "I like to think so. If you had heard her last night, you'd find all of this much easier to believe, I promise you. You'll see her tonight, so you can ask her." "I couldn't. Girls don't say those kinds of things to other girls. Not when they're part of the same family." "I've got seven wives now, and they're all girls, and all part of my family. I can tell you, from personal experience, that none of them have the least bit of hesitancy about saying those kinds of things, and a whole lot more, that you'd consider even worse." "I'm sure all of your women are ladies. I think you exaggerate." There was a tone of excitement in Trudy's voice. I wondered about it. It was almost as if she were baiting me to say something more lurid. "Well, if I wasn't afraid it would offend you, I'd give you an example of last night's conversation. This was a conversation that took place when the three of us were showering together. It was conversation between Cindy and Joyce, and it would certainly prove my point." "Words by themselves would never offend me. I'm no prude, and neither is Kyle. If anything, we've been far too adventurous for the rest of the family's tastes. I promise not to be offended if you tell me." Yes, she was definitely getting turned on by our conversation. I didn't want to do anything to offend Kyle, but she was offering up a challenge. "I'll take you at your word then. As I said, the three of us were showering after a vigorous three way lovemaking session. Joyce made the comment that she wouldn't hesitate to perform Cindy's role in the living room tonight, in front of my mother. She was explaining that she wasn't worried about what my mother would think of her. She was correct. My mother might leave the room, to afford us some privacy, but she wouldn't ever be offended by our actions." "You mean the three of you doing sex together, at the same time? In front of your mother?" "Yes. In spite of what we did, and what Joyce said about her willingness to perform the same act in my mother's presence, you are correct in saying that all of my wives are ladies. Not necessarily virginal angels, but definitely angels." "I'm not sure you aren't making all of that up, but I don't doubt the part about three of you showering together or what happened before that. I hope you are the man who will prove himself competent to satisfy Cindy. She hasn't had it easy with trying to make up for her past performances around other girls. I don't know why she keeps trying to please Gene and Lee. Nothing will ever be enough, not unless she produces a baby." "We're all hoping that Lee will be more content when your baby is born. Grandchildren have a way of changing people." "Not with me as the mother. I'm not from a good enough family to matter to her. I'll always be trash in her eyes, and any children Kyle and I have together will be too." She had gone from gay to somber so quickly. I didn't want to end the phone call on that note. "We'll just have to change her mind about that. To my mind, you're the epitome of a gracious Southern Belle." "You say the strangest things, Kenny. Thank you. I know you can't really take my side against Gene and Lee's, but I appreciate the kind words. Do we need to get really dressed up tonight? I've never eaten at Fleming's, but I've driven by there." "Just a party dress for you and a tie and jacket for Kyle. A sport coat would be fine. Nothing fancy." "Would it be all right if I wore a maternity top and a loose skirt? I'm starting to get too big to be seen out in public." "It will be fine. As far as being too big, I saw you only a short time ago and I didn't even notice you were expecting." "I've grown since then. My boobs are huge, which we like, but my ankles are just as big, which I hate. Everything seems swollen, and all pushed out of place." "Well, I've got twelve children, and all my wives recovered their figures. I'm sure you'll manage." "If you don't mind me asking, why is Billy Ray coming tonight?" "Billy Ray is fast becoming my right hand man. He frees up so much time for me I feel guilty about depositing my pay check. People are in for a big surprise about Billy Ray. He might not ever get as high up as Kyle will, but I'm almost certain he'll get higher than the rest of the boys." "If you can work those kind of miracles with Billy Ray, then I'm almost willing to believe you about changing Lee's mind about me and my baby. Only almost though. In three years, I think I've heard no more than ten flattering words from her, and that was comments about my cooking at family barbecues we both went to." "If you want some advice, you should start treating her the same way she treats you. If she gets snide about your family or background, remind her that you're still married to your husband. I notice that no one but Gene ever talks back to her or holds her accountable for what she says. Compared to my family, hers are dirt poor. She has no business treating you as less than her." "Kyle would have a stroke if I did that. He acts as if she's perfect in every way. I hate it." "Remind Kyle about who it is that lets him do things to make him a daddy. You control that part of things, and Kyle needs to decide which is more important." "You're terrible! I'm so happy that we're going to be friends. You've got Kyle running all over, taking responsibility for things. I swear I've never seen him happier or more excited." "We're all just as excited about him. We're putting a heavy load on his shoulders, but if he manages to come through for us he'll be pulling down six figures a year. That kind of income goes a long way to lifting you up in the eyes of any community. We all know it's the woman behind the man who makes him successful. You take care of Kyle, and he'll lead you to the promised land." "I better get off the phone in case Kyle calls me. If you see him before I do, tell him to come home early so he can shower before we go out." I got off the phone with a slightly revised opinion of Kyle and Trudy. A better opinion, because it sounded like they were both less rigid in their personal beliefs. I got the impression that the only reason I hadn't been tarred and feathered around this area of Birmingham was because there were too many jobs dependent on them not doing that to me. I didn't think anyone approved of my lifestyle. I didn't mind, not as long as they left me and mine alone to do what we had chosen to do. I sensed that Kyle and Trudy were from a different mold. Billy Ray had returned from his break and was finishing up the last of the reconciliations for me. I walked over behind him and waited for him to print out the daily synopsis sheet. He had almost finished the printing when Danielle came in to tell me Joyce was on the phone. "Hi sweets. Did you get everyone settled in yet?" "Sure. Mama likes the house, but she wants to buy a bigger one for all of us. She thinks we're going to be spending more time here than you were thinking. She doesn't like feeling cramped, and she hates it that Hans and Gerta needed to stay at a hotel instead of with us. That wasn't why I called though. Doctor Gardinier's office called, and he says Friday is the soonest he can fit all the tests together for you. He says you'll need to be there for eight to ten hours at least. He wants you all checked in and ready for lab work no later than seven o'clock." "We were going home on Friday. See if we can change it to either Monday or Tuesday of next week. I don't want to spend all day in the hospital when I could be home with the kids. Reschedule." "I told him you'd be there at seven, ready for all your tests, and you will be. Mama agrees, and so does Gerta. This is too important to be put off. We'll do it on Friday." "You can be a royal pain in the ass, Joyce. Which reminds me, speaking of ass pain. Tonight is your turn, like I told you. You better hide the thick one if you don't want to get hurt. I think Cindy's planning on being loaded up with the biggest dildo she can find." Billy Ray's head snapped around to look at me before turning, just as quickly, back to what he was supposed to be doing. "I forgot that Billy Ray was here in the office with me. Now he knows all our secrets." "You can't fool me, Kenny. You'd never speak like that if anyone was around to hear you." "Billy Ray, pick up the phone and tell my wife what you heard." I could see Billy Ray's neck redden. "Just pick up the phone then and say hello to Joyce. You'll be speaking to her quite a bit, and You'll meet her tonight." Billy Ray picked up the phone and mumbled a quick hello. "Kenny! I'm going to pay you back for this. I can't believe you did that." "You take too much for granted with me, Joyce. I'm not my father. Billy Ray is going to be working closely with me, helping me with the grain brokerage and the trading. He'll be around all the time. I'm not going to censor myself whenever he's in the office with me. He's a big boy, and he has two kids of his own. He already knows about sex. He may not know about a strap on or dildos yet though, so I better explain it to him so he doesn't get lost following our conversations. I did promise to educate him, but this isn't what I was referring to." Billy Ray got up, threw the synopsis on my desk and hurried out of the office. It was four thirty. His quickest finish yet, and it had been a heavy trading day. He was improving all the time. I hoped I hadn't gone too far with him, but I also knew I wasn't going to be uncomfortable in my own office. "Did he leave, Kenny?" "He just now finished his work and left. I think I might have embarrassed him. He's coming to dinner with us tonight, along with his wife, Vellie, short for Maravelle. Kyle and Trudy are coming too. These are two of the best of the Macklinson children." "I think Cindy is the best. Best tasting." Joyce giggled. I could tell she was getting a little turned on by my naughty conversation. "I don't think you know what Kyle tastes like, or Jerry either, her other brother. For all we know, Gene is the best tasting of the bunch, or Laura." "Only one way to know for certain." Joyce laughed again. She was maddening. I knew she wasn't just bluffing either. I'd known it for awhile. Joyce reined herself in, only because she worried about what I'd say, think, or do if she didn't. I knew she was willing to do far more than we'd done, but I didn't want to get into that with her at this point. Eventually, I knew it would be brought up by her. I didn't want her to miss out on something she really wanted to try. I hoped to put it off for some time later. Hopefully, a lot later. "You'll have to let that remain a mystery. I don't think any of them are ready for a taste test from you." "I thought you said you weren't like your father. I took that to mean you were becoming more adventurous." "I have seven wives and twelve children. It doesn't get any more adventurous than that." "Shirley and I both want you to get more adventurous, and not with a strap on. I've been thinking about it for awhile. Shirley has too. Not all the time, but we're both real curious." "I'd be very unhappy if either of you ever acted on that without me saying it was all right first. We talked about that before. We agreed." "I wouldn't, and Shirley is a lot less adventurous than I am. Besides, I'd want you there too. I want to see your eyes if it ever happens." "Did Shirley tell you about what I told her on Friday night?" "Shirley tells me everything. I almost came when she told me. I had to make myself come right after she finished telling me. It's your fault for bringing it up again with her. One of these days, you're going to have to deliver. If you do, I want to be in on it. I can wait, Kenny, but there's no way I'm going to let Shirley get fucked by two dicks, and me not get the same thing too. Do you really have someone in mind?" "No, I was exhausted and I wanted to make sure Shirley went out. That seems to always do it, so I said it to her." "You aren't even really thinking about it?" Joyce had a pleading tone to her voice. A little girl asking for another cookie before supper. "I didn't say I wasn't thinking about it. I put a small personal ad in the paper, in Chickasaw, trying to get in touch with Big Luther. You remember Big Luther, don't you? As soon as I find him, he and I are going to split you wide open together. That will teach you to be such a horny little girl. I can't believe I've got five absolutely perfect children from a girl that spends most of her time dreaming about being unfaithful to me." "I've never been unfaithful to you, Kenny. And I won't ever be. It would only be exciting if you were there, and you were doing me too." "If I did it, I'd be the one in your pussy, and it would only be because I love you and thought you needed it to make you happy." "Then it won't ever happen. I'm already happy, and I don't need anything else to be as happy as I can be." "So, I should tell Kyle you've changed your mind again?" "Kyle, he's too young for me. I was thinking Sean Connery. He's old enough, and you can take one look at him and know he'd be good at it." "He's sixty at least, older than my Dad or yours. I doubt that he still does it. I think you waited too long for him. That ship already sailed. Maybe Tom Cruise. He's our age I'm sure." "All right, Tom Cruise. When will he be here?" "I'm leaving all the details up to you, Joyce. You set it up with his people. First, him and me with Shirley, then, after, we'll both do you." "You and Tom Cruise will do me if I get him here?" "No, that isn't what I said. What I said was, if you can talk him into it and get him here, He and I will double team Shirley. After, Shirley and I will double team you. I might be able to do that with Tom and Shirley, but not with you and Tom, no way." "Who could I get here that you would let me do, seriously?" "Kathy Ireland. I'd hold her pussy open wide, so we could both lick it at the same time. She isn't the only one either. I can think of several other girls we could do together." "Kenny, I'm glad you amuse yourself, really. Make sure you come home soon so we can get ready. Let me talk to Cindy." "I can't. She's off somewhere with the work crew. Let me find her, and we'll come straight home. Don't tell Cindy about Kathy Ireland. She'd want in on it, and I doubt Kathy's pussy is big enough for all three of us to eat it at the same time." Joyce was laughing when she hung up on me. I found Cindy and we headed for home. Cindy told me that the work crew was scheduled to finish everything by late Thursday. I had been in to see how Billy Ray's mural was coming. He promised me it would be ready by the end of the week. We were locking the conference room door at night, not letting anyone in except for the work crew, Billy Ray, and Cindy. "Tonight, if Joyce asks you what you want for dinner, tell her Kathy Ireland, okay?" "Is that supposed to be funny?" "It is funny, but only to Joyce and me. We were talking about a threesome, with me, her, and another guy. I told her I wouldn't let her do it with Tom Cruise, so she asked me to name someone else we could do a threesome with, and I named Kathy Ireland." "She wants to have a threesome with two guys?" "You know Joyce. She's adventurous. By the way, we're eating with Kyle and Trudy tonight. Can you tell me why your mother is so down on Trudy?" "Well, other than the fact that Trudy came from a trashy family, and she used sex to trap Kyle into marriage. Mama doesn't like her because Trudy doesn't try to act like my mother does. Trudy is her own person. I think she always knew that my mother wouldn't ever accept her." "When you say trashy family, what exactly do you mean by that?" "In Trudy's case, her mother was a trashy woman who ran around on her father. Her two sisters were putting out by the time they got to sixth grade. Jed, her brother, is in prison for grand theft auto, his fifth or six time being caught. That kind of trashy." "What about her father?" "He left after he caught Trudy's mom with a guy in a bar in town. She was hanging all over him, according to what Kyle was told by Trudy. He never sent back any money after he left, and that was pretty trashy too." "Don't most girls use sex to get boys to want to marry them? Either by holding out, or else giving them a taste and then pulling back?" "Trudy was Kyle's first love. When she dropped out of college, about three years ago, she decided she was going to get married. When Kyle tried to put her off, she started dating someone else. Kyle didn't have any choice, he loved her. I'm almost sure she slept with that other boy too, and that really drove Kyle crazy. We were all worried about him." "How long had they been going together before she started going out with this other boy?" "Seven years, either since before she was in the ninth grade, or right after. Kyle's four years older than her." "You don't think she had a right to ask him for a commitment, after seven years? I'm surprised she waited that long. If you ask me, she did exactly the right thing by forcing him to make a choice." "Well don't yell at me, Kenny, I get along with her just fine. It's my mother we were talking about." "Did you get our reservations set with Fleming's?" "For ten people at seven o'clock. It's expensive there. You knew that right?" "Doesn't matter to me, Mama will insist on paying. She always does, and I always let her. It makes her happy, and she can afford to do it. Dad is even worse about insisting on paying at restaurants. I could invite them out every night and feed my family for free for the rest of my life." "You're kidding. You wouldn't really do that?" "No, but only because it would be too much trouble having all the kids with us at every meal. I can drive over to Mama's house whenever I'm hungry, and Gerta will fix me whatever I ask her for." "You take advantage of them." "No, I allow them to do nice things for me. There's a difference. No one appreciates Gerta's cooking more than I do. She loves fixing me things to eat. She loves cooking for anyone, but me and Mama especially. We're her family, and that is one of the ways she tells us how much she loves us." "Are you really planning on having her cook every meal for us while she's down here?" "Except for tonight. You watch too, whatever I order tonight, Gerta will make the same thing tomorrow, only it will be her way, and it will be better than the dish the restaurant serves. She always does that. She's the best cook I've ever had food from in my life. Not to change the subject, but Joyce told me the doctor has me scheduled for all day Friday, for those tests. We might not be flying home until Saturday. If that happens, we'll probably stay an extra day, okay?" "How come you're going to be paying Billy Ray more than Uncle Phil? We don't do things that way down here. Larry and my father aren't going to put up with it. Phil says he'll do it, because sixty is more than the forty eight he thought you'd be offering." "News travels fast doesn't it? I'll tell you this much, I'm not going to let Larry and your father dictate how much money I ought to be paying them. If they get all upset about the sixty five a year I'm going to be paying Billy Ray, what do you think They'll do when Kyle starts pulling down over a hundred?" "Thousand? A hundred thousand? Each year? You only pay me ten thousand. What makes Kyle worth so much more than me?" "Don't think of it that way. Think about how much Kyle's family makes against how much our family does. We're making a lot more than they are. I'm sure Joyce makes at least ninety by now, and I make another ten or so. With your money and Dale and Eddie's, we've got to be pulling down at least two hundred a year." "Don't even try it, Kenny. Why is Kyle worth ten times as much as me?" "He isn't. And, he doesn't make that much more when you add in all your perks and benefits. You live in nicer houses, fly around in your own private plane, get to ride in a limo, and eat really good food, whenever Gerta or Brenda are around." "I sleep with you." "True, but I don't like to charge for that, and neither do my other wives. We consider that a hidden benefit. If you tell everybody, they're liable to come up with a new way to tax it." "It isn't fair. Dale and Eddie make four times as much as I do." "If they do, they must have gotten a really big raise. Last thing I knew, they both got the same as you do. What about Shirley, how much does she make? Two hundred a week, I bet." "She has several million dollars in that trust fund. She told me about how all the mothers and the kids have their own trust fund." "Is that what you want, a trust fund, with a million dollars?" "It would be a nice thing to have. Security, just in case." "Just in case what?" "In case something happens to you." "Joyce will take care of you if something happens to me." "Then I want to be paid as much as Kyle is." "I can do that. As soon as you prove to me that you can make the company as much money as Kyle will, I'll raise you right up to where he is. Until you prove that to me, you'll have to stay where you are. I was planning on giving you a nice bonus for the work you've done on the remodeling, but now I'm not sure if it wouldn't just make you want more." "A bonus? How much?" "I was thinking a thousand dollars, maybe twelve hundred." "You'll spend that much at dinner tonight." "Not me, Mama will." "You know what I meant." "I'm afraid I do, Cindy. I'm afraid you have the same curse as the rest of your family. Whatever anyone else has, you want more. If you can't get more, you might settle for the same, but only grudgingly. I don't respond well to that philosophy. I can be generous, but I refuse to be intimidated into paying someone more. Your father and Uncle Larry are going to find that out. I was planning on keeping them on par with Phil, but now I think I'll cut my offer by five thousand a year, if they ever decide to call up and ask me for their jobs back." "You can't do that. I wasn't even supposed to tell you what my father told me. Now he'll know that I told you." "I feel bad too. I know how things like that happen. I wasn't supposed to tell Billy Ray about what you, Joyce, and I did last night, but I did it without thinking about what it might mean. I'm sorry." "You told Billy Ray about what the three of us did last night?" "I didn't go into all the details, but I did mention strap on's and dildo's. Billy Ray might not have understood everything." "Do you know how my whole family has been treating me, Kenny? You think this is going to help?" "I know how you and your whole family have been treating me, and I'm getting sick of it. This whole money thing has put me in a terrible mood, and it isn't going to change anything. I try to work things out so everyone is happy, but it just doesn't work. I'm the boss, and I get to offer jobs and the salary's that go with them. All you employee's need to decide is whether to accept or refuse. If I wasn't paying Kyle or Billy Ray so much, no one would have squawked about it. All it really amounts to is greed and envy. The money you get is walking around money, enough so you have some money in your purse in case of an emergency. None of my other wives have ever asked me for a penny, not a one, until you just did. Well, I take that back. Brenda asked me for money lots of times, and I did end up giving her three million. What I meant to say is that I don't want to buy you or rent you, but that seems like what you're hoping for." "I am not. Is that what you think? What did I say to make you think I wanted you to buy me?" "Let's see, first you brought up Shirley's trust money, then said you'd like to have a trust fund too. For security, just in case." "I didn't mean it like that. I was upset about Kyle making ten times as much as me. How do you think that makes me feel? Unappreciated is what. I'm worth a lot more than a tenth of what Kyle is." "Kyle isn't making ten times as much as you are right now, only about four times. I was talking about what he could be making if this program of his is a big success for us." "I'm upset about you discussing our private affairs with Billy Ray too. Now everyone is going to know." "I don't think they are, because Billy Ray better know already not to discuss what I say in my office, with anyone, not without my permission. If he doesn't know this, then I picked the wrong man to trust. By the way, I told Trudy some things too. We were talking and I actually told her more than I did Billy Ray." "You told Trudy about the three of us too?" "Well I was telling her about what Joyce said in the shower, about doing the same thing in the living room, with Mama present to see it. I also told her that you were settling in nicely, and were getting rather fond of my dick." "You better be lying, Kenny. If you aren't I'm ruined with my whole family." "No, Trudy comes from too trashy of a family to ever be believed over you. You should just deny it ever happened. No one will believe her against you. By the way, my birth family was every bit as trashy as Trudy's. Maybe that's why we got along so well on the phone. Did I ever tell you my birth mother used to fuck guys for drinks of booze, or hits off of a marijuana cigarette. Her mother and father were both hopeless alcoholics. My birth father was pretty rich, but he was trashier than any of the rest of them. He was a real ass hole." "I can't believe you're acting this way. Why are you doing this to me?" "I'm not sure. I'm a little out of sorts from dealing with so many Macklinson people today. I know I seem strange to you, Cindy, but all of you seem every bit as strange to me. I'd like to chalk it up to today being a really bad day for me, but I don't think you're going to let me off that easy. Before we go inside, go ahead and tell me what you want me to do to make this all go away. I love you, but my patience was gone well before you decided to start in with me. Joyce got the same kind of treatment from me, and she's going to want me to pay too. Tell me if you can think of something that will make you forgive me." "Tell me you're sorry, and that you feel bad about telling Billy Ray and Trudy those things." "I am sorry. I guess what has been happening with my arm has me more upset than I realized. I usually don't go around deliberately trying to hurt or piss off the people I love." "I forgive you. Now, what about those things you said about paying Uncle Larry and Daddy less than Phil?" "I meant that. But, to prove to you how bad I feel, I'll retract that statement, and we'll pretend that we never discussed what Larry and your Dad told you." "Not Larry. That was only Daddy who said it. Did you really tell Trudy what we did last night?" "Not all of it. I said we had a threesome and then we all showered together. I did tell her that you were becoming real fond of me, and that you liked the sex we were doing together. I mentions strap on's and dildo's to Billy Ray, but I didn't come right out and say Joyce used them on you." "Would he think that she did?" "You know him better than I do, but I'm pretty sure he won't say anything to anyone. Are we ready to go inside now? I need to shower and change" "Are you going to be angry tonight if Joyce and I use that strap on in you?" "Well, you really can't do that. I'll have to take a rain check. I've got to stay pure for Friday. I'm sure they'll be sticking things in my ass. I don't want to make it too easy for them. You know how those rumors get started now that Deliverance became so popular down here." Cindy laughed. I had dodged a bullet for right then, but like with Joyce, I knew I'd have to pay for it sooner or later. ------- Chapter 55 We got to Fleming's at five before seven. Billy Ray and Kyle were waiting for us, outside the restaurant, with their wives. All the rest of us had come together in the stretch Lincoln I'd rented for Hans. I thought it would be a good choice for him, for the time he would be down here. It wasn't as big as our limo, but it held six people in the back compartment, easily. I think Hans was slightly miffed when Gerta elected to sit in the back with us, declaring that she was on her vacation. We were seated almost immediately, and I certainly had no complaints about the service we received. We had two rounds of drinks before we ordered dinner, allowing all of us to relax and get to know each other. I had chosen to sit between Cindy and Joyce, in the center of a long table where they seated us five to a side. It wasn't crowded at all, because the table could have seated sixteen people easily. Maravelle was a real beauty. She had black hair and eyes so dark they looked like they were black as well. She and her family had emigrated from Cuba in 1962, when Maravelle was just an infant. She had spent some years in Florida, before her father was transferred to Birmingham to open up a cigar shop for his employer. Doing the math, it appeared that Billy Ray was several years younger than his wife. It also appeared to me that they were still very much in love with each other. Trudy was showing her pregnancy, but she certainly wasn't what anyone would call large or ungainly. She looked a lot better and happier than she had that night I'd met her, over at Gene's house. I think she felt less tension without her in laws being present. Kyle looked nervous and ill at ease. He was quiet and fidgety, moving around in his chair. "Something bothering you, Kyle?" My question startled him. He'd been reaching for his water glass when I spoke, and he almost tipped it over, recovering it in time only with a deft and very athletic move. "We bombed today. It was a massacre. I shouldn't say it was all bad, because Lenny Train opened twelve accounts himself, and Virgil had nine, but after those two it was pretty bad." "You were only expecting an average of five accounts per salesman. Those two had twenty one new accounts between them. How bad could it be?" "Three of my guys were shut out. One quit after three hours. By the time I got out there and saw what was happening, it was already too late to salvage much. I feel terrible about what happened. I really thought we were ready." "What did the other four do? The ones who weren't shut out." "Two did three each, Larry got four, and Terry got five. They all should have done better. I don't think they tried very hard. That's all I can think it could be." "Kyle, you probably aren't going to find one salesman in five hundred who can do what you do. It comes easy and natural to you. I couldn't do it, and I've seen a lot of very successful salesmen that couldn't come close to doing what you do. If you try to judge their performance by what you could do, you're going to end up a very unhappy and frustrated boss. Getting thirty six new accounts your first day isn't a massacre. Ten or less would be a massacre. Fifty would have been a grand triumph." "Forty one new accounts. I got five while I was showing the other two guys that were shut out how to talk to the buyers." Kyle seemed to be feeling a little better. I worried that he had seemed afraid of what my reaction might be. I tried to stay reasonable and tolerant about achieving goals. I knew too much pressure wasn't good for achieving sustained success. "I was expecting about thirty. Forty one sounds like a terrific beginning, Kyle, something we can build off of. There is almost a certainty that their technique will get better once they get used to making their presentations. Another thing in our long term favor is that the snacks seem to be selling quite well. These small store owners are going to want to buy anything that moves off their shelves, and even more so when their profit mark up is above what they've been used to having. I'm pleased with your first day out there." "They weren't all full sales, Kenny. Most were, but there were some half orders sold too. Maybe about ten of them." "It doesn't matter. Remember, the goal was to get our product on their shelves and to open a company client relationship. As long as our location sales average comes out to about two fifty a month, we'll be very happy. You should concentrate on the positive more. I hope you gave out rewards to the two big producers who did a great job for us today?" "I don't guess I did. I was really ticked at how the others fell on their asses. I should have done better with that. I know you're right about being positive, Kenny, but its hard for me to be happy when all those guys fell right on their asses." "It isn't about you being happy, Kyle. You're the brains and the heart of your sales team. They look to you for leadership and inspiration. One of your biggest jobs is to get them back up and anxious to get out there again tomorrow, to do even better. You can't do that if you aren't telling them positive things, and helping them improve their skills. You need to be thinking of the long run, not a single day's performance." "What can I say to the two guys who didn't sell squat today, the ones who didn't already quit?" "If it was me, I'd tell them that it sometimes takes awhile, and then offer to go with them tomorrow to see if you can spot something they can work on to improve their results. They are the ones that you can use to refine your teaching techniques. The two that sold twelve and nine, they don't need your support as much right now, just some sign that their effort and results are appreciated. Concentrate on the others that need your help, until you can bring them up to an acceptable level of performance. This is about building a permanent sales team. What you learn here will help prepare you for your next group, and the one after that." "No more talk about that, Kenny. Tell us what happened with Billy Ray's daddy today. I asked him to tell me and he said he can't. He won't tell me anything about his new job either." Vellie had just the tiniest hint of a Spanish lilt in her voice. "Phil? Not much happened. He came in, we talked for a few minutes, and he decided to come back to work, starting tomorrow. The reason Billy Ray can't say much about what he's doing for me is because its very hush hush. I have trade secrets that I can't afford to have anyone else knowing. He helps me with keeping all the records for what I'm doing with grain sales and commodity trading. Those records are very important, and very confidential. "One thing I will tell you though, is I'm real happy with the work Billy Ray's been giving me. I think he's going to surprise a lot of people with the way his career is going to take off in the next year or two. I consider Kyle and Billy Ray to be my two Macklinson's stars. "Cindy too though. She's doing a great job helping us remodel the administrative offices, and I'm going to be sending her to Texas soon, to help me with an expansion project we're working on over there. I'm also raising her salary to forty thousand dollars a year, effective the first of next month." Cindy beamed a bright smile at me for including her among my star Macklinsons. The pay raise went over well with her too. She tried to bombard me with questions about what I wanted her to do in Texas, but I told her it wasn't the time to be getting into it. We took a rest while we all considered our menus. Just like I knew she would, Joyce leaned forward so she could see around me and asked Cindy what she wanted to eat. She did that all the time in restaurants. She could never decide what she wanted, so she'd keep asking people until someone mentioned something she thought she'd like. Cindy didn't even hesitate. "Kathy Ireland." Joyce erupted in surprised laughter, delighted at the joke I'd gotten Cindy's help to play on her. "Kenny took Tom Cruise and Sean Connery off the menu." Joyce had her hand on my knee and was rubbing me lovingly as she explained her laughter to the table. "Where are you reading dears? We must not be reading the same menus." Mama seemed confused, which only added to our mirth. "Kenny, if you took Sean Connery off the menu, then Gerta is going to be very upset with you. For years she prays that he comes down her chimney at Christmas." Hans was laughing and threw his arm around Gerta affectionately. "It isn't my chimney I want him coming down on." Now Gerta and Mama were both laughing too. Hans looked undecided for a second or two, but then he joined in with them. "What is this thing about Sean Connery? I don't understand what the big appeal is." I looked around, hoping for a sensible answer. Mama spoke up. "Masculinity, Kenny. He exudes it. He's a throwback to a more primitive era in a way. There's something very compelling about a man you just know would take you if he chose to do it. Sean Connery makes women feel that he could. He looks like he would too." Mama seemed very certain of her words. I had the impression that she had given the matter a lot of thought, even before the subject had come up at the table. "Okay, Joyce. Just for you, I'm putting Sean back on the menu for you. You have to handle all the arrangements though. I won't be involved in setting it up." "Thank you, Kenny. This includes Shirley as well? She likes Sean even more than I do." "You're kidding, right? The guy's in his sixties. I can't believe either of you would prefer him to me." "Not to, Kenny, with. What a delicious sandwich the three of us would make. You just remember that you promised me. It's probably going to take a lot of work to get him to come to Kansas. If you back out after he gets here, Shirley and I are going to be mad." While all this was going on the two Macklinson couples were staring at all of us like we were all Martians or something. I gathered that talking about fantasy threesome's with famous people involved wasn't their normal conversation in a public restaurant setting. "Kenny, if Joyce does get him to come to your house, you let Gerta come and cook for him, Ja?" Gerta was pleading. She believed that Joyce might pull it off. "Gerta, if he does come, I promise to let you come to our bedroom and watch the whole thing. You can even bring a camera and take pictures if you want." "Kenny! Sean isn't going to let anyone take pictures. Gerta no camera. You can watch if you want. After Shirley and I get finished with him, you can even see if he'll give you a turn too." Hans and I looked at each other. We both shrugged at the same time. That's when I noticed Mama. She looked like a school kid who knew the answer to the teacher's question but was fighting not to raise her hand. "Mama, was there something you wanted to say?" "No dear, nothing. If he does come, Joyce, I'm expecting that you'll bring him by so that Thomas and I might meet him. We've been big fans of his work for years. He's Thomas's favorite James Bond." "I'm not sure how long he'll be able to stay, but, if he has the extra time, I'll bring him over. I better talk to the other wives too, especially Emily and Brenda. How about you, Cindy? Any interest in being the meat in a Sean/Kenny sandwich?" Cindy just looked at her without answering. She was still tuned to the Macklinson wavelengths. I'm pretty sure she knew we were all just kidding around. I was pretty sure we were only kidding around. I didn't see any possible way Joyce could actually get Sean Connery to come to Kansas. If she did, I didn't think she could talk him into having a threesome with either her or Shirley, especially with another guy as the third person. I was pretty sure, but with Joyce, you could never absolutely count on anything being an impossibility. When our waiter came over to take our orders, I was the only one not already fixed on a choice. I ended up having a thick rib eye steak. Gerta seemed disappointed that I hadn't ordered one of the more exotic menu offerings. I felt bad that I hadn't done my part and presented her with more of a challenge. I resolved to order a dessert, something rich and unusual, so that Gerta could have something to compete against. I found out that Maravelle worked in her father's cigar store, and that Trudy worked as an office manager for an engineering company. Both enjoyed their jobs, but Trudy and Kyle had decided that Trudy would be a stay at home mother. In a way, Maravelle was a stay at home mom, because she and Billy Ray lived in a house right next door to the cigar store. Her parents lived in a smaller house situated behind their daughter's. I gathered, from what Vellie said, that it was her parents who owned both those properties. It became apparent, during the meal that Kyle and Billy Ray weren't the closest of cousins. From what I was able to observe, Kyle seemed to look down on Billy Ray. Some of his comments suggested he didn't consider Billy Ray to be much competition, in any arena. I didn't like seeing that. While I would concede much to Kyle, I doubted that he had the temperament to do some of the tasks that Billy Ray managed handily. I was beginning to see what Gene had meant when he told me that Kyle was always a little too full of himself. It was one thing to be very talented, and quite another to be conceited about it. "Kyle, I'm probably going to be in and out of the office quite a lot over the coming months. More than I had anticipated I would be, because of our new acquisitions. I'm going to need you to report your results through Billy Ray. He's my new administrator, and he'll be the same as me whenever I'm not in the office. If you need anything, or you have to get in touch with me, you'll need to go through Billy Ray." "You said I only reported to you." "That's correct. When I'm out of the office, Billy Ray is me. Whatever decisions Billy Ray makes are my decisions. It won't work if I'm out of the office and out of contact. I have full faith in Billy Ray's ability to act in my stead." "You want me to take orders from Billy Ray?" "No, I want you to take orders from me. Billy Ray will tell you what I want, when I'm not there to tell you myself. These aren't his orders, they're mine. He'll just inform you of them." "I don't know if I'm going to like that." Billy Ray had looked away after Kyle voiced his objection to taking orders through him. Kyle's objection hung over the whole table. No one else was speaking, waiting to hear my response. "What possible objection could you have? Billy Ray and I work hand in hand all day long. He knows what I want and need, because he sees more of the big picture than you do. Only because he's there when the big picture is being discussed. You need to think of Billy Ray and I as interchangeable parts Kyle, like Joyce and I. Joyce is my boss, but I tell people what to do, in her name, all the time. If I wasn't telling them the right things, she wouldn't keep allowing me to speak for her. The same thing goes for Billy Ray. If you refuse to take my orders from him, its the same as telling me you won't take my orders. Is that what you're telling me?" I saw Trudy tugging at Kyle's arm. She understood that this was a power struggle. I hope she realized why it had come about. Lately, I had found myself coming down hard on people who were mistreating or speaking ill of other people that I knew. It wasn't usually something I got that worked up over. I wondered if the mood swings, lack of tolerance, and my sudden bad temper were at all connected with my hand shaking problems. I was right there during all of it, and at some detached level I was surprised by my actions and reactions. I didn't feel like I was fully in control of my moods anymore. This whole day was almost a perfect example of that out of control feeling. I'd start off with good intentions and then say or do something to darken other people's mood. I hadn't needed to pick this fight with Kyle. Nothing positive would come of it. While I was thinking these thoughts and waiting for Kyle's answer, I reached out to take a sip of my wine. My hand started shaking violently. I moved it back away from the wine glass and moved it down to my lap. Everyone had noticed my hand though. Joyce reached over and took it in both of hers and brought it to her stomach. It was the first time she'd reached out and tried to calm my hand. Before she'd shied away from it in fear. "Sorry about that. It seems like I've picked up a hand tremor from somewhere. It will pass in a moment or two. I believe I was waiting for you to answer my question, Kyle." "What was the question again?" "I asked you if you were telling me that you wouldn't take my orders if they came to you from Billy Ray?" "I've got no problems taking any orders from you. It just surprised me when you said Billy Ray would tell me what to do. You're the boss, Kenny. I know that." "You're the boss too, Kyle, and Billy Ray is going to be a boss as well. We all have to work together to get the best results. We need to help each other, not worry about who is higher up than the next guy. In the next few years, all of us are going to make a pile of money, and we're going to help keep a lot of people working so that they can take care of their families and pay the bills. It isn't only us we're concerned with. Sometimes, we forget that we're all in this together, like one big body." I lifted up my shaking hand to show Kyle. "This is what happens when part of that big body starts doing things on its own, without thinking about how it affects the rest of the body. We don't want that. It isn't good. I've got a big enough problem with finding out how to get this damn hand to behave. I don't need any problems between you and Billy Ray. You're both important to me, and to my plans for this company. I want you to work together, with me, and with each other." I was going to drop my hand back in my lap when it went back to normal all by itself. The effect was quite remarkable in its timing. Couldn't have been better, in fact, as perfect punctuation for what I'd been saying. It was almost like a symbol of what I'd been saying. "You have Essential Tremor, Kenny. My father had it too, but he could control his better. He got to where he could shut it off in less than two seconds. I'd hoped that was all it was. He had it in his right hand too. Most people have it in both hands, but he never did. You tell your doctor that Essential Tremor runs in your family." Mama spoke strongly and clearly to me. She seemed relieved to know what I had. From what she said, I got the impression that it wasn't as serious as I'd feared. I was full of questions to ask, but knew it would be better if we discussed it in private. I could see that Joyce was puzzled and full of questions too. Number one on her mind was about how Mama's father having the same thing had anything to do with me, since I was adopted. I'd never told her about really being Mama's half brother. I could see that I was going to have to do that now. I'd probably have to have a talk with my father as well. I hoped he wouldn't be too upset with Mama for deceiving him for all these years. Hans and Gerta understood too. I wondered why they hadn't mentioned Senior Chalmers tremors to me too. They had seen me shaking a lot earlier. Mostly, I wanted to find out more about the condition, and what I might have to expect in the future. Mama had said her father could stop the tremors right after they started. I wanted to find out how he managed to do it. She had used the word control. I desperately wanted to get back to where I could control my hand. Surprisingly enough, after all that excitement at the beginning, the rest of the dinner party went well. After we finished eating, there was some switching around with the seating. Joyce, Cindy, Vellie and Trudy all got together and were whispering in a conspiratorial manner. Billy Ray, Kyle and I resumed our business discussion, mostly Kyle and I, but I made a point of eliciting Billy Ray's opinions on several questions that came up. Billy Ray said something that put everything in a positive perspective. He was talking about Kyle's teams results for the day. "Forty one new accounts in one day. I'm sure we never opened anything like that many in one day before. If what you said was right, Kenny, about each account adding three thousand a year to our gross sales, our business just got bigger by about a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars today." "Sounds pretty good when you figure it that way, Billy Ray. We're eventually going to be adding a million dollars a month to our gross Quick Snack sales, and we've got the whole country to work with. It will take us several years to do it, and at an extra million dollars a month in sales every month for several years, that's going to come up to a very big annual sales figure. Something like half a billion dollars a year in Quick Snack sales. We already know we can open new accounts, and that people will buy our snacks at a price that everyone seems to like, the consumer, retailer, route drivers and us. This program is going to be a real winner. What we need to work on is finding ways to get each sales team able to sell their fifty new locations a day. Today, you had seven guys who worked together and combined for that average if the other three had only succeeded in getting to theirs." "How could they go out with the same product, the same terms, and even have the same sales pitch, and not be able to sell even one order?" Kyle seemed genuinely unable to fathom how that could happen. He hadn't been in sales long enough to observe how difficult it was for some, even most, people. I was surprised that he'd had two people who were both such big producers. "How did you pick your crew, Kyle? Were these the best salespeople you knew in the area?" "No. Most of them are guys that grew up around here that I knew from either high school or from one team I was on or another. They were guys I thought might be good at selling. Lenny and Virgil were in sales, Lenny sold that advertising on the register tapes they give you at the markets, and Virgil sold cemetery plots and mortuary services. I think one or two others might have done some selling, but none of the rest of them had. You think that was my problem, picking them by their looks and how they could talk?" "Some people say salesmen are born not made, but I don't think that's true. Some, like you, Kyle, just have a natural talent for it. Most though, are the products of good training. My father has a man who trains sales people. That's all he does. By the time he finishes with them, they can sell. Some are stars, but all of them can sell. We don't need stars, just people who are trained and know what they're doing. The product is good enough, and the margins we're offering are very attractive to the stores. It isn't a hard sell. I think all of your people need to have sales training. They all need some training, even the stars. Even you could be made better with training, Kyle." It didn't look like Kyle agreed that his sales ability could be improved. I knew his sales management abilities could be improved. In any event, I'd be having my father put one of his sales training teams together to come down to Birmingham and set up some classes for us. We needed some personnel people to come in and handle applicant interviews for future sales teams. I think Shirley's dad had told me that only one in five applicants for sales positions were suited for the job they sought. Of the ones who got through the initial screening, only half proved able to succeed, once they'd been fully trained. Of that half who succeeded, more than half of them still quit selling within the first three years. After three years, the ones who were still working in the sales jobs they'd been trained for, they accounted for the bulk of all new sales. This held true in any industry, according to Mr. Jones, Shirley's father. "Kyle were you naturally good at any sport?" "I'm good at all of them. I have a lot of athletic ability." He seemed so sure of himself, so cocky. I found his attitude maddening. It motivated me to want to knock him down a peg. I could sympathize with his father and uncles. It was hard to penetrate such a high wall of confidence and conceit. Still, I needed to try. "Did you play football in high school?" "Three years. All city my junior and senior years. Played both ways too, safety and wide receiver." Billy Ray nodded to confirm Kyle's claims. "Did you get better after working with your coaches?" "Not really. I was already good when I first tried out. Maybe I learned how to run more precise routes, or how to throw off a defender by giving him a shoulder feint. I was already about as good as I ever was, by the time I got to high school." "Maybe you would have gotten a lot better if you didn't have the attitude that no one can ever teach you anything. That's the problem with being pretty good. Most people are content to get by with that. There are a lot of high school athletes who are pretty good, but only a very few make it to the top." "I could have. I had a lot of offers to big colleges. I just didn't want to leave my friends or family. I had all I ever wanted, right here." "Well, I'm sure you had the potential, just like you do now. I have to hope you aren't going to continue your pattern of settling for just being pretty good. You have an opportunity here to be much more than that. I can already tell you that you won't live up to your incredible potential unless and until you change this attitude you seem to have. An attitude that you're already good enough. You're going to need to grow a lot to be able to handle the task of running a national sales campaign. Unless I see a big difference in your attitude soon, I'm not sure I'd be willing to take such a big financial risk on you." "It sounds like you've been talking to them again." "Your father and uncles?" He nodded that they were who he'd meant. "I guess you could say that, Kyle. I've spoken to your father about you. You and I have spoken about it too. There's a fine line between being confident and being cocky. You step over that line all the time. It turns people against you, makes them root for anyone else you're against. You can have all the ability in the world, and still not be a success, or a great leader. You can succeed by going out and personally opening twenty new accounts a day. I know you're already capable of doing that. The job I have in mind for you isn't doing that. It's a lot bigger than that. To succeed, you need to be able to make others better, to make them successful. I'm no longer sure you can succeed at that." "I can succeed if you leave me alone and give me a chance. All I need is a chance to do it my way." "That's fair enough, Kyle. I'll run two programs, one your way, and the other one my way. We'll run them both until the end of next year. If yours ends up being the best, I'll turn over whatever I built to you, and pay you a quarter million dollars as a bonus for winning our bet. If mine is the best program, you turn over what you've built to me, and you can join one of my sales teams, and spend the rest of your career going out and opening new locations for us." "You'd just use your money to rig it so that your guys would win." "I wouldn't, but that isn't what you're really afraid of. You're afraid to go out and compete against any real competition. There are millions like you, all pretty good, but unwilling to put in the work and effort to try to compete at a much higher level. Natural talent only takes you so far. All the rest is hard work and determination. You have to expend some effort to get beyond pretty good, and you haven't shown me yet that you'd be willing to do that." "So, what do I do now?" "Show me I'm wrong about you. Put in the hard work and make some sacrifices. Don't be so damn cocky all the time. You have a lot more natural sales talent than I do, but I don't believe you've ever had to work hard at anything. If you don't give everything at this job, you'll fail. It will get too big for you, and, after awhile, it will simply overwhelm you. Pretty good isn't good enough, get better." Kyle stood up and went back over to where Trudy was sitting, A worried expression appeared on her face as the two of them continued to whisper together. From Kyle's scowls, it seemed like Trudy was telling him something that he didn't want to hear too. "You were hard on him, Kenny. He really is the best, just like he's always telling all of us. If anyone can do it, Kyle can. If you ride him too hard, he'll quit on you." Billy Ray was looking over at his cousin while he told me this. "If he has any quit in him, it will come out on its own, Billy Ray. He needs pushing, and for someone to tell him he isn't as great as he thinks he is. Up until now, he was always able to show people they were wrong, because he never bit into a really tough challenge. He avoided them. If he's going to avoid this one, I need to know before I sink too much time and money into backing him." "How will you know if it was the challenge that made him quit, or the way you spoke to him? He might quit just because he stopped believing in you having confidence in him. I know what that's like" "That's another new job for you Billy Ray. I'll be the bad guy, and you can be the good guy with Kyle. I'll issue the challenges and you can be his main cheerleader. Together, we might just get him to start reaching up for more than what his current reach can grasp." "I don't think I'd be good at that, Kenny. Besides, me and Kyle, we don't exactly get along too good." "You did tell me you'd try to do whatever I needed, right?" Billy Ray looked miserable when he nodded his assent to my question. "I need you to help Kyle stay with this program he's trying to put together. I'll back you all the way, as long as you're really trying to help him succeed." Billy Ray got up, every bit as unhappy as Kyle, and headed over to his own wife. Cindy and Joyce descended on me, pouncing on their newly created opening. "You seem to really be trying to make people unhappy today, Kenny. I don't think I've seen you like this, not since the time we first came back from Florida." Joyce had plopped down in my lap, or plopped up, since she had to jump a little to manage it. "I know. I've felt it too. I think I'm trying to help, or to do what is right, but it all keeps ending with me pissing people off. I really don't want to piss them off, but it ends up that way anyhow." "Well, one thing I've noticed is that you don't have any patience with people today. No tolerance either. Trudy told me what you said to her, and Cindy told me about you jumping on her for her telling you what she meant about trashy families. Tell me about that comment Mama made about her father having hand tremors too." Joyce never missed much. I regretted not having told her about who my real birth father was, or about how I'd come to find it out. Up until now, it was a secret between Mama, Gerta, probably Hans, and me. What Mama had said at the table earlier would necessitate a change in that. No way to avoid it. "She said it because her father was my father too. I found out about it when I had some tests done on our DNA. Mama and Uncle Bunny knew about it, but they didn't tell my Dad. I never told you because it was a family secret, and I didn't think it was right for me to be the one to tell you." "She made it sound like these tremors weren't that bad. She said her father could control his. They didn't kill him did they?" "I don't know what he died of. We can ask Mama later. Tell me what you think of Kyle, Billy Ray, and their wives." "Cindy knows them much better than I do. Ask her." "I will ask her, later. Right now, I want to know what you think." "I like them both, but they're different from each other. Vellie is quiet and not really interested in the company or in the Macklinson family. She's angry because of how Billy Ray gets treated. I think she loves him a lot, but there's something wrong too. I like Trudy, but I get the idea she isn't content with being stuck with Kyle's family as her only social outlet. She asked a lot of questions about what all the wives do together, and about if we didn't ever get jealous. I think she's curious about girls, but maybe I'm just projecting my own feelings onto her. She thinks Kyle is quite the catch, and she's thrilled that someone else now shares her opinion." I waited to see if Joyce was going to add anything, but she didn't. I looked over at Cindy. "I think Joyce is right about Trudy being curious about girls. She's asked me questions in the past. She's definitely curious about you. I think she's had it hard not being able to have friends outside the family. Kyle doesn't go out much with her, and when he does, Wayne or Jesse, and their girl friends are usually there too. He doesn't want her hanging around the people who knew them when they were broken up, because of what happened." "The break up you mean?" "No, Trudy going out with that other boy. I wish I could remember his name." "Was it Vince?" Joyce asked the question, and Cindy's eyes got big, amazed that Joyce had known the name. "It was. How did you do that?" "Trudy told me that Kenny reminded her of someone named Vince." "Kenny doesn't look anything like Vince. He was shorter, and stocky. Kenny's a lot better looking. She's dreaming if she thinks Kenny looks like Vince did." "She didn't say he looked like Kenny, just that Kenny reminded her of Vince." Cindy started laughing, and then she looked over to where Kyle and Trudy were sitting. "Vince had this attitude, like he was every girl's secret dream. It was pathetic, because he really wasn't very good looking. He had this big nose, and all these black heads and pimples on his chin, If anyone was more full of himself than Kyle though, it was Vince. Kenny's not like that, except when we're in bed. Do you think that's what she meant? I knew she slept with Vince. She better not come around trying to find out if she was right." This time the look she sent in Trudy's direction was an angry, jealous, one. I turned and caught Mama's eye to signal her that I thought it was time to go. She gave me a nod, and I asked our waiter for the check. I got two surprises when the check came. The first surprise was with the amount of the bill. In spite of what Cindy had told me as a warning about it being expensive, almost a thousand dollars seemed very high. When I saw a charge of three hundred dollars for a single bottle of wine that Mama had ordered with our desserts, I felt better. Our combined wine and bar bill was easily more than half the total. My second surprise came when Mama made no move to pay the check herself. That was a first. Fortunately, I had my company American Express card, and an unlimited expense account. Mama smiled serenely when I pulled it out and handed it to the waiter. It took all of us fifteen minutes to say our good-byes outside the restaurant. I noticed that Kyle did quite a bit of politicking with Mama and my aunt and uncle. That was good. It meant he still had hopes of succeeding. Trudy came over to me when she said good night, and planted a kiss on my lips. Joyce snorted and Cindy looked outraged. Trudy whispered something to Joyce who simply nodded and smiled at her. Maravelle and Billy Ray were more subdued around all of us, which only seemed to make all of us more effusive towards the two of them. There were hugs, but no kisses, and handshakes for me and Hans from Billy Ray. In the rental car, Cindy and Joyce really started dishing the dirt with Mama and Gerta. I stayed over in my corner, listening to what was being said, but not participating. Joyce told the ladies that Trudy had whispered to her that she wanted to watch too, if Sean Connery ever came to Joyce's bedroom. It was Mama that dropped the bomb on all of us. I never figured out how she could tell these things, but I knew she had this uncanny knack. "Kyle is sleeping with Maravelle." You could have heard a mouse fart in the quiet that immediately followed, before Cindy and Joyce clamored loudly to get the details from Mama. ------- Chapter 56 Mama spun a circumstantial evidence argument in order to make her case about Maravelle and Kyle being lovers. It mostly came down to looks that they'd been observed exchanging, and this one time that Mama had seen Kyle lightly run the back of his hand across a seated Maravelle's neck. I hadn't seen any of what she described. I knew I didn't pay as much attention to those kinds of things as I used to, but still, I thought I would have noticed something if it had all been like what Mama was describing. "Kyle does have this reputation. Had it all through school, and right up until he married Trudy, for being a big flirt. I've never heard anyone ever say it was more than that though. He likes to show people that he could be good with getting women too. As far as I've ever known, Trudy was the only girl he's ever been serious with. He didn't even date other girls. Even during that time when they split up, he didn't date any other girls. I'd find it very difficult to believe he was having an affair. Even more so when you say its with Maravelle. She's just as angry with Kyle as she is with all the rest of my family. I might be made to believe that Trudy could do something like that, but not Vellie." Cindy seemed pretty certain of herself when she spoke. "Believe what you choose to, dear. I'm one hundred percent convinced that I'm right. Those two are sexually intimate. I recognize all the signs. Kyle thinks he's too clever to ever get caught or found out, but his overconfidence is very misplaced. He made it quite obvious. Billy Ray's wife tried to discourage Kyle from being so obvious with his glances and that one touch, but she didn't have the will to resist him entirely. I made this known to you Kenny in the hopes that you will be forewarned if the affair turns out badly. I see potential for a serious division within the family should this become common knowledge." "Mama, Cindy's part of that family too, and she seems willing to share what she learns with her father." Cindy gave me a look, and not a benevolent one either. "Nonsense, dear. Cindy knows this would be harmful in the extreme. I'm sure her first loyalty lies with you." Mama reached across between the space separating her from Cindy, patting her gently on the hand. "She wouldn't betray the trust we've shown in her." "How will Trudy or Billy Ray react if they found out?" Joyce asked the practical questions. this one had been on my own mind too. Personally, for the two couples, it could be a tragedy. For Macklinson's, given the prominent positions that Kyle and Billy Ray held in my current and future planning, I needed to know. I had to prepare a plan for damage control. We all turned to Cindy. "I still don't believe it's true, but if it is, Kyle couldn't have chosen a more dangerous woman to have an affair with. There has been bad blood between Billy Ray and Kyle from when they were both little kids. They must have gotten into a hundred fights, and Kyle would always beat Billy Ray. Billy Ray was a wild boy, and so was Kyle. They were both dangerous wild. Billy Ray would crash his race cars, trying to make impossible passes, and Kyle would compete with him off the race track too, getting him to do even more dangerous stunts. Once they both broke their arms jumping off the same branch of a tree. Kyle jumped even after Billy Ray had already broken his arm just a few seconds before. For awhile, it looked like they were in a race with each other to see which one would be the first to kill himself. "When Billy Ray met Maravelle, all that changed, and he settled right down. She told him he had to choose, because she wouldn't put up with any more of his foolish risk taking. She was three years older than him, but very beautiful, so Billy Ray actually eased back a lot. She made him stop racing, and she put her foot down about him accepting anymore of Kyle's challenges." "How long ago was this, that Billy Ray settled down because of Maravelle?" I asked her the question because I wanted to get a sense of when all the wildness finally stopped. "Billy Ray met Maravelle while Kyle and Trudy were still going together, maybe five years ago? When they started getting serious, after about a year or so, I think that was right before Kyle and Trudy had their big fight. They got married during the time when Kyle was split up with Trudy. It was after the wedding that Kyle and Trudy got back together. Maybe a month or two after." "Well, they're both grown men now with children either here or on the way. Why do you think it would be so dangerous if Billy Ray found out?" "Billy Ray is so in love with Vellie, and he's changed so much just so she would be with him. Even when everyone else was down on him, he always had her. Take that away from him, and he doesn't have anything left. Billy Ray does crazy wild things whenever he gets to thinking that nothing much matters. He'd come looking for Kyle, and it wouldn't end until one of them was hurt bad, maybe even killed." "So, you think Billy Ray might actually go after Kyle, if he found out that he and Vellie were fooling around?" "Probably go after him, but it wouldn't end there. He might try to fight Kyle, but Kyle would whip him in any regular fight. Billy Ray would do whatever it took to hurt Kyle back, even if it meant shooting him. I told you there was bad blood, and there is. Billy Ray would have to find something he could do where he would finally end up as the winner, or else he'd just kill Kyle. Nothing else would do. The way things stand right now, no one would take Billy Ray's side. They never do." "Mama could be wrong. She's been wrong about these things before." "I have not! Name one time when I was mistaken, Kenny." "That time you accused Dad of having it off with Georgia Connor. You were wrong then." "Was I? Why, because he denied it? He says I was wrong, I don't. Georgia as much as admitted it to me once when she'd been drinking and got onto one of her crying jags. Men are weak about these things. They find it more difficult to resist anything like that if its freely offered. I forgave him that indiscretion, because I knew she'd been throwing herself at him for years. He resisted longer then most men would have." I had some trouble just accepting her word for it, but I still needed to stay on track with our current problem. "Are you absolutely sure about Kyle and Maravelle, Mama? This could be catastrophic if we do something and it turns out that you're mistaken." "I saw what I saw, but I didn't actually see them in bed together. I know what I saw, and I'm convinced that they're lovers. Not past lovers either. What's going on is current. Hire someone to check on it if you have any doubts. You'll see." I had a different plan, one that was simpler and quicker as well. I'd ask Kyle. I was confident I'd be able to tell if he was lying. Even if he did lie to me and I couldn't tell, he would have to have second thoughts about continuing his affair. In bed that night both girls were quiet and subdued. There wasn't any strap on either. We didn't even make love. I didn't sleep well, having a lot on my mind. Cindy and I left for work at seven. In the car I warned Cindy not to say anything to anyone about what my mother had claimed. I found Kyle over at the loading dock supervising the loading of the sales teams trucks. I made it a point to be introduced to each member of the team, singling out Virgil and Lenny for personal credit and congratulations. I told the whole crew that we were pleased with their effort and expected an even better second day from them. I also told Kyle I needed to see him privately, to discuss a situation I was concerned about, one that I wanted some advice about. He finished up with loading his team and then arranged for all of them to meet for lunch at a restaurant in Birmingham's East side. When the sales team dispersed to go to their assigned areas, Kyle turned back to face me. He was smiling, and looking more confident than he'd been the previous evening. I looked around to make sure no one could hear us. "Kyle, my mother tells me that you and Maravelle are fucking each other. I told her you weren't stupid enough to be dipping your dick in the family's inkwell. She said she's positive that you are. Who's right?" That wasn't how I'd planned to do it, but it had somehow seemed like the correct approach to take at that particular moment. I was already feeling a lot of strain, and one of the causes of some of it was standing right in front of me. I felt powerless against my physical problems, but this was something I could do something about. I saw no reason to beat around the bush with it. Perhaps, given how things turned out, I should have tried a less direct approach. Kyle made a disgusted face at me, as if I were beneath contempt, and tried to shove his way past me. It was his reaching out with his hands, to shove me out of his path, that triggered an unexpected response from me. I punched him in the mouth. It was a reaction, and one I knew, even as it happened, was too much reaction for the provocation given. I wasn't a violent person. I disliked violence, but there I stood, committing it. Kyle jumped back from my punch, his hand moving quickly up to his mouth to check for blood or any signs of a cut. His eyes had narrowed, anger flashing hotly as he glared back at me. "You're crazy, you know that? That's assault. I'll have you arrested, and I'll sue you for a million dollars." Kyle was wild eyed by then, deliberately mobilizing the adrenaline for his own attack. His words were harsh and clipped, barely coherent with the rage he was building up inside. I could see he was marshaling his anger, bringing it to a feverish pitch. It was obvious that he'd be retaliating, and very soon. I doubted he was at all used to having people strike out at him like I had. After only a few seconds, he started advancing towards me. I didn't back away. It didn't seem real that I was actually going to be having a fist fight. We both started throwing punches. It felt good to me to be engaged in something I could fight back against for a change. I savored the pain I felt from his punches landing on me, as well as the ones I managed to land back on him. It was Kyle who finally stepped back again, after a furious fifteen seconds of a wild swinging melee from the two of us. We were both aware that neither of us had scored any blow against the other that was even close to being as solid as the one I'd landed when he first pushed me. It had been more a wild flailing of arms at each other. "Trudy is going to be crushed, Kyle. Billy Ray will probably kill you. It will split the family wide open." I wanted him to realize that more was at stake than could possibly be settled with us fighting. He had to understand the import of what was going to take place. He charged me again, this time too enraged to even care where he was hitting me. I absorbed his wild swings until I saw a good opening and landed my own solid blow on his cheek and jaw. He dropped to his knees, but was back up almost instantly. Again he backed away. Trying to think of a tactic that would be more successful than what he'd already tried. I could see he was thinking. With the stress he must have been under, and the pressure, this was a remarkable feat. I knew it wasn't easy to think clearly in the heat of a battle such as this. I knew my own thinking wasn't very acute right then. "I never touched Vellie. Your mother is crazy." "You touched her last night, on the back of her neck when you thought no one would notice." Kyle winced, realizing that what he thought had gone unnoticed, hadn't really. "I meant I never touched her the way you said I did. Why are you even doing this? This is stupid. Even if I was doing what you said, it isn't any of your business. What are you trying to prove?" "I don't know. This isn't how I thought it would go, Kyle. I guess I thought we'd have a talk and I'd tell you that what you were doing was too dangerous, and you had to stop. This isn't how I thought we'd end up, fighting like a couple of children." He charged at me again, but I was ready for it. I outweighed him by quite a bit, and while he was undoubtedly the better athlete, I took comfort in knowing that he didn't seem to have any more experience with brawling than I did. I beat him back again, although I absorbed some damage from his attack myself. "We need to stop this, Kenny, I quit. You can run the sales team by yourself. You'll never get anywhere with it around here. It won't work without me showing them how to do it. You better keep your lying thoughts to yourself too. You even come near my wife with these lies and I'll kill you." "You afraid she'll divorce you and take the baby? Serve you right if she does that. We're not done here yet though. You can quit if you want to, Kyle. That's your style. I didn't come down here to force you to quit, but it doesn't surprise me a bit that you'd want to. You have no stomach for real challenges, especially ones where failure is a very real possibility. Not your style. All you enjoy are sure things where you can impress everyone with how good you are. I fell for it once, but I know better now. We still need to talk, to work out how we're going to stop this thing you're doing before it tears your whole family apart." Kyle was thinking. He was tired and afraid. The possibility of having people find out about his affair with Vellie was unexplored by him. He'd never given much thought to any of the possible consequences of them being exposed either. It was just now dawning on him that his life was about to be severely impacted due to his rash and selfish indulgence. "Look, Kenny, I'll stop it with her right now, this minute, but you have to swear to me that you won't tell Trudy about any of this. You have to promise me, please." He was desperate, begging, pleading with me to help him with this problem he had. "If you quit your job, Trudy is bound to have questions, she'll to want to know why. If she asks me what happened, I'll have to tell her. You better make sure she never asks." "You don't want me to quit?" Kyle couldn't believe that's what I meant. "I wanted you to quit fucking your cousin's wife, not quit your job. I want you to quit going around thinking that you're better than everyone else, and that all the rules don't necessarily apply to you. Quit thinking you're the Golden Boy, because you aren't. I don't think Billy Ray would ever do to you what you and Vellie have done to him. In that one way alone, he's shown me he's a better man than you are. You better hope he never finds out what you were doing with his wife." "He won't find out, not unless you tell him. I never told anyone." "You told my mother. Not with your words, but by your actions when you were around Maravelle. Not everyone is that easy to fool, Kyle. You better hope no one else figures out what you were doing. Cindy knows though, because Mama told her at the same time she told the rest of us. Now you have someone else to be worried about. I'm pretty sure Cindy has doubts, but I'm going to tell her you admitted it to me." "Shit, Kenny. Shit, shit, shit. She's just going to go running off at the mouth about this. You should have just taken out an ad in the News, and saved yourself a bunch of trouble. Don't tell her I said that about me and Vellie. Tell her it isn't true, that we denied it. She'll believe you." "She'd believe me, but only because she knows I wouldn't lie to her. That's also why I won't lie to her, because I want her to continue trusting me. What I will do is ask her not to tell anyone else." I looked at Kyle's face, it wasn't marked up very much. Only my ear really hurt, and it felt like it was probably red. Neither of us were cut anywhere I could see or feel. I stepped aside, to allow him to go by me, giving him a chance to rush me again if he wanted to. He walked by without trying anything. "I'm going to go see Vellie, to tell her its over." "You get back to work. I told you I was going to go talk to her. She'll know its over. If it ever starts up again, I'll make you regret it, I swear. You might get away with it this time, but you'd never get away with a next time." "I don't want to work for you anymore, Kenny. Just let me quit. We'll make up another story." "Kyle, if you quit me over this, you're going to have to bear the full brunt of it. The only reason I might have for trying to help you out of this is because you're a valuable employee to me. If you quit the company, I have no incentive to try to get this settled quietly." "That's blackmail." "Is it? That isn't how I see it. What I see is me trying to clean up a big mess that you made. For doing that, I deserve something back in return. We can do it your way or my way, Kyle, its up to you. Do you want to go back to work and hope this all goes away, or do you want to try to take your chances, hoping that when Billy Ray and Trudy find out about what you've been up to, you can fast talk your way out of facing the consequences?" Kyle waited before answering. I knew he was calculating his chances. He must not have liked the conclusion he came to. "I'll go back to work. When you talk to Maravelle, tell her I'm sorry, and that I didn't mean for this to cause her any big problems." I had the address to the cigar store where Maravelle lived and worked. I knew that Billy Ray was safely back in my office, hard at work. I'd just sent Kyle back to be with his sales team, out in the field. When I got to the address. Maravelle and her two little children were playing in her front yard. From seeing the look on her face when I pulled up to the curb, I knew Kyle had already phoned her. I might have done the same in his shoes. In a way, it was a brave thing for him to have done. I went over and stood by the little wooden gate leading to her front yard. "He told me already. You can go back to your company. It's all over with now." "Did you think that was going to be all you had to say to make this all go away? I want to know why you did this to Billy Ray. We all thought you loved him. Everyone said so." She didn't like me standing on the sidewalk discussing such private business. Too bad, I thought. She was the one who decided to choose the outdoors as the best place for us to talk. I could see she'd been crying too. Maybe it was more than just sex between them. It didn't matter. Whatever it was, it needed to end. "I don't want to talk anymore, go away, please." "I told Kyle that I was going to talk to you about this. I'll leave if you think that's best, but, if I do, I'm going to need to talk to Billy Ray instead of to you. If I don't understand this, I'll never be sure if it got ended or not." "We both told you it did. I don't have to explain it to you. This is something that's as much Billy Ray's fault as Kyle's or mine." "If you want to explain it to Billy Ray instead of me, that's probably better. It concerns him a lot more than it does me. I wanted to see if there was a way we could all escape from this with little further damage. I'll give him some time off to take care of what he needs to. I hope the two of you can work out your problems, Vellie. I know he loves you and his kids." "Why couldn't you leave us alone and let it run its course? It wasn't any business of yours. It was you coming here that caused it to happen." "Me? How did I cause you to start cheating on your husband? A husband that thinks the world of you." "He quit when you came in and made all those changes. I told him he had responsibilities, but he went and quit like all the rest of them. He knew we couldn't afford it, but he did it anyway. At first, this thing with Kyle was only meant to hurt Billy Ray, to pay him back for hurting us. It started out that way, but then it changed. It was only supposed to be once, but I didn't know then how I'd feel." "You better try to call Kyle back and tell him to go hide. Cindy seems pretty sure that Billy Ray might want to kill Kyle when he finds out about what's been going on." "Kyle said it was your mother who figured it out. It was the hand against my neck wasn't it? I almost told Billy Ray we couldn't go last night. I knew it was going to be hard for us both to be there and to have so many other people around. Billy Ray was so happy and excited just to be invited, so I took a chance. I should have known we couldn't hide what we feel." "That, plus all the looks you two kept exchanging. Are you planning on divorcing Billy Ray?" "I don't know. I've thought about it. Its hard when there are kids, plus I'm a Catholic. My parents too. If they find out about this, I might as well kill myself." "No way they won't find out if I leave here without the answers I need." "You think you know him, but you don't. He doesn't really care about me, or about the kids, only his precious Macklinson family. When it came to what was best for them or us, he always did what they wanted You think he really cares about whether I'm sleeping with another man? Only if that other man is a Macklinson. That's why I picked Kyle, I knew that would hurt the worst. I thought it would end up hurting him though, not me. They'll all think it was Kyle who came after me, but it wasn't like that. "All of them are just like Billy Ray, except for Kyle. He's the only one that's different. He fights back against them, and he does what he wants to do. All the rest, they follow the three old men. We all saw who was the first one to go back to work. Not Billy Ray, no never Billy Ray. I got tired of waiting for him to stand up to them, to demand better treatment. He said it was all going to be different now, that this was his big chance. It was already too late. Too much has already happened to us. This is just like him too, to wait until after I've finally given up, and then have something good like this happen." Sometime, in the beginning of her speech, she had lost her composure, and started weeping uncontrollably. It sounded like she felt like she'd give up on Billy Ray recently, maybe just before he and the others started coming back to work. The most troubling thing, from what she was saying to me, were the deep feelings she obviously had for Kyle. She didn't sound like a woman who had accepted that her affair had to end. "It doesn't have to be too late, Maravelle. All you have to do is stop this and go back to how things were before. Let Kyle go back to Trudy, and you go back to being a good wife to Billy Ray." "I don't love him anymore. Not after being with Kyle. When he touches me, I cringe inside. I thought I married a man, but Billy Ray isn't a man, not like Kyle is. Four years I waited for him to grow up and act like a man. To stand up to them, to be independent." "Just out of curiosity, what does acting like a man mean to you, Maravelle?" "Standing up for yourself, not letting people walk all over you. All the time I kept after him to do that, but he never would. Even now, it wasn't him that got this new job, it was you. He was willing to go right back to the old one." "Everyone told me about some of the stunts Billy Ray and Kyle used to get up to before you gave him the ultimatum. You don't hold yourself responsible for some of the way Billy Ray gets treated by his family? You have to feel bad for a man who gives up his whole way of life for the love of a woman, then, after he goes ahead and does all that, she starts saying he isn't acting like a man. Billy Ray never had a chance. I think he made the wrong choice when he made those changes." "Tell him that. I don't care anymore. We all made wrong choices. We can't do anything to change the choices we made. I'm not ashamed of what Kyle and I did. I've got half a mind to call Trudy myself, just to get it out in the open. At least I'd have a chance with Kyle, after Trudy found out about us." I left her crying in her front yard. This was turning into another big mess. I didn't see how this could ever be contained like I'd hoped. Maybe I should have held off on cornering Kyle first thing in the morning like I did. Now that I thought about how things were turning out, maybe I should have just stayed out of all of it and waited to see how everything would shake out. I'd ended up accelerating the mess I'd been trying to head off. When I got to my office, Billy Ray wasn't there. I was glad he wasn't. The way things were going, I'd have probably started in on him too. I didn't have much time to savor that small blessing though, because Cindy came striding into my office with red hot fire in her eyes. "You can be such a total jerk, Kenny. You've done it now. Guess where Kyle went, right after you got done beating him up?" This was a very angry woman, and she was directing all of it squarely at me. "Out to work like I told him to?" I didn't know what tone I should take. I'd known already that what had happened was backfiring on all of us. I didn't know what I could do to lessen the fallout of it. "Over to Daddy's, to confess about Maravelle. Now why don't you try to guess who was also there, when he went into Daddy's kitchen to do this? Phil and Larry, that's who. Guess who called Billy Ray, even before Kyle got through with his confession? Uncle Phil, that's who!" "This is all for the good, Cindy. We'll get the air cleared now, and then we can go right back to work on expanding this business. Billy Ray will get over it. Maravelle told me she's given up. She doesn't love him anymore anyway. Its better if it all comes out and gets settled." I didn't believe a word of that, but what else could I say? The problem wasn't going to be made any less serious by my admitting how bad it could get. "Better for who? You haven't learned anything from all I've tried to teach you, not if you think this is going to make anything better. This is a disaster, a big pile up out on the Interstate. This time its my whole family in that pile up. And, Kenny, you caused it to happen." "I disagree with that part about me causing it. I disagree that it has to end up as a disaster. Something good might come out of it too. There has been a lot of dishonesty, ever since I came down here. Maybe now, we can all try to be more honest with each other. I think a lot of this trouble would be helped if everyone was just being honest. "Honest like how?" "Honest, like honest. Telling the truth about things and speaking plainly about what you want or need. Ever since I first came down here, I've been saying straight out what I want. All the rest of you have been talking all around everything, never coming out and saying what it is you're really after. None of this would have happened if everyone had been honest, right from the start." "I've been honest." Cindy was still mad. All my little rant had accomplished was to get her to focus less on her troubles with her family, which she blamed me for, and more on her anger at me alone. I'd helped focus her anger. Again, this isn't what I wanted to have happen. "You keep using me, manipulating, and deceiving me. You keep doing this in order to get me to help you out with your family and their problems. How is that being honest?" "You always knew what I was doing. I never tried to hide it from you. How is that being dishonest?" The funny part was she was asking me this as a serious question. How was I supposed to argue with someone who didn't consider manipulation and deceit dishonest? She apparently thought it was all okay, as long as the other person knew he was being manipulated and deceived. "All of you are just using me to benefit yourselves. You don't even care about me." That stopped her. I was hoping she'd tell me I was wrong, and that she loved me more than anything. Instead, she wheeled right around and left me alone in my office again. I sat down at my trading desk and adjusted my feeds. I didn't make a single trade, I just looked at the screens, trying to think, trying to put my pain somewhere not quite so close to the surface. I felt everything getting away from me. I felt myself on the verge of slipping into a big depression. My reactions to what was happening around me were all turning these situations back against me. This time I felt, more than felt, I was convinced, I was doing most of this damage to myself. This was different than how I'd felt before. Always before, I'd felt like I was only the victim. This time I realized, for the first time, that even if I was the victim, I was the one responsible for victimizing myself. It was mostly a self inflicted pain I was feeling. I was tearing my life apart, using my own chosen methods for doing so. It was very discouraging, and it made me sad to recognize that it was happening to me again. I held my hand out from my side and watched it, willing it to begin trembling. I wanted it to shake. Surely there had to be something bad in my life that I hadn't brought upon myself? It took a few minutes, until my hand and arm started getting tired from being held out, perpendicular to my body, for such a long period of time. When it did start trembling, then shaking, I rooted for it to become even stronger. I wanted it to shake more violently than it ever had in the past. I was rewarded by my wish being granted. What had begun with the barest of trembles had evolved into a full blown shaking, finally, becoming so violent that my upper arm and shoulder felt like they were now shaking wildly as well. It had never progressed this far before. I stood there and watched it, no longer trying to encourage it to get worse. I walked over to my desk and tried to pick up a picture that Joyce had taken. A picture of me, on the floor at home, wrestling with eight of the children. I reached for it with the shaking hand, and only succeeded in knocking over the picture, and the frame that held it. It was symbolic to me. What my hand was doing to my body, my actions were doing to my whole life. I needed to find a way to get both under control, and I needed to do it before I made the situation too bad to ever recover from the damage being caused. I was processing thoughts, but these thoughts were beginning to become disjointed. It was becoming more of a free association than any actual organized or structured thinking. I found my mind leaping from one unrelated subject to the next, and treating all of them as if they were somehow connected closely together. I recognized the danger in this, and made an effort to bring myself back under control again. I moved around my desk and sat down in the chair. When I happened to glance at my right hand, the shaking had stopped. Left behind though, in its wake, was a much gentler, barely noticeable, very slight little tremor. For some reason, I felt comforted that the arm movement hadn't left me entirely this time. Now, there was this constant reminder for me. No one called, no one came in to see me for the rest of the day. I was left alone to follow my random thoughts and associations. I waited until five thirty for Cindy to come back, but when she didn't, I got up and walked down to my car and drove home. I knew that Joyce, Mama, and Gerta would be there. I'd have a nice dinner, and then get myself some needed rest. I didn't have any problems with the drive to the house. I had already greeted everyone and gone into the kitchen to take a look at what Gerta was preparing for dinner when Joyce came in looking for me. "Where's Cindy, Kenny?" "She left earlier than me. I thought she'd be home before I got here. She might be over at Gene's. We had a little fight, and there was some trouble in the family. She'll probably call us after things get settled down over there." "What kind of trouble? Why is the side of your face all puffy, and why does your ear look like somebody just hit it?" Joyce was coming closer, and I saw her eyes narrow suspiciously while she made a more detailed examination of my face. "That thing with Kyle and Vellie? Mama was right, and I guess it's all coming to a head right now. Cindy told me that Kyle confessed everything to Gene. Before that, Kyle and I were talking about it, and we wound up having a little bit of a scuffle, before we decided to act like adults, and just talk the situation over." Scuffle? You mean a fight, right?" "Not a real fight. More of a scuffle. We didn't hurt each other or anything. When we got done talking, he said he was going back to work. I didn't know he was going to go over to Gene's house." "What's Gene's number, Kenny. I'm going to try to get Cindy to explain what's going on. What you're telling me isn't making much sense." I gave her the number, then turned back to Gerta. I casually mentioned that I hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. Five minutes later I was eating a cold cuts and cheese sandwich, and having a cold glass of milk. Gerta wasn't asking me any questions either, although she did come over and pat me on my shoulder while I was eating. I'd just finished my sandwich when Mama came in the kitchen and told me that Joyce wanted me to come over to the living room. I saw her examining me too. Joyce must have said something to her about the scuffle with Kyle. I followed her back out to the living room. Joyce was on the telephone, listening, but she looked up when I came in and patted the cushion next to hers on the couch. I went and sat down where she'd patted. I could hear sounds coming from the receiver on the phone. The noises sounded like a girl's voice, but I couldn't make out any of the words, just that she was speaking. From time to time, Joyce would make some short comment into the phone before the other speaker, I'd assumed it was Cindy, would go back to talking again. This went on for at least ten more minutes. I sat there quietly, knowing that Joyce and I would be having a conversation right after she hung up the phone. I was right about that. "Kenny, why did you act so stupid today? Didn't you even think about what might happen if you started in on Kyle like you did?" Joyce had started right in with me, taking that tone she sometimes takes. A tone I hated whenever she took it. She spoke to the big twins like that too, whenever they did something that she wanted to put a quick stop to. I wasn't a five year old child, and I resented her speaking to me like I was. She hadn't even heard my side of things yet. I didn't say anything, because I knew she hated that as much as I hated her using that tone of voice with me. We just sat there for awhile, looking across at each other. I could have lasted a lot longer if Mama hadn't jumped into it like she did. "Kenny, Joyce asked you some questions. We're expecting you to answer them." I could have stuck to the same kind of things I'd told Cindy earlier, but I knew it would probably turn out the same way it had with Cindy, and with Kyle and Maravelle. I didn't want to keep on making things worse. Especially not after I'd already started to realize that I was the one creating most of the problems for myself. I'd already decided I'd have to tell Joyce the truth. I just couldn't think of a good way to begin doing that. "I start out trying to improve things, like I normally would. Except, now, when I do that, this other thing happens and I turn it around to try to make it come out as a bigger problem for myself. But, I'm not doing it like that on purpose, he is." "Who is?" "Him, the other Kenny, the bad one." I looked at Joyce and the expression on her face, and then I looked at Mama, and at Hans and Gerta standing in the hallway listening to what we were saying. They all looked horrified about something. I looked around, trying to find whatever it was that was bothering them so much. I didn't see anything, so then I knew it had to be me. I felt bad then, because if even Joyce, Mama and Gerta felt mad at me, that meant that the other Kenny was winning. I was getting too tired to keep him back. I knew I needed to take a rest. I could feel the tears running down my cheeks. I knew how this was going to all turn out. I'd wake up and have to take the blame for everything the other Kenny did. I couldn't help that. I'd done all I could to keep him held back. It had been years, and I was so tired of doing it without any help from anyone else. I closed my eyes and went to sleep. Let the other Kenny deal with all these unhappy people. I needed a break. ------- Chapter 57 I first began re-emerging on August 11, 1995, with the help of Dr. Brenda Fellows. More than two and a half years had passed since that day in late October in 1992 when I voluntarily ceded control to the alter ego I had always thought of as either "Bad Kenny" or "Strong Kenny". I have a personality disorder they refer to now mostly as dissociative identity disorder, or DID. Earlier, it was most commonly referred to as multiple personality disorder. It isn't a disease, it is a condition. Dr. Fellows tells me that I have this problem because I suffered from what she calls extreme mistreatment as an infant, young child, and throughout most of my formative years spent living in St. Cecilia's orphanage. I don't know, but she's the expert, so I'll accept her standards as to what might constitute "extreme mistreatment". She also tells me that no child is ever born with a sense of a unified identity. It is something that comes into being as each child develops, and consists of a blending together of experiences and relationships to form a unified self. Important parts of my identity remained separate, never blending as they were meant to. In my case, she thinks my problems began at birth with my mother's inability to provide proper care or emotional nourishment for me. She also thinks my fall from a window, sometime after my third birthday, and the resultant head injury, played a major role in preventing proper blending. Other than those two things, she believes the main cause of my condition resulted from the overwhelmingly stressful events which occurred during my time spent living in the orphanage. Events like my strong feelings of rejection at not being picked for adoption, and my unwillingness to satisfy the demands placed on me by the nuns who were providing care for me. She tells me that I was fortunate in having the dissociative capacity, the ability to uncouple and disconnect from some of my earliest memories and perceptions. She says I have no memories of the time before I was three years old, and few memories before the age of six. She has hypothesized that this was the age when I first developed the ability to "go away", to retreat inside my own mind. This was when my identity split first made itself known. This was also when I first learned to retreat, allowing my alter ego, "Strong Kenny", to emerge and exist in my stead. When I say "Myself", I mean the scared little boy I thought of as "Good Kenny". The boy I valued, and wanted to protect. I was "Good Kenny", and Dr. Fellows said I was very adept at erecting amnestic barriers between myself and "Strong Kenny". I was able to completely wall him off from my awareness, and to also wall him off from getting to me. I always had thought of this as me going to places in my mind to hide from the stress and emotional pain, never understanding that, while I was hiding, "Strong Kenny" remained behind, and was replacing me, taking over whenever a situation arose that I felt was too painful for "Good Kenny" to endure. It took so much time, even with many hundreds of sessions using hypnosis, for Dr. Fellows to break down some of these barriers I'd erected, and then to begin the slow process of attempting to integrate my two identity states. It was slow, because I was unable to assist her, in the beginning, since I had remained uncooperative and unresponsive to her early attempts to reawaken me under hypnosis. "Strong Kenny" was always there, available to be interviewed, but it took much more time and work before "Good Kenny" was willing, or even able, to participate. He didn't want to integrate with his other identity state, not even after he understood that it was just another drawer in his own personality dresser. I slowly came to realize that I needed this other identity state if I was ever going to be able to leave the clinic and rejoin my family. Throughout these thirty plus months, while good Kenny refused to come out, Joyce and the rest of my family were exposed only to my "Strong Kenny" identity state. They didn't like him as well as they'd liked "Good Kenny", and they weren't big fans of the notion that Dr. Fellows kept promoting to them. She kept claiming it was necessary to integrate both identities together in order to prevent any future states of derealization, and further episodes of the total withdrawal of the "Good Kenny" identity state. With derealization, a person with the condition that I have doesn't really recognize his surroundings, or his own family, not even all the other people that are close to him. They would seem totally unfamiliar, unreal, or even strange when he interacted with them while in this state. This is too dry and technical an explanation, but I'm trying to explain it using some of the terms she used when she explained it to me. It was a process, and a long one, although things went much quicker, once I decided that the possibility of rejoining my wives, children, and parents was well worth taking any kind of risk for. Secretly, I believed that I would always be able to detach "Good Kenny" from "Strong Kenny", if I ultimately found that I couldn't co-exist with him. It hasn't turned out like that at all, not so far at least. To be honest, I like not having to leave when it becomes necessary to bring out the character traits that I'd always left to the "Strong Kenny" state. I'll tell you one thing, I'd had no notion of how often he and I were switching control back and forth from one identity state to the other. At some conscious level, while being "Good Kenny", I was vaguely aware of the need for suppressing "Strong Kenny". To me though, we were separate people. For six years, I had believed that I'd either managed to kill him off, or that he'd given up and had left me alone to be the Kenny I'd always wanted to be. Dr. Fellows said this was because the amnestic barriers I kept building were so strong and effective. Whatever I thought, our two identity states co-existed, side by side, with each side making multiple daily appearances. "Strong Kenny" was always aware, and thought of himself as the dominant Kenny, seeing "Good Kenny" as only a weakness of his, but one that was easily overcome. All of this is simply to make an explanation of where I first came to find myself in the late summer and early fall of 1995. This was a very big day for me. For the first time in over two and a half years I'd be able to be with my family again. They'd been with me all through my stay at the clinic. Except I wasn't me then. "Good Kenny" had slept through all those visits, while "Strong Kenny" had assaulted, abused, and enraged them at turns. They never knew what to expect during a visit. No matter how strained or uncomfortable these visits became though, the visits themselves never slowed or were cut short. Dr. Fellows warned me that my inability or unwillingness to participate in these frequent family visits had resulted in a great strain being placed on my relationships. She hoped my newly returned presence, and the integration of our two, heretofore separated, identity states, would reverse this deterioration in my family relationships. All of this had occurred as a result of my extended presence, as "Strong Kenny" only, while under her care and treatment. She didn't say so, not in so many words, but I got the distinct impression that she had nearly given up and resigned as my therapist on many separate occasions. What she did say was that Joyce was a very convincing woman. I had begun to notice, in the time since my re-emergence, that I was feeling stronger and more confident each day. I wasn't sure why I felt this way, but I hoped it was because I was becoming more comfortable with the Kenny that seemed to be taking shape. I was beginning to feel whole, something I'd never really felt before. I hadn't recognized what it was at first, but when I tried to describe it, Dr. Fellows seemed pleased with my descriptions. She told me that I was moving from cooperation into collaboration. "We're on the threshold of true integration, Kenny. I can sense it. In our talks, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between states. When there are no discernible differences, my work will be completed." "Are we talking years, months, weeks, days or what?" I was curious. This was the first time she'd ever indicated her pleasure or even satisfaction with the progress we were making towards this integration she kept referring back to. "Months I think. We've been making excellent progress, almost from the first day we were able to reach our agreement on the necessity for identity integration. Already, in most areas, there is seamless collaboration. I see no overt conflicts, which I find remarkable. I believe we are well and truly past the most difficult early stages of the journey. I am excited. You should be as well. I know of few other instances where full integration proceeded with so few setbacks. In truth, we have had none." She left me in the lounge where patients received their visitors. I felt so anxious, and yet, even with my anxiety, I was full of anticipation at the thought of this visit. I had less than a month of renewed awareness, which meant that only a month had passed for me since I believed I'd last seen Joyce, Mama, Gerta and Hans. A month since I'd last spoken with Cindy. Thinking her name caused me some pain. In the month that I'd been reemerged, Dr. Fellows had brought me up to date on the changes that had taken place within my circle of family and friends. There were several casualties. Cindy had decided to distance herself from us, electing to remain in Alabama, rather than continuing on as a member of our family. Bea had died in California the year before, of an infection that had been left too long untreated. This had hit me hard, setting me back in my recovery. I felt like I should have made more of an effort to find her again, and see to it that she got whatever help she needed. There had been some financial upheavals as well, mostly with my grain trading programs and the grain broker business that I'd been operating. Eddie had been trying to keep it all together, but her results weren't like mine had been, and there had been several millions of dollars lost as the family continued to honor our earlier commitments. The Southern expansion had been slowed down for quite a while, but people had been brought in and tasks reassigned so that progress, while slow, was being made. There have been other problems among my wives, including several temporary defections involving Emily, Dale, and Eddie. Other men had been involved in these problems. Dr. Fellows wanted to prepare me for changes in the nature of my relationships. With each new piece of information she gave me, she also provided the support I needed to accept the pain or disappointment I was feeling. I retreated, but to a safe place, one where I still maintained my awareness and was able to diffuse the effect of the information I was being asked to process. Through it all, with three or four hypnotic sessions a day, my two identity states started to merge as one. With few jointly shared memories, we began to build on discussing those important ones that had defined our previous coexistence. It was amazing that we both cared for all the same people, but for such different reasons. It was a matter of our separate experiences and perspectives. It was something we had in common that we could build on though, and it formed the basis for beginning our journey together. In the beginning of the process it was "us", two separate states. Through our sessions with Dr. Fellows, under hypnosis, with both of us awake and aware, we managed to accept the truth that we weren't separate, and that there wasn't any clear "we". There was some memory merge, and, in spite of what Dr. Fellows said to me, there were times of overt conflict, even bad feelings about how different situations had been handled. Both of us would like to change things, to have them be more our way. Fortunately, each identity understands now that conflict leads to separation, and separation prevents integration. We've agreed to bind together as completely as we can, and to allow our complete self to determine our future course. I heard the children running, and the sounds of their excitement and enthusiasm, their joy for life. Derek burst through the swinging door first, and then stopped his progress as soon as he saw me sitting in a chair in the center of the room. He'd grown so much. Before, while I'd believed Dr. Fellows when she told me about how much time had passed, it had been only an intellectual acceptance. Thirty two months. All right. I knew these months were gone, and that I hadn't been around to experience anything that had happened during them. Seeing Derek, I experienced that information on an entirely different level. I saw, for the first time, what my disappearance had cost me. Thirty two months lost forever to me from the lives of all my children and my wives, from my parents and all my friends. They were gone, and I'd never get them back again. This is what I'd lost, and it became my motivating force to ensure that I'd never suffer such a loss again. What can I say about that first visit? It was glorious, and it was maddening. I drank all of them in, and I wilted from the looks of uncertainty and the tentative untrusting conversations I had with each of them. Even Joyce seemed withdrawn and distant from me. I'd been warned by the doctor that there would be residual resentment and mistrust. I knew some of the problems that had occurred because of my other identity's previous actions and words. I wanted to shout to all of them that it hadn't been me, but I couldn't do that, because I now knew that it had been me. It hadn't been the me I wanted to be, but it was the me I was at that time. It was frustrating and more than a little emotionally deflating for me. The visit lasted for three hours. It was Joyce, Brenda, Emily, Derek, Little Bertie, Bunny, April, Dwightee and Hans. They had driven two hours to come see me. I was grateful that they'd come, and sad that it hadn't gone better. I wasn't completely discouraged though. There had been many good moments during the visit. After they'd been in the visitor's room with me for an hour, April walked over to me and held out her arms for me to pick her up. She sat quietly on my lap for the remainder of the visit. Derek and the twins and I talked about how their classes for the coming school year were shaping up, and about how they didn't ever want summer to end. Emily looked at me, but she didn't speak. When I said hello to her, she just stood there looking angry and upset. When I tried to talk to her, she turned and walked over to the side of the room where the windows all were. She looked out the window and ignored all of us for the remainder of our visit. I enjoyed Hans, and he seemed to be the only one who I hadn't hurt or offended. He told me about how Mama, Gerta, and my father were planning on coming to see me as soon as Dr. Fellows would allow it. Apparently, my visitors were being hand picked until such time as my progress became more certain. There was no hugging or kissing. When I stood up, expecting to be embraced, no one stepped forward until Hans did, with his hand outstretched. That hurt. When it was time to go, Brenda came and took April's hand, pulling her off my lap unceremoniously. It wasn't difficult to see that Dr. Fellows had understated the degree of the rift created between myself and my family. She had said there was a great strain put on my relationship with my family. To me, it looked more like a total breach had taken place. I sensed no love or affection, only a sense of loyalty and duty. With the children, I'd felt a stronger emotional connection, or maybe they were just more willing to accept what the doctor had told them. I had been sedated for the visit, a mild sedative to reduce the anxiety I was feeling, and to allow me to better accept the coldness my visitors had shown to me. I had argued against the need for it, wanting to be myself when I saw them again. This was another conflict I had with Dr. Fellows. I had wanted it to be just the one side of me that they visited, the old "Good Kenny", wanting to make up for the other me they had been dealing with for so long now. I knew I could help to heal past angers, and that seeing me back again would help to give them hope for my recovery. Dr. Fellows had refused, telling me that this was me trying to revert back to the old ways. When I insisted, she threatened to cancel my visitors until I had made more progress. As I watched them leave the visitor's room, I wanted to get up and run after them. About the only satisfaction I could take from this initial visit is that there were no incidents from me to add to the long list of complaints they had about my past treatment of them. I'd behaved myself for the whole three hour visit. Several times I'd wanted to act out in some way, but I'd been able to control and suppress those urges. I could see what an uphill battle it was going to be. I had some ideas though, ideas about what I might be able to do to begin to repair some of the problems I'd caused. After they left, Dr. Fellows began another session with me. She seemed pleased after my debriefing. She made a remark that Joyce also had been pleased with how things had gone. The next day, Dr. Fellows allowed me to make a phone call out of the clinic. Early in my stay, my telephone privileges had been revoked as a consequence of several abusive phone calls and "Strong Kenny's" trying to hire legal counsel in an attempt to get himself released from the clinic. Getting even limited phone privileges back was a big step forward. I called my father at the plant in Bolling. To say he was surprised to hear my voice would be a big understatement. When I outlined to him what I wanted, and the help I would require, he was skeptical and unwilling to even consider it without a confirming phone call from Dr. Fellows. Since I hadn't discussed any of my ideas with her, I had no way of knowing whether her permission would be forthcoming. It wouldn't hurt to go see her and try to make my case for her allowing it. We talked more about what was happening with me. I told him that I was trying to get back to how I'd been before all the problems happened, but that I'd probably end up different than he remembered me being. I found out that he wanted me different than I'd been all the times he'd seen me since that episode in Alabama, when "Good Kenny" went to sleep. One of the interesting things we'd discovered was that my tremors were continuing. Even after my breakdown, my tests had been conducted, and after every other possibility had been examined and eliminated, my doctors had agreed on a diagnosis of Essential Tremor for my shaky hand condition. In the time that I'd been in the clinic, the condition had worsened slightly, but it was still confined to only my right hand. One of the things I wanted to work on was finding a way to control my shaking better. I remembered what Mama had said about Senior Chalmers being able to control his shaking. "Dr. Fellows, I'd like to get some computer equipment and some data feeds hooked up in my room. In fact, I'd like a bigger room, or a double room so that I can conduct my business while I'm here recovering." "Kenny, we've been through this before. During the integration process you need to remain as stress free as you possibly can be. I'm afraid that means no outside activities." "I believe it would help us with what we're doing. This is something I've managed to do with both my identities. Rather than being stressful, I find it comforting. I often took refuge in being by myself and trading. It was calming, and something I'm quite accomplished at doing. From what you've told me, my not doing it has caused stress and hardship on my family. I'd like to begin doing something productive, something that would let them know that I am making progress towards returning to a full and normal life again." "If I permit you to bring in your equipment, and then it turns out that it is interfering with your therapy, we will discontinue this trading venture. I want that understood from the outset. I am to be the sole judge of whether it is interfering or not. Do you understand and agree to those terms?" We called my father back and he agreed to send me what I needed, and to call my brokers to arrange for data feeds. Two days later, Eddie arrived with all my equipment and helped me set it up in my new room. This time, I had the feeling that Eddie was uncomfortable because of her actions, not with mine as "Strong Kenny". She was much quieter than I'd ever known her to be, and went right to work setting all of the equipment. There had been many changes to the equipment she hooked up for me in this room over what I'd been used to with my old set up. For one thing, there was only a single monitor now, instead of four like before. For another, all of the feeds were available from a single data connection, through the internet which I accessed through the clinic's existing computer connection. In an hour, she had everything set up and operating. She showed me how to bring as many as eight small screens up on the monitor at once, and how to enlarge and minimize the screens as needed. She had made many changes to how the data was stored and could be accessed. I liked all of it. I had her take me through the method she had come up with to do her own grain trading, and it was what she had pieced together from going back and trying to reconstruct some of the successful trades I had made in the past. She replayed the information on the screen and told me how she had established criteria for trading. Her results had been minimally profitable. Where we had lost all the money was in absorbing all of the shipping costs for the grain we delivered in our broker activities. She hadn't made nearly enough to offset those costs. I asked her to stay, and changed the set up just a little, all the time explaining why I was making the changes and letting her understand better what it was I was looking for. There were several software programs that she wasn't using, already loaded onto the machine. I activated them and superimposed them over one of the screens we had earlier gotten set up. I thought it was a very good omen that I had an excellent trading situation already developed, with corn boxed in against the Swiss Franc and silver. There were three active contract months, and all of them were extremely tradeable. We were trading like crazy when one of the orderlies came in to tell me that Dr. Fellows was waiting for me in her office. It was time for another session. I was having a great time, and a profitable time, but it looked like the silver side of the box was nearing collapse. I hated to leave until after we'd milked it for everything we could. This was one of those rare events when you could trade sixteen ways using the same five futures, crossing them back and forth into a complex spider web. Eddie had sat there watching everything I was doing. I stood up to go, knowing I didn't want to be late and have Dr. Fellows blaming it on my trading. "Take over for me Eddie. Keep pounding on the silver as long as it stays above that red line. Sell it against all the grains, and keep selling the two outer contracts against the nearer one. If the Franc moves up past the blue line, close out all our long franc positions and unwind the silver and all the corn." "You aren't going to leave me here all alone with this? I've never done it like this Kenny, and I've never traded this big either." She sounded scared to death. "I've got to go, Dee Dee. I can't keep her waiting I'll be back in an hour. Try to remember what I told you. Stop trading if the silver dips under the red line. Don't worry about the rest of it. It's all stable inside the box. Just worry about Silver dropping, okay?" She nodded, but I was already halfway out the door and hurrying off to my therapy session. The session went pretty well. The doctor thought both identity's were working well together, and that the excitement from the trading activity was a healthy outlet for me so far. After my therapy session was over, I asked Dr. Fellows a question that had been on my mind all morning, ever since Eddie had first shown up. "What is your policy about patients having sex here in the clinic?" She looked up from her desk, clearly surprised by my question. "With another patient? It is against policy. Have you met someone here in the clinic?" "My wife brought my computer equipment. She's here now, helping me set it up. I don't even know if she'd want to do anything with me or not, but I wanted to check in with you first, just in case she does. I don't want to get in any trouble, or cause any problems." "Joyce is here, now?" "No, Eddie is here. "Eddie. I see. Have you spoken to her about the situation I informed you about? The relationship she and Dale formed, briefly, with that man over in Oklahoma?" "I haven't talked to her about anything personal. Right now, I don't want to argue with her or make her feel bad about anything. I would like to love her, and show her that I'm more like the man she used to know, the one she loved." "If the door to your room remains closed, I'll make certain that none of the staff bothers you before three this afternoon. Will that be time enough for the two of you to conduct your communications?" "Thank you. I've got to go. Are we having another session today?" "Why don't you stop by here after your guest leaves? We'll have a little talk about how you feel about the progress you're making. Kenny, don't try to force anything. Allow it to happen, but don't apply pressure to force it to happen." I nodded that I understood, and then I hurried back to my room. Eddie was sitting in my chair, her brow furrowed with intense concentration as she tried to watch everything on the screen at once. She seemed very tense. I moved behind her and put my hands on her shoulders and started giving her a shoulder rub. I'd left my door open, because that was normal procedure with a visitor in your room. I was planning on closing it if Eddie seemed at all interested in any kind of physical contact with me. "I've missed you, Eddie. You and all the rest of my wives. This has been a bad time for me. I'm sorry that I haven't been there for all of you. Whatever happened since I went away, I want you to know that I understand. It must have been very hard, having that happen to me so suddenly, and not knowing whether I'd ever get better. I just wanted you to know I am getting better, and when I get out of here, I hope I can make it up to you for what I've been like since I got ill." "Are you trying to get in my pants, Kenny? Cause if you are, I'm ready. You don't have to sweet talk me. I've missed you too." "I am, Eddie, but that isn't all I wanted. I want you to know, I want all of you to know, that I'm changing, that I'm getting better, more like my old self. Whatever I did before, to make everyone so mad, I'm sorry. I'm going to learn how to act better around all of you, and the kids too. I could see Sunday how angry I've made people. I don't want to be like that anymore." "Can we put off all the talking for now, Kenny? Help me shut this thing down, and then let's close that door. There's a time for us to be talking, but not now. I've got things I need to say to you too, some explaining I need to do. For right now though, I want us to be together over on that little bed of yours. You need to see about getting a bigger bed, too. I want us to get to fucking, because I've missed that a lot. It isn't the same without you there. Nobody's laughing no more. Everybody blaming everybody else. I know when you start fucking us again that things are going to get better. Those were the best times we used to have. Not just the fucking, but all the laughing and running around, in all the rooms, we used to do. Let me give you some of Dee Dee's medicine, Kenny. It will make it all better. If it don't, then at least I'll feel better, and that's a good thing too." I helped her unwind our positions and then turn off the computer. We'd had a busy trading day. I shut the door and when I turned around, Eddie was already naked and up on the bed. Her legs were spread and she looked at me as she ran one of her fingers through her pussy. She was right about that bed being too small. We still managed to accomplish a lot on it, small or not. She still tasted a little like Cindy, and that almost made me cry, when I started remembering what had happened to Cindy and us. She was still very easy to make cum, and I did make her cum, many times. I came several times myself, and the best one was with me standing up, and having her legs wrapped around me as I walked around holding her butt, with her speared deeply on my cock. She still couldn't take all of my dick, she was too little. She took what she could though, and she didn't seem to mind not getting all of it. That last time, while I was standing, we ended up with both of us sitting on the floor gasping for a breath. "I love you, Eddie. Thank you for sharing yourself with me again." "I love you too, Kenny. We all do. We might be mad at you about what happened, and we might get frustrated and run off for awhile, but none of us ever thought about giving up and leaving for good. You need to get with Emily soon. She's all eaten up inside about all of this. You tell her what you told me, and it would mean a lot to her. All this other stuff, what you did and said when you were sick, that won't last. We'll get all over that as soon as this here Kenny starts showing up when we come visit. Emily needs to hear you tell her that you forgive her." "I know what Emily needs. She needs to be punished, so she can stop punishing herself. Tell her I'm going to beat her ass red the very next time I see her. After you tell her that though, then tell her I'm going to love her after I get finished spanking her. I'm going to love her until her legs are like ours are now, too weak to hold her up. Tell her I love her too, and that nothing she's done, or will do, is ever going to change that fact. Tell her the doctor told me that I might be able to get all day passes, off the clinic grounds, if I keep on improving. I'm not going to smack her ass here, because the clinic would really frown on that. As soon as I get her off to somewhere private, I am though, and she can count on it." "Now you're sounding like you used to when you first came here to this place. Mean and angry." Eddie sounded a little upset, but more angry than afraid. "No, I know what Emily needs. She won't let me love her until I show her that she still means enough to me for me to want to punish her. If you tell her exactly what I told you to, it will be something she understands." I got permission to walk Eddie out to her truck. She had bought herself a little black Toyota pick up truck. I kissed her just before she got in, and thanked her for all that she'd done for me by coming herself, and for bringing my trading programs and equipment. After Eddie left, the doctor and I had another therapy session where she put me under, and we talked about everything that had happened earlier with Eddie in my room. I quickly found out how much both identities had participated in the sex, and in the speech I'd made to Eddie about my plans for Emily. Some of this was a revelation to me. I hadn't had any idea of the close collaboration we'd shared, spanning across my entire active sexual life. Most of the rougher sex and the taste for domination came from one identity, and the gentler, softer parts, and most of the performing oral part, had come from the other one. I knew that it was true that this was one area we really did need to collaborate on. Too much of one way or the other, and the results would be unsatisfactory, to say the least. The doctor explained that this was correct, at that each identity acted as a regulator on the other. My motivation to integrate both identities stemmed from my desire to be reunited with all my family and friends. My other identity had learned, from experience, that doing things without moderation resulted in social disaster for him. Both of our identities preferred to get things back to more like they had been during the six years before my identity had broken down. For each identity, that time had contained elements of an ideal existence. We were taking on faith the doctor's claim that having a single, integrated identity would allow the identity that formed to have the best possible life. Over the next six weeks, many changes occurred. I had quite a few single visitors, all of them my wives. Each brought up new clothes for me, or something for me to read or sign, but the real reason was to check out for themselves what Eddie had reported to them. As I had more than half expected, two days after Eddie's trip to bring up my computer, Joyce showed up with some tax papers she said needed my signature. I knew that a court had awarded Joyce guardianship over me, and that she was already empowered to sign any documents on my behalf. I signed all the papers, in every place she indicated, going along with the charade. "Eddie said you were really like your old self the other day. You seem different today, different than you were when we all visited you on Sunday. Maybe more alert or something?" "Dr. Fellows made me take a sedative because she was afraid I'd get too anxious. It was my first visit with you. I know you might not believe that, but it was. I know I've seen you a lot, but not as me, not for a long time." "It was you. I know you've been sick, but it was still you. The things you said, they were mean, but it was you saying them." "I can accept that if you can, but it wasn't the best me. It wasn't the me you loved. It was me with a big part missing. That part was sleeping, resting, getting strength back so that it could come back to be with you and the rest of our family again. I'm beginning to understand that you wouldn't like that part, by itself, any more than you like what you've been seeing for the past few years. It takes both parts to be the real Kenny." "I hate it that I don't trust you. It hurts me that Eddie trusted you, and she got to make love with you. I don't even want to, not after how you hurt me all the other times. I knew I wasn't that pretty, Kenny, but I don't think I looked like a monkey." Joyce started crying, and she threw herself in my arms. These were the things I most resented about my other self. I would never have said that about Joyce. But, from what she'd just told me, I did. I had to own up to that being me too, and to admit I was capable of being like that, and making rotten comments like I obviously had. I held her and tried to comfort her without talking much. Words weren't going to heal this pain. "I'm so sorry, Joyce. That isn't what I think, or how I feel. I love you as much as its possible for me to love anyone. There isn't anyone on this earth I love more than I love you. I can't keep fighting with myself though, not even when part of me does something that I want to punish him for. When we get our identities merged, that Kenny wouldn't be capable of even thinking such a thought. You need to accept the truth of this statement. If you go on believing I said that to you, then you'll never accept the well person I'm hoping to be. My sickness is because I'm two separate identities, and one of them dropped out. I'm back now, and I'm not leaving, but I need the other part of myself too." "Who is it that you are when you're in bed? Eddie said you were like you had been before, but she also said you were more like you've been lately too." "Did Eddie fuck me before when I was here at the clinic?" I hadn't heard anything like that. "No. I think she meant the way you acted wasn't as gentle, or as loving during the actual sex. She wasn't complaining. You know we both like it when you get a little rough with us. She just said it was different, maybe not as smooth." "It had been a long time for me, for either me or both me's, however you want to describe it. Anyone would be a little crazy if he went without for almost three years. I'd probably be a little smoother now, since it's only been two days." "I didn't say I needed it to be smoother. I don't want to fuck you if you're going to call me names or try to hurt me." "I wouldn't want to fuck you either, not if I was going to do that. On the other hand, I am thinking that it would be nice to get on the bed with my wife and see what would happen. Maybe if we managed to make love like we used to, you'd believe I really was getting better. I do love you Joyce, and I can't believe I'd do anything now, to hurt you, or to make you regret trusting me." We wore each other out. I warned Joyce that an orderly might come by at any time to summon me for a therapy session. Joyce told me she'd stopped by and had a talk with Dr. Fellows before she came to see me. She said she'd arranged it so that we had all the rest of the morning to visit, without worrying about our being disturbed. We made good use of our time. I was trying to be gentle and loving, but Joyce wanted it hard and rough, just like Eddie had gotten it. I gave her a ride around the room standing up too, but unlike Eddie, Joyce managed to have all of me buried up inside her. After we finished making love, we talked about Emily. I'd been in the clinic for about six months when Emily had gone to California to visit her parents, taking our children with her. Her original plan was to stay for only two weeks, but that kept getting extended after she was out there, until she had finally been out there for four months. It had turned out that she had met someone, an actor who hadn't enjoyed much in the way of acting success, and they had begun having an affair. In this regard, Emily had been encouraged by Kitty, her mom. It was Brenda who had finally ended up speaking to her, reminding her that she was married, and that she already had other family obligations. When Emily returned, there were tears and recriminations from Brenda, but, in the end, Brenda forgave her. Joyce hadn't made up her mind whether she needed to forgive her or not. "I feel the same way, but I know Emily. Someone has to beat her ass for her, before she can put it all behind her. I think I'm going to have to be the one to do it too. I need you to talk to the doctor for me, and explain I need a day pass to take care of some personal business. Bring Emily up with you and get a room somewhere where a little noise isn't going to bother anyone. The way she was with me on Sunday, its only a matter of time before she decides to leave again. I don't want that. It was bad enough finding out about Cindy. I don't want to lose Emily too. Especially not if we have a way of preventing it." We spent the rest of our time together talking about the business, and discussing problems we were having with finding capital to expand in all the areas we wanted to. Kyle had been right about the sales team not succeeding without him. In the period immediately after my illness first became known, no one had even bothered trying to put a new sales team in place. We had gone almost three years, and we still needed to replace the sales team Kyle had put together that had fallen apart later, from a lack of leadership. Joyce told me a story that I found both weird and amusing. After his father had called Billy Ray to tell him about Kyle fucking Vellie, Billy Ray had driven over to Kyle's house hoping to confront him. Instead Trudy was there, and he told her the story his father had told him. It wasn't exactly news to her, since Vellie had just gotten off the phone with her, herself, right before Billy Ray had pulled up. Trudy decided that a little turn about was fair play, and Billy Ray was also in a mood to accommodate her. It turned out that Trudy and Billy Ray both liked the way the other did it, and Kyle and Maravelle preferred each other too. In the next three months, the two households were switched around, with Kyle going to live with Maravelle, in her parent's house, and Billy Ray moving in with Trudy in the house she and Kyle had been leasing. After Trudy had her baby, a boy, which she promptly named after Billy Ray, just to upset Kyle, divorces were filed, and both new couples ended up getting married again. Visitation for the children was easy, since they just swapped them on the weekends. Joyce also told me that Cindy had told her that there were rumors that more than the kids wound up getting swapped on some of these weekends. "Do you still talk to Cindy? Do you ever see her?" I had assumed, from what Dr. Fellows had told me, that Cindy had pretty much opted out of everything having to do with any of us. "Of course I see her. She's my assistant at the plant in Birmingham. Did you think I was going to fire her just because you two had that fight? Billy Rays still works for me too. Don't ask me if she's fucking anybody or not though, because I don't know, and I wouldn't tell you if I did. She isn't fucking me, I can tell you that much. She came up to the house about a year ago, when I'd broken my foot, and she stayed up in one of the extra bedrooms in the nursery wing. "You broke your foot? How?" "I was in bed with Eddie and Dale, and I had my foot jammed into the footboard, trying to get leverage to turn Eddie over, and she managed to turn me over instead. My foot wouldn't turn, and I broke two little bones in the middle of my instep. Hurt like the dickens too." "I suppose I better tell you too, Joyce, that I'm not going to get mad about anything you might have done while I've been staying here at the clinic. I know how important sex is to you, and I know I've been here a long time." Joyce is small, but she hits hard. My nose hurt when she punched me in it, and my eyes were watering. I hadn't expected it, so that made it hurt even more. When I pulled my hand away, I came away with several fresh drops of my blood. "You listen to me, Kenny Parsons. If I was going to do something like that, it wouldn't be while you were sitting in this loony bin, all doped up, and intent on acting like some kind of an ass hole. If I did do it, I'd wait until after you got out, and it won't be something I'd do behind your back." "I didn't mean I thought you had, Joyce, only that I wouldn't be mad at you if it happened. I was trying to make sure you weren't running around feeling guilty like Emily and Eddie." "Don't forget Dale. That whole Oklahoma thing was her idea. She's another one who needs a good ass whipping. The best part of it is that the guy she picked couldn't do her any good at all. Not for lack of trying though. Eddie told me about some of the things they tried. I almost hit both of them. I would have too, if I hadn't known they were both so much stronger than me. That one made me madder than Emily's. At least Emily didn't set out with the intention of being unfaithful to you. I was very disappointed in Dale and Eddie." "I'm disappointed in Cindy. The other thing, with Emily, and with Eddie and Dale, it doesn't seem like that big a deal, because they all came back in the end. I really thought Cindy loved us." Joyce could tell, from my voice, and from the way my eyes were all squinched up, that I was almost ready to cry. "She didn't have enough time with us when it happened, and she hadn't gone through things like this with you before. You have to have already seen the changes you can go through, and then see you come back before it doesn't seem so frightening. This time we were all afraid, even Mama. Maybe especially Mama, because she thinks the same thing might happen to her. Gerta tells me Mama has a hard time sleeping now, and that she keeps having these bad dreams. I'll go over and see her tonight, when I get back, to tell her how much better you are. I'll stop off and get Dwightee, and take him over to spend the night. Maybe April too. She's going to be so glad to learn that you're getting better." I saw the ease with which Joyce deflected me away from maudlin thoughts about Cindy. In many ways, having Joyce there to talk to was better therapy than anything the doctor could have done for me. I could see, by her more relaxed manner around me, that she had changed her opinion about me somewhat. She saw the differences in me. Right after lunch, after Joyce had gone, Dr. Fellows called me in for another session of therapy. This was a long one, involving age regression. I could always tell, because these left me feeling tired and emotionally drained. What was different about this time was when I got up to leave her office, it looked like she'd been crying. I wondered what I might have said that would make someone as professional as she was start to cry. After I thought about it for just a few seconds though, I decided I really didn't want to know. ------- Chapter 58 I settled myself into a comfortable routine at the clinic, keeping busy during the times between therapy sessions. I was becoming better at concentrating on the primary task of assisting the doctor in making me well again. Dale and Emily seldom visited me, and whenever they did, it was always during visits that included some of the children. They made certain not to ever be alone with me. Dale seemed sad to me, but she refused to be drawn into any conversations while in my presence. Emily too remained angry and aloof. Shirley and I had arranged to get together to try to reconcile. With Joyce and Eddie, there had been a strong sexual component present to help motivate them to risk being alone with me again. Shirley had been truly hurt and angered by the way I'd treated her and with how I'd spoken to her during my stay at the clinic. I'd made several threatening phone calls to Shirley, early on, berating her for not standing by my side and helping me against the insistance of Joyce and my parent's that I was ill and needed to be hospitalized. Shirley had been shaken by my illness far worse than all my other wives, and it had been Joyce who suggested that I phone her and invite her to drive over to see me for a private visit. Joyce even phoned Dr. Fellows to explain that Shirley and I might need to go somewhere more private for our visit, due to Shirley's loud vocal outbursts while having sex with me. As a direct result of Joyce's interceding phone call, I was given my first day pass. It was good for only four hours, but it was an important step forward in my progress. It took a lot of convincing to even get Shirley to allow me to drive her car away from the clinic. I knew what I was looking for, but I didn't know where to find it. It was mid September, and we were having an unusually warm week for the area. I wanted to go to a green area, a place where Shirley and I could get out of the car and hold a private conversation. She was wary and cautious, and it didn't help that I was unfamiliar with the area and hadn't asked anyone for directions on where I might go. I wanted a secluded area, one where we wouldn't be constantly interrupted or disturbed. I hadn't given any thought to the possibility of Shirley not trusting me enough to be comfortable with doing that. I knew, from speaking on the telephone with her, that Eddie and Joyce had both told her that I was much improved in the way I had treated them. "Shirley, I can see how tense and nervous you are. I promise I'm not going to do anything to hurt you today. We'll take it slow and just try to talk to each other. I know you have good reasons to be wary of me right now, and I can't even begin to tell you how sad I am about that. I know you've talked to Dr. Fellows, and that she's explained about what has been happening to me. I'm getting better, and stronger. As long as I'm like I am right now, I'd never say or do anything to hurt you." Shirley looked at my face. I could tell she wanted to believe me. If she didn't want that, she'd never have traveled so far, or put herself in a position like the one she was in with me right then. She didn't respond directly to what I had told her, but she did begin telling me about Derek and our other children. We talked for over an hour about all the changes I'd missed in their lives. I'd seen and spoken with Derek on several visits he'd made with some of the other family members. He was the oldest child, and he seemed to sense that I no longer posed a threat of any kind, to him, or to the others. On his last visit, he had come over and kissed me before they all left. I'd felt him tense up when I had hugged him to me, but it was only a very short time before he relaxed in my arms. After I released him, Little Bertie and Bunny came over and let me hug them as well. "Kenny, I'm not sure I can ever fully trust you again. You said terrible things to me, and you threatened to hurt all of us, even the children. The doctor told us this was a side of you, that it would always be a part of who you are. She said it will be some time before we find out how you're going to be when you're well again. You might be more like this other person that we've had to deal with for the past couple of years. If it turns out like that, I don't think I could take it." "I can't promise you what I'll be like, Shirley. I don't know. I want to believe I'll be like I was before, only not so much at war with myself. I'm finding out things all the time now, about how I was before, and that both my identity states were nearly always active to some degree. I didn't know that. I thought it was only me that was doing things and controlling what was happening. Dr. Fellows told me that things weren't ever that bad before, not until after the identity I always thought of as me stopped wanting to be awake. That's what let my other identity take over completely." "I don't know about any of that. All I know is what you said to me. I know you were sick, and that you weren't yourself when you made all those phone calls and told me all those things you did. I'm afraid about how you're going to change with the therapy." When we talked about the children, we were able to communicate well together. When the topic switched back over to me, and to what might happen with both my identities fully integrated, I saw the fear and uncertainty in Shirley's face. I began feeling afraid as well. Up until then, I'd just assumed that I was going to get well again, and that I'd be pretty much like I had been before. That's what I'd been hoping for. Shirley was the first person who had questioned whether this would be the case or not. The worst part for me was not being able to reassure Shirley that all her fears were baseless. I just didn't know. What I did know was that I was having to fight back against the anger I was feeling for Shirley. It had risen up while we were talking, but I didn't really recognize it for what it was until after it began to affect the tone of voice I was taking with her. Shirley recognized the anger before I did. I saw the fear in her eyes at how I was then talking to her. It alerted me, made me focus on what I was saying, and how I was saying it. I stopped talking immediately, and concentrated on putting the negative thoughts and anger away. I must have closed my eyes while I attempted to refocus my thoughts. I don't remember closing them, but I do remember regaining control and willing myself to relax again. When I opened my eyes again, I had managed to release the negative thoughts and feelings. I smiled at Shirley. "I'm sorry for that. Sometimes, part of me gets upset, but the other part isn't upset at all. I understand why you'd feel afraid. To me, it seems only natural. To my other Kenny, he isn't used to caring much about how people deal with his outbursts. We both realize we need to change things about ourselves so that we can meld together and start being healthy and well again. It's a process. With me here too now, there isn't any reason for you to be afraid. I'd never allow you to be hurt, Shirley, never." She continued staring at me, not speaking at all, and I could see how upset my anger had made her. I didn't want anything more to go wrong, and I could see that our time together posed more of a danger of that than any possible benefit we might derive otherwise. "Maybe we should go back to the clinic, Shirley. I've made you upset, and that isn't what I wanted to happen at all." "No! I don't want us to go back, not yet. I think I understand it better now. I was watching you while you tried to gain control again. Did you know your face changes when you lose control, Kenny? You get a meaner look, and your eyes get harder. Even your voice changes. It really is like talking to two different people. Eddie and Joyce both told me about it, but I didn't believe it. I think I can tell now when you're like the old Kenny. Part of my problem was with not knowing if I could tell or not. Try to stay just like you are now, okay?" I heard the pleading tone in her voice. Like me, she really wanted our visit to be a success. The problem with what she was asking for was that I couldn't give her any assurance that I would stay like I was then. I didn't control it, and my therapy was far enough advanced then that I recognized how little control I truly had. Either identity state could manifest itself at any time, or both. I wasn't able to recognize when control shifted, and I became more of a passive observer and less of a controlling influence on my words, thoughts, and actions. This was becoming troubling. It hadn't mattered too much when it was just me, in a controlled clinical setting. Alone, with a loved one, the danger became much more apparent to me. "I think we should go back to the clinic, Shirley. Maybe later, when I've had more experience with this identity integration process, we can be out on our own like this. Right now, I realize its still too early for me to be out like this." We were both quiet on the drive back to the clinic. I was relieved when we drove through the gate again. That episode of anger had shaken me far more than I'd let on to Shirley. I really saw for the first time that I wasn't fully able to protect people from myself. It had shaken me to my core. As soon as we returned to the clinic I took Shirley to my room and told her I needed to see Dr. Fellows for a therapy session. I asked her to wait for me, promising not to be gone longer than an hour. I went to find the doctor to request a hypnotic session. During the session I tried to explain to the doctor what had occurred, from both my perspectives. It became a somewhat heated session because each identity insisted that it had the right to express itself in a way that was true to the underlying beliefs it held. This isn't going to work if I have to watch you every single second when we're around my family. You heard what she was whining about. I don't understand why you want to take that from any of them. If it were left up to me, I'd keep Brenda, and maybe, Emily. The rest of them aren't worth our effort. This is exactly what I mean. I love all of them. This is my family. You don't care about anyone except yourself. I hoped things would change once we became more integrated, but it was pretty obvious today that you aren't going to change. "Doctor Fellows, what happens if I stop this integration process? If I refuse to continue trying to integrate my identity states?" "You can attempt to reach agreement over sharing control, you can cede control to your other identity, as you did before, or you can choose to fight for control. Of those three choices, the only one that would result in you being allowed to return to normal society is the first. You did share control for many years, but, at a cost to you. There is no reason for us to believe that any agreement would survive the stresses of normal living. Sooner or later, you'd be back in another clinic similar to this one. To even get to the point where I'd recommend you for release, you'd need to make tremendous progress. There is only one cure. Anything less than full identity integration would be merely a patch up." If I have to, I'll stay in this clinic forever. I won't expose my family to any more of your disgusting behavior. You refuse to admit that you need to change. I won't tolerate you being a part of me the way you are now. We'll see. You're weak. I know now how to make you give up. I was willing to do this because it helped me to be able to get what I wanted by using you. I don't like being stuck in here like this. Having you made many things easier for me, but I can certainly get what I want without you. Go back to sleep, and I'll figure out a way to get released from here. "Doctor, would you please send an orderly to tell my wife that she should leave? Let her know that I said I want no further visits from anyone until this thing is settled." Dr. Fellows pressed a buzzer and one of the female orderlies came through the door. The doctor repeated my instructions to her and she left to carry them out. That isn't going to change anything. Do you think I'll start getting lonely now? Probably not. At least I'll know my family is being protected from you. "Doctor, I'd like to end this session now, and I'd also like to hold off on any future therapy until after we get some things settled between my two states. If either of us wish to communicate again we'll inform you of that fact." "You're assuming a large risk, Kenny. I take it that you are planning on trying to outwait your other self?" "I'm planning nothing. I find the idea of sharing a body with this other identity too distressing to continue with your planned integration. I know I'll have to change, but I'm not willing to change if it means I'll be more like him than I am like myself. Right now, he feels dominant, and I can't accept that." "The integration will modify both identities. You will be you, the same individual you would have become had both states been one in the first place. What you are telling me is that you don't like an integral part of yourself. Once you are integrated, you can make a choice to undergo therapy to change the way you interact with others. A behavioral adjustment isn't as critical as regaining your good mental health. I really must insist that you hold off on taking this step." ------- Four more months had passed since that September session. Four months without visitors or any task oriented cooperation from my shared identities. We could only communicate under hypnosis, and Dr. Fellows was honoring my request. She did make it a point to have me brought to the office two or three times each day to inquire about whether I thought more therapy would be helpful. Each time I told her that I didn't want to continue with the therapy. On February 1, 1996, Dr. Fellows summoned me to her office to take a phone call from Joyce. From the sympathetic look she gave me when she handed over the receiver, I knew whatever news I was going to get would be bad. "Kenny, Shirley left last night. She took the children with her. Emily says she's leaving now too. Dr. Fellows keeps telling us that you're refusing treatment. Why won't you at least let us come visit you? We're all sick with worry about you. You were doing so well, and then you just quit trying. If Emily leaves, I think Brenda will too." "Joyce, I'm sorry about what's happening. There isn't anything I can do though. Maybe it's for the best if they all leave. It doesn't look like anything is going to change here. I can't accept the risk of having my other identity become the dominant one if we integrate together. I don't know what I'd be like when it was finished." "You can't just give up and stay sick for the rest of your life, Kenny. Let the doctor help you like you planned. If it ends up that you're too changed, we can make other decisions then." "It will be too late for me then, Joyce. Whoever I am when this integration thing is complete will be who I'm stuck with forever. I don't want to be like him. I won't be like him. I know him now, and he scares me. I hate that he's a part of me, but I won't let him ever become all of me." We were both crying by the time the phone call was over. The doctor looked like she was feeling pretty sad as well. I went back to my room. Three days later, I woke up in a hypnotized state again. At first I was angry that Dr. Fellows had overridden my stated wishes. "Kenny, you requested this session." When she told me that, I felt a tiny thrill run through me. This could only mean that my other identity state had called for a meeting with me. I had outlasted him. What do you want? We should go back to trading. It will give us both something to do, and it will help pay for all this time we're wasting here. I'm not interested in doing anything with you. Neither of us will even be aware of the other. We need each other to do this well though. Give it a try, and, if you don't enjoy it, we can stop again. "Doctor, would it be possible for you to have sessions just with Bad Kenny? Sessions to try to change the way he acts?" "There is no Bad Kenny, and no Good Kenny either. I could work to try to modify both your identity states, but I wouldn't work with one without the other being present for it." "I don't want to change. I'm happy with the way I am. He needs to change if we're ever going to go back to trying to integrate ourselves." Do you think I'm happy with the way you are? You're like a little girl. At least I'm a man. You're losing everything now. If you were more of a man, you'd know you need to do something about it. Just sitting around feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to solve anything. I don't need to solve anything to win. I'm perfectly content to sit here in this clinic for the rest of my life. I'd prefer that over having the possibility of ending up like you. If you want me to cooperate by returning to the trading, you have to agree to having the doctor help you to see things more like a normal person would. You have to learn how to control that anger and respond nicer to people. It's only a matter of time you know? I can feel you getting weaker again. You really should try to get along with me better. If you do what I want, I'll keep you around and let you have some of what you want too. "Doctor, I've had all of him I can take for this session. No more sessions until he agrees to behavior modification therapy. I won't even consider doing anything more with him until he shows me he's ready to make some changes." Another three weeks went by without any changes in either of our positions. I got a long letter from Joyce during this period. In the letter, she sent me Shirley's new address, as well as the information that Emily and Brenda had taken the kids and moved back to our home in Lawrence. Joyce was living in Ridgeline with Eddie and Dale and our five children. In her letter, she told me that Mama had started having more of her depressions again. She said they weren't as bad as before, but she was having them frequently. She didn't come right out and say it, but I knew she felt my problems were what had brought these depressions back. She closed the letter by begging me to allow her and the rest of the family to come for visits. At the end of three weeks, Dr. Fellows called me back into her office again. "Today we are going to return to our therapy sessions. For now, we've agreed to attempt to deal with trying to align the two identity states more closely together before we resume our merger attempt. I have very little hope for success with this endeavor. My best professional advice has already been dismissed by you. I see no harm that might come from proceeding as you have directed. I have my own request of you before we proceed though." "Request? What sort of request?" I was immediately on my guard. As the clinic's director, Dr. Fellows didn't need my permission for anything. "Both identity states will participate fully in the process, and you will begin acting cooperatively outside of these sessions. The trading is one instance of the cooperation I'm requesting. In return for you agreeing to the resumption of the trading, your other identity state will agree to cede control to you during any future family visits where sexual contact isn't going to be a part of the visit." "What about when it is a part of a visit?" "Shared presence and control, with a promise of no violence or angry outbursts." "When was all of this discussed? I have no memory of any meeting where we discussed any of this." "You weren't a participant, or even a party to the discussions. I've done as you directed. The contact was initiated by you, but solely by the identity you refer to as Strong Kenny." "Given your understanding of both my identity states, are you recommending to me that I enter into this agreement?" "Cooperation is always to be preferred over conflict in these cases. If you are seeking common ground, you need to cooperate in order to find it. In my opinion, anything that brings you closer to the point of accepting the need for full integration is a step in the right direction. Both identity states need to find a way to be more accepting of the other. We're talking about the whole you, Kenny. As troubling as it might be to you, there is no real separation possible if you are ever to lead a productive life again. At this point, it should be overwhelmingly apparent to both identity states that neither can function separately for long." "I do know that. The real choice isn't whether to operate separately or not. The real choice is whether to operate at all. Unless things change, my current choice would be not to continue operating. I'd choose not to live rather than accept living with Bad Kenny in control of things." It wasn't one session, it was many. It didn't start out as anything I would call cooperation either. It was angry and hostile. I knew what I was protecting. He knew what he could live with and tolerate. We weren't even close to agreement about what needed to happen. It was two small children fighting for possession of a single toy. It wasn't pleasant, and it wasn't very productive either. What was supposed to be accomplished with one session took eight sessions instead. In the end, I felt like I had compromised much more than I should have been required too. My only consolation was that Bad Kenny seemed every bit as dissatisfied about the agreement as I was. Neither identity was gloating over anything like it thought it had secured a clear cut victory. Only Dr. Fellows seemed satisfied in any way, and that was more from her relief that the qualification process was over with, rather than any true satisfaction with the format that we had agreed to. We both had a long list of behaviors we wanted to see changed in our other identity state. We had worked out priorities for what needed to be worked on. My list of changes to be made was so long, that I wondered what I'd be like if I did actually make all the changes being demanded. His list was even longer, and I was almost certain that his thinking parallelled my own. The next morning, after we'd hammered out our format for beginning behavior modification therapy, we resumed our trading. It had been something I really had wanted to do. There wasn't too much activity in the grains, but I did manage to initiate several profitable currency and metal crosses which ended up being exceptionally profitable. It was good to occupy my thoughts with something other than myself, and what my illness was doing to my family. When trading was over for the day, I made my first phone contact with Joyce since the call where she'd told me about Shirley leaving. This had been arranged through Dr. Fellows and myself. I would have fully restored phone privileges, and both identity states could listen in to the call, but only mine would be allowed to speak. It was my way of testing whether or not my other identity state could be trusted. Joyce had already been informed by Dr. Fellows that my therapy had resumed once again. She wasn't too surprised to hear from me either. I had called her at her work number. We spoke for about an hour, although there were constant interruptions when people needed her for one thing or another. It was a good talk, we were both very positive in the things that we were saying. "Why don't you come down tomorrow afternoon for a visit, Joyce?" "I can't tomorrow, Kenny. I'm leaving tonight for Birmingham. I'll be there until Friday. I could send Eddie instead." "I'm thinking about calling Brenda and Emily. Do you think they'll speak to me?" "I'm sure Brenda would. I don't know about Emily. You don't want me to send Eddie? She'd love to see you again. We all would." "Do you think Dale would?" "Maybe not. I could ask her if you want me to?" "No. Call me tomorrow from Birmingham. I want to spend time with all of you. Is my Dad still in his office?" "I'm sure he's back at home, Kenny. Mama is having another bad time today. I think he wanted to stay with her. You can call him at the house. Maybe you could get Mama out of her funk. She's getting worse again." "Okay, I'll call there then. Remember to call me tomorrow. I'll be trading, but I can still talk to you while I do that. Kiss the kids for me, and tell them I love them." After I hung up, I called Mama's house and spoke with Gerta, my Dad, and, after about fifteen minutes, to Mama. She sounded very tired and sad to me. She didn't seem to have much of her normal spark. I told her a bunch of lies, mostly about how much better I was getting, and about how I thought I'd be able to come back home very soon. It really bothered me that I was the one primarily responsible for her relapse into these dark depressed states of hers. After I got off the phone with Mama, I dialed our Lawrence house. Phil answered the phone there, and he and I spoke for several minutes. Brenda and Emily had taken all the children out to a nearby park to play. I left my number with Phil and told him to ask Brenda to phone me. I told him I could receive phone calls up until nine at night. My Dad had been happy to hear that I was back trading, even after I told him that I hadn't traded many grain contracts. He thought the fact that I'd resumed trading was a good enough sign that my health was improving. We had discussed one problem he was having, and I told him I'd think about it and call him if I came up with any good possible solutions. He was very worried about Mama too. Joyce had told me that Kyle Macklinson had approached her on her last visit to Birmingham, asking her if she was wanting him to come back to work at the company. Gene and Larry hadn't gone back to work before I took sick, but Phil was still there, running the maintenance department for us. I had already known that Cindy was working in Birmingham as one of Joyce's assistants. I had told Joyce she should hold off on giving Kyle any definite answer. I wanted to think about it. Joyce told me she would find out what it was that Gene and Larry were doing with their time. It was seven o'clock that evening before I got a return call from Lawrence. It was Emily calling me. I had told Phil to have Brenda call, but only because I didn't think Emily would want to talk to me. "Kenny, I hoped you'd care about us enough to leave us alone until you at least get out of the hospital. Your call has Brenda all upset and crying now." "I called to ask about how all of you were doing, and to make sure you didn't need anything Em. How are the children?" "We're all fine, no thanks to you. We're trying to move on with our lives. We only agreed to stay in this house after Joyce insisted we do so. I wanted to go back to California, but Brenda wasn't ready to leave Kansas yet. Neither of us consider ourselves your wives anymore. Brenda says its okay for Joyce to take Dwightee and April to visit you, but I'm not letting Sissy or Tony visit you until after I've received some assurances that you won't have another big tantrum and hurt them some way, or even scare them again like you did before." "Emily, I didn't contact you to have any fights with you. If you're afraid I might do or say something to hurt the children, then I don't want you to let them visit with me. The same is true for Dwightee and April. I'm not that sure myself about how much in control I am right now. I don't want to make anything worse for any of you." "Aren't you going to try to get me to come visit you too?" "No. There was a time when I thought you should come see me so that I could get things straightened out about that time you went to California. I was going to punish you so you wouldn't need to feel bad about what happened anymore. Now, I know you've stopped loving me, so it wouldn't help anything for me to do that. I do forgive you though." "I don't need any forgiveness. I'm not ashamed that I did that. I should have just stayed out there and never come back." "You should do whatever you think is best, for you, and for the kids too. Listen, tell Brenda I won't try calling her again. Tell her to make sure she stays in contact with Joyce though, so she can tell me what I need to know about the children. You need to stay in touch with her too, Em." "You're acting like this on purpose now, just so I'll think you're really back to being your old self. It doesn't fool me, Kenny." "I'm not back to my old self, Emily. I probably won't ever be. I am back to loving my family again, and worrying about whether or not they're all okay. From where I'm sitting, it looks like I might never get well again. It would make it easier to accept that if I knew that all of you were doing all right. I do wish you'd take some pictures of all the kids and send them to Joyce to give to me. I don't have access to any recent pictures." I'd have to say this phone call had been one that really had hit me hard. The more bad things that happened, the harder it was for me to stick to my commitment to remain in the clinic rather than give in to having Bad Kenny take over the dominant role in our identities. The next morning, it was right back to trading and to three sessions of behavior modification therapy. My two identities batted back and forth about all the phone calls we'd made. I say we, because I found out that Bad Kenny had taken a more active role than we'd agreed on, in my conversations with both Joyce and Emily. It was Bad Kenny who had suggested Joyce come for a visit, and also him who had told Emily that she could keep all the children from visiting me. In retaliation for this breach of our agreement, I stopped trading for a full week. I was beginning to realize that it was my identity that controlled most of our actions, and initiated and maintained all our new relationships. Bad Kenny could only participate in most things after I initiated them. On his own, he couldn't initiate the trading, or meet any new people. That had been a big part of the reason that Dr. Fellows had taken so long to reawaken me after I was sent to her clinic. Bad Kenny had been very little help to her. He was totally dependent on me for most interactions. Once a relationship was forged, he could participate along with me. On his own, he had no real idea of how to maintain these relationships. This had gotten him in trouble when I decided to withdraw before. He really didn't have any idea about how he was supposed to act without my presence. I was beginning to realize the power I held over my other identity state. Without me, he had no hope for ever recovering enough to live on his own. My identity state was far less than whole, but, compared to Bad Kenny's situation, I was a lot more complete. After a week without any trading had passed, I opened our previous agreement up for renegotiation. I had found out that I could sit, doing nothing, and this lack of activity bordered on torture for Bad Kenny. It was the worst kind of imprisonment for him. I had taken to doing just that, frequently, and for long stretches of time. Unless things change, and I have good reason to believe you're going to behave when you've promised to, we're going to be spending most of our time doing what we've done for this past week. I stood it for more than two years. It doesn't bother me." You didn't have a choice before, and you didn't know then that it would be like it was. Now you have an alternative. You can only live the life I choose to live. You have the power to screw things up for both of us, to destroy things, but not to build anything up to replace it. I could do more if you'd let me. I told you before I was willing to work with you, but you can't always be the one who gets his own way. I think you're wrong. In fact, I'm so sure you're wrong that I've gone ahead and bet the rest of my life on it. I'm willing to close off any further negotiations, are you? You aren't giving me anything, just like before. You treat me like a parasite. I want to be an equal part of your whole. My whole! I knew it. I was sure you already accepted that my identity had to be the dominant one. Without me, you can't really exist. You're like an arm to me, an adjunct. The arm doesn't make demands on the whole body. You can change, and then, after you've changed, you can be a fully awakened part of me. Together, I'll be healthier, but even without you, I will still be alive and capable of much more than you are on your own. This concept you have about our identity states being equal, it only applies if we're somehow separate. When we're merged, we'll both be parts of the same whole. We'll experience life the same way. What could be more equal than that? I won't be me anymore, not if I let her change me before we merge. You won't be anything unless you do change. My way, you'll be something, and your way you'll be nothing. I'm not going to accept ending up as a danger to my family. Unless you change, that's just what I'd be. It isn't enough! I sat quietly in my room for another month. I became aware that something was going on with my other identity state. Each morning I'd awaken feeling stronger. It reminded me of the times when we were attempting to merge my identity states. I also noticed subtle changes in my thoughts, and in my memories. I went over to Dr. Fellows office to ask her about it. I had attempted to explain to her the changes I was feeling, including the memory changes. "Kenny, you do realize that I've been treating you again? We've been engaged in intensive therapy sessions for this past month. Are you telling me that you haven't been aware that this was happening?" I didn't know what to tell her. As far as I was concerned, I'd been sitting in my room for the past month. I'd sleep, go to the bathroom, eat, and then sit around until it was time to go to sleep again. I'd been waiting for Bad Kenny to concede to me. "I don't remember any sessions, doctor. Not for at least this past month. Wouldn't I remember them?" I could see the doctor growing more excited as I told her what I remembered doing. She had me recount my days to her in greater detail. "Kenny, I need to put you under again, in order to verify a few things for myself. I think something very important is taking place here, but I still need to verify it." I gave her my permission, but nothing happened. I just sat there, doing nothing. The only difference I felt was a lack of responsiveness from the doctor. "Kenny, I found no evidence of any separated identity states while you were regressed. They merged. I don't understand how this could have taken place without me realizing it. Yesterday, there were two separate and distinct states. Today, just now, I can find only one. This isn't how it's supposed to occur. The process takes quite a bit longer, and involves a much more subtle merging that takes place over time." I tried to make some sense of what she was telling me. I didn't feel that much different. I felt like myself. I felt like I'd always felt before that time in Birmingham. I had to undergo quite a bit of further testing and hypnosis sessions. Dr. Fellows brought in some of her outside associates, and they tested and probed me too. They all agreed that I had a single, well integrated identity state, and none of the outside consultants could find any evidence that two separate identities had ever existed. That too was very unusual, even with a so called complete merger of identity states. June 7, 1996, unable to think of any further excuses for not releasing me, Dr. Fellows signed my discharge from her clinic. I had the distinct feeling that she really wanted to keep me longer, to try to find out how whatever it was that happened, had happened. I'd been busy with my trading and on the telephone. I mostly spoke with Joyce, Eddie, and my parents. Once, when Shirley happened to be visiting Joyce, with the children, I spoke with her too. I never tried to contact either Emily or Brenda. Dale wouldn't speak with me, even though I'd asked for her several times. Two days after I told Joyce the doctor was releasing me, Dale left for Chickasaw, without Eddie. On the morning of my release, ten people showed up to help me leave the clinic. It was Mama and my Dad, Hans, Gerta, Joyce, Eddie, Grace, Jane, Shirley and Brenda. The last two really surprised me, especially Brenda. We had to drive home in two cars. I traveled in the limo with my parents and all the wives who'd made the trip. Grace and Jane had driven over in Jane's car. Gerta sat up in the front with Hans. There were so many questions to answer, but I didn't have any answers to give them. I didn't know what had happened. Dr. Fellows believed that Bad Kenny had resigned himself to the inevitable, and had found some way to force his own merger with me. She would have loved to have known for certain. The biggest question seemed to be 'how do you feel?' I knew the question had many meanings. Are you better? Do we have to stay worried that this will happen to you again? Are you going to be different than you were before you got sick? I still didn't have any answers for them. I knew that I wasn't worried about the same thing happening. What I didn't know, and therefore couldn't explain, was why I wasn't worried. All I knew was that I felt good again. Whole. I had even started planning out the rest of my life. I was going to discuss things with Joyce first, but I knew that I was going to try to bring things back to how they were before I got sick. I knew it wasn't going to be something I could make happen overnight. I also knew it might be something I'd fail to make happen. I still felt like I had to try. Shirley and Brenda were both acting skittish around me. Of course, with Mama sitting right across from me, I had to act less excited than I was to have them sitting so close to me. I thought they were both wishing that they could be alone with me so we could talk about what our future plans were. "Brenda, how did Emily take the news that I was better again? What did she say when she found out they were letting me go home?" "She was happy for you, but she doesn't believe they really fixed you. She thinks you must have found a way to outsmart them. She's afraid of what you might do to her. To all of us." "Aren't you afraid too?" "No, why should I be afraid? I never left you. I went with Emily and the children, but only because I thought that way was the best way to keep all of us together. I always believed you'd get better." "How about you, Eddie? Aren't you afraid?" "I'm not afraid of you, and neither is Dale. When I called to tell her you were coming home, she just said it was about damn time. I'm sure she'll be waiting for you to tell her its okay for her to come back home again." "I'm not going to call her. She left on her own, and she can come back on her own too. The same thing goes for you, Shirley. I didn't ask you to leave, and I'm not going to ask you to come back. You have to make up your own mind about what you want to do." "Kenny, maybe its too soon for you to be making those kinds of decisions. A little time to reflect may soften your perspective." My father was trying to keep me calm, and to help prevent me from acting on my immediate emotions. I didn't feel like time would make me change the approach I'd already decided upon. "Speaking of time, Dad, don't you think its past time for us to begin implementing our Southern expansion? From what Joyce has been telling me, we've certainly dropped the ball on those plans. I think the reason why you haven't been able to raise new capital is that you've been satisfied to just try to hold on to what we have, instead of moving forward like we had planned on doing. Now that I'm back, I want us to really start expanding. We're lucky that someone else hasn't moved in and staked out all that Southern territory for themselves." "All of that can wait, Kenny. The important thing is that you're well now. Take all the time you need to put your life back in order. The business will still be waiting when you're ready." I listened to my Dad's words, not liking what I was hearing. I was trying to remember when that ten year period would be up, the one allowing him to retain full voting control over my 40 % of the outstanding company shares. "Today is Friday. I'm flying down to Birmingham on Sunday night, with Joyce. It shouldn't take me more than a week, with her help, to get caught up with things again. I'm tired of resting. As far as me putting my life back in order, I'd have to say, for right now, that I'm perfectly satisfied with how things are. I'll make some changes later, but I think its important that we get the business back on track." My father stared at me, but I noticed that Mama was smiling at me happily. Joyce was holding onto my arm possessively. At any other time, I'd have been trying to get closer to Brenda, but I just bided my time on that. Joyce was one of the keys to my overall plans, both for the business, and for my personal situation. I needed her close to me, and on my side. There would be plenty of time for me to indulge myself with choice little morsels like Brenda. This was turning out to be so much easier than I thought it would be. I'd show him who was something and who was nothing! I'd show all of them. ------- Chapter 59 It was good to be back in my own home again. I was in the shower, trying to organize a workable agenda for the coming week in Birmingham. So far, everything had been going even better than I'd planned. My father had quieted down a little after I told him my plans. The only discomforting thing to happen had been the look I'd caught Shirley giving me while I'd been explaining my plans to the family. There was something different about the way she was acting around me. She hadn't stayed for long after we'd gotten home, going up to the nursery and gathering up the children's things quickly. I had barely any time with the kids before she spirited them away. I wondered if she had somehow understood the reason why I was different now. I had put in an hour with all the kids, rolling around on the floor with them and listening to them chattering on about things that could only be of interest to a child. I knew it was necessary, and I'd already included it as something I would need to do. I could be loving and playful. I could be whatever was necessary, for however long it was necessary, just as long as I got what I wanted in the end. I had almost finished showering when the bathroom door opened and Joyce and Eddie came into the bathroom. They had already taken all their clothes off before coming into the bathroom, and they were laughing and kidding around when they opened the shower door. "Eddie and I thought you might need some help scrubbing your back, Kenny." Joyce was laughing and reached over to grab the soap from my hand. This was more like it. I wondered where Brenda had gotten off to. After a minute of Eddie and Joyce climbing all over me though, I put any thoughts of Brenda out of my mind. The two of them got me all worked up quickly. I hadn't had sex for awhile, and they were both acting like they were ready for it. I picked Joyce up and brought her in close so that her butt was poised just above my dick. It didn't take long to find her wet opening, so when I had the head of my cock lined up, I dropped her down on it. She wrapped her legs around my hips, worried about me dropping her. Once she felt safer, with her hands grabbing the back of my arms, she started raising and lowering herself on my pole. I knew I wasn't going to last very long. I could feel my balls starting to tighten. "That's it you little Monkey, make me cum!" The way she froze up on me, I knew I'd said the wrong thing to her. When she lifted herself up and off of my dick and dropped back down to the shower floor, I knew she had figured out that I was changed. She had this look on her face, and she was already starting up with the making faces, and the tears running down her cheeks. It didn't take her more than a couple of seconds to open the shower door and leave. Eddie followed right behind her. I was glad that they'd left. It gave me time to try to think about what I could say to them to try to salvage the situation. I didn't care that much about what Eddie thought, but Joyce was someone I needed to have with me until after I brought my plan to fruition. After that, I didn't care what she did, or how she thought. I was worried though. I had planned on being able to get through the first few weeks without anyone getting upset. I'd have to improvise now. When I finally came out of the shower, Joyce Eddie and Brenda were all waiting for me in the bedroom. They were all fully dressed and they didn't look happy. "You do realize you left me hanging back there, don't you? I didn't mean anything by calling you a monkey. I was just joking with you, because you were climbing all over me." "We want our Kenny back." When she said that, Shirley walked into the bedroom too. I guess they had called her back to add some reinforcements. I knew there was nothing else I could do now. I'd just have to explain things to them, and let them decide for themselves. "I want him back too. This was supposed to be a merger, but somehow it got messed up and ended up being one of those hostile takeovers. He's still in here though. I can feel him now, but something went wrong and he can't help me yet. Maybe it will just take him longer to adjust than it took me." "You have to go back to the clinic until he does come back. We don't want you here with us like this." This was Shirley speaking. What right did she have? She didn't even live here with us anymore. I really did wish I could turn a switch or something and have these situations handled by this other Kenny. It would make things a lot simpler if I could do that. I'd tried to tell him that too, but he'd kept insisting that it had to all be his way. "Why do I have to go back? I'm not sick now. You can't send someone back to a clinic just because you don't like their personality, or the way they treated you. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm still me, just different for right now. All I need is some time so that I can get used to doing things more like you are used to. I hoped all of you would want to help me. I'm not crazy now." "I called Dr. Fellows and left her a message. It would be better if you went back to the clinic. If you don't go back voluntarily, we'll go to court again and have you committed." Joyce was careful to stay far away from me when she said that. I didn't lose my temper with her though. I was actually pretty calm about things, considering that all of my careful planning had been ruined. "If we do go into court, what makes you think they would decide I need to go back there? I'm not a danger to you, or to anyone else. Have I lost my temper? No. Am I running all around threatening any of you? No. Are you going to go into court and tell them I need to be committed to a mental hospital because I said you were a monkey? I'm sorry I said that to you. It was insensitive of me. You have to remember, most of this is new to me. I'm being truthful when I tell you that everything you liked about the other Kenny is still here with me. You should give me enough time to see if I can bring it back. The doctor didn't make me better, I did that myself, but it isn't complete yet." "We aren't going to take a chance with you. We all remember what you said before, the things you threatened to do to all of us. You can either leave, or else go back to the clinic. You can't stay here with us." Joyce had a very determined look on her face. I wasn't hopeful of changing her mind. "I can't just leave, where would I go? Look, even if you don't want me here with you right now, you have to help me try to bring back this other Kenny that you do want. He's in here with me, I swear he is. Something isn't quite right yet, but it will be. We still trade, and I can do things I couldn't do before, so he's here with me. Every day I get new memories and new skills. Where do these come from if not from him? I just need some time. I promise I don't want to get in trouble again, and I know I would if I did anything that you're worried about." I could see my argument had them thinking about not sending me back to the clinic. They weren't convinced, but they at least had some doubts about sending me back now. It took everything I had to fight my way back from just being a passive observer. More than anything I wanted to be back in control again. When I first started to realize what was happening, it was already too late. Bad Kenny had somehow surrounded me and swallowed me up. I was there, but nothing seemed to work for me. All I could do was watch and listen as Bad Kenny took complete control. This time I was awake though. The last time, I hadn't been awake. I didn't see how I could do anything to prevent him from doing what he planned. I couldn't resist him because I had nothing to resist with. In the end, I had no choice, so I tried to join him, hoping to modify and temper his thoughts, actions, and words. I thought I noticed subtle changes over the weeks, but, listening to him making his argument with my wives, I began to be sure that he was starting to change. I wished there was some way that I could communicate directly with Joyce. I felt him. I hadn't been sure myself when I told the women that he was still in there. I thought he was, and I really had been getting his old memories, and learning to do things that only he could do before. I hoped I could use him, at my will, as a resource, when I needed him. The women told me to stay in the bedroom while they went downstairs to talk about what they should do with me. I was suddenly tired. I went over to the bed and sat down on it. I didn't like being put in a position like this. By all rights, I should be the one who dictated to them. It was my house, my money, and my business. If anyone should be made to leave, it was them. Still, I was willing to compromise, if it would somehow prevent my having to go back there. It had been almost three years taken out of my life. They hadn't been totally wasted though, because I was better and stronger now than I'd ever been. I'd learned a lot. It was too bad I hadn't had access to this other Kenny's thoughts and memories before. He taught me some valuable lessons about needing to cooperate. I got comfortable and closed my eyes. They were sure taking a long time. Maybe that was good for me. I have to accept the fact that I am now the one who's the appendage, not Bad Kenny. He has somehow become ascendant over me. Strangely, now that I can see through his eyes and hear his thoughts, he doesn't seem as dark and sinister to me. Like me, he is searching for a way to achieve his goals. I dislike his goals, since they are selfish and greedy. In his universe, there is only him. I don't have any sense that he wants to do any harm. It is more a case of his not wanting to do any good. Given a choice, I would decide not to work with him. With him right here, in the midst of my beloved family, I no longer have the luxury of having a choice like that. I would do anything to keep them safe and unharmed. I'm not sure how long they were having their little conference, but I woke up as soon as they all started filing back into the bedroom. Joyce was still in the lead. None of them were smiling, but none of them looked particularly angry at me. I wouldn't have noticed things like this before. To me, this was another sign that the other Kenny was influencing me. I didn't mind the assistance, just as long as it was me that was in charge. I wouldn't ever agree to going back to how things used to be. "Kenny, I just got off the phone with Mama and your father. I told them what we'd learned about you. I also told them about what you said about needing more time to complete the changes. Mama said you can go over to her house and live in your old bedroom. Your father says you can't have anything to do with the business until after he's satisfied that you're enough like your old self that he doesn't have to worry about you. You can do your trading over there too, if you want to. If you don't want to do that, you can leave. Mama said to tell you we would give you as much money as you need to get settled somewhere else." "They can't kick me out of my own house, or prevent me from working at a business I own forty percent of. I have my own money, including all the money in my trading accounts." "We live in this house, not you. The children own the stock, not you, and your father is now the trustee, not you. As for the assets in the trading accounts, I control almost all of them. I also serve as your legal guardian, until we go into court and have that changed. You can go to court and take your chances by asking the judge to remove my guardianship, or you can go live at Mama's, or take some money and leave us alone here." I knew I wasn't ready to go into court, especially when I'd be opposed by my entire family. I hadn't taken all of the legal mumbo jumbo seriously, or else I'd forgotten about no longer having control over my assets. Either way though, I really only had one choice. I didn't want to just leave. "I'll go live at Mama's, but I expect all of you to cooperate and try to help me bring out this other Kenny." I could see that this surprised them. They must have expected me to take their money and leave everything that was rightfully mine behind. I looked over at Brenda and smiled. She and that Emily were the best of them. Too bad about Cindy too. If I'd had more time to get comfortable being this Kenny they wanted me to be, I could have gotten all of them back, and gone right on being the rich boy he'd been. "Are you sure that's what you want to do? You aren't going to cause any trouble over there are you?" Joyce seemed upset at my announced choice. Good. It was better for me if she was kept a little bit off balance. "I'll need a ride over there. Brenda, could you drive me over? It would give us a chance to talk some. Maybe, once you see I'm not some scary person, you'll give me a chance to prove I'm sincere about wanting to be more like the old Kenny you're all used to." "I'll call Hans to come get you. You need to get your computer stuff that Jane and Grace dropped off here." Joyce was taking charge again, preventing Brenda from answering for herself. Brenda looked disappointed to me. "Is it going to bother you if Brenda or any of my other wives decide for themselves that they want to spend some time with me? Just because you've turned against me, that doesn't mean all the rest of them have too." "I didn't turn against you. You aren't my Kenny though. You aren't our husband. Until you change and show us that you can be that man, none of us will want to be spending time with you." "That isn't very helpful. I've felt all along that this other Kenny of yours responds more when he's in front of you. You bring him out better than I can manage alone. I felt it in the shower, right after you and Eddie left. He wouldn't have said what I did. Maybe if you hadn't gotten all upset and left me hanging there, we could have managed to bring him out even more. All you're talking about is one side of my personality that is a little suppressed right now. It's still there. I think you're afraid one of the other wives will succeed in bringing him out where you failed. I hope you girls won't avoid me just because Miss Bossy here is jealous of all of you?" As soon as I said that, I knew it had been the wrong thing to say. They all trusted Joyce. It wasn't going to be easy to drive a wedge between them and her. My head started hurting again. Joyce turned and walked out of my bedroom. All the others followed her. I did notice that Brenda sent me one of her most dazzling smiles before she too left. Maybe I'd been wrong about talking to Joyce like I had, maybe it wasn't the wrong tactic for me to use after all. Brenda seemed amused by it, and, if her smile meant what I thought it did, somewhat intrigued by the idea that she might be able to cure me where Joyce and the doctor had failed. It took almost another hour before Hans showed up with the limo. I made it a point to do all of the heavy loading myself, remembering about Hans having the bad back. I also remembered to sit up front with him and to tell him that Joyce had decided that I still wasn't well enough for her yet. At the house, I insisted on carrying all of my things up to my room by myself. Mama and my Dad were happy to see me, they said. I thought Mama was being sincere. After I got all of my stuff moved into my room and had hung up my clothes in the closet, I went back downstairs and joined them in the library. I figured it would help to clear the air if I spoke about Joyce's fears myself. "Joyce is really upset because I'm not one hundred percent back to my old self yet. I thought Dr. Fellows had explained to her that it was a process, and it will take awhile for it to be totally completed. Instead of seeing how much I'm different from the man who went into that clinic, all she thinks about is that I'm not an exact duplicate of the Kenny she first fell in love with." "I've noticed the changes as well, Kenny. You seem very different to me also. Joyce said you acted far differently than our Kenny would have, and that you seemed very insensitive to her." My Dad spoke in a slow, measured cadence to me. I wondered if he thought I'd become retarded in that clinic. It sounded very patronizing. Perhaps he was still pissed off about what I'd said to him in the limo driving home? "Dad, I am different. It's been almost three years and I've had to make adjustments to get back even this far. I feel a sense of urgency now that I didn't feel before. Its like I feel the need to prove to everyone that I'm back now, and that I can do everything I did before I got sick. Maybe she's upset because I tend to be a lot more straightforward now than before. I'm sure I'm going to need to adjust my personality to fit in better with her. She's changed too though. She's a lot more bossy than before. She isn't going to let any of the other wives spend time with me." "You need to slow down and consolidate this recovery. You might feel well, and even ready to start doing everything at full speed again. Before that happens, you need to give all of us time to get used to you, and yes, to the differences we all are seeing." "Why do I need to do that? Do I have something to prove? The doctor released me, Dad. She gave me a clean bill of health. I admit I'm different. It's going to be hard for me to try to fit in and go back to being more like everyone wants, especially if they all avoid me like Joyce wants them to do." "Darling, no one is talking about avoiding you. You're too tense, and too sensitive. We're all thrilled to have you back home with us. You are still so young. You have many years ahead of you to make your own mark in the business world. Listen to your father, listen to all of us. Everything will come back to you, in due course, but first you need to show all of us that this episode we've all suffered through is truly at an end. We've all suffered and agonized with you, Kenny. You tell us that you're all cured now, and that the differences we are all noting will disappear with time. We have time. No one is in a hurry here, except for you. You will help your cause best by listening to what those who love you are telling you." "You too, Mama? I thought you'd understand how important it is to me to get my life back on track again." "I do, dear, I do understand. I also understand that it isn't all about you, Kenny. Joyce knows you so well, dear, and she loves you more than anyone else ever could. We trust her judgment and her instincts. When you've satisfied her, then you've satisfied us. Until then, we'll just take things slow and see all these wonderful changes that you've been promising us." Mama was a tough old broad. There was more steel in her backbone than in all the rest of them combined. I heard her message. Loud and clear. There was nothing ambiguous about it. I wondered how the other Kenny would have responded to what she'd just told me? I almost had to laugh at Mama. I wanted to kiss her, and give her one of those great big bear hugs she'd been giving me ever since I first came to live with her. I remembered that she hadn't hugged me when she showed up to bring me back home with the others. I hadn't thought about it then, but it must have been her sensing the difference in me. I felt him again. He's pleased, I can tell. For a minute, I actually felt like hugging Mama. Of the lot of them, it was her that had raised the greatest response from him. I thought that must be significant. "Mama, if you think that too, then I'll just have to go along with it. Maybe it will help me get back to being closer to my old self if I do stay here with you. A lot of my memory seems impaired, but I have some nice memories from back when I used to live here. Do you still play golf?" "We still play. Do you think you're well enough to resume playing?" "Nothing wrong with me physically, Mama. I hope I still remember how to play. I don't think I'm ready to play for money yet, though. I'll drive over to the club tomorrow and hit some balls. If it starts coming back to me again, we can all play together next weekend. Maybe we can ask Shirley to play with us? She always liked golf." "You know something, Kenny? I think Joyce might be overstating the case with you. You're different, but I still see my boy in there. I want to see more of him though. I can accept some changes, all of us can, but, even with any changes we accept, the old Kenny still needs to be present as well. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" "The old Kenny is welcome. I welcome him as much as you would. I feel him here in this house more than I did at the clinic, or over at that other house. I'd like to see more of him, but not so much that I feel left out of things. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" "Perfectly, dear. I must admit that I enjoy seeing you be more forceful. Before, I always thought you lacked a forceful presence. There is a time and a place to be firm. It might do Joyce and the others a world of good if you were to insist on being more in charge than you previously have been. I hope for a good balance." It hurt to hear my own mother dealing like that with me. It wasn't my character and personality she was praising, and that felt like betrayal to me. I was forceful in business. It wasn't that I lacked the capacity to be forceful. She was right about having a good balance. I finally understood how important that was. If I'd known it before, things might have turned out much differently. There it was again. I felt him. He wasn't happy this time though. Mama and I both see this thing pretty much the same way. At least she doesn't put the old Kenny up on some pedestal and act as though he was perfect. She recognizes the benefit of acting like a man, instead of like a boy, or some sissy. He can feel me. That's a form of communication. He's been acknowledging my existence, and seems to be coming around as far as understanding that we each need the other. I really meant what I had said before. We do seem to have merged, although I feel like I've been engulfed, swallowed up whole, rather than merged. However it was accomplished, I'm now a part of a whole. I need to make the best of it, and try to begin to have an impact on how I do things. I'll try to work with what I have left to work with. It won't be the same, but it will be better than not existing, better than allowing myself to exist without any say so in how I'm acting. Again! This time I can almost make out what he's thinking. Everything would be so much simpler if we could get together to make this work for both of us. No, that isn't what I meant. What I meant was that I could stand being less of me and more of him, if it meant that I didn't always have to worry about being left totally out of the mix again. We can do this. We just need to accept it happening. ------- It took us another month, on our own. I kept to myself for the most part. I traded grains, metals, currencies and even dabbled in some ingredients when an opportunity presented itself. During this period, I communicated with my selves, in hopes of resolving whatever control issues and fears there were still left unresolved. Brenda did come over to see me on the first Monday afternoon after I got back. I was heading out the door, having finished my trading for the day, hoping to get in some more practice on the range at the club. My game was really off, but I took great pleasure in the simple repetitive activity of laying club to ball. I noticed clear improvement with every jumbo bucket I hit. "Hi, Kenny. I came over to see you. Are you surprised?" Hey, Brenda. I wish you'd called first. I'm just on my way out the door. Mama's inside, and you can talk to her about what we've all agreed to. She wants me to change more, closer to the old Kenny, before I spend any more time with you girls. Did you drive over from Lawrence?" "I was visiting my mother anyway, so I thought I'd stop by and surprise you. Have any of the others been over to see you too?" "No. I think Mama has told all of the ones still around here to wait until she says I'm all right. I think she's worried I'm contagious or something." "You're changed from before, Kenny, but you're still as cute as you ever were. You wouldn't hurt me if we slept together, would you?" "No, I wouldn't. Mama might get mad though, and she might hurt both of us. Sorry, but I really do have to run. Go in and see Mama. She'll be able to tell you what we can do and when we can do it. As soon as she says its okay though, I hope you'll come over and spend some time with me." "What about Dwightee and April? Should I bring them too?" "Well, maybe it..." "Yes! Bring them. They can sleep in the nursery. Tell Mama I haven't seen them in a long time." "Maybe it would be better if we didn't have kids distracting us. There will be a lot of ground we want to cover, and if the kids are here, they'll be a distraction for us." After she went inside, there was another long conversation I had with myself. Sure we had different priorities and interests, but it wasn't like I didn't have time to be with Brenda and the kids too. I understood that tastes were different with guys, and that Brenda's looks put her in a special class. I had to explain that Brenda was a woman, and one I desired a lot, but she was also the mother of two of my children, and being with those kids was as important to me as being with Brenda was. That didn't go over too well. I stressed the need for cooperation, explaining that it wasn't an either or situation. I'm not sure what Mama said to Brenda, but, after that day, two or more of my children came over for a visit almost every day. Even Emily was persuaded to bring Sissy and Tony over from Lawrence by Mama. I saw Emily when she came and dropped the children off. She didn't speak to me, but she did acknowledge me with a little wave of her hand. I'd been at Mama's for about two weeks when Joyce and Shirley came over for dinner one night. Mama hadn't said anything, and even Gerta didn't give me any warning. I came downstairs when Gerta called me, and there they were. Shirley spent the first twenty minutes at the dinner table staring at my face like she was trying to memorize every line and feature. "What?" I took my napkin and tried to make sure no food was caught on my chin or cheeks. "You don't look like him, but you don't look like you either." "Like who?" "Never mind. I can't tell anymore. I could tell back in your bedroom when you first came home." "Shirley, you aren't making any sense. What could you tell?" "When you were our Kenny, you were more relaxed in your face, and your eyes had a sparkle, like you were always laughing, or about to laugh. With the other Kenny, your eyes were colder, and you seemed more tense in your facial muscles. Now, you look relaxed, but your eyes aren't laughing. They aren't hard or cold either though, just like regular eyes. Now I can't tell." "I'm just Kenny. A little different than I was before. Different than I was that afternoon over at our house too. I'm both Kenny's, but I'm a new Kenny too. I'm still adjusting. How come you won't play golf with us?" "How come you haven't apologized to Joyce?" "I did apologize. You were right there when I did it." Shirley looked at Joyce, and Joyce nodded, acknowledging that I was telling the truth. "I didn't remember. Derek told me he had a nice conversation with you. He thinks you're the same as you were before you got sick. I think you're still different." "He's right, and so are you. With him, I probably am the same. With you, Joyce, or any of the other wives, I'm different. Don't you act different around children too, a little more patient than with adults?" While I'd been speaking to Shirley, Joyce had been fidgeting around in her seat, obviously impatient for something. I didn't say anything to her about it, but I noticed it. During a lull in our conversation, she finally spoke up, speaking too rapidly. "Shirley and I came to spend the night with you, to see for ourselves if you've changed. Mama says she sees you changing. We want to see if you really have." "Well, I'm flattered, but I did promise Brenda she could be first, whenever Mama decided it was all right." "Brenda's in Lawrence, and we're right here." Joyce seemed shocked that I was effectively refusing her offer. "That's true right now, but I'm betting she'll be willing to drive over here if Mama calls and tells her its okay. Right, Mama?" My father was watching all of this play out. Shirley was blushing just about as red as I'd ever seen her. She seemed content to let Joyce and I work out the details. "Kenny, I hardly think it appropriate that you put Joyce and Shirley in this position. It appears that you're toying with them." "You might be right Mama, but Brenda never told me she was going to have me locked up at another clinic like Shirley and Joyce did. Brenda never told me that I needed to move out of my own home. I don't remember hearing anyone apologizing to me for any of that. As far as being toyed with, their offer sounds about as romantic as calling for a plumber would be. At least Brenda told me she loved me, and wanted to bring my children over to see their father. If you make it a condition that I have to sleep with Joyce and Shirley before you decide I'm well enough to go back to work, then I'll do it. Otherwise, they can just wait until something changes to make me believe I want to make love to either of them." Shirley started crying, getting up and leaving the table. Joyce remained right where she was. Mama got up and tried to follow Shirley, but Shirley was out the door and in her car before Mama could make it to the front door. We all heard Shirley's car start up when Mama opened the door again. We heard the gears grinding as she put it in gear and drove off. I didn't even know she'd gotten herself a stick shift. When she'd come to visit me the last time, she'd driven her old car over. I'd always wanted to drive a stick. "Do you have your own car, Joyce, or should I ask Hans to drive you back home?" "I'm not leaving here, Kenny. I came to find out something for myself, and I still plan on finding it out." "You left me hanging last time, Monkey." "Kenny, that's unforgivable!" Mama had come back close enough so she heard what I said. My father looked upset as well. I really didn't care. This was between Joyce and me. I was getting tired of allowing her to run roughshod over me. I looked right at her, and for the first time in quite a long time, I saw that glaze come into her eyes. She spoke again, but so softly that I was the only one who heard what she said. "I won't leave you hanging this time." "Of course you say that now, Monkey, because you've been thinking about doing it with me all day. As soon as you get what you're after, you'll be right back to treating me like you have ever since I left the clinic. You just want to beat Brenda into my bed. Like I said earlier, you had your chance and you blew it. I never told the doctor this, but you were a big part of the reason why I had my breakdown. I mean it probably would have happened anyway, but you made it happen sooner with all your plotting and scheming you did with Cindy. I had really always believed I could count on you, Joyce." "Are you talking about that land deal? I knew the money wasn't important to you. I could have borrowed the money from Mama if I'd wanted to. It wasn't that much money. Are you saying you weren't interested in Cindy? Or that you only went along because I wanted her?" "You were supposed to be on my side, always. You weren't though, and that bothered me a lot. I call you Monkey, but not because I think you look like one. I call you that because you tried to make a Monkey out of me. I loved you more than anyone, but you could never be loyal to me like I was to you." By the time I finished, Joyce could see I was prepared to continue further with this, even in front of my parents, if need be. If it had only been Mama, she might have continued it, but not in front of my Dad. "I don't need to sleep with you now, Kenny. I can already tell that Mama was wrong about you changing back to our Kenny again." "I think you're right. Mama is wrong. I'm not ever going to change back to being that Kenny. It might not be a bad thing if I don't though. You better go home and think about what I've told you tonight. You also better step aside and let my other wives make up their own minds about me. If you don't do that, I'll find my own way to get each of them back, and I'll make sure you're shut completely out of their lives from then on. That includes Cindy as well. Of all the things I regret, Joyce, I most regret not getting this straightened out with you before now. It might have saved both of us a lot of pain and grief if I had." "This isn't going to change anything, Kenny, or whoever you are now. My Kenny wouldn't ever say those things to me, or to Shirley either." "I guess that means I'm not your Kenny anymore. I can live with that. From now on I'm going to try to be my Kenny. That doesn't mean I'm trying to shut you out from everything, Joyce, but I'm not going to be content to sit back and let you run everything either." "If you make me leave here like this, Kenny, I'll never forgive you. I know what you're trying to do, but it won't work." "I don't need your forgiveness, Joyce. I also know what I'm trying to do, and that's take back what I never should have delegated to you in the first place. Do you need a ride, or will you be able to get home by yourself?" I stood up then, putting my napkin down on my empty plate as I did so. I waited for her to get up and leave, but she remained seated in her chair, unwilling or unable to get up. I turned away from her and walked over to the staircase. I turned back to see if she had gotten up yet, but she still hadn't. I climbed the stairs, not looking back again. Inside my room, with the dead bolt thrown, I started shaking. It only took a few minutes to calm myself back down. I half expected Joyce to come up and start pounding on the door demanding to be allowed to enter. It was about a half hour later before Mama came knocking on the door, calling out my name, and asking me to open the door for her. I got up and threw the dead bolt back, opening my door. She walked into my room and went over to stand by my bed. "Was that absolutely necessary tonight, dear? I felt so bad for Shirley." "Don't feel too bad for her, Mama. She'll get another chance. After what happened here tonight, all the wives are going to start taking sides. Shirley will think about it a lot, but, in the end, she'll pick me." "But, what of Joyce? Surely, you aren't going to force your father to choose between the two of you?" "Don't call me Shirley. I'm already confused enough trying to figure out which Kenny I am." Mama laughed nervously at my little joke. "Joyce isn't going to leave, and she isn't going to let me run off taking all her women with me either. She'll figure out soon enough that she will be the biggest loser if she tries to make this a choice between the two of us. We work well together. All this really amounts to is a switch over, from her leadership to mine. She got too frisky with having no one around to stay her hand. I let her run over me for too long. In the end, this will make our marriage healthier. She's always best when she's worried about not succeeding. This will make her try even harder." "You aren't as nice or as sweet as you once were. Joyce is right about our Kenny not being here anymore." "I think that was one of my biggest problems before, Mama. I kept trying to find a way to please everyone. It makes things too complicated. In the end, I decided it would work better if everyone was trying to please me. The alternative, staying like I was, it would have killed me. I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to being the way I am now, but I'm pretty sure it won't kill me. It might make some people wish I were dead, but, I guess that had to happen too. When are you going to tell Dad that I'm ready to go back to work?" "Not yet, Dear. You still need to get your family back together. That's more important than anything you could hope to accomplish down in Alabama. Our father would have been proud of you tonight, Kenny. He was a bastard in so many ways, but he always understood what was needed, and he never let anything take precedence over what he wanted." "I think he would have been proud of you too, if he had known about what you got Hans to do to Dwight Nunes. How come you never told Gerta that it was you who told Hans to do it?" "I loved him. I believed he loved me too. If it had been anyone else but Georgia." "I think it was needed too, and so would your father. You need to put it behind you too. You've paid a high enough price, not that you ever owed it to anyone." "Why do you think it was me, and not Bunny who had Hans do it?" "Uncle Bunny was too soft to do it. He might have wanted it done, but he wouldn't ever have asked Hans to do it. Hans would only have done it for Uncle Bunny, you, or your father. If it had been your father who asked him, Hans would have told Gerta. She knew it had to be either you or Uncle Bunny. You should have told her. If you had told her, she could have helped you a lot more with your depressions." "I couldn't tell her. You've seen how Hans is now. He changed after Dwight died. I didn't want her blaming me for Hans changing." "I'm going to take your advice, Mama. I'm going to wait and get my family back together. You need to do the same with Hans and Gerta. She loves you too much to let this come between you. She'll understand why you needed to do it." The next afternoon, Brenda showed up with Dwightee and April. She moved into my room, and used my old bedroom as a nursery for the children. She never even asked me if it was all right, she just showed up and moved herself in. Every hour that I spent on the computer, trading, Brenda spent that same amount of time on the phone, talking to Emily, Shirley and Joyce. I'd half listen to her as she described what it was like having me all to herself. No part of what we did together seemed to be an off limits topic to her. It all ended up being spoken of with the other wives. I got a phone call from Eddie next, telling me that she and Dale both wanted to talk to me. I told her that Dale had to call me herself if she wanted to talk to me. When she asked me if she could come over, by herself, I told her I wanted to speak with Dale first. Later that day, I heard Brenda on the phone with Emily, describing her version of my conversation with Eddie. It was pretty accurate in places, but way off in other places. Joyce called me next, to apologize to me, and to tell me she had thought about what I'd said. "Kenny, you should come back home now. I was wrong in what I said before. If you come back, you won't even have to see me unless you want to." "I don't need to avoid you Joyce, but if I do come back, I'm going to be running things, not you. I don't think I can trust you to run things for me anymore. I'll move over tomorrow, after you leave for work. Brenda will need her old room back too. I want you to call Phil over in Lawrence and ask him to find someone else for Emily. I'd like Thelma, Phil and Claire back here to help us as soon as they find someone else to help Emily and the children." "Have you talked to Emily yet?" "Not yet." "I can have her call you." "Don't interfere, Joyce. You've already done enough." "I'm trying to help." "I don't need any help. With Emily, all I need is time. I'm sure she's missing Brenda a lot already." "Are you going to divorce me, Kenny?" "No. I'm angry at you, but not mad enough to want to divorce you." "Are you going to do anything about Cindy?" "Are you asking me if I'm planning on taking her away from you?" "She isn't with me. I told you that already. We haven't been together since right before you got sick." "Do you miss her?" "That isn't a fair question. I miss all of them. I've missed Cindy for a lot longer though." "How's Shirley?" "How do you think? She's mad at me too, but she blames you for setting her up like you did. You know she never expected you to say what you did." "I love Shirley, but I didn't like what I kept hearing from her. She isn't much of a person for loyalty either. You better tell her for me that I don't mind her being mad at me, but I still expect to see all my children. Tell her that means Derek too." "I'll call Phil first, and then I'll call Shirley. I guess I'll see you after I get home from work tomorrow?" "I'll get Brenda to cook something special for us. When we do sit down to dinner, I want Brenda sitting where you usually sit. You can sit where Emily used to, next to where Brenda used to sit." Joyce didn't say anything. I wanted her to know that I really was planning changes. Brenda and I were sleeping together, and the sex was all right. It wasn't as good as I remembered though. I began to think this was because Emily wasn't around. Even Joyce could get Brenda's motor running better than I was able to manage. "Brenda, what's the matter? You act like you're just going through the motions with me. Is it you, me, or the two of us together?" "I guess it's me, Kenny. It's hard for me to be relaxed around you now. I'm never sure about you like I was before. I don't want you to get mad and hurt me." "Did you do anything to make me mad?" She didn't answer me right away. "Did I say something that makes you think I was mad at you?" She started crying, and shaking her head from side to side. "Brenda, could you do me a big favor and go check on the children?" I waited until she went over to my old bedroom to check on the kids before I opened up communication. What happened? It wasn't anything. I bit her. I thought she'd like it. Is that why you wanted to be alone with her? So you could bite her? If you had asked me I'd have told you she didn't like that. No more being alone with any of them. I didn't mean to hurt her. Some of them love that. You could have asked me. These are the kinds of things we want to avoid. People have doubts about me already. I can't afford mistakes like this. Don't do it again. Freaky? I know. I'm not the only guy who talks to himself though. It was getting a lot better. Maybe it was a mistake to ever agree to not being right there when he and Brenda first got together. I had agreed to it because I wanted to be alone with her the first time I made love again with Joyce. I wanted to know there wouldn't be any unwelcome surprises. We were sharing all the wives, but we didn't feel the same way about each of them. Bad Kenny cared only about looks. I liked looks too, but I saw beyond the physical beauty. I didn't want Joyce, Shirley, Eddie or Dale hurt by Bad Kenny's low regard for them. I saw after this incident that this wasn't a practical solution. We had progressed to the point where we both thought of ourselves as "I" all the time now. It wasn't a case of one being dominant and one being passive. This seemed to switch back and forth for what seemed like no reason at all. The more we got adjusted, the less noticeable the switch was becoming for us. "I" was "I", and I always thought of him as "He", but he told me he felt exactly the same way about it. The distinction was definitely getting blurrier though. When Brenda got back, I spent a lot of time comforting her. I apologized for the bite, telling her that she was so beautiful that I got carried away and needed to taste her. I had her show me the bite mark, and I spent a long time kissing her pain away. When she told me it didn't hurt her anymore, I found other places to kiss, places that didn't hurt right then, but places where I knew she would be aching soon. I knew what Brenda liked. She loved being told how beautiful she was and how perfect everything of hers was. I was finally able to get her to relax with me and then she had the strongest cum I'd ever seen her have. Her legs got stiff like rigor mortis had set in. Her face was contorted into an unattractive grimace. She was panting and huffing and groaning and moaning. I waited for her to relax and calm down. "What was that?" "That was you, Kenny. It felt just like it did when we were kids in here. Back when all I could think about was how much I loved you." "I love you a lot more now than I did back then, Brenda. Let's go to sleep now. Tomorrow is going to be very busy for both of us." "This is my last night for having you all to myself. Maybe that made it better too, because it made me feel more emotional about this." I think she was remembering that bite. Remember how Cindy used to get when I bit her?" Go to sleep. That isn't what they mean when they ask you to eat them. Some things you know best. I'll be better off though, after we're all done doing what we're doing here. It seems like one of us always knows what to do. I hope it turns out like that after we're done with this merger thing." ------- When I woke up that next morning, Bad Kenny was gone. Good Kenny was gone too though. All that was left was me... Kenny. I was sad at first, then it was all relief. I'd gotten through it. I felt just like me. I knew I was different, but at least I still felt like myself. I looked over at Brenda. She was still sleeping peacefully. I didn't have any urge to bite her. Brenda came into the nursery about an hour and a half later. I was sitting on the floor with Dwightee and April, telling them about this experience I'd just come through. I'm not sure they understood it or believed what I was telling them. It didn't really matter. I just loved being there with them, talking to them about something. I'd been so afraid that one of the changes would be that I wouldn't be a good parent to my children, that I wouldn't feel as much love and affection for them. I knew right then that I didn't have to worry about that. I knew if that was true, that I could handle all the rest of it. ------- Chapter 60 After the move back over to my own house I began to be more active. I wanted to put myself in as many different situations as I could, hoping to test the limits of my new personality. I had already known I was less patient, and more apt to speak out about things that were troubling to me. I was also more confrontational with people. This was a wild departure from before, but it felt right to me. It wasn't that I was suddenly argumentative, or that I ended up fighting more with people to get what I wanted. It actually seemed more efficient. The people surrounding me seemed to prefer knowing what I wanted and what I didn't want. I tended not to go along with things I didn't like as much as I had before, and certainly not for as long a time as I used to go along. My likes and dislikes were made clearer. I had been back in the house for about a week when Emily decided to come back for a "visit" with the children. She avoided me, but she was doing her best to get Brenda to go off somewhere more private with her. They were in the kitchen, talking, while Brenda prepared lunches for all of us. I was in my office, going over all the trading recaps, and the account reconciliations that Billy Ray had been making in my absence. I followed Eddie's trading progress, along with the ever increasing losses we incurred with our grain brokerage business during the period I was at the clinic. We'd ended up losing more than five and a half million net. Without Eddie's trading, the figure would have been another million higher. My door was closed, but I still heard the raised voices coming from the kitchen. Emily and Brenda were not only having a loud argument, they were actually shouting at each other. It quieted down after I heard what sounded like a large metal object hitting the floor with a resounding crashing sound. Thirty seconds later, a crying Emily opened the door to my office and stormed inside. "Why did you have to turn her against me? You knew how important to me she is." "Hello, Em. I assume you're referring to Brenda when you say her. I know I haven't said or done anything to try to turn her against you. Since I've been back, the only thing I've said to Brenda concerning you is that I expected you to make sure I had frequent visits with Sissy and Tony. Other than that, I never mentioned you to her at all." "If that's true, then why is she acting so uncomfortable around me? Why is she being so hostile towards me?" "I have no idea. Did you ask her why yourself?" "I tried asking her, and she threw a dough pan at me. She acts like she hates me now." "Go tell her I'd like to speak with her. In private." "I want to be here, to hear what you both are saying about me." "We all want things, but we don't all get what we want all the time. This is one of those times you aren't going to get what you want. Either go do what I asked you to do, or else leave me alone and take care of this yourself. If you expect my assistance, you need to allow me to do things my way." Emily stared at me. I could see she was trying to rein in her anger. She didn't speak as she turned around and left my office. Two minutes later, Brenda came knocking on my door. "Did you want to see me, Kenny?" I caught a glimpse of Emily behind her, obviously trying to eavesdrop on our conversation. "Come in and close the door behind you, Brenda." She did as I'd asked. "Tell me what's going on between you and Emily. I heard the two of you yelling out in the kitchen, and Emily just accused me of trying to turn you against her." "This is something we've been fighting about ever since I moved back to Ridgeline. I'm just tired of having her blame everything that happens on you. She's mad because I chose to come back to you." "I don't like this fighting and arguing. I had Joyce tell Emily that she and the children were always welcome to come visit with us. I would appreciate it if you would treat her as a guest in our home. We don't throw pans at our guests, Brenda." "She wants me to stop what I'm doing and go back to my bedroom with her." I didn't say anything in reply to that, waiting for her to continue. "I'm not in the mood for that with her right now, but she won't listen. She thinks you told me I couldn't do anything more with her." "Open the door and ask Emily to come in here." Brenda went and opened the door. Emily was standing about three feet away from the door. It was quite obvious that she'd been trying to hear what we were saying. I signaled with my hand for her to come into my office. She did, shutting the door again behind herself. "Emily, I have no objection at all to you having any kind of relationship you choose to have, with any of our other wives. This includes Brenda, of course. On the other hand, I don't appreciate you trying to force yourself on Brenda either. If she says no to you, then she must have her own reasons for saying it. Her reasons have nothing to do with me, or with anything I've said to her. You might be better served finding out from Brenda what her reasons for saying no might be." "You know she's only doing what she thinks you want her to do." "No, I don't know that. That isn't what she told me either. If that is the case though, she's completely misinterpreted what I would want from her. In the past few years we've all had our problems. I feel bad because it was my mental problems that created all the rest of it. I didn't get sick deliberately, and I would have recovered faster if I had known how to do so. Our family has suffered too much already. Anything that makes the situation worse, or which adds to that suffering, is the opposite of what I would want." "We were doing just fine until you had your mother call to tell Brenda that you needed her." "That isn't what happened, Emily. You knew I went to see Kenny and he put me off until his mother said it was all right. I had already told you that I was going back to Kenny, even before he got out of that place he was in." Brenda sounded belligerent, and far more confrontational than she usually was around Emily. She seldom sought out open conflicts, preferring instead to remove herself from the fray, and let them settle themselves on their own. "Emily, you called me once to tell me that you and Brenda no longer considered yourselves my wives. At the time, I wasn't sure if I'd ever get out of that clinic. I was troubled by what you said, but I knew it wouldn't be right for me to try to talk you out of what you said was the two of you trying to make a new start. Brenda has apparently had second thoughts. She still loves me, and I still love her. Maybe, in her own mind, it would seem disloyal to her if she resumed a relationship with the both of us, given your stated choice. In spite of what you told me, I still consider you my wife, and I have no interest in seeing you deprived of any comforts with any of the other wives. You and I have some unresolved business, but I don't want it to interfere with your other family relationships." "You never punished Eddie. She did the same thing I did." "Eddie, Dale and I also have some unresolved business. For that matter, Joyce, Shirley and I do as well. Brenda and I have resolved any issues we might have had." "I didn't do anything wrong. I had already left you when I moved to California. You can't punish me for what I did." I knew that Emily wanted to come back, and I also knew she wasn't worried about being punished. Always before, when these types of things came up, I'd ask her to come back. This time I hadn't done that. In the past, I didn't mind doing it. I knew the important thing was to get her back, not just for me, but for the whole family. For some reason, this time I felt differently. I was going to make her ask to come back. That would be her punishment. "I'm through talking with you about this. I already told you where I stood on this thing between you and my other wives. As far as that other thing, the punishment, it no longer matters to me. You don't consider yourself my wife any longer, so it isn't anything I need concern myself with. If you were my wife though, I'd beat your ass black and blue for what you did." "Well, I'm not." "I accept that. Please leave me alone right now. I have plans to make to try to get things back running the way they should be." Brenda and Emily left. They were both quiet. I think Brenda was even more shocked than Emily that I had terminated the discussion the way I had. Now that I was out of the clinic, and all the reports from Brenda indicated that I wasn't some angry, brutal maniac, the expectation from all the wives was that we would all reunite relatively soon. I had put Eddie off and had made no new overtures to Shirley. Joyce and I hadn't slept together or even had a friendly conversation in the time I'd been back. We had business discussions, and we had spoken of my future business plans. We had discussed all the children, with Joyce bringing me up to date on a lot of the milestones I'd missed with them. It wasn't that I had no sexual interest in all my other wives. I did. It was more a case of not having a workable plan on how to bring all of us back together in a way that would acknowledge the shift to my new leadership role within the family. I contented myself with only having Brenda in my bed. My new trading results had been excellent. If anything, I felt more in touch with the way the markets moved than I ever had before. This was probably due to my having far fewer distractions. I was well on my way to having regained all of the money lost in the grain broker business while I was gone. The volatility of the various markets, and the greater amount of contracts now being traded by pure speculators was producing many more exciting trading opportunities than were present in the time before I had become unwell. I was aware that Joyce, my parents, and Frank Clooney were watching my daily trading results with a close eye. Had I not been prospering in my trading, I was certain that steps would have been taken to curtail it. My success had led to greater freedom of movement, but Joyce still controlled all of my personal trading account balances. I had access to no money of my own. It wasn't that I really needed any money, but it was the principle of that condition that I found so objectionable. I didn't need a guardian. I had broached that subject with both my parents, and with Joyce. They had all told me, in various ways, just to be patient. I had been in my own home for slightly less than a month. I usually hit golf balls every afternoon for my physical recreation. I played with my children, had sex with Brenda, and traded grains and other instruments every weekday. I ate mostly meals that Brenda had prepared, and spent at least one hour every day discussing business with either Joyce or my father. I decided after a month that I'd waited long enough. Mama had decided that I needed to wait until after I had recovered my previous family situation before I would be allowed to resume my place again in the family business. I presumed this would also mean appearing in court somewhere along the way to have Joyce released from acting as my personal and financial guardian. I had spent two hours hitting golf balls over at the club, and had decided to drive over to Mama's. It was a spur of the moment decision. I wanted to share my own thoughts with her about the guardianship, having my own money, and just about every other restriction being placed on me. I found her in the library, reading a golfing magazine that she subscribed to. "Mama, I've given everything a lot of thought, and I think it would help my personal situation with my wives, and my own state of mind, if we petitioned the court to have Joyce removed as my guardian. I really don't believe it serves any good purpose to have her remaining in such a controlling position over me." "Have you put your personal situation back in order, Kenny?" "I've done everything I'm prepared to do under the present circumstances. I don't like the idea of Joyce thinking she can compel me to do anything, just because she happens to control all the purse strings. I want my freedom, and with it, my fortune. I won't be coerced into making personal decisions. Whatever decisions I do make, I want it to be because it's what I want, not what I needed to settle for in order to prove something to you." "This is something your father, Joyce and I have all agreed on, Kenny. It would take all three of us to make any changes to that agreement." "I've given this a lot of thought. If need be, I'll have Frank petition the court on my behalf, to have my guardianships vacated, including the one that had Dad become the trustee over the children's main trust account. It is my belief that I would prevail if it were to come to a legal showdown between us. I believe I've demonstrated my competence to you enough. It chafes me to continue to be put in the position I'm in." "This is beginning to sound more like a threat than a request, Kenny. Are you quite certain that this is how you wish to present it to us?" "I'm presenting nothing to "us". I could have chosen to tell this to Joyce, Dad, or you. I chose you for a reason. I'm no longer ill, but I'm not the old Kenny, and I won't ever be. I'm different, and Joyce and Dad probably won't appreciate that difference. I thought you might. A lot of the difference in me takes away from my previous softness about things. I believe most of my old values are still intact, but, I look at many things differently now. I won't be pushed around, not by Joyce, not by anyone. Believing as I do isn't a sign of illness, and I hoped you could appreciate that and convince the others. If you can't though, I still believe I would prevail if we took it into court. I'd like to avoid that, but not enough to forego what I believe is my due. I am well again, and it's important that all of you recognize that fact, and that you do so by returning all the rights that were taken away from me." "What of your family?" "Having my competence under a cloud prevents me from being as active as I might otherwise be. Restoring my family the way I want it, requires that I be able to point to the complete restoration of what I had previously lost. Part of my attractiveness and the respect I had from others came from the wealth and power I possessed. Not having these things reduces me in my own eyes. I had to conclude that some of the others have had similar reactions." "Can you assure me that you do plan to gather your family back to you? All the original wives, and the children at least?" "I could, but I won't do that. I'll do whatever I think best. It may turn out just as you'd wish it to, but that is my decision to make, not yours. It will turn out like I want it to, and that should be enough for you." "Very well. I will speak to Joyce and your father later tonight. For what it's worth, you'll have my vote." "Your vote is really the only one I was uncertain of. Joyce and Dad will do whatever you suggest. Try to set things up as soon as possible. I'm tired of waiting. I want to be in Birmingham no later than Monday of next week. I've looked at what Joyce has accomplished down there, and there was so much more we might have done. The first thing I'm going to do is get that vending product sales project going again. We've lost millions in annual sales by not following through with that program. We could have funded most of the rest of the Southern expansion with the sales profits and the borrowing opportunity that program would have presented to us." "Your father seemed undecided after you became ill. I believe he kept hoping you'd have a quick recovery. He was saving it for you." I needed to take a new physical and appear before a three man board to get my flying privileges back again. It took a month from the time I first applied. I had to accept restrictions in order to even get my privileges back as soon as I did. I wouldn't be flying solo for awhile. I didn't mind too much. The main thing different was the expense of another pilot. I still did all the flying myself. It was like having a babysitter, but it was only for a limited duration. By the first of August, I was fully restored, and in the same independent position I'd been in before the illness. Emily had been making weekly visits to our home with the children. Sissy and Tony said they really missed all their brothers and sisters. Emily managed to talk Brenda into letting her spend the night with her. Brenda came to me first, leaning towards refusing Emily, but I told her I thought it would help all of us to ease the tensions that had built up between us. Joyce knew that Emily was spending the night with Brenda, and came to me to ask if I'd let her sleep with me, since Brenda wouldn't be available. I refused her offer, saying that I still didn't feel like sleeping with her again. I really didn't either. I loved her, and I still wanted the two of us to be married and together, but I saw her as the architect of my downfall. She had botched her task of holding the family together, and she had done nothing more than act as a passive caretaker with our Southern division. I held what had happened with Cindy against her too. The following morning, Emily made it a point to stop by my office before she left, supposedly to thank me for helping her out with Brenda. I was in the middle of a delicate series of trades when she stopped by, so I didn't have a chance to do more than acknowledge her thanks, and wish her a safe trip back to Lawrence. Later, at lunch, Brenda started sounding me out about how I'd feel if Emily and the children wanted to move back in with us. Joyce looked up from her sandwich when Brenda began talking to me about it. Before, Joyce would have been the one that Emily would have needed to go to for something like this. Her not doing so in this instance was very telling, to Joyce, and to me. I was gratified that it had happened on its own. I would have reacted differently if Emily had gone to Joyce with her plans. "I think I'll leave it up to you, Brenda. If you think she can move back without disrupting things too much here, then tell her it's all right. This doesn't change anything between Emily and me though. Make sure you explain to her that we're a separate matter, and that I won't put up with any problems she might want to create here. This isn't like it was before. This isn't a democracy. This is my house, and we live here under my rules." "I'll tell her no if that's what you want, Kenny." "It's your decision, Brenda, whatever you decide you want. I have no problem as long as she behaves herself. I'm happy to know that Sissy and Tony might be coming home again." "I'll tell her she can move back in again then. Will I still get to sleep in your bedroom?" "I think I'm going to start back to making that invitational only again. You'll be getting regular invitations though." "When am I going to get invited back in to sleep with you?" Joyce's face was not even trying to hide the anger she was feeling. "When I start wanting to sleep with you again." "When will that be, never?" "No, not never. It definitely won't be before all my children are back living under my roof though, and it probably won't be before all my wives are living here too." "Including Cindy?" "Including all the wives I had on the day I got sick, and you took over running things. I told you I was going to get everything back, and that's what I meant. Until I do, every time I look at you I'm reminded of all that I lost." "It wasn't only you that lost, Kenny. I lost too. I tried my best to keep things together." "I don't believe that. In all the time I've known you, for all those years, you always managed to get whatever you really wanted, including me. I don't believe for a minute that you didn't deliberately let things get to the point they were when I finally started getting better. You messed things up, and I'm not going to forgive you until after I put them all back to how they were." "If you don't start treating me like your wife, I'm going to take the children and leave you. This is so stupid, Kenny." "Do it then. Never threaten me unless you're really willing to do what you threaten. If you leave me, you'll be leaving everything, not just me. I'm talking about your place in the business, everything. If you do leave, since you're the person who allowed this whole family mess to happen, I won't ever let you return again. Think about that before you start packing up any of the kid's clothes. I'm cleaning up your mess, but don't you dare go and make it any bigger for me." "You really are crazy if you believe any of what you're saying. Why would I do any of what you claim I'm responsible for?" "If I knew that, I'd be a lot closer to getting the rest of my problems solved. If I had to take a guess, I'd say it had something to do with your ambitions as far as taking over the company after Dad gives it up. That's the only thing that begins to explain some of the things that went on while I was sick. No matter how things end up with us, I'm going to make sure you never get the opportunity to ever run the company." "Wait until I tell your parents what you're saying to me. I knew this was going to happen. I wish you'd come out and talked like this before they gave everything back to you. When your father hears what you're saying, he'll never let you back inside the company. You can't possibly believe I'd let all this happen just so I could take your place in the company." "I said it was my best guess, not that I was certain of it. I've always let you have your own way with the business. I don't know why that wouldn't have satisfied you." "You aren't certain, but you're still punishing me for it anyway." "I want you to stop right now, Joyce, before we both say things we can't ever take back. You're my wife, but you aren't going to dictate to me. I already told you when I'm going to sleep with you again. If you don't like it, you're free to leave like you threatened. Just remember what I told you about never coming back. I'm stuck waiting too. You act like its only you that is doing without." "You have Brenda. How is that doing without?" "Who else do I have? Who else don't I have? When my house is full again, things will get back to normal for us. Until then, you'll just have to wait." "I'm not going to just sit quietly and let you do this to me, Kenny. I've got needs too. If you have somebody, I can have someone too." "Go ahead Joyce, but make sure you've moved out first." We sat there at the kitchen table, staring at each other. Joyce was glaring, but I had an even expression on my face. Let her try to do what she was threatening to do. "I want a divorce." "Get a lawyer. I won't even fight it as long as I get joint custody of the children. There isn't anything you can threaten me with that is going to change my mind about this, Joyce. Instead of continually trying to get your way, you should be out there trying to get me what I told you I needed to have before I can forgive you." She got up and left the kitchen. She didn't go start packing though. I knew how stubborn and determined she was. I'd outlined for her where our game could be played out. I was expecting a lot of quick activity as a consequence of our little set to there in the kitchen. "She's really mad now, Kenny. Is that what you wanted?" "I don't know what I wanted, Brenda. Most of it I made up as we went along in our argument. My main goal was to continue frustrating her. She needs to find out that she can't push me around like she used to. If she doesn't learn that, then none of the rest of my plan is liable to work either." "This is part of a plan?" "Changing Joyce's role, in the family, and in the business, is part of a plan. I haven't worked out many of the actual specifics yet. When you talk to Emily, make sure she knows that I let you make the decision about her coming back and not Joyce. You might let her know that Joyce is out of favor right now too." Brenda laughed. "I told everybody that already. Nobody understands why you'd want to do that. Joyce didn't have anything to do with any of us leaving. She tried her hardest to stop Emily from going to California. The thing with Eddie and Dale, none of us even knew about it until Dale told us about it later." On the fifth of August, Joyce and I flew to Birmingham. It was the first time I saw the new house Mama had purchased for us in Birmingham. It was a nine bedroom house, and big enough for the whole family if we all squeezed together. We got in before one o'clock, and I drove us over to Macklinson's plant. Almost three years had passed since I'd been there. I was sure everyone was aware of what had happened to me. I was also aware that I could expect to see Cindy almost as soon as we got there. I knew I'd have to wait and deal with however seeing her made me react. Joyce had called to tell her that we were coming. I was carrying a cashier's check for fifty thousand dollars, drawn on my personal trading account, and made out to Billy Ray Macklinson. I had planned to raise his salary when I took sick. After I recovered, I saw that he'd gone ahead and done everything I'd asked of him during all the time that I was unwell. Not once had he received any extra pay for his efforts. I wanted him to know that I appreciated his loyalty and his dedication. I was nervous climbing the stairs. This was going to be my first real return to working in the business. It was very important to me that I get off to a fast start. Even the familiar smells coming from the baking floor helped to increase my anticipation. On the day I'd left, so many things had happened. Many of those things were still left unfixed. I couldn't understand, in spite of what Mama had told me, why someone hadn't better exploited the opportunities we'd had down in the South. It was more than frustrating to me. It magnified, in my own mind, the loss we'd all suffered from my illness. I felt guilty about letting so many people down. What also troubled me was that no one else seemed to feel that way. When I got to my old office, Cindy, Billy Ray and Phil were standing around, by the door, talking together. I saw Patty standing over by her desk in accounting, and she waved to me and was smiling. When I got to Phil and them standing by my open doorway, Phil put his hand out and welcomed me back. I shook hands with Billy Ray as well, and then Phil and Billy Ray just kind of disappeared, leaving me standing right in front of Cindy, with the two of us blocking the door, preventing Joyce from going through it. "You look just like you did the last time I saw you, Kenny. It's hard to believe you were sick for so long." Cindy was putting on a brave front. I knew she wasn't as confident as she was trying to appear. "Where did Billy Ray get off to? There's something I need to speak with him about." Joyce was at my back, trying to push me out of her way so she could get into her office. Joyce liked to touch bases with everyone as soon as she got anywhere new. She hated to miss anything. She ended up shoving me up very close to Cindy. My dick was only two or three inches away from her belly by the time Joyce managed to squeeze through us. "Do you want me to quit, Kenny?" Cindy hadn't taken a step back into the office. She stayed as close as Joyce had positioned us. "No. Why should you quit? Joyce says you're very good at keeping things straight for her down here. I didn't come down to stir up any old troubles, Cindy." Somehow, while I was telling her this, her stomach had made contact with my cock. We both felt it when it did. My reaction was immediate, and without me moving any closer, my hardening dick started pressing more forcefully against her. I didn't say anything and neither did she. "Cindy, when you can tear yourself away, I'd like to see last week's production numbers from Tupelo." Joyce sounded perturbed. She also sounded upset and jealous. When Cindy turned away to go get Joyce her report, our physical contact was broken. I saw Joyce looking at the sudden bulge in the front of my pants. I smiled over at her, making no attempt to adjust myself. I stood there for another few seconds before reaching down and making my boner less noticeable. "I'm going to take a little tour around. I'll be back in an hour or so." I left before anyone could object, heading back down the stairs to the baking floor. I recognized quite a few people, and they knew me too. I saw people stopping to point me out and whisper to their work neighbors. I was doing it to allow them to get it out of their systems. I knew that they would quickly get used to me being back again. I saw three of the Macklinson boys during my little tour. I said hello to Steve and Jesse, but didn't say anything when I saw Doug. He was busy talking to three of the route drivers. I took a peek into a few of the route drivers trucks and was pleased to see some of our vending product boxes being loaded. At least they hadn't abandoned accounts we'd already opened. When I got back to the office I found Billy Ray at the computer, putting in data for the daily reconciliation. I had left the automatic trading programs running, so I knew there weren't that many trades he'd have to input. Cindy and Joyce weren't in the office. "This is for you, Billy Ray. I meant to raise up your salary before I got sick. I really appreciate the way you stuck with doing all the work we'd agreed on. I stopped off in accounting and had them raise you to sixty two a year. This is to make up for what you missed out on while I was gone." Billy Ray took the check from me and read the amount. I saw how big his eyes got, but then he tried to give it back to me. It was one of those funny things where he kept trying to put it back in my hand and I kept refusing to take it back. All the while he was telling me it was too much and that he was happy with what he was already making. "Billy Ray, take the money. I saved a lot more than that because of the mistakes you caught and called Frank Clooney about. You were the one person down here who surpassed all my expectations while I was gone. I need to know how things are now between you and Kyle. He's been calling Joyce trying to get a job here again." "That there is some complicated, Kenny. Things have sure changed since you left. I don't know where to begin." "If I brought him back, would I have to worry about the two of you getting into it?" "No, not us, but you might have a problem if you got all of us together with our wives again. There's some bad blood there. I don't know if Joyce told you about us, but we kind of ended up swapping households. I'm with Trudy now, and Kyle's over with Vellie. The girls don't get along much, mostly because of Vellie causing us some problems. It's mostly on account of the money I make. If I get a raise in pay, it will only get worse from her." "Well, I do hate like hell to make things more complicated for you. I suppose us not telling anyone about your raise wouldn't work?" "It might if I didn't tell Trudy, but how am I supposed to explain having so much extra every payday? And this." He was waving the check at me as he asked me the question. "If I do hire Kyle again, I'll probably end up paying him quite a bit of money. Probably more than you'd be making. Would that help any?" "It sure might. Vellie's funny about money though. I think she gets some kind of special charge out of getting some from me." "From what I heard, she gets a charge out of getting more than money from you." Billy Ray started blushing and shifting his weight on his two feet, back and forth, front wards and back wards. "Sorry, Billy Ray, I couldn't resist that one." "S'all right, Kenny, I'm kind of used to it by now. I think I've heard just about every comment people can make. None of this was any of me or Kyle's doing. The women came up with this all on their own. Said it was for balance, and to keep me and Kyle from feuding. Truth is, we all like a change now and again. We aren't hurting no one." "I agree. No one else's business anyway. Why don't you hold off on telling anyone about the bonus, or your pay raise, until after I've had a chance to have my talk with Kyle. Do you think he's got over that little dust up we had that day?" "He must have done, else he wouldn't be turning his eyes here for a job. Things haven't gone that good for Kyle the last few years. He tried doing some things on his own, but none of it panned out too good for him. He's changed some, lost all his magic. I don't believe in magic, but if anyone had some, it was Kyle. He's been down on himself for some time now." I didn't like the report I was hearing. Joyce hadn't said anything about any big change in Kyle. If he didn't have it anymore, some of my immediate plans were going to be unworkable. I was thinking about that when Joyce and Cindy got back from wherever they'd gone off to. "Kenny, we've got a problem." Joyce got my attention when she said that. "What kind of a problem?" "Tell him, Cindy." "Some of the workers in the Tupelo plant have started to organize. There's a meeting called for later in the week, on Thursday, and they're going to take a vote on joining up with the Bakery, Confectionary and Tobacco Workers International Union. If they do decide to join, it will mean trouble at all our plants. Everyone will be waiting to see what we do." "We've never had an organized labor force in any of our plants. We always treated our people fairly. What's going on in Tupelo that makes them want to join a union?" "There was an accident at the plant last year. Two of the workers got burned really bad. One lost his arm from his burns, and the other one can't see anymore out of one eye. The company insurer refuses to admit liability or settle. There's some question about what caused the accident. The other workers are afraid the same thing might happen to them." "Joyce, have you heard about any of this?" "I heard your father discussing it with one of our legal people. He tried to get the insurer to either deny the claim and go into court, or else settle. The insurer is dragging it out. We don't really have any recourse with the insurer, Kenny. We pay the premiums, but they make all the claims decisions." "Does anyone know what the workers want as compensation? Jesus, it seems to me, if they were working for us at the time the accident occurred, we have to have some liability. The only way we wouldn't is if it wasn't an accident. Is the insurer claiming they burned themselves on purpose?" "I think they suspect that negligence was a major contributor. It's too late now though. Once a union vote is scheduled, we can't do anything to interfere with it." Cindy was looking at some papers in her hand. "Our plant manager is predicting they'll vote in favor of joining." "Do we know what our plans are if they do vote to go union?" "Your father has always said he wouldn't deal with a union. The lawyers are looking into our options. The laws are complicated. If they do vote in a union, we're required to bargain with them. Right now, the lawyers are recommending we convert over to an automated plant. We were going to make modifications anyway. All we have to prove is that it would make us more competitive. That wouldn't be difficult. We already handle all of the administrative and billing from here. There are about one hundred workers now. With automation, we'd get that number down to less than twenty workers." "They'd do that just to get out of having to deal with a union?" "They'd close the plant down right now if they could. Your father thinks unions are a poison to any business they gain a toehold in. I'm surprised you never discussed this with him." "It never came up. We've never had any labor trouble. What bothers me the most is we could have avoided all this if we hadn't waited around for our insurer to settle these two claims. We should have stepped in and settled with them ourselves, and then changed carriers. We could have sued the insurance company ourselves to recover our pay out. Even if they do vote to unionize, we should send someone to go see those two workers and do whatever's right. These are the kinds of things you should have gotten right on and taken care of, Joyce." Joyce looked at me hard. I knew I was being unfair and unreasonable, but I was frustrated by something like this happening. It was unnecessary. Cindy was looking at me with a critical expression too. I turned around and asked Billy Ray to give me a phone number where I could reach Kyle. "He's over at Daddy's house, Kenny. How come you're calling him?" Cindy was all ears whenever it came to any member of her family. I'd forgotten about that. I still remembered Gene's home number, so I sat down at my trading desk and dialed it. "Hi, Gene, this is Kenny Parsons. Is Kyle still over there with you?" "Kenny. Good to hear your voice. I heard a rumor that you were coming down our way again. Kyle's here, let me go get him for you. Listen, Kenny, I know you're going to be pretty busy there for awhile, but I was hoping the two of us could get together to discuss our own situation. It was pretty much left up in the air after you had your little problem." "Sure Gene. It's still high up there on my list of things I need to get done. We'll do it sometime this week. Why don't you ask Larry if he wants to have a talk with me too?" "I'll get Kyle. I hope this is a good news call. I've never seen him with his dobber down so low. He could really use some cheering up." I heard Gene put the phone down and head off to find his son. "Hello, this is Kyle. Is that really you, Kenny?" "It's me. They finally let me out of the funny farm and I wanted to call you and find out if you've had a chance to reconsider your decision to quit?" "Its been three years now. I guess I've learned a few things since that time. You give me another chance, Kenny, and this time I will get the job done." "Sounds good to me. Do you have anywhere that you have to give people notice, or can you get started right away?" "I'm free as a bird. The thing of it is though, I had some business set backs. I hope it won't be held against me that I owe a lot of money all over this part of the state. I've got some judgments against me, and they'll probably be garnisheeing my pay checks until I can make other arrangements." "I won't hold it against you. Hell, it will probably make you work harder just to get those debts cleared up. How much are we talking about?" "Close to a hundred thousand. I had a little business that didn't turn out like I'd hoped. I rode it for too long and it turned out to be a big mistake." "I'll start you at forty thousand, Kyle. As soon as you can get me ten full sales crews, all meeting their monthly sales quotas, I'll raise you up to sixty thousand, and loan you whatever it takes to get you out of hock. Be here by eight tomorrow morning to fill out all your paperwork. See my wife, Joyce, about her bringing in some product for you and helping out with the recruiting and training. This time we'll be training your next crew while you're out in the field with the first one. How many names do you have for people you think could make a go of opening new accounts for us?" "Maybe thirty five. I've been thinking about all the things I'd do different if I ever got another chance. I'll be there tomorrow, Kenny. Will I still be getting some money for training and incentives?" "Talk to Joyce. She'll get you what you need. If she can't help you, come to see me. We wasted a lot of time, Kyle. We're going to have to really hit it hard this time, just to make up for all that wasted opportunity." Cindy was beaming when I hung up the phone. Joyce just looked at me. I called my father next. He and I both got a little hot at each other over the Tupelo situation. I guess I was pretty critical of the way it was handled. I shouldn't have said he really botched it. It ended up pretty well though, because he put me in charge of handling our union negotiations, if the union got voted in. He told me there was no contract that I could possibly negotiate that he'd agree to. That gave me a pretty wide berth to negotiate from, and left all of my options completely closed off. I certainly wasn't pro union, but I did think we'd shot ourselves in the foot with the way the worker injuries had been dealt with. It was funny how my parents felt a real responsibility for all the employees we had, but they couldn't see the need for them to have any say of their own in how they were being treated. My Dad decided what was fair, and that was what they ended up getting. We did pay well, and there were good employee benefits in all our plants. The Tupelo workers weren't organizing for more pay, or for better fringe benefits. The terrible thing was that both sides were going to be hurt by the way a third party had responded to the industrial accident. It was after five o'clock and Cindy was still hanging around in our office. Billy Ray had left, and Joyce was on the phone talking to someone up in Bolling. I was pretending to be busy staring at some of the recent sales figures from the Birmingham plant. Her sticking around was beginning to make me uncomfortable. Finally, Joyce finished with her long phone call. I stood up, hoping to leave to go out for something to eat. "Kenny, Cindy wants to come with us to dinner. She wants to talk with you, and explain her side of things." "I don't think I'm up for that tonight. I'm sorry. Look, Cindy, I'm sure you had your good reasons for deciding what you did. I'm sure these reasons made perfect sense to you. I've already accepted your decision. Why don't we just hold off on any more explanations for awhile? Joyce tells me the two of you work well together, and right now, I'm more interested in getting business things straightened out down here. Maybe, after I get settled in here, and my emotions become calmer, we can discuss why things happened the way they did." "I'd like to hear what she has to say, even if you don't." Joyce was getting edgy with me again. I thought briefly about reining her in, but decided against it. It wouldn't hurt anything if she and Cindy went out to dinner. Maybe she'd get laid, and get herself in a better frame of mind. Just thinking of her and Cindy like that had me almost wanting to change my mind. "Why don't you catch a ride with Cindy then, and I'll drive back to the house by myself? I'll stop off and pick up something to eat on the way. I'll take that front bedroom downstairs. You can pick whichever other one you want." Cindy looked at me funny when I stood up and circled around the desk to leave. Apparently Joyce hadn't kept her informed about the strain in our relationship. I stopped at a small chicken place about two miles from the new house and had a delicious fried chicken dinner. I took my time, savoring the meal, thinking about whether or not I was satisfied with my first half day back at work. I hadn't been surprised with how I reacted physically to Cindy. It had surprised me that she had been reacting like she had with me. I could have sworn she would have let me fuck her right there on my old desk, even if it was in front of Joyce. I felt like it would have happened if I'd made the slightest effort to have it happen. I remembered that the three of us had done things like that together. Not at work, but over in the Ridgeline house. By the time I stood up to leave the restaurant, I had already gotten myself worked up just by rehashing some old memories. Emily was supposed to move back to our house during the week Joyce and I were in Alabama. Phil, Claire and Thelma were going to close the house in Lawrence and follow her by the weekend. Joyce and I were both looking forward to having Phil, Claire and Thelma back again. I worried about what having Emily back when she and I were so far apart would bring. I hoped for the best, thinking that having Brenda close again would be enough to keep her there. As soon as I got home, I called Brenda. She was happy to hear from me, and we chatted about our respective day's. She told me that she had been on the phone with Shirley for more than two hours, talking about Emily coming back, and about how I was still being mean to Joyce. "I told her that you still make love just like you used to. You don't really, but I wanted her to feel bad about what she was missing out on." "How is it different? It seems the same to me." "Really? I guess the actual doing it part is pretty close, but not the before, or the after parts. You don't seem as interested in the other parts as you used to be. I thought it might be because there's just two of us there now, but then I knew it was more than that. You don't seem like you enjoy parts of it as much as you used to, especially the kissing and touching parts. Afterwards, you don't try to hold me close and cuddle until we go to sleep." "You don't like to cuddle. You said it makes it difficult for you to go to sleep." "I know what I like. We're talking about you though. You always used to love to cuddle after." "Maybe I still do. I haven't really thought much about it. Maybe when I sleep with someone who does like it, I'll cuddle her." "Joyce loves to cuddle." "I remember." We talked for a while longer, mostly me assuring her that I was feeling fine and nothing was bothering me in Birmingham. Brenda thought it might be something in the air that had set me off before. No amount of explaining could convince her it wasn't anything like that. Joyce and Cindy came home just before nine. They'd both been drinking wine. I could smell it on them. I could also tell they were both tipsy. "Kenny, we thought you'd be sleeping. How can we sneak into your bedroom if you're out here, in the living room?" Joyce was trying to act more tipsy than she was. I knew she really didn't think I was going to let her sleep with me. "I just got off the phone with Mama. I told her everything had gone well enough. I called Brenda earlier. She says I make love differently than I used to. It surprised me because I thought I was just about the same." "If you'd like a second and a third opinion, Cindy and I will both try to help you." "I'm sure you both have more important things to do than that. I'm going to bed. Cindy, it was good to see you again." When I got up and went to my bedroom, it was quiet behind me. My bedroom had a simple lock on the door, but no deadbolt. I didn't think they'd try to force the door though. I had taken note of the fact that Cindy hadn't contradicted what Joyce had said about the second and third opinions. That bore thinking about. I wondered what Joyce's response would be if I started up again with Cindy while still refusing to sleep with her. I knew I couldn't risk finding out, not if I didn't want to push Joyce too far. I had a pleasant interlude in the bathroom thinking about what I'd like to be doing with Cindy and Joyce. I wondered if Cindy was spending the night? I had an order in mind for them though. Emily, then Shirley, then Eddie and Dale. After what I'd seen so far, I would probably add Cindy's name after Eddie and Dale's. Only then would I make love to Joyce, but only after she told me why she had stood by and allowed my family to disintegrate. ------- Chapter 61 I was up before six thirty the next morning, anxious to get out to the plant and begin my first full workday. My head was full of plans and ideas to help Kyle get off to a good start with the Quick Snacks program. Speed was the real key for me. We had adequate production capacity to keep fifty sales crews busy. I'd gone over all the numbers fifty times at least. Joyce had shown me her plan for setting up storage and distribution facilities at different railhead's where she had reserved railcars and space for us to use. If it had just been a matter of planning, we would have been all set. Kyle was the heart of our plan. Someone had to be the focus of any program, and it was going to be Kyle for ours. I really hoped that Billy Ray was wrong about Kyle having lost all his magic. Right from the beginning, I'd realized that Kyle was almost the perfect person to handle this type of effort. He could get right out there and sell along side any of the other people on a team. That was a big plus for us. He would be able to recognize what people were doing wrong, and set them back on the correct pathway. What I was looking for was for Kyle to find others that could do what he did, and have them go out and multiply his efforts by training and supervising teams of their own. I was out the door and in my car before seven fifteen. When I saw Cindy's car parked alongside mine, I had to smile. Good for Joyce. That explained why she hadn't been up when I was ready to leave. I hoped she would have some of the strain she was under reduced by her having spent the night with Cindy. Going without had made Joyce pretty uptight around Brenda and me. Even the older twins had mentioned that Mommy wasn't being very nice to them. I, for one, was looking forward to a more relaxed and mellow Joyce. When Kyle showed up a little before eight, he had three men with him that I recognized from his original sales crew. He told me that four of the others would be coming in before the week was out. Kyle looked different, less sure of himself, maybe less full of himself as well. Perhaps his business reversals had helped him in other areas. He wasn't exactly humble, but he wasn't constantly preening and letting everyone know all the time that he was the cock of the walk. "Kenny, me and the boys would like to borrow some of the reserve vans and go on out today, to try to make ourselves some quick money. We all pretty much know what to do, and Doug told me there was enough extra product on hand so we wouldn't be causing anyone any shortages. We could all use some practice too. I should have a whole crew here before the weekend, and be ready to put them all out in the field in two man teams by Monday morning. That's one of the changes I think we should make. Send each new guy out with someone that already knows how to sell enough to meet his daily quotas. I already have a plan to slowly wean them away from each other as their sales get consistently better." "If you already have a full crew recruited and coming in, go ahead and put yourself and your people out on the street. It can't hurt for all of you to be polishing up your sales skills. I'll even set the four of you up with a little incentive. If you and all the old crew members can set up one hundred new accounts by five o'clock this Friday, you can all sell the route yourselves and split whatever money you get for it among yourselves. Each new account counts towards one percent of the route sales price. That's how I want the bonus paid out, so keep track of who sells what. This is only a one time deal for you and the old sales team. I'm not counting any accounts sold by anyone who might be out training with you." From the grin on Kyle's face, and the way the other three were smiling, I quickly deduced that all four of them were probably strapped for cash. I told Kyle that I wanted him back in my office by four o'clock, with all the sales results, including names and locations for all accounts they'd opened. I told him to go ahead and inform Doug that it was okay for them to take out four of the trucks we kept for route drivers who suffered mechanical breakdowns with their own delivery vehicles. At ten o'clock, Joyce and Cindy came into the office. Cindy looked a little embarrassed. Joyce had a wolfish grin, and did everything but smack her lips to show her satisfaction to me. I smiled and wished them both a good morning. "Cindy, how well do you know that cousin of yours that works over at the Tupelo plant?" I had remembered that a family member worked over there. I was hoping Cindy could talk to him and let him know that we were prepared to do the right thing with those two injured workers, and that, if the workers did vote in a union, in all likelihood they would see the number of their jobs shrink quickly down to a fifth of what had previously existed. "He isn't a cousin. He was married to my Aunt Glenda. His last name is Macklinson too, but his is a different family, the Mississippi Macklinsons. I don't know him at all, but Daddy does. Phil might be a better one to do it though. He and Joe used to go fishing together a lot. I'm not sure it would be legal for any of us to say anything to him that might affect the union vote. Phil could get in a lot of trouble." I didn't want anyone to get in trouble. Eighty men and women losing their jobs was trouble too. I wasn't sure about what I should do. The safest thing would have been to sit back and let them go ahead and vote. Our automated plants were all much more efficient, and could easily be operated around the clock, because of our greatly reduced labor costs. If I had been the plant manager over in Tupelo, I'd have set up a little tour of one of our automated plants for some of the older Tupelo workers, long before they got to the point where they were ready to vote in a union. The workers at our older plant in Omaha hated to go over to the newer one. They could see right away how many fewer workers it took to put out much more product than the older plant did. One of the things I always admired about my father was the fact that he never even considered converting the older Lucas Company plant to fuller automation. I knew he wouldn't want to do it in Tupelo either, but that he would do it, rather than be forced to deal with the union. My last conversation with him had shown me that he was pretty dogmatic and rigid in his feelings about anything having to do with unions. I made my decision. "Cindy, please go find Phil and tell him I need to see him." After Cindy left, I told Joyce to make herself scarce when Phil arrived. What I had to say to Phil, I wanted to say privately. This was something where it would be much better if only Phil and I knew what had been said. He came to my office after a wait of five minutes or so. Joyce got up and left, closing my door behind her. Phil looked around nervously, probably wondering if he had done something wrong. "Phil, come here and have a seat. This is about that vote they're taking over in Tupelo. You know anything about that?" Phil was sitting down as I finished speaking. "I heard about it. Unions won't be good for what we're doing here. Is this about Joe?" "Its about me letting you know what the company has decided to do if the union gets voted in. First, no matter how that vote ends up turning out, those two men who were hurt are going to be treated fairly. I don't care what the insurance company is claiming, they were hurt working for us, and we owe it to them and their families to try to make sure they don't suffer financially, on top of all the rest of it. That doesn't have anything to do with the union question. Its what we should have done a long time before now." Phil nodded his agreement with me. I resumed speaking. "What I'm going to tell you next does have to do with the union question. If the union gets voted in, my father plans to retrofit the Tupelo plant and put in automated ovens and packaging machinery. We've done this with several of our other plants. Usually, when we build anything new, its automated. If we do it in Tupelo, the hundred people who work there now will be fighting for the fifteen to twenty jobs that will be available. Joe's job will be safe anyway, because he has two years left on his guaranteed employment contract, the one we signed when we bought your family out here. His is the only contract that's never been breached. I just found out this morning that he's a Mississippi Macklinson. Maybe that explains why he isn't always quitting his job." "I haven't quit for three years, Kenny." "No, but I'll bet you've thought about it." "If you'd hired Gene and Larry back before you got sick, they'd probably still be here too. We learned quick how things were after you took over." "That's one of the problems with quitting, Phil. Sometimes the company stops hiring for awhile. That isn't why I called you in here though. I called you in to tell you what was going to happen to all those jobs. I can't legally go over to Tupelo and tell them that they aren't really voting for a union like they think they are. This isn't something that we're threatening, its something that we're planning, as a response to them going union, but only if they do." "You want me to call Joe and let him know?" "If you did do that, you'd have to be pretty sure that Joe didn't tell anyone the information came from an employee of the plant. It would be better if he heard it from Gene or Larry. If you went to see Gene and told him exactly what I just told you, there wouldn't be anything illegal about Gene calling Joe and telling him some gossip he heard from his brother who does happen to work at this plant. I'll be honest with you, all I'm interested in is letting those workers know what their vote really means. After that, they can vote however they please. Telling them in advance of the vote shouldn't be illegal, not if it isn't something we made up just to intimidate them. If the union knew about it, I guarantee you they'd hold off on telling the workers until after the vote was in." "Joe's a pretty quiet man, Kenny. He isn't the kind who'd stand up in a crowd and tell people what he knows." "Maybe he will pass the word on to someone who is comfortable doing that. Even if he does nothing with the information, I'd feel better knowing we tried." "Is it okay if I take off for a couple hours now? That election is Thursday from what I've been hearing." "Phil, you're a department manager. You don't need my permission to do whatever you think you need to do. You're on salary, not on a time clock. I don't mean only for things like this either. The main thing is to keep things running here. I know you must get calls at home at night when something happens on second shift." After Phil left, Cindy came back into the office. Joyce wasn't with her. "Kenny, can we talk?" She looked nice. There was just something about her that struck a responsive chord in me. I didn't know what it was, but there were certain women who had that effect on me. Brenda had the strongest effect, then Cindy. Joyce had it too, especially those three times when she was pregnant, or anytime I saw her while she was nursing our children. I couldn't explain it, but it was there, and it was noticeable to me. "Is it personal or business?" "Personal." "This really isn't a good time for me, Cindy. If its about what you said yesterday, or what Joyce said about you wanting to tell your side of what happened, it really would be better if you waited. I don't know how closely you've kept up with our family things, but a lot more has happened than you deciding you didn't want to be one of my wives anymore. I have a plan right now, with definite goals in mind. These goals have an order to them." "If you'd just listen, maybe you'd understand that it wasn't because of me not loving you still. I do. I thought I was partly to blame for what happened to you." "I think that too, Cindy. What you and Joyce were doing was a part of it, but I was probably going to have the problems I did sooner or later anyway. The thing with Kyle and with your father, all of it helped to overwhelm me. I don't blame you for any of it though. All I blame you for is not wanting to stay with us when things got a little rough." "I wanted to, but I felt too guilty about what I might have caused." "We can deal with this later, but only after I finish with all the things that need to come before it." "Things more important to you than I am?" I could see her having a really bad reaction if I were to tell her yes in answer to that question. I realized immediately that I would have told her no and reassured her before, perhaps even changed my order around so that she and I could reconcile right then. That was before though, back when I was a different person. This was now, and I didn't plan to do that. "You could put it that way if you wanted to start a whole new problem. To me, its like a lifeboat from a sinking ship, but this is just the reverse. A lot of my family is floating out there in the dark ocean, and I'm trying to get them back in my boat and make them safe again. Five of these family members are my children, and five of them are my wives. Emily and Shirley are out there with my children, with our children, and I'm going to get them back with me and safe again before I can worry about you, Dale or Eddie. I knew Dale and Eddie before you, so, for the plan that I have, you'll be the one after Dale and Eddie come back. "I'm last with you then?" "No, that would be Joyce. I blame most of what happened on Joyce. Not me getting sick so much, although she helped bring that on too, but for what happened while she was supposed to be looking out for the rest of my family." "Joyce is still with you. She never left like some of the rest of us." "Joyce wants to be with me, but she isn't. She might not ever be again. She definitely won't be with me unless I get Shirley and Emily back, along with my children. Before you say anything about me not being fair, I'm going to tell you that I don't care about fair in this case. Joyce let things happen that she should have prevented. These things hurt me, and they endangered my recovery. I don't think that's what she wanted to happen, but I came very close to never getting well again. Joyce needs to see to it that everything is restored to me." "This isn't like you. You can't blame Joyce for all the things that happened. Joyce tried her best to get me to come to Ridgeline and wait for you to recover. When that affair happened in Los Angeles, with Emily, Joyce almost fell apart, because she felt like she had failed you." "She did fail me. If you think Joyce couldn't have prevented most of what happened, then you don't know Joyce very well." "From what you've been telling me, I guess I don't know you as well as I thought I did." "Don't feel like you're all alone there, Cindy. I surprise myself sometimes. I know I'm different. Everyone I know well has commented about it. It wasn't that I wanted to change, but that was my only choice. I took the best deal I could get, and this is the result. It could have been a lot worse, believe me. Ask Shirley and Joyce sometime about how I was when I first was at the clinic." "Every time we have one of our talks, what I end up being offered is always less than what you offered me the last time we talked. First it was for me to be one of five, then one out of seven, and now you're making me the last one of the seven. You keep making it harder for me to say yes to you." "I warned you that it would be better to postpone our talk. I don't think of you as the last of anything. I love you just like I did before I got sick. When I woke up and the doctor told me that you had decided you didn't want to be part of my life anymore, I almost didn't want to go on. That's how much you mean to me. I told you from the beginning that I was already committed to others, but I wanted you too. None of that has changed. I'm still committed to others, and even though they don't seem to want what I'm offering, I can't move forward without making every attempt I can to change their minds and to win them back. If I put them ahead of you in the order that I'm trying to get them back, that doesn't mean I love them or value them more than I value you." "I'm supposed to wait until you get all the others, or until you finally give up on trying to get them back?" "I didn't ask anything of you. I'm telling you I love you as much as I did before I got sick, and that, when I'm with you, I still feel all the same excitement I did before. You feel some of that too, I know that. There will be a better time for you to make your choice, but it can't be now. You were the first one to bail out on me." "That isn't how I'd put it. I don't feel like I bailed out at all." "Call it whatever you choose to call it. When everything is said and done, nothing has changed since we first started having this conversation. You can decide how you choose to interpret what I've told you. I have my own plan and timetable, and I've told you what it is. You are free to stay with us whenever you want to. I still love being around you. None of that will change any of my plans though. Ask Joyce if she's ever been successful trying to change them." "A lot of the quality I most loved about you has disappeared. I'm not sure I even like what you've become." "That should make your decision easier then. I don't control how you feel about me, or how you're going to react to the changes that have occurred with me. I told you how I feel, and about what I want to happen in time. If you aren't interested, you won't have any problems with me. I guess I am glad now that we had our talk. This way you've had a chance to experience some of the differences in me. I can see where that might complicate your decision. It has complicated Shirley's for sure." I spent the rest of my morning trading grains. It was relaxing for me to only have to concentrate on the price movements and the relative positions of the commodities I was watching. It seemed clean and very clear cut to me, unlike the complexities of trying to explain myself to Cindy. By one o'clock, I'd initiated so many trades that I knew Billy Ray would be unable to handle the account reconciliations before it was time for him to leave. I knew I'd done well, profit wise, from that day's trading. Perhaps a million dollars, or even more. I couldn't believe how many speculator's came into the market to throw their capital away. I ended up making over six cents a bushel on hedging my near month corn. Eight million bushels at six cents a bushel. Almost half a million from corn alone, and all because people were trading in a market when they had no clue as to what was actually taking place. It felt like stealing. They should have a separate market for amateurs. Kyle showed up at four, and his face told me the whole story even before he said a single word. They had done well. Exceptionally well. Between the four of them they'd managed to open up fifty three new accounts. They were more than halfway to my target of a hundred new accounts, and they still had three more days to reach that goal. Kyle told me he was expecting two more from the old sales crew to come in the next morning. Whatever Billy Ray believed about Kyle having lost his magic, nobody could argue about those results. I asked Kyle to wait in the office and went out looking for Joyce. I found Joyce and Cindy sitting together in the conference room. Billy Ray had really done a nice job on that family mural. I remembered the picture he'd showed me, and the mural was eerily the same, only blown up to many times the size of the original. "Joyce, Kyle and his mini crew went out and opened fifty three new accounts today. We need to get a lot of product here so that they don't start eating into the product that Doug sends out with the other route drivers. We need to get at least fifteen new delivery trucks too. Right now we're using the ones we own that we lend to the route people when their own rigs break down. We don't want to get caught unprepared in case we have too many break downs." "I've got plenty of product coming down here already. As far as the trucks go, we should wait until after the vote on Thursday. There might be a few used trucks for sale after the vote." "I want fifteen brand new ones. Get with Kyle and have him tell you the specs he needs. Call my Dad and tell him I need some recruiters and sales trainers down here. I want to get as many sales crews out in the field as I can. Call Frank too, and tell him I need to take five million out of our personal trading account and have it sent down here. I'm loaning the company the money to run this new sales program. I don't want anything coming up to prevent us from getting green lights all the way on this. I want to get enough people out there that nothing will start to come apart in case something happens to Kyle, or to me again." Joyce was smiling. She was also scribbling notes to herself as I spoke. Cindy was looking at both of us while all this was going on, having to switch her head back and forth as she did so. Kyle's success and the day I'd had trading had restored my good humor. I felt like going out and celebrating. I had forgotten the pure joy of having everything seem to fall right in place. I had put the talk with Cindy out of my mind. I stopped worrying about the union vote the minute Phil left my office. I'd done all I could. I was improving in my ability to compartmentalize problems. It made things easier when you could find a way to dispose of your worry about several specific problems. A lot of my questions were being answered. The results weren't final yet, but I was regaining some of my old confidence. My expectations were turning more positive. After three years, that was a nice feeling to have. "I feel like celebrating tonight. Kyle and his crew lit them up today, and I made more than a million dollars trading my futures contracts. Billy Ray warned me that it would be a mistake to let Trudy and Vellie get together. I'm thinking we should all go out together for dinner somewhere, have a few drinks, and see how everyone gets along. Where should we go, Cindy?" "There's this Inn that a friend of my mother's just opened. It was an old house before, but now they're trying to make it into a bed and breakfast and a catered gourmet private restaurant. I heard it was expensive, but the chef is supposed to be really excellent. I think you need to give them several day's notice, but I could call my mother and have her check and see if they can fit us in." "Perfect. Invite you mother and if she says yes, invite Gene too. Tell your mother its a celebration for Kyle's new success. Does your mother still have problems with Trudy?" "She loathes her now. Having her and Trudy in the same room, especially if Vellie was there, would be inviting a big scene. You don't want to do that." "Funny you should say that, because I'm kind of in the mood to let loose a little bit. There were things I was worried about that I'm not worrying about anymore. It's liberating. Call your mother. Tell her to try really hard to get us a private banquet area. Tell her it shouldn't be a question of money, and its a big celebration. Rent two limo's to pick everyone up and drive us to the restaurant and home again. Joyce, you and Cindy go out and buy nice dresses for yourselves. We're going to do it up right tonight. Who knows? You two might end up getting me drunk tonight and find yourselves getting very lucky." Joyce stared at me. I knew she hadn't seen me acting like this before. It was seldom that I had acted so carefree with her. I was anxious to see how she would take my last comment. My goal was to throw her off balance again. I knew that Cindy had disclosed all that I'd said to her earlier. This was my way of throwing a wrench into whatever counter moves Joyce was now planning. I knew that Joyce was single minded. Given the very real possibility that she was going to get a chance for some loving from me almost right away, she would put all the rest of her scheming on hold. I knew my Joyce. I left the conference room, confident that what I'd asked for would be attended to. "Kyle, Get home and tell Vellie that we're all going to a celebration dinner tonight. Don't let her come up with any excuses, no matter what. This is an important business dinner. Oh, Billy Ray and Trudy will be there too, make sure that Vellie knows about it. I'm expecting your parents too, both of them. A limo will come by and pick you up. Tell the babysitter that you'll be out late." "I think this is a bad idea, Kenny. Trudy and Vellie can't stand each other. There will be trouble." "Are you telling me you can't control your own wife out in public? Tell her that it's important for your new career. I'm expecting big things from you Kyle. Don't get started right out of the gate by disappointing me. Seven o'clock. Tell Vellie its a nice restaurant and for her to dress accordingly." After Kyle left I went over to where Billy Ray had carved out a tiny little cubby hole for himself to work in. Joyce told me that he wasn't comfortable sharing an office with Cindy and her. His new office was little bigger than a broom closet. I seemed to remember it had been an office supplies storage area before the remodeling. I found him there busily trying to input the accounts reconciliation data. "Billy Ray, let that go for now. You need to get home and get Trudy ready for the dinner party we're having tonight. Dress fancy too. A limo will be by to pick you both up a little after seven. Kyle and Vellie will be there, so make sure Trudy knows about it and doesn't start any trouble. Gene, Laura Lee, and Cindy will be there too. This is an important business occasion, so don't you dare try to stand me up." "This here's nothing but asking for trouble. Those two are going to scratch each other's eyes out. I told you about them, Kenny." "I know you did, but you and Kyle are too important to let feuding wives drag your careers down. Tonight we're getting all that settled. If a fight does break out, I don't want you and Kyle getting yourselves involved. Let the women work it out. You said they worked out that whole swapping thing, so how hard is it to sit at the same table for a simple dinner? This is an important celebration. I think Kyle found that magic you thought he'd lost. The four of them that went out today opened fifty three new accounts between them. By next month we'll be opening two hundred new ones a day." "Kenny, this is a big can of worms. It has taken most of the past three years to get them calmed down again. You'll just wind them right back up with this idea of yours." "Billy Ray, I think you're scared of those two women. What kind of a life is it when you're afraid of the women you're sleeping with? It's past time that you stood up and showed all of us what you're made of. If you had any stones at all, you'd announce to Trudy and Vellie that you're taking your bonus money and investing it in a new racing car. That's just what I'd do in your place." Billy Ray looked at me and groaned. When he stopped everything and got up to leave for home, I felt like I'd won an important victory, with him, and for him. This whole idea was turning out to be more fun than I'd hoped. There wasn't anyone on my guest list who I wasn't looking forward to seeing. I walked back over to the conference room and both girls were busy on the phones. They looked up at me as I stopped in the doorway. "Billy Ray and Kyle are all set. Have the first limo pick up Kyle and Vellie first, at seven sharp, then go by and pick up Billy Ray and Trudy. After that, have them go by to get Gene. Have the second one pick us up at the house at six forty-five. Cindy tell your mother we'll stop by for her between seven and seven fifteen." "We still don't know if we can get reservations at that inn, Kenny. My mother is calling her friend now." "Did you tell your mother that money wasn't important?" Cindy nodded that she had. "Then we'll get in. Would you turn away a client who told you that price wasn't going to be a problem? We might end up doing a lot of business with this inn. If they turn us away, how much business do you think I'd be sending their way?" "They take bookings months in advance." "You'll see. They'll work something out for us." "Kenny, I've got the limo's. We've booked them for six hours each. From six thirty to two thirty. Any longer and you have to pay the driver for that extra time in advance. Eighty dollars per limo per hour." "Perfect. Cindy, did you find a nice dress shop for you and Joyce where they have something nice right off the rack?" "I already have something nice to wear, and Joyce says she brought two dresses that would be fine. We made an appointment at five thirty to get our make up done and our hair combed out. I'm not spending the night at your house again, so you and Joyce will have to get lucky without me." Joyce made a little face like she was disappointed. If she had known what I knew, she'd have been even more disappointed. "No problem, Cindy. Joyce and I will make out fine either way. You have to promise me you won't be driving though. I'd feel terrible if you got into an accident after being out with all of us." "I'll drive over to Daddy's house and leave my car there. I can spend the night at his house, and drive to work in the morning, from there." "That limo will be crowded with six of you. You guys better get going then. When's Laura Lee supposed to call you back?" Just then, the receptionist buzzed the phone next to Cindy. It was Cindy's mom, of course, and there was absolutely no problem fitting in nine people on such short notice. I smiled. It had been that kind of a day After the girls left I went back to the office and called Brenda. I told her about my day, and she wanted to know how much of that money I made was going into her trading trust account. I took a guess and told her about fifty thousand dollars. "Emily got here. She's upstairs putting the kid's clothes and toys away. She was asking if you had said anything more to me about beating her ass black and blue. Did you really mean it when you said you'd do that?" "Emily knows that I meant it. If I didn't do it, she'd think it hadn't been important to me, that she wasn't important to me. I want her to know that it was, and she is." "Kenny, you should beat my ass black and blue too." As soon as she said it, she hung up on me. Talk about someone managing to spoil a wonderful day. Brenda had just come out and practically confessed that she'd been unfaithful to me too. I wondered what else my wives were keeping from me? I wondered if Joyce needed her ass beaten black and blue too? I closed my eyes, fighting back the sudden attack of nausea I was feeling. There are some thoughts you don't want floating around inside your head. I was having what I can only describe as violent visions. I made a real effort to stop having such negative thoughts. Whatever had happened before, it was done. I hadn't been in any position to attend to my marital responsibilities. Women get used to having sex, and it becomes an important component in their health and happiness. I tried to calm myself by making it seem less important. It didn't work. I had a choice between choosing between feeling anger and rage, or abject sorrow and despair. None of these were emotions that I welcomed. I knew I had to get myself in check before I left the conference room. I was an adult, and a man who was still freshly recovered from a near catastrophic illness. My reaction to Brenda's statement could upset the mental equilibrium I'd fought so hard to achieve for myself and my family. How I chose to react would go a long way towards determining the way I proposed to look at events that would undoubtedly unfold in the future. I could sit there in this room and decide how I should react. I knew it was an important decision I was making. How big did Brenda's confession have to be? I thought of all my children, particularly April and Dwightee and Sissy and Tony. If I overreacted to this news, their lives would again be affected. How important was it really? Until she told me, I hadn't even noticed any difference in her. I had been through this before with Brenda, and I'd been able to get over my hurt. Looking at it as positively as I could, at least she'd been the one who told me this time. She'd gone ahead and told on herself. That must mean something. She had been unfaithful. Emily had too, and so had Eddie and Dale. Shirley wanted to be, even if she hadn't been already, and so did Joyce. I didn't know about Cindy, but, she had been unfaithful in another way when she abandoned me. I had a choice, even though it didn't feel like I did. Was it only my own dick that was so special? Why did this have to come out right then? Was it too much to ask to have one night to celebrate? I started laughing at myself. I really did have a choice. Seven wives, twelve healthy children, and enough money to buy anything any sane person could ever want. Poor baby! How many men would just love to have all my problems? Brenda was so beautiful. How much was it worth to me to exact my revenge? Emily had just returned to my house with two of my children. Shirley would follow, then all my children would be back where they belonged. Compared to that, how important was it that someone else had managed to get his cock inside Brenda? That wasn't a good visual image for me to think about. I cleared my head and took another deep breath. I looked at my watch, surprised to find that it was almost six o'clock. I was making progress, but maybe not soon enough. I had to decide right then how I was going to handle this. Was I going to go off the deep end? Was I instead going to be an adult, and be philosophical about the whole thing? "BRENDA... YOU FAITHLESS FUCKING CUNT!!!" I could feel the tears of rage sliding down my cheeks. This wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't what I needed. I stood up and wiped my eyes. Five minutes after I'd screamed out loud, in what I now fervently hoped, had been an empty floor of offices, I was sitting in my car, driving back to my new house. ------- Chapter 62 When I got home, Joyce could see immediately that something bad had happened to me. She knew me so well. I could see the concern on her face. "What happened, Kenny? Did something bad happen?" Joyce started moving towards me. For whatever reason, or just because I needed someone to be at fault, I blamed Joyce for Brenda's being unfaithful to me. In my mind, she and I had this unwritten contract that she would always take whatever steps necessary to further all my interests, and to safeguard and protect all that was mine. That is how I felt about the lengths I would go to in order to protect her interests. With everything that had happened before, and now this revelation from Brenda, I couldn't believe that Joyce had lifted even the tiniest finger to do that for me. She had just stood by and let my whole world come crashing apart. "I don't want to talk about it now, Joyce. I need to get ready before the limo comes. Lay out my blue suit and a light blue shirt. I'm going to take a quick shower. We have to be ready to leave on time." Joyce followed after me as I went by her, heading for my bedroom. I didn't want to talk to her right then. I was still trying to get my emotions back under control. Brenda's comment had really hit me hard. I hadn't expected anything like that from her. She had already had so many opportunities, when we were alone, to talk to me about something as important as that was. Brenda and I had discussed the situation I was already in with Emily, Eddie and Dale. I had told her how upset and hurt I'd been to find out the news. Maybe those discussions had convinced her that she didn't want to be around me when I found out that she too had been unfaithful. What she had said to me still buzzed around inside my head, the words repeating themselves with the same resigned finality she had used when first saying them to me. Already, as my blind rage dissipated, I realized that she had been right not to tell me face to face. It didn't make the pain any less, but I was glad she hadn't been within my grasp when I'd learned of her betrayal. I loved all of them, and I didn't really want to hurt them. I quickly showered and had another shave. When I came out of my bathroom, Joyce was standing next to my bed looking anxious and very concerned. There must have been some change to my expression that let her see that I had myself back under control again. I started noticing how nice she looked all dressed up, with her hair done up and professional make up applied to her face. "You look real nice in that dress, Joyce. I like what they did to make your eyes look bigger too. I hope they have a photographer working at that inn tonight. I'd like to get a picture of the two of us for our family album." Joyce started smiling. As always, any compliment from me about her appearance was cherished far more than any regular praise she routinely received from me for doing something incredibly difficult on behalf of the company "Thank you, Kenny. You need to hurry up and get dressed though. The limo driver got here early, and we're supposed to be picking Laura Lee up in fifteen minutes. She's already called and said she's ready." My earlier good mood had been completely destroyed by Brenda's words, but I knew I was somehow going to be able to get through the evening. That was a relief to me. My confinement in that clinic had already raised too many concerns about my emotional control and everyone down in Alabama already had their own unasked questions about my mental health. I didn't want anything like my reaction to Brenda's confession cropping up to add fuel to all those concerns. It was important that people had faith in my ability to lead the effort we were getting ready to undertake. I was already starting to adjust my opinion about the seriousness of Brenda's transgressions. I was beginning to put it into the same category as what had occurred with Emily, or with both of the Pipkin sisters. It was something that had happened while I wasn't available to prevent it. I had decided, with Emily, Dale and Eddie, that those things wouldn't have happened if I'd been there. Deciding that had allowed me to accept a portion of the blame for it myself. In reality, I was prepared to make whatever allowances necessary to restore my family to what it had been before the episode had sidelined me. My illness hadn't been their fault, and it was unreasonable for me to expect that nothing untoward would occur. All of my wives had enjoyed very active sex lives with me. In a way, the fact that they missed sex with me enough to go out and find some replacement was a kind of compliment. It meant that, for these four women at least, girl/girl sex hadn't been sufficient to completely satisfy all their needs. I didn't think I'd have been able to refrain from being unfaithful myself, not if I'd been left in their situation for almost three whole years. I knew I was rationalizing about it, but, even so, I knew I needed to do something to make it possible to not make these activities more traumatic to our lives than they absolutely had to be. Nothing I could say or do was ever going to change what had happened. I needed to put my life back together again, not to take any impulsive actions that would ensure our reconciliation never happening. In some ways, it helped that Brenda and I had already been down this road twice before. I'd managed to get over the betrayal then, and I'd manage to get over this one as well. In some ways, because it was Brenda, it wasn't a complete surprise to me that she was capable of doing something like this. For this reason, it was quickly becoming easier for me to accept it. I found myself wanting to make sure there weren't other problems I didn't know about. I didn't want to have these same types of situations occurring every week or two. If there was more for me to learn, I wanted it out and over with. It was time for a new beginning for all of us. "Joyce, did you go out and fuck any other guys while I was in that clinic?" She had been standing there watching me getting dressed. I was sitting on the bed putting on my shoes and socks when I'd blurted out my question. My question had taken her completely by surprise. I could tell it was the last thing she had expected me to ever ask her. I knew she hadn't done what I'd asked even before she got herself under control long enough to answer me. "I've never been with any man since that first time with you, Kenny. If I was going to do it with another man, you'd know about it before it happened. Why did you ask me that? Did someone tell you that I had?" Joyce was upset that I'd asked her that. She was more upset that someone might have lied about her to me. "I called Brenda after you and Cindy left. She told me that Emily was moved back in. She asked me if I really meant it when I'd told Emily I was going to beat her ass black and blue if she ever decided she wanted to come back and be one of my wives again. When I told her I really did mean it, she told me I needed to beat her ass black and blue too. After she said that, she hung up before I could talk to her about it. I went a little crazy right after that, but I'm back in control again. I asked you about it because I don't want to keep having new information like this popping up all the time. I'd rather find out now, and get it all out in the open and over with." "I didn't know anything about Brenda and any other man. I think Shirley might have something she needs to say to you, but I don't think it's anything like what Brenda said. Shirley is afraid of you. I think that's the only reason she moved out rather than face you again after you came back home. I'm pretty sure she didn't let anyone screw her though. I think I'd have heard about it if she had. Something might have happened over at the country club, but not anything like sex. She acted guilty a few times after she started taking playing lessons from that new pro out there, but it was probably more because of what she was thinking about than anything she actually ended up doing. I do know that Cindy has been with two other women since you were put in the clinic, but she told me she hasn't even gone out on a date with any other guy." We were already late. I accepted Joyce's reassurances, knowing we needed to leave right away to avoid being late for the party. I didn't want to get myself upset like I'd been before. As much as the evening was supposed to be a celebration, for me it was also an opportunity to demonstrate to my key Alabama people that I was back to how I had been right before my breakdown. Laura looked amazingly the same as she had the last time I'd seen her, three years previously. On the ride to this inn, she and I talked and I got caught up with all the changes in her life. She and Gene were still very much at odds, but they had gotten together for some family outings involving all three of their children. I had to endure an earful about Trudy's shortcomings too. She wasn't quite as disparaging of Vellie to me, but I could sense that she and Vellie had issues that Laura was trying to refrain from going into. I gathered that Laura wasn't close to any of Trudy or Vellie's children. Trudy and Billy Ray had produced a new son together, and Vellie was then carrying the first baby she and Kyle would have together. Laura hadn't been in the limo for more than five minutes before she started trying to get information from me regarding any future plans or designs I might have on Cindy. From the tone of her questions, I knew she hoped that Cindy and I would be reconciled. I thought of telling her that Cindy and I still shared a strong physical attraction to each other, but I decided not to do that, preferring instead to let her see that attraction for herself. I didn't think there was much doubt that Cindy and I would resume our sexual relationship at some point. Whether or not that resumption would result in her returning to being a member of our family, I had no way of knowing. There was a strong chemistry between us though, and I knew we would act on it if we kept coming into close physical contact. I was more concerned, at that moment, about my feelings of anger towards Joyce. I knew I needed her with me, but it was becoming uncomfortable for me to have this large rift standing between us. No one but me even believed I had any right to be angry with her because of all that had happened in the past three years. They didn't understand the relationship Joyce and I shared. It was a complex compact where we had intertwined all of our lives in a symbiotic state of connections. We both had understood that all of our interests were joint and mutual, and that neither would do anything, or refrain from doing anything to protect all those interests. Joyce had failed to perform her responsibilities at a time when I was unable to protect any of these interests myself. She had allowed my children to be scattered in the wind, my wives to be unfaithful to us, and, most importantly, had failed in her responsibility to preserve and promote the business growth that she and I had agreed to jointly pursue before my collapse. There had been nothing in those plans that was beyond her capabilities to bring to fruition. At the party itself, I greeted everyone and tried to put on a good front for all of them. I had a nice discussion with Gene, renewed my acquaintanceship with both Trudy and Vellie, and outlined for all of them my beliefs about the fantastic growth and opportunities that lay ahead of us. Trudy and Vellie remained on their best behavior with each other. They tried their best to avoid one another, but I wasn't allowing them to do that. Instead, I got both of them together, off to the side with me, and told them directly that only by cooperating with each other could they hope to further the careers of both their husbands. "I don't know if you two women realize it or not, but both your futures are heavily dependent on each other. In order for Kyle and Billy Ray to really be successful, they need to have a calm and orderly home situation. These should be the start of their peak earning years. Anything that happens good for one of them will undoubtedly be good for the other one too. The same is true of you two, and for all your children. You need to work together and both be supportive, of the men, and of each other. You are natural allies, not competitors. Build each other up, and that will allow Kyle and Billy Ray to be free to help each other succeed. I don't want either of them having even the slightest worries about anything having to do with their home front. I want all of you to do more things together with both families. Picnics and vacations, maybe even going in together on investments like a summer cabin by a lake or a fishing boat that both families can use and enjoy. You didn't go nearly far enough before when the two of you decided to share the men." "We don't share them. Its only for the kids sake that we do that." Trudy spoke up first, but I could see Vellie hadn't been that far behind her when she did start to speak. "I'm sure that's what you tell Kyle and Billy Ray. That doesn't make it true though. I'm sure that each has his strengths and weaknesses, and you both decided you preferred not to have all your marbles in one bag. I don't really care what you use to justify what you do. I want you doing a lot more of it. Enough of it to let them know you're both happy with this arrangement. If you do that, you're both going to end up being well off. If you keep on with this charade of being angry and upset about anything having to do with each other, things are going to get much worse than before. I won't have men working for me in key positions if they can't keep their home lives under control. I'd rather fire those two and go find other men who have tranquil family situations." The two of them stared after me as I walked over to Gene to start a conversation with him. We had finished our meal, and were doing a sort of cocktail party social thing, with all of us standing around in small groups, drinking, talking, and watching everyone else out of the corners of our eyes. I saw that Joyce and Cindy were cloistered close together, talking heatedly about something. Laura was still sitting by herself, with Kyle and Billy Ray standing over by the table's other end, discussing some new racing engine design that Billy Ray had been reading about. "Gene, are you ready to come back to work yet?" "I've been ready. What do you want me to do?" "I want you to run interference for me down here. I don't have the time to go around and tell everyone what I'm expecting them to do. I thought I could explain myself to you, and you could go around, acting as my spokesman, getting everyone doing what I want them to be doing." "I could do that. How much does it pay?" "Sixty thousand a year. Part of your job is going to be trying to keep your family in line for me. That includes Laura Lee too. I'm tired of her sticking her nose up in the air around Trudy and Vellie. It wouldn't be so bad if she'd just ignore them and be quiet, but she's actively going around causing them problems." "I don't think she causes them problems, Kenny. Unless you mean because of what she says about the both of them to Kyle? The rest of the time, she pretty much does ignore them, and doesn't interfere with how the children are being raised." "She badmouthed both of them to me in the ride over here, Gene. She needs something happening in her own life to take her mind off of trying to run everyone else's life. She needs her own immediate problems. You took that away from her when you allowed her to divorce you." "I think you're overstepping yourself there, Kenny. Lee and I both needed that divorce. You have no idea how bad things were between us." "Maybe not, but I know you both still loved each other. You know what I think the problem was?" "No, I don't. I'm sure you'll let me know though." "I guess I should let you know, because I'm sure everyone else has already given up on letting you find it out for yourself, Gene. Laura Lee is and was the natural leader between the two of you, and you never could accept that. You fought her good advice for the whole time of your marriage, making both of you unhappy. Gene, I know this is hard, but you're a natural second banana kind of a sidekick. You should let others do the actual planning, and then try to implement what they tell you should be done. If you'd done that, you and Laura would still be married, and I'm betting you'd both be a lot happier too." "Larry told me that too, then listening to his advice ended up putting the whole company at risk." "Larry isn't a good example for you to use. Your father passed Larry over because he already knew Larry wasn't capable of running the company. He's smart enough, but he has no vision." "I'm not smart enough?" "No, that isn't what I'm saying. Planning and strategy isn't your strength, implementing plans is. You never could settle for doing what you did best. You should have learned that after you got done with implementing all your father's plans. That's when you first started running into trouble. You should have listened to your wife after she bought your mother's stock and gave it to you. I bet you listened to her advice when you were running that plant over in Georgia." "You think you understand everything, Kenny, but you can't see what I've seen. If I'd had more support, my planning would have worked out. I was undermined at every step." "Because you weren't able to convince everyone that your plans would be successful. It doesn't matter anyway. I'm looking for a second banana, Gene, and the job is yours if you want it." "I'm not sure that I do now. You can't come up to a man and tell him what you've just told me." "Gene, I just did it. We will have to be honest and open with each other if we're going to be working together closely. I see your strengths, and I have a good use to put them to. You can disagree with my assessment, just as long as you do the work I'm assigning you to do. If you really believe I'm wrong about Laura Lee, try an experiment with her. A purely social experiment. Let her do the leading and you try to follow. See if you end up better off than you were before or not." "I'm not going to do that. I think I know better than you what our problems were." "Gene, you aren't an open minded man. It makes it difficult to learn from your mistakes when you're too closed off to admit to making any. Think about what I've said to you. In fact, why not go ask Laura Lee if she thinks you should come back to work for me or not?" "I make my own decisions. I don't need to ask her those types of questions." "Suit yourself, Gene. Think about my offer and let me know." I turned and walked over to where Joyce and Cindy were still talking. They had both calmed down again, and were smiling at each other and talking together quietly. "Have you girls settled whatever it was that was troubling you before?" Cindy looked over at Joyce, saying nothing. Joyce was smiling at me. "I was telling Cindy that her deciding not to come back to the house with us tonight was costing me my best chance to get laid since the first day you got out of that clinic. She wants to be with you, but she wants everything all settled first." "Well, you're wrong about her costing you anything by not coming home with us again. After this thing with Brenda, I doubt I'd be good company tonight anyway. I'm going to need some time to decide what is best for all of us. I want to get everything back to the way it was, but I'm beginning to see it will need to be a little bit different than it was. Like me." Cindy looked at me, then at Joyce, and decided to walk away from both of us, heading over to where her mother was seated. Joyce and I both watched her walking away. "She really wanted to come home with us tonight. All you would have had to do was tell her how much you wanted to be with her again." Joyce spoke quietly, seemingly resigned to putting up with my obstinate behavior. "It wouldn't have been good, not tonight. I realize now that I have to get everything back first, before we can settle all these problems we have. Emily is back home, and so are Sissy and Tony. I need to work something out with Shirley; something so she knows she doesn't have anything to be afraid about with me. I want all of us to be back together, Joyce. After that happens, we can worry about all the things that pushed us apart." "What about Eddie and Dale, Kenny? You need to do something first with them. Dale isn't going to call you on her own. She already feels so bad about what happened. If you don't reach out to her in some way, we're going to lose both of them. You need to do the same with Cindy. She wants you to ask her to come back to you. Why is it so hard for you to do that?" "I'm not going to try to explain it to you, Joyce. You're smart, try to figure it out for yourself. When you do figure it out, you'll understand why I'm having such a problem with you too. Mostly, my problems with you now are because you're the main one I've always counted on." "Mama keeps telling me I should keep hanging in there with you, that soon you'll begin to start thinking and acting like your old self, Kenny. I don't see any signs of that happening. You think I let you down on purpose, I know that's what you think. You have some idea I did it to try to take over your place in the company. That's just crazy. I already knew I couldn't run the company without you. It would take at least the two of us, and even then it would be too much for the two of us to do and still have any time left over for the children or the other girls." "This isn't the time or the place Joyce. We'll get this settled, but not tonight. Not this week either. I've told you what has to happen first. Let's try to work together to make that happen. I still love you, and we can work things out again. I'm not going to worry about Cindy, Eddie, or Dale before I've got all my children living at home again. That's what we need to keep all our focus on. When we get home again, I'd like it very much if Shirley and the kids were back living there. Shirley and Emily don't have to have anything to do with me themselves, not if they don't want to, but I do want all the kids back together, at the very least." "I'll call Shirley. I'm sure she'll come back if she knows how much not having the children together is bothering you. I'm going to call Brenda tomorrow too, to find out what she meant by what she said to you. If she did do something with another man, it was while she was in Lawrence with Emily. She didn't do anything while she lived with me. When I talk to Shirley, I'll find out for sure if there's anything there that you have to be concerned about. I want all of us back together too, Kenny. You don't know how much it bothers me that you blame me for all that happened." It was after eleven before the party broke up and all of us left in the two limousines. I had watched as each of the smaller groupings started shifting. I was gratified to see Kyle and Vellie standing with Billy Ray and Trudy, and the four of them whispering and laughing while they all looked over to see if I was watching them or not. Gene and Laura spent an hour sitting together and talking. I saw several angry moments, but they weren't looking angry when they finally parted. Gene went over to where Kyle and the others were, and Laura went over to where Cindy was standing by herself. After we stopped to drop Laura off at her house, Joyce and I were quiet for the remainder of our trip. I was more calm than I had been, but there was still some pain, anger and turmoil I was trying to deal with. Inside the house, Joyce looked at me. I got the impression that she was hoping I'd change my mind about sleeping with her again. I told her good night, thanking her for accepting the way things had to be for me right then. "I don't accept it. I hate it. No matter what you tell me, I know I didn't do anything to make any of this happen. I love all of them as much as you do. I was there all the time, missing them and hurting because they chose to leave, or to do the things they ended up doing. The whole time, I always believed you'd get better someday. I didn't know you'd end up getting better and then blame me because I wasn't enough of an attraction to keep those girls interested and faithful. Maybe you could have done it if it was me that had gotten sick, but I wasn't able to. I've been telling you for all these years that it was you that kept all of us together. You don't believe me, and you punish me for something I couldn't have prevented." "Good night, Joyce. We're still in this thing together. There will be plenty of time to worry about who's to blame after we get things back to the way they used to be. I'll deal with Emily, Brenda and Dale and Eddie, but not until after we get everyone back together again." "It could be too late by then, Kenny. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to take this. I'm not talking about no sex either. Before, we always had each other to count on. Even when things went bad for one of us, we had that. Now its like I don't have that to count on anymore. It means everything to me that I have you, and it doesn't seem to even matter to you anymore that I stayed with you through all of it. Instead of me being rewarded for being the only one that stayed loyal to you, I get punished and accused of making everything bad happen to us." "It's your choice, Joyce. I've told you what has to happen first. One thing you can be sure of, and it's that I'll get to the bottom of all of this. I'm stronger now in other ways. I'm not ready to just listen to you speaking some calming words, and then stop looking to try to find out why things happened. I don't trust anyone anymore like I did with you before. I'm going to do what I decided, no matter whether you try to help me or not. You don't need to threaten me." "I'm warning you, not threatening. Right now you're putting all of them ahead of me." "Ahead of me too. Joyce. If you want to look at it like that, you can. More than anyone else, this is our family, yours and mine. It would never have been possible to put all of this together without the two of us being there to do it. It will take both of us to put it back together again. If you leave, it won't ever get put back again. If you did that, all my other questions would be answered. If that ever happened, I would feel free to see how much of everything I could get done on my own. That isn't what I want, but one thing I've learned from my time in the clinic is that you need to take what you can get. If you hold out for getting what you really want, you are in danger of getting a lot less than if you had compromised and took what was being offered." "You aren't offering me anything." "If that's true, and if you really believe that, then you should just leave. I'm not running around trying to tear anything apart. I'm not taking anything away from you. I haven't even hidden any of my reasons for the things I've been doing." "You've taken yourself away from me. How do you think it makes me feel when you call me a monkey and say you don't want to make love to me?" "That isn't what I believe I'm doing, Joyce. I'm not taking myself away from you. I'm dealing with some things that have happened, according to my own set of priorities. I have an order to what I'm trying to accomplish, and I've told you what that is. For some reason, you can't seem to just relax about things and accept my priorities. Something has been taken away from me, and I'm determined to get it all back. You had your chance to take care of this and continue to run things. I'm not sure what it says, that you seem more worried about trying it my way now than you are about all of us getting back together again." "Okay, Kenny. You go right ahead and do it your way. It would have been so much simpler if you had treated everyone nicer back when you were at the clinic. It would even be simpler now if you stopped running around ranting to all of us about punishing everyone. No one in our family is afraid of me. If anything, they're afraid for me, even Mama; but I decided to stay here with you, believing that you loved me enough to never want to hurt me. You aren't showing me any love, Kenny. Instead of that, you're deliberately trying to push me away from you. I'm going to take your advice though, and let you do it your way. When this is all over though, you're going to have a lot to answer for. I hope you don't think you're going to end up being the one person who gets to escape punishment for all your deeds?" I didn't answer her, instead I went into my bedroom and closed the door behind me. In the past, I'd have been swayed by her words. Possibly, swayed enough to alter my own plans. This was no longer the case. I was finding that I had a different way of looking at things. I wasn't sure it was better, but it certainly was different. Joyce didn't like this different way, but that didn't make any difference to me. I knew what I wanted, and I was going to get it. This time it was Joyce who was going to have to back down. If she didn't, she'd have to leave. That night I had some more bad dreams. There were important things being said in my dreams, but they were always being said just out of range of my hearing abilities. It was frustrating and unnerving for me. I felt like I was so close to being able to understand it all, but I wasn't sure I was going to be able to rely on what I was supposed to understand. I was confused about so many things. What had happened had me off balance and unsure. I knew I could take refuge working on my easy business projects, and by continuing with my commodity trading. In those two areas, I already felt secure. In the past, I'd always been able to get through these situations by putting my head down and pushing myself forward. It was the only way I had ever been familiar and comfortable with. Now it seemed different. I no longer wanted to put distance between myself and my problems. I wanted to try to resolve the problems rather than simply trying to run away from them. I needed to find some emotional equilibrium. I was prepared to pay whatever price it took to get back all that I had lost. ------- Chapter 63 I knew that Joyce hadn't really decided to let me try to put things back together according to my own preferred plan. She had her own take on what needed to be done, and the order it needed to be accomplished in. She had already concluded that decisive action needed to be taken immediately with Dale. I knew she spoke with Eddie several times a week, whereas I hadn't spoken to Eddie, except once, since she had gone back to Oklahoma to be with Dale and her mom. In the morning, Joyce and I were sitting in the kitchen eating our bowls of cereal. I could tell that she wanted to begin a conversation with me, but she wasn't sure about how she should go about it. Several times, in the week leading up to our Alabama trip, when we had started talking about things together, I'd suddenly lost my temper and had ended up yelling at her, rather than remaining calm and talking things through. Afterwards, I always regretted not allowing her to finish whatever point she'd been trying to make. "Joyce, maybe we should both take turns bringing things up to talk about. We'll set a time limit, and during that time, only one of us can speak. The other one can't interrupt or do anything to prevent the speaker from finishing with their thought." "We could always just talk together before, Kenny. We didn't need to set up any special rules for talking together." "That was before. Now, I think we need to set some up, if we're ever going to start making progress with our situation." Joyce said nothing as she ate her cereal and thought about what I had said. I'm sure she started to realize that I had made my suggestion in order to allow her to have time to tell me what she needed to. If she did decide to talk to me about something I didn't want to listen to, I was determined that I would remain calm and listen anyway. After I finished listening to her, I wasn't as sure about what I'd do then. I believed my dream had been telling me that I needed to listen more, to gain information that I could then sift through and evaluate at a later time. A time when I wasn't all charged up with my own fears and anger. My dream had seemed to be warning me that I couldn't always trust the way I processed the information I was being given. At first, I thought it meant that the information wasn't trustworthy, but then I started to realize it was not the information I was being warned against, but the conclusions I was drawing from that information. "If you think it will help us. Can I go first?" Joyce had made her decision. She was going to try my suggestion. "Sure. How much time will you need to say what you want to tell me?" "Ten minutes?" I nodded to her, purposefully looking at my watch face as I did so. "Okay then, here goes. Kenny, the first thing I wanted to say to you is that I want all the same things you do. I want us back together again, just like we used to be. I was always happy then. We had a very good life, and I couldn't have asked for anything better than what all of us had. "You've changed so much, Kenny. I know you're still you, but, in a way, you really aren't. You look pretty much the same, except when you get angry or upset, then you look different. You always used to listen to people. Even if what they were telling you wasn't what you wanted to hear. You don't do that now. Unless you like what people are telling you, you cut them off and stop them from continuing. Often, you attack them with those hurtful things you say. All the people around us talk about how these changes have made you harder to like, more difficult to work with. I love you so much, and right now, as much as I'd hate to do it, I'm thinking about how I might need to take the children and leave you." I was fighting with myself to hold onto enough of my temper to allow her to finish. Inside though, I was already seething. I had allowed her to speak to me, but rather than try to produce something positive and cooperative with me, she was resorting to the one threat she knew would cut right through my heart. I might have broken my agreement right then, but something told me not to do that. I nodded for her to continue speaking instead. "It isn't just me that feels this way, Kenny. Shirley left because she was afraid that Derek would start trying to be just like you. He loves you so much, and he's always trying to imitate you. Before, when you were the other way, all of us loved seeing him do that. We wanted all the boys to grow up to be just like their father. Now, that's more of a fear than a hope. You tell all of us how much having your children living with you would mean to you, but then you say and do things that make us all afraid of what you might do if you ever lost your temper around them." "I'd never hurt any of them!" I had tried so hard to keep my end of the bargain. I couldn't let her accuse me of possibly injuring the children though. I hadn't meant to scream my denial at her, but it just came roaring out of me like that. Joyce had pushed back in her chair at the suddenness of my outburst, and had almost ended up tipping it over. I felt bad about my lack of self control. "I'm sorry. Go ahead, I'll be quiet and let you finish." "Don't you see, Kenny? We all realize that you want to be a good husband and father again. That's what we want too, but wanting it isn't enough. We've tried waiting, but instead of getting better, more like your old self, you're getting worse. Most of us, we've stopped believing. I never said this to you before because I had made up my mind that I would stay with you no matter what happened. If it wasn't for the children, I'd still stay with you. It really hurts me to tell you this, because I do believe that my Kenny is still there inside you. What I'm most afraid of is that by staying with you I'm encouraging you to think you don't really have to change. You have your money again and you have the freedom to do almost anything you want to do. I know I can't really force you to do anything. If you really do want your family back together again, you have to change back to being more like our old Kenny. I don't mean pretending to be more like him either. You really would need to change." Joyce stopped talking. I waited for half a minute to be sure she was finished. "Are you through speaking?" She nodded that she was. I took my time, trying to think of some way to respond to her. I was angry, but I was also happy to find that I honestly believed Joyce's words again. I'd observed her closely as she was speaking, and I knew she had meant what she said. "I listened to what you told me. I didn't like most of it, naturally. I'm going to take some time and think about it before I try to give you any answers or ask you some questions. The biggest problem I see with what you've just told me is that I'm already trying my hardest to be as nice as I can be, to all of you. I think I'm stuck with being who I am right now. I had hoped that was going to be enough, that I was going to still be enough like I used to be, and all of you would still love me and want to be with me. Inside me right now, I'm thinking that if you decide to leave me too, that must really mean I've failed in trying to become as much like my old self as I wanted to. I didn't get to pick and choose how this was going to work out. I think it would be better for all of us if you went back to Ridgeline today. I need some time to consider all my options." "I think you're right. I need to speak with everyone up there, and I should talk to Eddie and Dale, to let them know what has been happening. Don't you think you could go back to the clinic for awhile and let Doctor Fellows try to make some adjustments? It isn't like you need to change completely back from where you are now. Mostly, it's the temper, and the things you say to us when you get upset. That's the biggest difference, and it's what has all of us a little bit afraid of you." "It wouldn't help to go back there. Dr. Fellows already said she can't find anything else to do. My identity is merged and formed up like it should be. It's like being left handed or right handed, or having blue eyes or brown ones. This is my personality now. The saddest part of this to me is that I was very pleased that I came through this merger thing feeling like I'd kept so much of my old self. I really thought it was going to be enough. I guess I first started knowing that it wasn't enough, when you and I kept bumping heads. People do learn to control their tempers, Joyce. I controlled it better this morning than I even thought I could." Whatever Joyce was thinking or feeling when I told her that, she suddenly stood up and left the kitchen. I knew, watching her leave, that my life was entering a new phase. An unwelcome phase. Nothing had changed about what I wanted. Well, one thing had changed, and that was that I'd end up having to do it all by myself. Losing Joyce like that, having her tell me that enough of me hadn't survived with the identity merge, really troubled me. She knew me better than anyone. Putting aside my recent feelings that she wasn't to be fully trusted, her assessment of me carried quite a bit of weight. It took three hours before we could get a plane down to Birmingham to fly Joyce back home. We had driven to the office, with Joyce's luggage in the car. At ten o'clock, Joyce came into my office to tell me that Cindy was driving her out to the airport. I had planned on driving her myself, and it was a disappointment to me that she had elected to ask Cindy instead. I nodded to her to indicate that I'd understood what she was telling me. It became an awkward moment because I didn't get up to go to her. I didn't want to hug her or tell her goodbye. Seeing that I wasn't going to get up and come to her, Joyce came around the side of my desk and kissed me softly on my cheek. "Goodbye, Kenny. I love you." I didn't say anything. If I had said anything, it wouldn't have helped my cause in the least. I watched her leave, thinking that her leaving marked the end of the very best part of my life. I felt sure that significant personality change was extremely unlikely for me. More than that, I believed I was much closer to being like my old self had been than any of them were giving me credit for. Even if what I'd become had turned out to be unsatisfactory to all my wives, I still believed it was enough for me to remain close to my parents, and to my children. I knew one thing, and that was that I had to keep working at the business, performing well enough so that they would realize that, whether I was changed too much or not, I was still a valuable resource for the family. One positive thing I now hoped for, was that my separation from the family would result in all the children returning to our home. All it needed for that was for Shirley to come back. If she really had left because she was afraid for Derek, then there was no reason for her to stay away now. ------- I spent the rest of the summer in Alabama, working long hours, six or seven days a week. My main focus was on the Quick Snack sales roll out, but I was also beginning to alter the product mix produced at all of our Consolidated production facilities. I wanted production engines to fuel the expansion I was planning to undertake. In Tupelo, the vote to unionize the plant had failed by a slim margin of only six votes. I drove over to Mississippi the next day, with a company attorney, and we met with both victims and their families. I listened to both men telling me what had happened, occasionally interrupting and asking them questions to pinpoint exactly how the accident had occurred. The attorney and I both quickly concluded, me from my own knowledge of how quickly things could change for the worse, and he from his knowledge of industrial liability, that both men had acted in what they had believed was their best chance to effect as good a possible outcome as could reasonably be hoped for. It hadn't turned out well for either of them, but the accident hadn't been their fault. You might question some of their decisions, but I believed both of them when they told me they'd been trying to stop the leak of the scalding hot water from becoming worse. It took less than an afternoon for all of us to agree to what both victims thought of as a fair settlement. I asked both of them to come back and continue working at the plant. The next day, after all the paperwork was finalized and the settlement checks had been mailed out, I called my father and told him to find us the best attorneys and file suit against our insurer, to recover the settlement costs. When I told him what I'd learned from both victims, he didn't think our settlement was excessive, or that I'd been too hasty in making my own decision about us awarding it. I told him, after we had finished talking about Tupelo, that Joyce and I had both agreed we needed some time apart. I also volunteered that I still had hope that we could salvage our marriage. "Kenny, you'll never find another woman like Joyce. You need to heed what she tells you. She loves you, and that should count for a lot with you." "It does. I've always tried to treat Joyce special. Lately, I've had a lot of doubt that doing that was a good thing. Joyce seems to always need to get her own way now, kind of like Mama. Sometimes, she gets pretty absolute about how things have to be. In my case, right now, she wants me to be someone I can't be anymore. I think she has been doing and saying things to try to force me to see things her way. Maybe she's always done things that way, but now, I can't let her operate like that with me. She claims I'm too changed from how I was before. I think it has more to do with me not allowing her to continue as the boss. The old Kenny would have allowed that. I can't do that, not when her leadership has left things as screwed up as they are now. Maybe, with us being split up for awhile, we'll be able to reach a compromise that we can both live with." "That's a dangerous game you've chosen to play, Kenny. I'm not sure I can support that decision." "I understand, Dad. I wasn't asking you to support it. I was explaining what I've decided. I expect you to support my business decisions though, and I'm planning on shaking things up down here quite a bit. How many new dollars in sales volume would you need to borrow another two hundred million dollars to pay for our expansion down here?" "It isn't that simple, Kenny. If you started showing dramatic increases in sales that wouldn't be enough by itself. Show me increasing repeat orders, something that points to sustainable growth, and I can get you all the money you'll need within three months time." "I'm loaning the company five million to cover our costs down here for the build out of the Quick Snacks program. If anything happens to me, you don't have to pay me back. I just didn't want to wait to get approval for the changes I'm going to be making to get this thing moving much quicker. I want to have at least one hundred teams out in the field by years end. That should bring us ten thousand new accounts a week until we begin to saturate the market. You need to find us a fleet deal on a thousand new delivery vans. I'll have Kyle fax you up all the specs and the interior design he came up with." "What you're planning for seems far too optimistic, Kenny. Even with two week training classes, you're talking about a hundred new recruits for every single class. I'm not sure its wise to try to be so hasty." "I've lost three years, Dad. I'm not saying we won't fall short of that goal, but that's what I'm shooting for. Don't worry about the cost of it. I'm going to be trading every day too. I've been doing very well trading my new programs. I can fund the vehicle and the training costs from that if I have to." "That's money for your family, Kenny. You might need that money someday." "Dad, I know you get printouts of all my trading accounts weekly. I'm the one who told Frank it was all right to send them to you and to Joyce. You know how much I've been making already, so you know I can afford to do this. There will always be plenty of money for everyone from all the other accounts I've had set up. We might never have another opportunity to blanket a whole national market like this one again. We need to act while it's still available to us. I don't think its risky at all. If we can't open tons of new accounts with the first hundred people out in the field, we can always cut back our plans to what you believe would be a reasonable rate of growth." "Would you listen to me if I told you I thought we needed to do that?" "I'd listen, but only as long as you listened to why I thought we should keep pounding as hard as we can. It won't be that hard to see which one of us is right, Dad. The sales numbers will either start climbing like crazy, or they won't. Everything we'll be selling will be at a terrific mark up. How many times have you told me that nothing speaks louder than fresh new profits?" Dad laughed. He knew I was right. Most of the time, when he got excited about something, he'd make me keep selling the idea to him, just because he enjoyed being sold. "All right, Kenny. We'll try it your way. Do me a favor though, call your mother and talk to her. She will take Joyce's side in this, and you really can't blame her for that. Just tell her that you still hope to get everything worked out soon. When you calm her down, tell her some of the sales numbers you're shooting for with this new program. You know your mother. Nothing convinces her that you're okay more than knowing you are out there making lots of money. That's a carryover from Senior's time. His answer for everything was to look at the bottom line. Bertie learned that from him. If I hadn't been able to turn a consistently high profit yield over the years, our marriage would have never survived." Dad surprised me by understanding how important his business success had been to the continuation of his marriage. It made me wonder what else he already knew or suspected. He was a very different person from either Mama or me. I was seldom able to anticipate these little insights he occasionally showed. I did call Mama though, and we had ourselves a good conversation. Good that is, after we had gotten finished with our discussion about me being separated from all of my wives. When I told her that I was hoping to create a billion dollars in new annual sales over the next three years though, she was immediately firing questions at me, trying to see if all my internal numbers matched up with the big number I'd used to start off the topic. When she found out that each sales team only needed to open one hundred new accounts per week to achieve my goal, she got positively giddy. Mama loved creating something new, as long as that something resulted in a profit. She preferred to have some or even all that profit accrue to her own account, but, any profit, hers or someone else's, was an exciting subject for her. Right before we finished our conversation, Mama asked me if there was anything she could do to help me with Joyce and the rest of my family. "I can't say right now, Mama. I think Joyce might be right about me having changed too much. She thinks I can just snap my fingers and be back to being the same way I used to be. I can't do that, and sometimes, I don't think I'd do it even if I could. There are things I can do now that I like. I don't see it all being bad, all these changes in me that people keep telling me about. I'm not talking about most of the changes, just some of them. I think Joyce is frustrated now because I won't automatically defer to her in all things. It used to be if she said something, I would just believe it. I found out that was a mistake. Joyce could have done a lot more to keep my family all together for me. She could have talked Shirley out of leaving, but she didn't do it. I think Cindy's another good example of what I mean. Ever since I've been down here, Cindy's shown a lot of interest in me. Joyce told me that Cindy didn't do anything with her for the whole time I was over in that clinic. As soon as I get out and come down here, Joyce and Cindy get back together again. I didn't do anything to cause that. It was all Joyce and Cindy. There are many things like that happening around me now. Things that make no sense to me. When I ask Joyce about them, she denies them, and starts accusing me of being different, and of scaring everyone away from me. Cindy doesn't act scared, and neither did Brenda, back when I was spending so much time with her." "Speaking of Brenda, she was over here to see me last night, Kenny. She told me what she said to you, and then she also confessed to not behaving well during a short period of time when you were incapacitated. I was very stern with her about her behavior. I can tell you that this isn't anything that is still ongoing. She's very worried now that you'll choose to send her packing. In her mind, by telling you of her indiscretion, she was performing an act of love. She sees it as a sacrifice she chose to make for you. She said she didn't want you loving her anymore when you were under the false assumption that she had behaved better than some of the others. I don't condone what she did, but it isn't necessarily a reason for you to want to terminate such a long standing relationship with her. Brenda needs constant reassurance that her beauty is remarkable. In that way she takes after her mother. Her body may have been involved in those acts, but her heart never was. It wasn't anything approaching a love affair. She has asked me to try to intercede on her behalf. She also promises that something like that will never occur again." "Brenda's promised the same thing before. It always lasts for just as long as her promise is convenient. I'm not even that concerned with what Brenda's done right now, Mama. Joyce is the key to all of this. She'll be the one I need to convince. If I do, she'll tell all the rest of them what they should decide. They listen to her, and that's a big part of the problem I've been having with her. In order for me to believe what Joyce has been telling me, I'd have to believe she had suddenly lost all her power to control all my other wives. We both know that isn't what happened. Joyce has tried to turn all this back on me. Now, she's complaining that this happened because of me being so different, both in the clinic, and even now." "You are different, sweetheart. For Joyce, in particular, that difference is very unsettling. In the past, you always paid her your very special kind of attention. This attention was much more than what you showed to any of the others. To Joyce, it was as if she were your one most special favorite. She took pride and comfort in knowing that none of the others measured up quite like she did in your eyes. Since your recovery from your illness though, you no longer treat her like you did. You judge her just as though she were the same as any one of the others. She always knew she couldn't compete based on her looks alone. "One of the changes in you now is that you seem much more confident and forceful whenever you're proposing one of your own ideas. You no longer collaborate with Joyce beforehand like you used to. She's gone three years without that collaboration, Kenny, and in that time, some of her weaknesses have been exposed. She was never that decisive, even when you were around. You would bolster her confidence by the way you treated her, and this support would allow her to appear to be acting decisively. To other people, it appeared like she was initiating plans on her own. Without you there to do that for her, to prop her up like you had, she became far more tentative. Of all the girls, Joyce had the most to hope for with your return. She needed you to regain her self confidence, dear, and you didn't provide that for her." "She said she and all the other wives are fearful of the children being around me. Do you think they really are?" "I think it would be an easy matter for someone to raise their concerns on that score. All of us have seen your potential for cruelty and violence, Kenny. You made no attempt to hide that side from us when we visited you at the clinic. Once you see something like that, you are always going to be somewhat apprehensive about it possibly returning." I got off the phone after speaking with both my parents. I added up what I'd learned from them, and what I already knew from my having listened to Joyce. One thing was clear to me already, and that was that I needed to begin mending some of my broken fences. Mama hadn't come right out and confirmed that I couldn't trust all of what Joyce was telling me. What she'd done was given me some reasons why Joyce might be more disappointed in who I was now than some of the other wives would be. What came through from what Mama had said though, was that I'd somehow failed Joyce since my return. I didn't see it like that. I would have to try to reason the whole thing through from all the things Mama had hinted at. Had it been Joyce who'd changed without me there to support her? If Joyce was disappointed enough with how I hadn't lent her the support she felt she needed and deserved, would that cause her to decide to work against me with all my other wives? Would she create dissatisfaction with me in them, in order to lend support to her contention that I needed to change myself? Would she be dissatisfied with anything less than me changing back to being just like my old self had been? It was too complex and confusing for me. I preferred situations that were straightforward and simple. Part of myself was urging me to listen closer to what Joyce was saying. Another part of me was rejecting that advice. I felt like I really needed was to come up with a plan of action that allowed me to be more of what Joyce seemed to need, without my having to pretend to be different than I now was. A very tall order. I had to find out whether the person I now was still had the ability to attract and keep some or all of my wives. I didn't think I could possibly give Joyce what she needed from me until after I'd answered these other questions first. Questions about being attractive enough for a sustained relationship with the other wives, being just the way I was now. If I gained confidence from interaction with the other wives, by simply being who I now was, I might be able to change myself enough to give Joyce what Mama said she needed from me. I'd given it to her before, according to Mama. I'd seen for myself, in the beginning, how Joyce had blossomed under my words of praise and encouragement. At the time I hadn't thought I was providing anything that was remarkable. It was Mama who said that some of Joyce's ability had deserted her, or wilted away, without me being there to provide the nourishment for it. I wondered if that could explain why she didn't make a better showing while I was ill and confined to the clinic? If it did, then it was unfair, in the extreme, for me to be angry with her for those failures. All of this was running through my mind as I watched the screen and performed my daily trading routines. By three o'clock that afternoon, it became obvious that some people were now trying to avoid me. I hadn't seen Cindy for more than fifteen minutes at any one time since she and Joyce had gone over to the airport. Billy Ray had been keeping himself absent from my sight as well. Kyle didn't show up to tell me about his sales plans during the mornings anymore either, but I put some of that down to him just being busy putting his new crews together. I really had an urge to spend more time with Cindy, to find out for myself if Joyce being gone would have an effect on how she would now act in my presence. I knew, from when I'd first come down to Alabama earlier, that Cindy still had an interest in me. Given all these new developments, I needed to adjust my previous timetable and plans for the order I would attempt to use to put my family back together again. Given these changes, Cindy might now be a good place for me to begin. She hadn't been exposed to me when I was first in the clinic, and thus at my worst. All she could know is what she might have heard from Joyce. Of all the wives, Cindy would be the one I thought would be the least ill disposed towards the new me. I needed any victory I could get. Her being so close didn't hurt things either. It was going to be a new beginning for whoever I now was. I was going to see, objectively, whether or not it was possible to attract and keep one of my former wives. I wasn't Bad Kenny or Good Kenny. I was just Kenny. There was no going backward to what I had once been. I had no choice but to be me. I could try to be a better me, but even that was only a matter of me deciding to try to act on the better of my available impulses. I could repress the worst impulses, because anyone could choose to do that. I'd try to put my best foot forward with her, to see if my doing so would prove to be enough to win her back or not. I found Cindy downstairs, a week after my trip to Tupelo, to speak with those two injured workers. She was over in the product storage area talking with her cousin, Doug. I'd been searching for her, all this time, searching this time for about fifteen minutes. This had been almost the last place I would have thought to look for her. "Hi, Cindy. Have you been trying to avoid me or something?" "What? Avoid you? No, why would I do that? Do you mean because of what's happening with you and Joyce? She's terribly upset right now, Kenny. She told me that it was you who was sending her away. Is it true that you've decided you don't want to be married to her anymore?" "Joyce is upset, and she exaggerates. We both thought it would be better if she went home to be with the rest of the family. She told me she couldn't accept what she calls the new Kenny. She thinks I could change who I am now if I really wanted to. This isn't the first time Joyce and I have had our differences though." "She told me that too, the first night you and she came down here. She said you could be more like your old self, if you wanted to be, and that all of us needed to encourage you to want to try to change yourself back." "If it were only that easy. I know Joyce would like to see me be nicer to her. I'm beginning to understand that she needs me to do that more than most people would." "Everyone likes to be treated nice, Kenny. I have to say I agree with Joyce about the way you had been treating her since the two of you came down here. You seemed so angry with her. What did she do to get you so mad?" "A very good question. Unfortunately, every time I think I've found some good answers, things come out to let me know all my good answers were wrong. I spoke to my mother the other day. She's a woman who is very perceptive about both Joyce and me. Some of the things she told me have made me wonder if I should have ever been mad at Joyce. Maybe I shouldn't have been so disappointed with what she accomplished down here either. My mother thinks Joyce did the best she could while I was in that clinic." "She did. It was hard for her, especially having to come down here for two or three days every week. She isn't like you, Kenny. Joyce doesn't just get an idea and start putting it into operation. This whole thing was hard for her, and she couldn't get anyone here to take many of her ideas that seriously. You know how it is when women try to tell men what to do around here. After awhile, Joyce just ended up being discouraged. Nothing she tried to set up ever got carried out like it was supposed to be. People didn't treat her the same way they treat you. Everything was made that much harder for her." Doug had been standing around listening to the two of us speaking. He looked like he felt awkward about being there. "Did Kyle and his crew get off okay this morning, Doug?" He looked grateful that I'd spoken to him. It was as if his being there was now perfectly okay. "They left before eight. There were nine of them this time, including Kyle. How long are they going to be using the spare vans? I've only got one van left, and I'd really hate to have to send it out in the shape its in." "I told Joyce to order us up some new vans for the sales team. I'll find out what she did about that and then let you know sometime tomorrow. My father is looking into buying us a whole new fleet of delivery vans for Kyle and his group, but that will take some time. In the meantime, if someone breaks down and needs another vehicle, you go ahead and rent them something. Whatever it costs, we'll charge it to the direct sales program. Try not to go overboard on rentals, but take care of our regular driver's needs first." I turned back to Cindy and told her I needed to get back up to the office. When I started back in that direction, Cindy began walking with me. "You don't really seem that much different right now, Kenny. Is what Joyce talked about beginning to happen to you?" "I don't think so. I'm starting to think Joyce is talking about a difference that doesn't have that much to do with any changes in my personality. I think it has more to do with me having a negative attitude about some other things. I reacted pretty strongly with her to the way so many bad things had happened while I was sick. Joyce bore the brunt of my disappointment with things, and of this whole negative attitude I had. Maybe, her being criticized like she was by me will turn out to be the worst possible thing I could have done with her. According to most of the people I've been talking to lately, Joyce already had lost a lot of her self confidence." "You know, its funny that you're telling me this about her, because I thought she was much more confident when she first came down here with you this time. After you got sick, she was so worried, and then she kind of was being obsessive about every little thing. She wasn't very confident she could cope with everything. None of us were confident. Daddy thought you being so sick would mean the end of Macklinson's Bakeries. He always believed that it was really only you that wanted his company. A few times, it even started looking like he'd been right too. None of the expansion money you told us about ever came down here. Money went into the old Consolidated company plants, but none of them were being transferred to us down here either, not like you said they'd be." "My father hoped I'd get better a lot sooner than I did. He wanted to wait and save the expansion program down here for me. He wasn't in a big hurry like I always am. Now that I'm back, things will start moving again." "Whatever you said to Daddy, Kenny, it wasn't what he was hoping to hear from you. He's been moping around the house talking to himself. Did you tell him you don't have any job for him?" "No. I offered him a job, but it apparently wasn't what he wanted. What do you hear from Larry? I told Gene to have him call me, but he hasn't yet." "Larry is funny like that. He isn't going to call you until after Daddy gets his things all settled with you. Larry's the oldest." "What do we have to do to get our things all settled?" I hadn't planned to say anything like that, and I knew, by the way the color rushed to her face, that Cindy hadn't expected to hear anything like that from me. We had climbed the stairs, and were about ten feet from my office when I asked her the question. "I thought it was settled? You said I had to wait until after all the others came back." Cindy had paused before she answered me, but when she spoke her answer, she moved ahead of me, gliding on into my office. I followed after her, softly closing my door so we'd have some degree of privacy. "That was before, but things are always changing. I'm not sure if I've changed too much for everyone else, or if it was just too much for Joyce. The only way to find out is to be around someone who knew me from before, and then ask for their opinion. I don't think I'm so much different than I was. I still sound the same to myself. When I look in a mirror, I look pretty much like I used to look. I look at you and I feel just the same way I used to feel. It seems mostly the same to me, but I need other opinions." "My mother says you're a lot different. Billy Ray and Kyle both think you're better than you were before. Daddy said you're vexing. I don't know yet what I think. It's hard to tell when you're just standing around talking to someone for a few minutes at a time. Joyce is different than she was. In bed, I mean. She doesn't have as much energy as before. I don't think she has the same enthusiasm as she once did. I thought she might be trying to use me to get you to sleep with her." "She might have thought it would make it easier, but I'm certain she enjoyed being with you again. Joyce has a strong thing for you. At times, I used to think it was too strong." "That's funny. Joyce told me the same thing about you. She was concerned because you had such a strong thing for me. That's what she told me. What's even funnier, is that all the other wives were concerned because you and Joyce were so close they never felt like they mattered enough to either of you. Shirley worried about that all the time. She was afraid she didn't matter much to anyone. Of all the wives, I felt closest to Shirley. I never felt like I was very important to either you or Joyce." She stunned me by her words. Maybe I was wrong about a lot of things, but I was sure I wasn't wrong about how Joyce had felt about Cindy. I knew how I felt too. What she said about Shirley hadn't been in the least surprising. Shirley had told me as much herself. Joyce and I must not have done a very good job at communicating our feelings to Cindy. "You were always very important to me, Cindy. Joyce loves you even more than I do. The idea that you didn't understand we both felt like that has me wondering whether Joyce and I are really communicating with anyone else at all. She and I had several big arguments about you." "What kind of arguments?" "The kind where we each thought the other one was trying to keep you for themselves. Joyce didn't mind sharing all the other wives, but did you notice, after you and I started making love, that Joyce never once joined in with us? Before we did it, she was with us a lot, but not once after. I think she was jealous when she saw us making love." "Joyce was jealous of me?" "No, at least I don't think she was. She was jealous of me." "I was jealous of her. We all are. You made it pretty obvious to all of us that you loved her the most." "Really? I guess it might look like that to some people. We were close, being husband and wife, but we were also close from all our collaborative business planning. She's been my best friend for a long time too." "She thinks you don't love her now though." "She's wrong if she thinks that. I told her I still loved her." "She doesn't want to hear the words from you. She doesn't trust your words right now." There it was again. This listening thing had some real value to it. I had been looking for all my answers in the wrong places. I was starting to get a different picture in my mind of what had gone wrong during the time I was confined to that clinic. I wasn't ready yet to reach any firm conclusions, but some areas that had seemed inexplicable to me were now beginning to make some sort of sense. The puzzle began to seem like it was becoming possible for me to solve. I looked at my watch, it was now just after four thirty. "Billy Ray should be coming in with my trading reconciliations and a summary of my daily trading profits soon. When he brings those things in to me, would you like to go somewhere and have some dinner?" "I have to be somewhere at six thirty, and I need to go to my apartment first to get some fresh clothes and my workbook. Class doesn't get out until after nine thirty. I don't have any classes tomorrow though." "Tomorrow I'm going to be in Texas. I'm flying there in the early afternoon, and then spending the weekend looking over the operation we have there." "You aren't going home for the weekend?" "For right now, Birmingham is my home. One of the things that's happening is that all my children are coming back to live in the Ridgeline house. Until we get some things settled, Joyce thinks it would be easier if I didn't come back home for awhile." "She doesn't even want you to see your children?" "She didn't put it exactly like that, but she did say it would be easier if I stayed away for awhile. Shirley is worried that Derek and some of the others might try to imitate my behavior. She means my temper. Joyce said Shirley moved out because she was afraid that might happen." "Look, if you just want to talk some more, I could stop by your house after I get out of class. Joyce didn't tell me anything about her keeping you away from your children." "Maybe that isn't how she's looking at it. Protecting the tranquility of our home and keeping the other wives from being worried that I might show up and do something, or act out in some way. I don't know. I don't really feel like I'm a danger to anyone. I feel like I'm normally in control of myself. Maybe she's worried about either Brenda or Emily having some kind of confrontation with me. I don't know. I told her that I'd keep away for right now, and I will. If you don't get out of class until late, maybe we should put it off for another time. I've still got a lot to think about. It was just me not wanting to have to eat alone again. You go ahead and get ready for your class. We'll get together after I get back from Texas." After she left, I started feeling sorry for myself again. As much as I might want to do it, sleeping with Cindy probably wasn't the smartest thing to be doing right then. Billy Ray came in a little before five with a big smile on his face. "Wow. You had some day today, Kenny. I worked real fast on reconciliations and I still barely managed to finish about half of them. How do you find so many trades to make?" "Some days are like that, Billy Ray. It was like that almost all day. These speculators have got to be getting killed with all the bad trades they're making. I took out so many stop losses today, it wasn't even funny. I sold it going down and then re bought things near the bottom. When things settled, they were back up near to where they opened this morning. A very profitable day for us I think. So tell me, have you made up your mind about what you're going to do with that bonus money yet?" "Trudy said we should invest it in real estate. She wants her own house real bad. She said renting isn't good for our tax situation. I'd do it too, except she wants to buy a big expensive house, and use the bonus money as a down payment. She thinks it can be a place for us to live in as well as an investment. I'd like to buy my own place for cash, knowing it was all mine no matter what might happen. I don't like owing anyone." "Trudy's right, Billy Ray. Right now property values are still very reasonable around here. Property will appreciate, but the land, not the house that's on it. Find a nice house with some land you can later subdivide with it. You and the family can live in the house, and you can take your time doing a lot split. When prices go way up again, you can sell off one or two of the other lots and pay off your existing mortgage. After that, you just wait until land prices get so high that you can make a real killing." "That sounds good, but Trudy and I don't know anything about any of that. How would we know if what we were buying was ever going to go up like you said?" "Research, Billy Ray. Call up some brokers and ask them if they know of any good deals involving a nice house and enough land to make a later lot split worthwhile. On the weekends, go out with Trudy and the kids, looking at what the real estate people have to show you. You'll find something that ends up getting you excited. When you do, then bring the deal to me, and I'll have someone check the whole thing out for you. Put in some time with this, and you'll be fine when you finally find something that's right for you." We talked about real estate investing for another few minutes. I could see that Billy Ray had liked what I'd told him. Having extra land to sell instead of having to sell his own house appealed to him. He wanted the house to raise his family. Trudy would be appeased too, because he had a plan that included real estate investing too. After Billy Ray left, I thought about calling Joyce. It was probably too soon to call her. I did want to tell her that she was wrong about me not loving her. I could see there would be a problem though, especially if she hadn't believed me all those other times I'd told her I did. It was going to be a problem, that was for sure. For about the thousandth time I asked myself if it was really worthwhile to try to be who I really was? Sitting at my desk all alone, it sure didn't seem like it would be. The only thing that seemed less worthwhile was having to spend the rest of my life pretending to be someone I wasn't. I drove home. I wasn't feeling good, but I did feel calm inside about everything. I watched some television before going off to bed. No one called me. I'd been halfway expecting either Cindy or Joyce to call me. I remembered what my father had told me about me playing a dangerous game. What other choice did I have? I felt comfortable with myself, and with my decision. I knew I could only be happy if I could get back all that I'd lost, and still be myself after I accomplished it. I remembered my Uncle Bunny, and something he'd told me about having doubts if he'd made the right choice when he had started doing things to make everyone like him. I wanted all my wives and children to love me, but only if it was the real me that they loved. If I had to fake at being someone else, it wouldn't really be me that they loved. I had to smile to myself, remembering having a conversation, many years before, with Mother Superior. It was right after a couple had returned me from a first "get acquainted" outing. They hadn't wanted anything more to do with me after that one picnic they had taken me on. Mother Superior had smiled down at me, a rare event for her, and told me I'd never find a couple to adopt me if I didn't at least pretend to be someone they could love. Even then I'd known I didn't want to pretend about who I was. I wanted to be someone the girls could love just for myself. Before, when I'd been the old Kenny, I'd only been willing to show them a part of who I was. I knew this was risking everything, but I'd risked everything before too. Only then, my everything didn't amount to anything. What I had now was a lot, but not enough to keep me from going ahead with risking it. I'd like to have all my wives love me again, especially Joyce, but I'd settle for less than all, but only if it became necessary. ------- Chapter 64 I'm not sure what it was that started moving things back in the direction I'd been hoping for. Whatever it was, I was very grateful when it happened. I have a theory that it had to do with the fact that I started feeling like I was never going to get anywhere with my wives again, and that I was losing contact with all my children. Instead of finding a way to make progress with solving this big personal crisis, I was spending all my time and energy working and trading. I'd like to think that, subconsciously at least, I was aware that the man I now was wasn't ever going to be a success with any of the members of my family. That probably was what motivated me to try to change the way I thought about things. I had this attitude and belief at that time that I was through with being able to make any changes to myself, that the man I now was had little chance of ever changing. Who I was then was going to be who I'd always be. Being unhappy now, that belief was really being tested. We all have hopes of being happy, of being well liked. I hadn't had much recent experience with being universally disliked. For that feeling, I had to draw on some of my earlier childhood experiences. I first became aware, on a conscious level, that I was still changing, the night I placed a phone call to Eddie and Dale. It was a spur of the moment decision on my part. I'd been sitting at home, working on trying to figure out if we now had enough outside sales crews for the Quick Snacks sales program to begin to start canvassing outside the South. We had over one hundred full time sales people, with another fifty new hires either in sales training classes, or out in the field, working with our more successful and experienced crew people. Things were going slower than I'd hoped, but still faster than anyone but me had been predicting they would. By the end of the month, we would have a minimum of fifteen fully trained sales crews, with each crew meeting or exceeding their weekly sales targets. When Eddie answered her mother's phone, I started in talking right away. I didn't want to give her the chance to get our conversation off to a bad beginning. "Hi, Eddie, it's Kenny. I've been thinking about you and Dale a lot lately. I miss you both. How's your mother doing?" I spoke quickly, more nervous than I thought I'd be. I was afraid I'd waited too long to finally call them. "Kenny! Are you at home with Joyce and the family again?" Eddie seemed happy to hear from me, but worried too. This made me think that Joyce had been talking to both of them. I should have known she'd have coordinated a united front with all of them. It wasn't that I had been trying to go behind anyone's back by calling Eddie and Dale. Since we didn't have any children together, and because Eddie and I had enjoyed good sexual experiences together at the clinic, I thought it might be better if I started back with them first. Joyce, Emily, Shirley and Brenda weren't as free to take risks with me, because they did have our children they thought they needed to protect. Eddie and Dale were able to make their own decisions, without having to worry about any of that. "No, I'm still down here in Birmingham. Joyce and I decided we needed to maintain some distance between us, until after we can decide what has to be done to make it good for all of us to live together again." "That isn't the same as what they all keep telling us, Kenny. Joyce says you've changed back some, but not nearly enough to suit her yet. She thinks you're maybe just trying to pretend that you're anything like our other Kenny was." There was a question in there somewhere. It was like Eddie was hoping I was going to deny that Joyce was right about me pretending anything. I didn't know how to tell Eddie that I was worried about that too, not without scaring her and Dale away from me all over again. "Joyce knows me better than anyone else, Eddie. I can't really say I've figured things out enough myself to be certain about anything. No, that isn't true either. I'm certain I don't like having people be afraid of me, or of them worrying that I might do harm to my children. I miss having my family, and being with all of them." "Dale needs to talk to you, Kenny. Talk to her for a few minutes, okay? Don't hang up though, not until after we talk some more." I was going to tell her okay, but then I heard Dale talking excitedly into the phone. "Hi Kenny! I'm so glad you finally called us. Are you coming to pick us up soon?" Dale wasn't usually like that, so excitable. That was how Eddie was, but not her sister. It was good to hear her voice, and even nicer to know that someone still cared, and wanted to be with me. "Hi, Dale. I didn't know you even wanted me to come pick you up? I thought everyone was still upset with me." "We've been telling Joyce, just about every day, for a solid month, that we did want you to do that. Dee Dee and me, we're ready to accept whatever you decide is fair for what happened before. It was more my fault than hers though. I'm the one who went with him first, not her. She wouldn't do anything until after I started bringing him home with me to our place in Oklahoma City. You know how competitive she gets whenever I have anything that she doesn't?" I heard Eddie's voice in the background, telling her sister to not talk about something like that until after all of us were back seeing each other in person again. "Dee Dee said we should wait until you come get us, Kenny, to talk about what happened. That's fine with me. Whatever you decide to do is okay with both of us. We already talked about it. Even Mama agrees that you have to decide what needs to happen for what we did." "I don't think so, Dale. I think we just need to worry about all of us getting back together again. So many things happened, to all of us. Right now, I'm more interested in getting things back together again than with worrying about what made things fall apart before. I miss all of you." All three of us talked for another hour on the phone. Dale and Eddie both told me that they were ready to come back and see for themselves if I was too different now for them. Several times I was near to crying, just from the relief I was feeling. I told them I'd fly up to Chickasaw to get them the following day, a Saturday. I warned them that it would just be me for awhile, and that they'd find me changed as well. I promised I'd try to be my real self with them, and let them see for themselves what that meant. I had to reschedule some earlier plans to clear my weekend. One of those things had been an invitation from Gene to come to his home for another discussion about the job I'd earlier offered to him. Over the months, Gene and I had often spoken together on the phone. He never brought up the subject of my earlier job offer, and neither did I. When I called him to say I'd be flying to Oklahoma, he sounded upset that I was rescheduling him. I was a little abrupt with him, telling him that I had something more important that I needed to take care of. I didn't get into what that more important something could be. The flight to Oklahoma and back was pretty routine. Mrs. Pipkin had driven her daughters out to the airfield. She and I had a nice conversation while I waited for the plane to be refueled. She told me that she'd prayed for me every night for the past three years. It touched my heart that she felt that way about me. I told her to keep right on praying, because I was going to need all the help I could possibly get. She kissed me and whispered in my ear that I needed to take it easy with her daughters. I knew what she meant. Eddie and Dale had both been all over me as soon as I had walked over to where they and their mother were standing. Even so, I could sense their uncertainty, and a little bit of actual fear. Both girls had gone ahead to board the plane as soon as we were given the go ahead. That was why I found myself standing alone with their mother. "I love both your daughters. I'll try not to do anything to make them feel bad. I do think we're all going to get everything settled back to how it used to be." "That's just what my girls are hoping for. They were happy before, Kenny, especially my little Dee. That other business, while you were still sick? That didn't really mean anything to either of them. It was from them being so worried about you, and so unhappy about you being gone. It was wrong though, and you better believe I told them both that. It wouldn't have ever happened if you'd been there for them." "Well, don't worry about it. So many things have happened since I was sick, that having Eddie and Dale go off on a fling doesn't seem all that terrible to me anymore. Having a houseful of women and children all afraid of you tends to put the rest of it into perspective. I'm trying to rebuild my life right now, not just be angry about why it needs rebuilding." I felt a lot better after she gave me a hug and told me she had faith it would eventually work out for all of us. I didn't exactly share her confidence, but I didn't tell her that. Instead, I hugged her back, and told her I'd bring the girls back for regular visits. I turned away from her and walked over to my plane. I felt better than I had when I had first landed. The girls might be nervous, even afraid, but that hadn't stopped them from hurrying to board the plane. On the return flight to Birmingham, Eddie and Dale stayed in the back of the plane. I saw them speaking quietly to each other. When we landed, I took them over to my car and helped get their suitcases stored away in the trunk. Both girls sat up front with me as we drove to the new house. I found out that all my wives had been to the new house before I had. We were inside the house, standing in the living room, before Eddie started talking about the other man they'd cheated on me with. "Eddie, don't. It doesn't matter. I don't want to hear any of the details. It happened, and I'm sorry. Maybe someday we can talk about parts of it, but not right away. I still love both of you, and, for a little while, I'd like to put the past behind us and just enjoy being back together." We had a wild weekend of trying to get caught up with each other. The sex felt the same as it had to me before I got sick. Both girls had retained all the same differences in bed that I remembered. Dale did tell me that she had been able to have orgasms with that other man too. Her theory was that I had made it easier for her to cum with a man. I was only interested in making sure she could still cum with me. She and Eddie both seemed comfortable with me in the bedroom. They asked me all sorts of questions about any changes they thought they might have noticed. That first night, after both of them fell asleep snuggling up in my arms, I felt a sense of contentment. I refused to sleep myself, wanting to absorb the feelings I had. Thoughts kept racing through my mind, preventing me from relaxing. This was the first night since I'd been released from the clinic that I could truly claim some progress in my domestic situation. I'd had many good nights with Brenda, but it wasn't a Brenda who was returning to me. Dale and Eddie had been estranged and were returning. More than that, they both felt comfortable with me again. Cindy and I had gone out to eat together on several occasions since I'd come down to Birmingham. There was a definite physical attraction, but an emotional reserve that neither of us had wanted to breach at the same time. Usually, it had been Cindy that pulled back from me, but, on several occasions, when she had indicated that she was willing to come back home with me, I'd been the one who had made up excuses not to do it. I knew that Cindy and Joyce were tied together somehow in my mind. I wanted to make love to Cindy, but, at the same time, I knew it would offend Joyce if I were to do that before she and I had reconciled. Eddie and Dale didn't make me feel that way. I think it had to do with me feeling that Eddie and Dale were both more interested in me than they were in Joyce, and that Joyce had been the one most in love with Cindy. I was happy to have Eddie and Dale in Birmingham with me. I realized how lonely I had been without having any of my family living there with me. I was beginning to realize that Joyce and the others weren't going to take the first steps to try to help us all get back together again. I was going to have to find a way to convince them that I was changing again. On Monday, I called Mama from the office. I told her that Eddie and Dale were staying with me again, and that I thought I'd come up for a visit with her and my Dad on that following weekend. We spoke about Joyce and the others, I asked her about whether they would have any problems with me coming back to Ridgeline, to visit my parents. "Kenny, it isn't like that. I hope you don't feel like all of them are lined up against you? I've spoken with all the other girls. Not a single one of them is happy with the way things presently are. This is more of a problem with you and Joyce right now. If you can find a way to solve things with her, the rest of it won't be much of a problem for you. You can't just run over Joyce, Kenny. She won't stand for it. She's being protective of all the rest of them, but, only because she isn't seeing what she feels she needs to see from you." "What Joyce is demanding won't ever be possible, Mama. I think she must know that too. At first, she said it was my temper problems, but I've learned how to control that now. When I told her that, she just said it wasn't enough. She isn't going to be satisfied until I go back to allowing her to run everything again." "Would that be so very bad, sweetheart? I remember everyone being happy when it was you allowing Joyce a free hand in running your household." "Things are different now. It isn't just the household she wants to control. It's me. Maybe it was like that before too, and I just never thought about it like I do now. I don't know. What I do know is it wouldn't work for me now. I think Joyce knows it wouldn't work, so she has it set up now so she gets to be the one who decides whether I'm enough like my old self again. I'll never be enough like my old self until I start letting her run things again." "That isn't how I see things, dear. Joyce is still the same. She wants what's best for everyone. You need to show her that the best place for her is still by your side. You need to try to work with her, not against her. You did that so well before. I'm sure you can manage to do it again." Mama was telling me what I needed to do. While she claimed not to be taking sides in my dispute with Joyce, it was obvious that she was more comfortable with Joyce being in control than with me being the one in charge. Everyone kept making excuses for Joyce. Joyce had changed too, in the three years I'd been gone, but no one seemed to realize that but me. As soon as I had that thought, I understood a lot better what I needed to do. All the pieces had been there, right in front of me, but I hadn't understood. What Cindy had said about Joyce's confidence deserting her, and even what my father had told me about how hard things had been on her. I'd been treating her like the enemy, when she was really the biggest victim of my long collapse. She had built her whole life and identity around being my wife, my assistant. She drew most of her strength from me, and from my position. She needed my approval and support. Without it, she didn't have anywhere near the same capabilities on her own. We had made each other better than either of us could ever be on our own. She needed me to be the same old Kenny, so she could get back to being the same old Joyce. The thoughts I was having seemed to ring true in my head. If what I now believed was really true, then the only reasonable choice I had was to convince Joyce that she could go back to being who she'd been by letting me be who I now was. I was changing, but it would never be enough unless my changing allowed Joyce to reclaim her place too. "Mama, I need to go now. I'll call you later in the week, to let you know what time we'll be landing in Bolling. I need to call Joyce and ask her some questions." I got off the phone and went over to my trading setup. I was convinced that I did some of my best thinking while I was distracted with my trading. I needed that distraction and excitement to remove the emotional charge I'd otherwise get when trying to think about my personal situation. With trading occupying the forefront of my mind, I could think unemotionally. Before the identity merger, trading had been the first task that both identities had cooperated together on. To accomplish what was necessary took skill sets from both. Perhaps it was the one cooperative venue that didn't cause conflict between the two identity states. I thought of it as thinking, but it was, at least possible, that what I was doing was communicating with myself. I told myself what I'd been thinking needed to happen with Joyce. She was the key to everything for me. I needed to find some way to rebuild her confidence to the point where she could feel comfortable being with me and being her old self at the same time. I had a strong feeling that, at least in the beginning, I'd need to really be the old Kenny with her. Once she got comfortable and more confident again, I could begin to start being like I really was. The key to my being the old Kenny was finding some way to convince myself that I needed to switch back to my Good Kenny identity state while I was with her. I'd be asking my integrated self to willingly take a step backwards, to allow that to take place. It was going to be a trust issue. It wasn't something I'd have been willing to do if it meant me going back to being Bad Kenny again, not unless I needed to do something like that in order to save the life of one of my children, or something just as important as that. I spent about three and a half hours trading and thinking before I stopped and walked back over to my regular desk. I still felt the same, but I knew I couldn't put off calling Joyce any longer. I picked up the phone and dialed her office number. I wasn't sure whether what I was about to tell her was real or simply some wishful thinking on my part. I knew I'd never know the answer to that question. When Joyce answered the phone, I started speaking. "Hi, Joyce, this is Kenny." "Hello. I just got off the phone with Mama. She called me to find out what you'd told me on the phone. She thought you'd already called me." There was this tone in her voice that told me she was distrustful of why I was calling her. "I had to make a deal first, Joyce, with Bad Kenny. He's agreed to let me be my old self whenever I'm alone with you." "You called me to tell me that? I guess I'm supposed to just take your word for all this?" "Joyce, this might be the only time I can get him to make this deal with me, and it won't be forever. It isn't healthy for me to do this. I only arranged it to help you get used to making the transition. I figured it would take a little while for you to find out how well we can work together, even if I have to change back again later. I love you, Joyce. I'm going to Mama's on Friday. Eddie and Dale are staying here with me now. I flew over and got them on Saturday, as the me I am, not as Good Kenny. I'm only able to be Good Kenny with you, that's the deal, and only until you get to feeling better about the new me." "Suppose I don't ever feel better about that?" "You will. You love me too, Joyce. You'll see me being myself in front of the others, and you'll understand that it's better for me to be the new Kenny. I'm not saying you'll prefer the new Kenny, but you'll learn to live with me, and to love me like you loved the old Kenny too. I know now how I need to be with you, and what you need from me. I've changed that much at least. I want you to come spend the night with me, Friday, at Mama's house. I'll have Eddie and Dale go to our house to spend the night there." "I'm not sure I can do that, Kenny. I'm half expecting that you'll try something sneaky if I did decide to trust you. I can't just drop all my suspicions and agree to come over there to be with you." "You have to decide this time whether it's worth the risk or not, Joyce. I had a difficult time arranging to be the old Kenny for you. I did it because I know now that you need me to be like that until you get some of your strength and old power back. Even Bad Kenny understands that I need you in my life, Joyce." "What happened after you brought Eddie and Dale back? Did you punish them?" "I'm not too concerned with punishing people anymore, Joyce. I was just happy to have them back with me." "What about Cindy? I talk to her, and she says you keep putting her off. She told me she was willing to go with you, several times, but you kept making excuses not to be with her." "I know. That probably has to do more with you than with me. I do want to get back with her, but not while you and I are still apart. Of all the wives, Cindy is the one I'd consider more yours than mine, just like Emily is more Brenda's than she is mine or yours. It just felt right for me to wait until you and I were back together again. I can tell you this, but I wouldn't be able to explain it to Cindy. It wouldn't have made any sense to her." "I've got another call I have to take, Kenny. Let me think about this, okay? What you just said about Cindy? More than anything else you've said, that makes me think I might really be talking to my old Kenny again. I always loved that Kenny. I still love that Kenny. Don't be so certain about Cindy being more mine than yours. She doesn't believe that, and I don't either." After I got off the phone, I didn't know whether to be happy or not. I still wasn't sure I could deliver what I'd promised her I could. I knew she'd find out in a hurry if I'd been lying to her. I hoped I hadn't been lying, but I wouldn't know until the time came for the two of us to be alone. I was determined to go through with my plan, even knowing that I'd be found out if I was just kidding myself about having this arrangement. ------- On Wednesday morning, Cindy came into my office and sat down in one of the chairs in front of my desk. "Joyce told me that Eddie and Dale are staying with you now. Why didn't you tell me?" She sounded angry. "It's complicated, Cindy. They aren't really settled in yet. I'd have gotten around to telling you soon." "Didn't you think I'd want to see them too?" I could tell that Cindy was a lot more angry than I thought she had any cause to be. "I didn't really think about it like that. The three of us are still trying to get re acquainted again. I haven't thought about much more than that." I wasn't being snotty with her, but I wasn't asking for her forgiveness either. She was presuming on a relationship that no longer existed. A relationship that had been terminated at her instigation, not at mine. She had decided to leave our family after I got sick. Now she was acting all upset over not being invited, first thing, to a family reunion? It didn't make much sense to me. "I want to go see them. Can I come over tonight, after work?" "Tell me why you're so mad first. I don't really understand why you would be." Sitting there in the chair in front of my desk, Cindy was a picture of discontentment. Something had upset her more than my failure to invite her over to see Eddie and Dale again. "How come you never invited me to go visit your family in Ridgeline? Joyce said you were bringing Eddie and Dale there this weekend. Why them and not me? Joyce said you told her that I was more her friend than yours." "Is that what all this is about, Cindy? If I had thought you'd want to fly to Ridgline with all of us, I'd have invited you. I'm inviting you to come now." She got up from her chair, storming out of my office. Cindy wasn't usually so moody. I briefly wondered why Joyce had gone to such trouble to let Cindy know what I'd said. It again crossed my mind that Joyce was trying to drive wedges between me and my other wives. It was a mistake for her to do that with Cindy though. I felt like I'd already lost Cindy, like Joyce and I had both lost her. I also thought it was likely that Joyce couldn't get her back without help from me. If she could have done so, without my help, she would have already gotten her back. I got to my house at about six thirty Wednesday night, and Cindy's car was parked in my spot in the driveway. I had to park behind her rather than drive into my garage. I got out of the car and walked to the front door. When I opened the door, I heard gales of loud laughter coming from the living room. I walked over to where all the noise was coming from and saw Cindy sitting on one of the sofas, her bare feet resting in Dale's lap while Dale applied nail polish for her. Eddie was sitting on the floor between them, laughing, and telling some story about Dale while they were both at Oklahoma University before I met them. As soon as she saw me though, she quit talking and jumped up to come greet me with a kiss. She started smiling the instant that she recognized me. "Kenny, come on in here and tell this Cindy girl that you don't hate her. She got herself so worked up that Dee had to polish her toenails to try to calm her back down again." Eddie was still smiling, but I thought I detected some worry in her eyes. "Why would you think I hate you, Cindy? I don't remember ever doing anything to make you believe I did. I don't hate you and I never did. I love you, but I understand that you have problems with wanting to be with me now, and that it would be better to wait until after Joyce and I get our own situation straightened out." Cindy jumped up from the couch, causing Dale to almost spill the two open bottles balanced between her legs. The big one was polish remover and the small one was bright red nail polish. She had a cotton ball in one hand and a small applicator brush in the other. Cindy's sudden movement had startled her too. "I didn't say you hated me! I said you don't treat me like you care about me anymore. You seem to think that I'm only interested in Joyce. You treat me like I'm only her girlfriend, not someone who loves you also. If that was really true, why wouldn't I have stayed around her after you got sick?" "I don't know, and I've decided to give up on trying to guess the why's about everything. Worrying about why things happened isn't solving anything. I want my family back, and that's what I'm focusing on right now. Joyce is the key to me getting them back, so she's the one I'm mostly concentrating on." "I'm the same as they are." Cindy nodded her head at Eddie and Dale. "Why didn't you come get me back too?" She had started crying. From the look of the condition of her eyes and the area surrounding them, she'd been crying before I came into the room too. "This isn't getting anyone anywhere, Cindy. I asked you if you wanted to fly to Kansas with us on Friday. You ran away when I did that." "We're going to Kansas, Kenny?" Eddie apparently hadn't been called by Joyce, and Cindy must not have told the girls what Joyce had told her. "I spoke to Mama the other day, Monday, and told her I'd like for us to come up for a weekend visit. I've been working too much and I thought a few days off would help me get things straighter in my mind. I also wanted to bring you back home to see the others. It was going to be a surprise. I didn't want the two of you worrying about seeing everyone again." "We're not worried about that. Why would we be? You're the only one we thought might be mad at us. We get along with everyone else." Dale had started getting up after she had the caps back on the bottles she now held in one hand. She was walking towards me to give me her own kisses. Cindy watched her as she did it. "Why do you give them all those kisses and not me, Kenny? In all these months, you haven't kissed me even once unless it was on the side of my face. I've had to practically throw myself at you, and you haven't even kissed me." I thought about what she said, thinking back to all the times since I'd come back to Birmingham. She was right, I hadn't kissed her in all that time. I hadn't thought about not doing it, but I hadn't done it either. I didn't see why it made so much difference to her. If things were different, or if they changed, not kissing her up until now wouldn't seem so important to her. I didn't want to let myself get bogged down in things that weren't important. I hadn't been the one kissing Eddie and Dale, it was them that had come and kissed me. I wouldn't have turned away from Cindy's kisses either. "Cindy, don't make this a big thing, okay? It isn't a big thing. Sometimes, when people are adjusting to each other again, after being real close, there's a period where things seem strange and awkward. We're going through that period now. I asked you if you wanted to go with the three of us on Friday, but you got mad and left in a big huff. It's going to be hard to make things better between us if you keep getting angry whenever I ask you to do something with me." "You can't even see what's obvious to everyone else, Kenny. You're hopeless now." Cindy went over to her shoes and slipped back into them, bending over first to take out the cotton balls separating the toes on her left foot. When she got done, she told Eddie and Dale she'd talk to them later and then left my house. I knew she'd be back, because I'd parked my car directly behind hers. "Kenny, you should be fucking that girl, because she wants it so bad from you. That's what you need to do with all of us, start laying that pipe regularly. Nothing wrong with how we feel about you that a few nice orgasms wouldn't smooth over." Eddie spoke like she was just kidding, but, underneath her light hearted words I could tell she was serious. "Cindy loves you, Kenny. You need to let her know you really love her too. Ask Dee. Both of us were worried until we ended up on our backs in that big old bed with you. In some ways you're very different, but we knew right away that you still loved us. Go on over to her house and let her know what you've shown us." Dale was nodding her agreement with the words her sister had spoken. I didn't think it was that simple. I wasn't sure that taking Cindy to bed was the smart thing to do. I was framing a response for Eddie when Cindy came barging through the front door again. "Kenny, you need to move that damn car of yours! She was pointing at the front door when she said it. I walked over to her and took her into my arms and kissed her. I was tired of trying to make things turn out the way I kept trying to get them to turn out. I'd listen to Eddie, because her advice couldn't possibly be any less effective than what I'd been attempting. Cindy struggled for about three seconds, trying to voice some kind of a verbal protest with my tongue sliding into her mouth. Her protest stopped when she realized that I was kissing her. I won't say she melted into my arms right away, but she did stop resisting. I had both of my hands on her ass cheeks when I lifted her off the ground and carried her towards my bedroom. She kept kissing me the whole time. Once inside my bedroom, it took almost no time for the two of us to get undressed and continue with our kissing. I don't remember the exact order of how things went from there. I know I was somehow inside her, and that she was welcoming everything we were doing to each other. I know I said things to her, and her to me, but I'm not sure what our actual words were. We both came, and it didn't even slow us down in our kissing and lovemaking. I wasn't trying for any effect with her. It was more a case of needing and wanting. She seemed the same as I was, content to experience rather than discuss or negotiate with me. After, we talked. We ended up talking quite a lot, about what had come between us, and about how she felt about being with me. She didn't want to be one of the wives when I wasn't there to be the husband. She said she loved Joyce and all the others, but all of that love centered around me. It hadn't been the same as soon as I got sick. No one had stayed the same, and she thought this was why things started falling apart. I told her of my fears about never being changed enough for Joyce. I also told her that I could never be happy without having Joyce by my side. She didn't seem that bothered by my admission either. "Kenny, we all know how much Joyce means to you. To us, its like you were both almost the same person. You are, when you're together. This is why everything seems all strange to all of us now. We aren't used to you and Joyce not being in total agreement. It makes you both seem strange to us." "Joyce and I both changed. We both want things back like they always were before, but it isn't going to work out that way. Do you think I'm very different now?" "I see differences in how you act in response to things. I don't find you as easy going as you were, and in some ways you're very intimidating now. Before, I could tell how you felt whenever you looked at me. None of that comes through now. I really miss that because one look from you before, and my legs would start to get weak. I felt that when you first showed up at the plant a few months ago. When I moved in close so I could feel your cock, I almost passed out from having it touch my body. I wanted you so badly right then, but you didn't have the look in your eyes from before. If you had looked at me like you used to, I'd have done it right there in front of your office, even with Kyle, Billy Ray and Uncle Phil there to see it. I missed that part the most." "Don't forget Joyce. She was right there too." I had her cuddled in close to me as we spoke, both of us facing together. I felt my dick responding to her again. She felt it too, and smiled up at me. The second time was more relaxed and unhurried, but ended in another feverish frenzy of mutual orgasm. We finally slept, sometime after midnight. I felt good, more relaxed than I'd been since being released from the clinic. So far, Brenda, Eddie, Dale, and Cindy had all made love with me and found the new me acceptable. All of them had something they missed about the way I had been before, but all of them said they had liked some of the differences in me too. It was comforting to have them tell me I had passed their inspection. More comforting, because I was being myself with them. I really felt like I understood Joyce's fears and concerns then. The changes in me had interfered with her the most. My relationship with Joyce touched many more areas than it did with any of the others. The way I acted with her really had an effect on how she would perform in so many different situations. I had propped her up, both emotionally, and with her self confidence. It was my unreserved support before that had given her the strength to be the woman she had made herself into. She needed my support, my admiration and my love. I needed my Joyce, the woman who had made me much more than I would have been without her. I was her confidence, she was my inspiration. I had to try to make her understand that what hurt one of us, hurt both of us, and what hurt both of us, made all our lives less enjoyable, productive, and rewarding. To be what we both wanted and needed to be required that we each give the other what was needed. We fed off of each others energy. When I finally fell asleep on early Thursday morning, I was hoping fervently that I truly had reached an accord with Bad Kenny. It was difficult enough trying to cope with and deal with having two split identity states. Add Joyce into the mix, and the task became infinitely more difficult. We both needed her though, in order to have any chance at returning to the life we both were seeking. It wasn't going to be up to me. It had to be a gift freely ceded, so that Joyce could get what I now understood she needed. I needed to be Old Kenny, Good Kenny, for her. I hoped Bad Kenny understood that necessity. ------- Chapter 65 I was surprised that Cindy had awakened before me. She only woke me after she was already dressed and ready to leave for her place to put on a clean change of clothes. I walked her out, mostly so I could move my car enough to let her get down my driveway. We kissed and hugged, but she didn't give me any answer when I asked her if she would be coming to Ridgeline with Eddie, Dale, and me. I watched her drive away before returning to my bedroom to shower and dress for work. I believed our lovemaking had been a great success. I was puzzled that she hadn't seemed more enthusiastic with me in the morning. I was in my office, trading up a storm, at noon, when I received a call from Joyce on my private phone line. While not a first, Joyce seldom phoned on my private line. We spoke about business matters all the time, but the private phone was for private calls. "I heard you and Cindy decided to make up last night. What happened to your decision to wait until after you and I got back together?" She sounded upset, angry, and worried, all at the same time. I had been right before when I thought I should wait on reconciling with Cindy. "Eddie said I should fuck her. Said it was what she needed. Eddie thinks I should do that regularly, with all my wives. She thinks it would make a lot of my problems disappear. I thought you said it didn't matter to you, about Cindy?" "It doesn't matter, except that I just wish you'd decide what you're going to do for once, and then stick with that decision. You keep changing your plans without telling anyone you've done that. I think it worked well this time though. Cindy called to talk to me, asking if it would be all right if she were to come home with you this weekend too." "To Mama's you mean? I wasn't planning on coming over to our house." "No, Kenny, you're staying here with us. I already told both sets of twins you would be here this weekend. You can't disappoint them like that. It would make things a lot easier for me if you stayed here with us." "Why would it be easier? I thought me staying away made it easier?" I was becoming concerned about the agitation I heard in Joyce's voice. I wasn't sure whether she was still upset over what Cindy and I did, or because I planned on coming back to Ridgeline and staying at Mama's house. "Kenny, don't make me spell it out for you. You win, okay? If you don't come here, Emily and Brenda are both planning to take the kids and move down to Birmingham too. Mama has been talking to them. I'm not sure what you told her, but whatever it was, she seems convinced that you should be with all the children now. If you come home again, I can wait for a week or two, and then move back over to Mama's with the children. We'll still be living close enough so you can spend all the time you want to with the kids." "Did you think this was some sort of contest we were having? I never wanted that. All I wanted was to get back to how it was before, with all of us together. You're the one who keeps insisting that I need to make so many changes before we can try to do that." "I don't know what to think anymore, Kenny. Brenda has been telling me that she thinks I'm the one causing all the problems, not you. Ever since I told them about you being back with Eddie and Dale, they've been yelling at me for making you leave in the first place. Only Shirley still thinks I did the right thing." "If you want me to, I'll speak with them, tell them I think you did the right thing too. I needed to make some changes, and I needed to be desperate enough to be motivated to make them." Joyce didn't say anything, but I could hear her weeping softly. It was faint, and I thought she might have her hand covering the mouthpiece, to prevent me from hearing her crying. I kept quiet as well, waiting for her to regain her composure. "Come stay with us, Kenny. We'll have a family meeting and talk about what we have to do. I don't have the energy left to try to keep things together here. I tried to do what I thought was needed, but they all think I was being selfish. I want this to be over, but I can't live with you the way you are now." I found myself getting angry. We always seemed to get back to our original starting positions. I felt like I'd changed as much as I could hope to, and Joyce felt like whatever changes I'd managed weren't enough. It was discouraging for me, but, from what she was telling me, it was quite a bit harder on her. I was angry because she wouldn't give me a real chance to show her it could work out if we both tried to make it work. It was more frustration with her than anger, but I'd had to work hard to make that distinction. My emotional range had widened after the identity merger, and it was taking me some time to adjust to controlling everything again. I told her that I'd come to Mama's house like I'd planned on, but that I'd come over early on Saturday so all of us adults could have a meeting and talk about possible directions we could all go in for our future. After I hung the phone up, I reflected on the several sudden turns of events which seemed to be taking place. I felt bad for Joyce. Her problems with me were affecting all the other relationships she loved and cherished. I'd been in her place before, and I knew how much it hurt to be scorned, to have all your decisions inspected, questioned, and then repudiated by the people you loved the most. Whenever two people were in conflict, shared friends and family were inevitably forced to take sides. Joyce was beginning to take a lot of heat too. People were agitating in hopes of breaking the impasse between Joyce and me. One thing I hadn't liked was Joyce saying I had won. She implied that my winning had to mean her losing. Obviously, if she really felt this way, she no longer believed the two of us were both on the same side. It had been heading in that direction ever since I had first awakened in the clinic. By then, Joyce had been trying to keep things together by herself for more than two years. In my mind it was an absolute given that Joyce and I had to be on the same side. If we weren't, none of the rest of what was occurring even mattered that much to me. I'd made a big mistake earlier in how I'd treated Joyce when I first was released from the clinic. I'd also been mistaken in believing she would be as capable, confident and competent without me being there to assist her. I knew I wasn't as capable, confident or competent without her. It stood to reason that the same would be true with her. She must have hoped and believed I'd be the solution to all the problems that had built up, but, instead, I'd come out and immediately made myself an even bigger problem for her. I should have thought about what things had been like for her. Instead, all I worried about was how everything had affected me. I knew the best way to accomplish my real goal, getting Joyce back, would be to manage to throw my full support and influence behind all of Joyce's decisions, both past and present, at this family meeting she wanted to set up. It didn't matter who had been right, or who had been wrong. Divided, we were each far less than we had been when we were united. Both of us had lost sight of that simple truth, and had ended up paying a high price for doing so. It was interesting that Joyce would admit there was a mini mutiny going on at home, and also identify the two mutineers to me. I thought about why she might have done so before it occurred to me that this was one way for her to test my claim about being Good Kenny whenever I was alone with her. She had told me she was worried that I might do something sneaky if she ever decided to trust me again. I wouldn't put it past her to have planned this as a test of my sincerity. At three thirty, after I'd wrapped up another successful day of trading, I decided to call Mama again. I wanted to check in with her about our arrival time the next day, but I mostly wanted to discuss what Joyce had said to me, and to ask her opinion about how I should handle Joyce's request. We spent quite some time discussing Joyce's statements. Mama confirmed to me that she had spoken with Brenda, Shirley, and Emily about their specific reasons for being afraid of me. "I was able to see that there was no solid foundation for their fears. With Emily and Brenda, it was mostly their fear of being punished for their past behavior. They also worry about being shamed by you when they have to be confronted for their lapse. I truly believe this is all that was keeping them from being more willing to finally resolve your differences. Shirley does have legitimate fears and concerns. She isn't troubled for the safety of the children, but for she is very troubled by the idea of them having you serving as one of their role models. Those worries seem to center mostly around Derek. She and I have spoken of the pro's and con's of Derek's admiration and his love for you. I believe Shirley is beginning to understand that Derek needs you back in his life more than she should worry about any possible harm that might come from you being around him. You need to understand that Shirley will be watching both you and Derek for any signs that your interaction is harmful to him in any way. You have to be sensitive to her fears, and not give her reason to continue worrying." I was being warned and guided, all at the same time. Mama was a consummate meddler, but in situations like the one I had found myself in, her meddling was working to my advantage. I'd been on the other end of her meddling, mostly when it concerned Joyce and Brenda, but now I was benefiting from it, so I accepted it without chastising her for interfering in my affairs. "Should I go back to my old room, over at my house while I'm here, or stay in my old room at your house? Joyce wanted me to come back home for my visit." "Who do you need to be visiting, Kenny? Your father or me? Hardly. Right now, your primary duty is to your family. You should be with them. If you have a successful visit with them, many of your problems could be resolved, perhaps permanently. We want to see you, of course. Come for dinner on Saturday, all of you. It has been too long since this house has been filled. I've missed having all the activity and the laughter in our home. Come for lunch and stay for dinner. Make this home a safe haven, a place to relax and enjoy your family. I'm sure there will be some tension at your house. Keep in mind what it is you're trying to accomplish, Kenny. You can undo a lot of good by speaking words that can't be retracted. Take the time to think before you react and lash out in anger." "I'm better at controlling myself now. I saw how much getting angry was hurting me with everyone. I'm still learning new things about myself and what I need to do to fit in better now. It was so much easier, before when it all seemed to come naturally for me. Now, I have to watch everything, all the time. I can never relax." "Speaking of relaxing, I heard from Joyce, who heard it from Cindy, that the shaking in your hand has stopped. Is that true?" I hadn't thought about it. I know it had gotten worse in the clinic, but I hadn't given it much thought ever since I'd moved back down to Birmingham. I tried to remember the last time I'd had the tremors. I remembered an incident a month before, while I was reaching out to open my car door. It had only lasted for a few seconds before going away on its own. Several times I'd felt a tingling sensation in my hand and arm since, but no tremors had occurred. "I don't think it quit, Mama, but it isn't as frequent or as severe as it used to be. I don't reach out for things as much as before, and I put my arm down anytime I think they might be going to start up." "How do you know when they're going to start?" "I don't know, I just do. It always happens when my arm is extended out away from my body. I've learned how to adjust my movement so it doesn't happen as often." "That's good, dear. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned from that? These issues you and Joyce both seem to have? Perhaps you both need to try to adjust and make the best of things. You two are both so good for each other, but you need to constantly be aware of what it takes to make it so. There will always be trials and minor dissatisfactions. You need to give and take, Kenny. It seems to me that you are the one who needs to give more this time. Don't make Joyce feel like she lost anything. You can afford to treat her generously, because it seems like now you will be getting back everything you'd once feared you'd lost." There is always a price to pay when transacting anything with Mama. She was handing me the bill now for this transaction, and we both knew I had little choice other than to pay it. Mama was telling me to let Joyce appear to win. I didn't know how I could do that now. If Emily and Brenda were both threatening to move down to Birmingham, with our children, to be with me, how could I possibly make it look like Joyce had won? It was beyond me. "I want to treat her generously, Mama, but she's waited too long. From what she told me, Brenda and Emily were going to leave her anyway. That just leaves her and Shirley, and the kids. Can I just cave in and tell her I'll give in and let her be in control of things now, after I didn't give in to her even when she had all my wives and all my kids?" "Darling, you aren't approaching this correctly. This isn't about control. This is about compatibility. You have to convince Joyce that the two of you can be compatible now, even though you've changed some. In the first place, you haven't invited those girls to come live with you. If they do offer to move down to be with you, who says you must accept their offer? Perhaps you can turn them down and then allow Joyce to talk you into coming back home again?" It was dishonest and devious. I wondered if Mama had come up with this idea on her own, or if Joyce had assisted her in coming up with it. I wasn't sure I wanted to take the chance on all this backfiring on me. It was that sneaky part that scared me. I thought it was possible that Joyce might have a plan that involved using me this way to keep Emily and Brenda staying with her. This showed me again how badly things had deteriorated between the two of us. Any reconciliation had to begin with an act of trust, and one of us had to be the one to go first. I also had the advantage of already knowing that Joyce was the centerpiece to my family anyway. While I wanted Emily and Brenda back, wanted it desperately, without Joyce too, it wouldn't be enough. I'd learned that lesson from getting Eddie, Dale, and Cindy back. I could be the first to trust. It was a risk that was definitely worth taking. If I was wrong, and she did end up double crossing me, I could always keep on doing what I'd been doing before, treating Eddie, Dale, and Cindy well, and working on the others as individual re-acquistions. I could develop a plan to get Brenda, Emily and Shirley back later. Joyce was definitely the key acquisition for me. I knew if I had her, all the rest would follow. "You think I should go ahead and let them have this family meeting, then tell Emily and Brenda, if them moving to Birmingham comes up, that I'm not ready to forgive either of them yet?" "We think you should insist on it being all of them or none of them. Include Joyce and Shirley, instead of trying to pick them off one at a time. If you do that, the ones who already want to be back with you will be working on the others to get them to agree. You'll have new allies." "We think that?" I couldn't help thinking the worst, that Mama and Joyce were still plotting against me. Mama paused for a few seconds. "Gerta and I think that, Kenny. Don't be paranoid. I'm not plotting with Joyce. If anything, I'm plotting with you this time against her. Its for a good cause though, because someone needs to help you two get back together. Gerta and I both believe this separation has dragged on long enough. You and Joyce must be made to solve these differences. Gerta and I both think you need to be alone together, intimately alone, in order to bridge these differences. A woman looks at things much differently after she has her other pressures reduced. Joyce has been under a great deal of strain. She needs to be more relaxed. She will see benefits to her accepting some changes in you." "You mean I should perform my marital duties with her?" I enjoyed teasing Mama like that. She didn't want to get into any actual details, so I pretended not to understand what she meant. "Gerta and I both expect far more from you than just performing some duty, Kenny. For what Joyce is going to need to accept from you in the way of changed behavior, you'll have to give her something to make her acceptance seem worthwhile. You'll need to perform at your very best in that area. Give her a good reason to lower her other requirements and expectations, to accept how you now present yourself. Our father, Kenny, he was not a nice man, and no one ever claimed he was. He knew about people though, he knew how to make them like him, although he didn't always care whether they liked him or not. When he did need people to like him, he found a way to meet that challenge. This is your biggest challenge, dear, perhaps the most important one you'll ever face. You have to meet it well enough that Joyce will be willing to drop all her other objections. By now, we all realize these are objections involving behavior criteria that you could never hope to meet. She has to have a good reason for dropping those objections. Give her that reason." I had my marching orders. Not surprisingly, I was looking forward to answering Mama's challenge. One thing I did know, and this was something I was confident I hadn't lost, was how to get Joyce's motor going. I knew all her sexual appetites, and I knew every square inch of her body. If getting her sexually satisfied was all it took to get her to accept me the way I now was, then Mama could consider it as good as done. I told her as much. She told me that she would have Hans at the airport at twelve o'clock the next day, reminding me that she expected all of us at her house from noon on Saturday, until about seven or eight that evening. I knew she wanted to be in a position to observe, first hand, how her scheming and plotting was unfolding. I was grateful for her help, and didn't begrudge her the ringside seat. I wondered if my father was privy to any of what was beginning to unfold? ------- The flight back home was lively. The girls were all excited to be going home to see everyone, and I was feeling as keyed up and nervous as on the morning of the day I first got married. There were literally a thousand things that might go wrong and spoil all of this for us. For it to work, everything needed to go just right. I wasn't kidding myself that I was in charge of any of it, other than for bringing myself and the girls back to Ridgeline. I didn't really believe that Mama would leave anything to chance, so I was guessing that Joyce too had been given her instructions. It wouldn't have surprised me too much to find out that Mama had talks with each of her grandchildren too, telling them how they were supposed to act, and what they needed to say while I was in town. I even found myself hoping this was the case, and that everyone already knew the part they were supposed to play, and had agreed to play it just like I had. Things went perfectly at first. The flight went well, and Hans was waiting for us at the maintenance hangar with his new limousine. I hadn't seen this one before, and Hans and I talked about it as he showed me around all the custom work Mama had ordered from the factory that had stretched and converted the new Lincoln. It was a beautiful car, but I sensed Hans missed the old one. I asked him about the old limousine, but he smiled and told me Mama had given the car to him to keep. He had it over at a German friend's shop, and was having it completely rebuilt and restored. "Why are you doing that, Hans? You can't drive two limo's." "I don't need to drive two. Phil can drive one, you know. It was time for you to have your own big family car. Soon, the children will be old enough to need someone to take them places. They should travel in style. This will be a gift from me and Gerta. I will be pleased when the time comes that we have need for both cars at once. In fact, your mother and Gerta are thinking we'll need to get a third car, for when Derek and the older twins begin high school in a few years." "You all have everything planned out for us, don't you? I hope nothing comes up to throw a monkey wrench into all these grandiose plans," "Ha! You don't even know the half of it. So many plans your mother has for these children. Caravan trips to Springfield, and flights to New York and Chicago. Already she has your father looking at larger company planes, ones that are big enough for the whole family to fly in. I heard her tell Gerta that she wanted to take a whole summer, for a trip to Europe, and a three week cruise in Hawaii, on a chartered yacht. For these "kinder", she is pulling out all the stops." The trip to Ridgeline was good, giving me half an hour to think about what I wanted to accomplish with my visit. When we pulled up into the driveway, the front door opened and all my children came running out on the entryway leading up to the house from the paved driveway. It was good to see all of them, but worrying for me to note how quickly they were changing in the short time since I'd last seen them. They were all there together though. I knew that because I'd counted them in my head as I looked them all over closely. There were few, if any, things I found more comforting than the sight of all my children standing together, smiling at me. They were all smiling, at me, and smiling at seeing Eddie, Dale, and Cindy too. Eddie and Dale were the first two out of the car, exiting even before Hans had put it into park. Cindy wasn't too far behind them. I noticed the front door of the house was still partially opened, with Joyce's head peering out at all of us, and, far above her head was Shirley's as well. They looked like a totem pole, staring out at us like that. I didn't see Emily or Brenda. I didn't take much notice of that, or read anything special into their absence. I could understand why they might not want to be members of the initial greeting party. I still had my issues with both of them. The last time I'd spoken to Brenda had been when she told me I needed to whip her ass black and blue too. I tried not to dwell on those kinds of thoughts. This was supposed to be a homecoming, not a day of vengeance. All of us squeezed forward into the house. Phil, Claire and Thelma came out to help us with our luggage. I shook hands with all of them and told them how glad I was to see them again. As I got nearer to the front door, Joyce and Shirley retreated inside the house. They had both smiled at me, but neither one offered any verbal greeting. It was becoming a little different than what I'd been picturing it to be. When I finally made my way inside the house, Joyce and Shirley weren't anywhere to be seen. They had moved off somewhere and I couldn't see where. I shrugged in some confusion, having expected they were just waiting their turn to greet me too. After waiting to no avail, I decided to take my suitcase upstairs and put it in my bedroom. I wanted to get an opportunity to freshen up a little first, and then come back downstairs to spend some time with all the children. I was a little concerned about Shirley and Joyce disappearing like they had My plan lasted only as long as it took me to climb the stairs and open my bedroom door. Inside, Emily and Brenda were waiting for me. They were both sitting on my bed, fully clothed, and trying not to look scared. Brenda tried smiling, but she couldn't quite bring it off. She and Emily were both still beautiful. Seeing them together like that made me have a sharp intake of breath. I had so many stored up memories of the three of us together. My first reaction to them being there was that Joyce had planned it to be like that. Perhaps she meant it as another test. Unfortunately, there were other memories stored up, ones not as pleasant as most of the others. The most recent memories of them weren't very pleasant for me to think about, but those were the ones that were quickly taking over my thoughts. Some of what I was thinking about must have been showing on my face, because both girls suddenly paled at the look I was giving them. Brenda started crying, and then Emily began screaming at me. I heard what she was yelling, but I couldn't understand why she would pick this particular time to attack me. She must have been panicked by the look she saw. That was the only logical explanation for her behavior. She was really giving it to me good, telling me I had no right to intimidate either her or Brenda. I think she thought she was going to be the one protecting Brenda. She started listing all the wrongs I'd committed against them, saying I had no right to punish anyone. "I'm not here to punish anyone, Emily. I came for a visit, and Joyce said I should stay here, rather than at Mama's. I just wanted to see my family again. If me being here makes you two so uncomfortable, maybe it would be better if you went somewhere else for the weekend. I'll be gone again on Monday." When I said I wasn't going to punish anyone, Brenda immediately turned off the crying. Emily had quit screaming at me while she listened to me replying to her accusations. When I shut up, she began talking again. This time it was in a more normal tone of voice. "This is our home too, you know? We don't have to leave." "I didn't say you had to, only that you could leave if it made you more comfortable to do so. I hope you'll let the children stay here, even if you two do decide to leave." "We're not leaving. If anyone should leave, its you." Same old Emily. When she wanted to fight, she'd keep after you until she finally found something you'd be willing to fight about. I wasn't going to fall for it this time. I put my bag down by the door and turned around to leave. "Take your bag if you're leaving." "Get out of my bedroom, now, both of you. I didn't come here to fight with you two. I don't know what you were expecting from me, but I'm pretty sure you aren't going to get whatever it was." "I want you to beat me, Kenny. I want to just get it over with." Brenda started crying again as soon as she spoke those words. "I'm not going to beat you, Brenda. It wouldn't change anything, and it wouldn't make you want to be faithful to anyone." "I can be faithful, Kenny. I made a mistake, that's all. I was weak for a short time, but I was perfectly faithful for almost all the time you were sick. I got lonesome, and I messed up. I'm sorry." "I'm sorry too, Brenda. I'd have felt better if you'd told me before you let me believe that you had stayed faithful the whole time while I was sick." "I never told you that I'd been faithful. You didn't ask me. It was just one guy, and it lasted for about a week. I didn't love him." "You know what? I don't really care. It isn't that important to me now. I have so many other things that are more important. I'm very disappointed, but I can't say I'm that surprised by what happened either. I wasn't exactly expecting it from you, but I guess we all knew you were capable of doing that." Brenda, still crying, got up and ran from my bedroom. I expected Emily to follow right behind her, but she didn't. She sat there on the bed, trying to stare me down. She was obviously going to try to turn this whole thing around, to blame me for causing both Brenda and her to cheat on me. "I guess our only mistake was in not bringing the guys back here with us, then telling everyone they were our new husbands. You and Joyce did that with Eddie, Dale, and Cindy. All we did was sleep with them for awhile. I don't know why you have to make such a big deal about it. Did we make a big deal out of it when you and Joyce did the same thing?" "You know, Em, its you who has been beating yourself up over this, not me. I forgive you. I'm sorry it happened, and I'm sure both of us wish it hadn't happened, but it did. I'm prepared to just try to put it out of my mind." "You aren't going to punish me? Really?" "No. Just like I told Brenda, it wouldn't change what happened. Punishing you won't make me feel any better." "You told Brenda you had to beat me because I wouldn't think you loved me if you didn't do it." "I told her that, but I've changed my mind. You don't stop loving someone because they disappoint you. I never stopped loving you." "Does that mean its going to be okay now, for you, me, and Brenda?" "No, it doesn't mean that. You left, and then you told me you didn't want to be my wife anymore. Both of you decided you could do whatever you wanted to do, and you hurt Joyce in the process of acting like that. You made her feel like a failure. I ended up blaming her for not doing a better job keeping all of you together, as a family. I need to find a way to make things up to Joyce before things get back to being okay again. I don't even know what I can do to make it up to her. Right now, she really doesn't want to have much to do with me." "That isn't true. She really does. Maybe some of what you say is true, about all of us making things harder for Joyce. That wasn't why we did it though. When you were gone, nothing was the same. There wasn't anything good going on here. In California, it was like I could try to get things started all over again. It turned out that it wasn't the same though, so I came back to be with Brenda when she asked me to. I was mad at you after, because I knew it wasn't ever going to be like it had been when we were all together. When I said I didn't want to be your wife anymore, I didn't really mean it. I was worried about what you must think of me, and what you'd do if I gave you a chance to do anything." "I won't be able to decide about what I think of you until after I find out how much damage was done to my relationship with Joyce, and with all my children. We've all contributed to that damage, not just you. All of us need to try to work together to help fix what we can. Joyce has been the one most affected by what has been going on. She gets slammed from both sides. It isn't easy thinking you've let down a lot of people you love and feel responsible for. She lost just as much as all the rest of us did, and then felt like she had somehow caused a lot of the problems that later developed." "Can I be your wife again, Kenny? Please?" "I don't know. I'm not going to be anyone's husband again if I can't be Joyce's. Right now, it looks like there are serious problems with me being her husband again." "What are we supposed to do? Brenda and I?" "I don't know. Right now, it isn't as important to me as getting things worked out with Joyce. If I do get things worked out with her, I'll probably end up seeing what she thinks would be best. To be real honest with you, although I forgive you for what happened, I'd feel better if it was just Joyce and me for awhile. You and Brenda and the children are always welcome to live here, but I'm not sure I want to go back to how things were before. Maybe we've outgrown the kind of lifestyle we shared before. I don't really feel the connection I used to feel before I got sick. I need to make new connections, and maybe this is a good time for all of us to decide how we want to make these connections, and who with." "You don't really mean that, Kenny. We have the same connections as before." "No, I do mean it. I'm sorry it took all of us having to go through so much for me to find out some basic truths. You have Brenda, and I want to have Joyce. We'll stay connected, through Tony and Sissy, but I think some of those other connections are gone for good." "What about with Eddie and Dale? Cindy too?" "That is a different connection, but even there, it needs to be looked at again if Joyce and I manage to work our things out." I could see that my words were having their desired effect. I recognized the pain I saw in Emily's eyes. It was the same pain I'd felt when she told me she didn't want to be my wife anymore. I wasn't lying to her about severing those connections either. I would leave those decisions up to Joyce, if she and I were able to resolve our own differences. If we weren't able to do that, I'd keep all my own options open. I knew this wasn't what I'd planned before I'd walked back into my house, but it was the new plan, and one that seemed to make the most sense to me at that point. Emily finally stood up and was searching for something more to say to me. She seemed to sense that there wasn't anything she could say or wanted to say right then. Like me, she hadn't envisioned this particular scenario. She wanted to think about what I'd just thrown at her. I watched as she turned first for the door, and then changed her mind and came over to give me a hug. "Thank you for forgiving me, Kenny, and for not giving us a beating. I'm not sure I wouldn't have rather had the beating than what you did give me though." She stood on her toes and kissed me on my cheek, before turning back around and walking towards my bedroom door. "Tell Brenda what I said, Em, because that goes for her too." I saw her back flinch, like I'd hit her with something, then she nodded and resumed walking away again. I was alone for about ten more minutes before Joyce burst through my door, crying herself. "What do you think you're doing, Kenny? Are you deliberately trying to tear this whole family apart? If you are, then you're succeeding. Emily is in her room packing, and Brenda is crying her eyes out on Emily's bed. What did you do to them? Please tell me you didn't really beat them?" "I didn't beat them. I didn't touch them. We talked and I told them things were different now, and I didn't care that much about what had happened. I told them I was mostly interested in getting things fixed between the two of us. I told Emily that it might be better if we didn't try to rebuild the connection we've lost. I told her to tell Brenda that too." "Why would you do that? I told you that you'd already won. They were going to do whatever you said they had to do. They wanted to get back with you." "I can't win, Joyce. I understand that now. You have to win. If you don't, there's no way we can ever hope to undo all the damage that was done." "You aren't making any sense, Kenny. You've already won. They all know you've won. This isn't helping anything. Go tell them you didn't mean what you said." "I did mean it. All the connections have been broken. All of them. What I didn't tell Emily, but what I already knew, was that all those connections I had with them were coming through you. Until we reconnect, you and me, I have no way to be connected with anyone else." Joyce looked at me like I was crazy, and maybe she really thought I was, before telling me in her hissing angry voice that she wanted me to leave her house. "Get out of my house, Kenny! You aren't back for five minutes, and already you've gotten all of us upset." "Don't you want me to talk to Shirley too? I can have her crying in less than five minutes if I drop all the preliminary pleasantries. I'll leave, Joyce, but Cindy, Eddie, and Dale have to stay here tonight. If you have a meeting, I want someone here that is representing me too." "Just go. I don't know why you think this is funny, because it isn't. These are exactly the kinds of things you do now that our Kenny wouldn't have ever done." "I'll be over at Mama's. I'm taking your car too. Give me a call over there if you have any more questions, or if you come to any big decisions. My offer for you to come over and spend the night with me in my bedroom there still stands." I could see, from the way she just stared at me that I'd probably be sleeping alone that night. I wondered how long it would take for Mama to see that what I'd done was infinitely better than her plan. This way was so much more real. That was probably because all of us believed what I'd told them. I believed it myself. Joyce was the key for all of this with me. I didn't want the rest of it if it ended up I couldn't have her as well. Unlike Mama, I knew we couldn't fool Joyce by pretending to let her win. Joyce was the only one who really needed to be fooled. I was the only one who could honestly create the circumstances where she would have a real opportunity to step in and salvage the whole situation. I hoped she would step in and save everything for all of us, but if she didn't, I still had another plan. I was over at Mama's, sitting in the kitchen with both Mama and Gerta, trying to explain my reasoning to them. Neither of them were buying one word of what I had been saying. In fact, Mama had twice lost her patience with me and had started yelling at me, even calling me names in the process. I remember dunderhead and moron being two of the names she had called me. She was interrupted by the ringing phone. Gerta got up and answered it, then pointed to me and whispered to us that it was Joyce. "Hello." "Okay, I got everyone calmed down again. We all decided that we needed a meeting with you, here, so you can explain to everyone what you meant when you said those things." "That isn't going to happen, Joyce. I'll meet with you, privately, in my bedroom here. We can discuss anything you want to talk about. If the others have questions they want you to ask me, have them write them out on a sheet of paper. I'll try my best to answer all of them." "I'm not coming over there. We're all here. The kids are here. You can just drive over for a couple of hours." "I'm not the one who asked for this meeting, Joyce. You are. I'll meet with you, alone, up in my bedroom. Tonight. I'm not going back over there so all of you can yell at me again and try to make me feel guilty. Tell Cindy, Dale, and Eddie that I've decided to fly back on Sunday morning instead of on Monday. When I leave here this time, Joyce, I'm all through with trying to get this thing settled. All of you seem to think I have to do whatever you tell me to. I don't see it that way myself. I'm very interested in getting back with you, but, as for the rest of them, it isn't that high a priority for me." "Don't you say that! What happened to your promise?" "What promise?" "To be our Kenny again." "That was only when you and I were alone, Joyce. Mama and Gerta are here with me now. Are you alone?" I didn't wait for her to answer me. "I didn't think so. You come over tonight and we'll talk. When we're talking alone, I'll keep my promise." "Are you going to yell at me? Are you going to call me names again?" "I won't. Come over and we'll talk. We can talk about whatever you want to talk about. I have nothing to hide from you. If you come over, you'll be able to tell right away that I was telling you the truth about being the other Kenny when we're alone." "This is some kind of trick. You didn't act anything like our Kenny today." "I was being honest with both girls. Don't you think your Kenny would have been honest too?" "He wouldn't have talked to them like you did. He wouldn't make them cry, and then laugh about it." "I'll be awake until about ten thirty, and then I'm going to go to sleep. Tell Eddie and the other two that I'll be ready to leave here at about eight on Sunday morning. You need to call Gerta and Mama in the morning if you decide to cancel out on lunch and dinner with everyone. If you do decide to come, there's no arguing or discussing any of our problems in this house. Those are my rules, Joyce. I won't have my parents upset anymore just because we can't seem to talk together without always fighting and yelling." I heard Shirley and Brenda yelling in the background. Brenda was telling Joyce not to make anything worse, and Shirley was yelling at Brenda to be quiet. "Kenny, you can't just leave things like they are now. Please come over here and tell them all what you meant. I can't come over there tonight. It wouldn't be fair for me to do that after what you already did to them when you were here." "I understand. I'm sorry you feel that way. Don't forget to call Mama and Gerta about tomorrow, and make sure Eddie, Dale and Cindy know what time we're going to be leaving on Sunday." I said goodbye, before she could reply to what I'd just said to her, softly lowering the button on the wall phone. Mama had told me I couldn't just run over Joyce, but I just had. She'd heard me doing it. "That wasn't very productive, Kenny. You aren't getting any closer to where you said you wanted to be." Mama seemed resigned to the fact that all her plans had been destroyed. She didn't have any faith in my ability to make things work out. She was only seeing what she feared. This was her weakness. I still felt like I was in control and knew what I was doing. "She'll come over here tonight, Mama, and we'll end up making love together all night. Tomorrow we'll go back over there together, and we'll hold a family meeting. Joyce will tell all of them that I've changed enough to satisfy her. After we're finished with our meeting, we'll all be over here for lunch. All I had to worry about was getting her over here, and inside my bedroom. Once she's here, assuming you and Gerta are right about her needing to relax, all the rest of it will go just about like you planned it." "We didn't plan for any of this to happen. This isn't how we thought it would go." Mama looked at Gerta and shook her head from side to side. I could tell that both of them were already in some sort of denial about what had happened. They both were trying to think of a way to disassociate themselves from me, with Joyce, and with all the other wives. I, on the other hand, was confident. I knew Joyce. She would finally decide that she needed to come see me. She'd be too curious. She'd need to try to understand why I had acted as I had. Mama got up and left the kitchen, probably hoping I'd confide my true plans to Gerta in her absence. Instead, I had Gerta make me three meat loaf sandwiches, which I immediately took upstairs, along with a quart container of milk. I ate my late lunch and waited on my bed for the phone call I was sure was coming. I had fallen asleep while I was waiting for my phone call, but was awakened by an insistent pounding on my bolted bedroom door. "Kenny, please let me in." It was Joyce. I looked at my watch, seeing that it was after eight in the evening. I'd fallen asleep, and had been asleep for about four hours. I was glad I'd managed so much rest for myself. I had a definite feeling that Joyce would keep me up for most of the night. "What do you want?" I wanted to throw her off balance. I was sure she had come over with the intention of getting me to do what she wanted me to do for her, which was come to that family meeting. She still hoped I'd come over there and take the pressure off of her shoulders. "What do you mean? You asked me to come over so we could talk." Good, she sounded agitated and uncertain. I knew how uncomfortable that combination of feelings could be. "Did you come alone?" Let her think I was being paranoid. I wanted her to remain unsettled at first. Later, she'd be relieved when I started acting normal again. "Kenny, open that door. I'm alone and I want to talk to you." Joyce was recovering. I could tell from the firmness in her voice. Mama was right about me not being able to just run over her. I could do it a little, but she was quick to adjust to anything I threw at her. I got up from my bed and walked over to the bedroom door, unbolting the lock and throwing it open. Joyce looked at my naked body and started giggling. I was in full erection, something I'd planned on being when I had invited her over to discuss our problems. I wasn't planning on being subtle about my intentions with her. From her giggles, and the way she didn't even try to pretend not to stare at my dick, Joyce wasn't too unsettled by the possibility that I was going to fuck her. "Come on in, Joyce, I'm happy to see you." "I can tell." She laughed as she said that, walking casually into my bedroom. I closed and threw the deadbolt on the door after her. She had to have heard it, but she didn't turn around or make any comment about it. "Did you bring me a list of questions?" "No. I wanted to see whether you were my old Kenny or not. If you aren't him, I'm not going to be here very long." I circled around behind her, jumping up on my bed. I took up a position just like the one I'd been in the first time she and I had ever made love. I started telling her all my thoughts about what needed to happen for us to get things back to where we both needed them to be. She didn't try to interrupt me. She listened. "I understand I made a big mistake by changing things so much in the beginning, when I first got out of the clinic. You have to understand that all of this was new to me, new to the other part of me that had kind of overwhelmed me and taken over. It was too much to assimilate all at once. I shouldn't have done that thing with you in the shower. We weren't ready yet for that." "No, I liked it. It was different, but I liked it. It was when you made that monkey comment to me. Until then, I was really enjoying what we were doing. I wanted things to be okay again." I could see that Joyce was trying to get into the spirit of what I was telling her we needed to do. She was trying to remember the differences in me that first day and what she saw now. I knew Joyce liked it rough, with me throwing her all around, but she also liked it slow and loving, with plenty of foreplay and gentle teasing. She liked talking about it too. I was watching her closely, seeing what effect my words were having on her. I watched as that very familiar glaze started to appear in her eyes. "All of that was me, Joyce. Different parts of me, but still me. Too much of one part without any of the other part isn't good. After leaving the clinic, I had to make so many adjustments, had to learn how to control things I hadn't been that familiar with, like my temper, and a lack of feeling for people. I thought if I could control them, it would make it easier for you to accept me like I was. I was mistaken. I know what you need now, what you found missing in the new Kenny. I can give you that. It doesn't have anything to do with one side of my personality or the other." "What is it?" Joyce was curious. Skeptical, sure, but curious too. I knew I had been right when she asked me her question. Joyce didn't know what it was that she had before but didn't have now. I knew she'd gotten it from me before we ever made love. She thrived on it and it drove her to greater achievement. "Do you ever wonder why I fell in love with you? Why I picked you over the others?" That was an unfair and a loaded question. She'd asked me why a hundred times at least, each time giving me more reasons why I shouldn't have chosen her, but needing me to affirm that I had chosen her, and that it was a deliberate, calculated, and rational choice. She really needed me to have a reason she could believe. "Tell me why." "We were alike, you and I. We had both been powerless, and were barely surviving until something came along and changed our whole lives for us. For me, it was Uncle Bunny coming to my orphanage and taking me away with him. He showed me a whole different side of life, a different way of living. Before he came and took me away from that orphanage, I had nothing more than the hope that I could somehow manage to grow up and survive. I didn't really know how much more there was that I could aspire to." "I wasn't like that. I had a family. We weren't that poor." Joyce was resisting the parallel that I was trying to outline for her. She was getting lost in the absolute differences, rather than seeing the similarities. "Yes, you were like that. It was different, but you needed to be rescued as much as I did. Your own body had quit on you, just stopped growing and developing. The rape had done to you what my breakdown later did to me. You were intelligent, but you had no direction or purpose in your life. I gave you my direction and my purpose. I pointed out the way for you, and then you did all the rest. You amazed all of us, and in the process, you amazed yourself the most. We worked so well together, each able to help the other. We shared so many goals and helped each other to realize so many achievements. We both ended up wanting the same things. I can still do that for you and with you, Joyce. I can prop you up again, and we can go back to protecting and supporting each other. I can help to make things easy for you again. The differences you see in my personality don't have anything to do with that. I can love you and respect you, and things can be good for us like they were before I got sick. All you have to do to make this happen is to stop worrying about how I'm different from the old Kenny. Start thinking about what we can accomplish by working closely together again." "I can't just stop worrying and accept these changes I see, Kenny. I have to protect the children first. You lied to me about being my Kenny whenever we're alone too. You aren't the old Kenny." "I didn't lie. I am the old Kenny. If I did lie, it was in telling you that you could ever be alone with the old Kenny. I can't separate myself. What I can do, and what I will do is let as much of the old Kenny come through when we're alone as I can. I want you to think about how Brenda and Emily both look, Joyce. Both of them are beautiful, right?" She nodded that I was right. "You know you wouldn't stop loving either of them if something happened to take away their looks, right?" She nodded that I was right. "I chose you over both of them, not because of your looks, but because I could see how good a partner you'd be for me. Even when you rejected me, because my personality had changed, I still loved you and wanted to keep being your partner. I kept loving you even when you rejected me. The same thing is happening right now, because I've lost my old personality, which you liked before, just like we both like Brenda and Emily's looks. When you looked at the differences in my personality you just rejected me. I didn't want to change, I didn't have any choice. I can change how I treat you though. There, I do have a choice. If you try to accept the other changes in me, the ones I can't help, I'll try to make myself as much like the old Kenny when I'm alone with you as I can be." I was looking at Joyce, and she was staring at my dick. I knew she was listening to what I was saying, but I had no idea what she was thinking. "You say you'll do that when you're alone with me. Why won't you do it with everyone?" "That Kenny isn't me anymore, Joyce. He's only a part of me. You asking me to do that would be like me asking you to jump high so you're six feet tall all the time. You can jump, that's easy. It would be staying up in the air that would be the tough part. I'd be putting an important part of who I am to sleep in order to be this Kenny that you're so comfortable with." "It's that Kenny I love." "That Kenny wasn't a whole person, Joyce. He wasn't complete. I'm complete now. I want to stay complete. I need to stay that way. For you to say you only love that Kenny is like saying you love my cock but hate my face, and the rest of my body." "I do love your cock." "This isn't just your Kenny's cock, Joyce. It never was. It wasn't just your Kenny who used to fuck you before. It never was just him. If it had been, you probably wouldn't have ever been able to cum. All the rough parts, that was Bad Kenny. The double teaming, and the things we used to do, like when we used that strap on, none of that was your Kenny. Even the sexual things you were able to do with all the other wives. That wasn't something your Kenny would have normally accepted or even tolerated. He went along with it because he had to. You loved it, and Bad Kenny loved it. Good Kenny had no choice but to accept it." "I think you're making this all up. I could feel the difference that time we were in the shower, the way you lifted me up and just dropped me down on you like you did. My Kenny wouldn't have done it like that. You might have hurt me doing that." I watched Joyce's tongue come out to wet her lips, as she spoke directly to my cock. She hadn't looked up at my face for the past five minutes that I'd been watching her face. My plan was to seduce her and see if Mama was right, if she'd become more open to accepting my changes after she had been made love to in a very satisfying manner. She was showing all the signs of being aroused now. All I'd need to do was begin touching her. The rest of it would follow. This was when I discovered that there really was an agreement in force between the two parts of my whole personality. I was going to take a very big chance with Joyce, one that would probably end up determining if we had any future together. "All right, Joyce. I've tried to tell you, but you don't believe me. You wanted your old Kenny back, here he is." I felt the change immediately. It was like I'd lost a large part of myself. Until that very second, I'd had no idea that Bad Kenny could do that, could turn himself on and off at will like that. I felt diminished by his absence. Somehow, him not being there made me feel weaker and less confident. I stayed quiet, sitting there on the bed naked. After a few seconds, I grabbed a part of the bedspread and pulled it onto my lap, covering my penis which was already shrinking back to its flaccid state. Joyce watched all of this with a suspicious frown. "Are you changing your mind again, Kenny? Is that why you're covering up?" She reached for the covers and pulled them off me. I didn't resist her, but my penis wasn't being cooperative either. Joyce took over, sucking me until I regained my erection, then she took all her clothes off, mounting me and riding me like she had many times in the past. I held her with my hands on either side of her hips, enjoying the stimulation her pussy was giving my dick. She finally managed to have her orgasm, and I soon followed her with one of my own. I could tell, by the way she was scowling after my wilted dick slipped out of her, that even though she'd achieved an orgasm, she wasn't very satisfied with my passive performance. After I made no further attempt to continue with our lovemaking, Joyce settled herself down beside me and I held her close to me. I kissed her back and neck, not to try to inflame her passions again, but to provide assurances of my love, and to let her see that I welcomed her closeness. I think I fell asleep first. We both woke up early the next morning and made love once again. This time I was on top of her, in the missionary position, and we had a rather long session of lovemaking. Although I lasted for a long time, Joyce didn't appear to gain any orgasmic satisfaction from our coupling. A few minutes after we were done with our lovemaking, Joyce told me she needed to get back home to get everyone ready for coming over to Mama's for lunch. She didn't bother with showering, just dressing and leaving before I'd had a chance to ask her if we could work together again, now that we had made up. Fifteen minutes after Joyce left, I was up myself and showering. In the shower, I felt the difference as soon as things went back to what I now thought of as normal. My immediate reaction to what had happened was despair. I knew that Joyce hadn't been happy with what had occurred. How could she have been? It was as though I was just going through the motions, not even trying to do my best with her. I had a very bad feeling that the performance last night and in the morning might have ended any chance I had to reach an accommodation with Joyce. Later, at breakfast, I knew immediately that Joyce had voiced her dissatisfaction with the outcome of our bedroom meeting. Even Gerta made a disparaging comment. Something about me promising a banquet and then delivering a cracker covered in Cheez Whiz. Mama claimed to be experiencing a migraine and said she'd retire with a damp wash cloth and try to be back downstairs in time for lunch. Gerta told me that Joyce had assured her, before she left, that the whole family would be over for lunch, just like Mama had planned it. I knew things weren't going well. I went over to my Dad's study and knocked on his door. ------- Chapter 66 I spent an hour and a half talking to my Dad, telling him first about how I couldn't seem to come up with one plan and then stick with it all the way through. After I was finished telling him about that, then I spent the rest of the time telling him about my latest problems with Joyce. Joyce hadn't actually said anything about our lovemaking, but she hadn't needed to. I knew without her making any comment. Joyce hadn't responded to me like she always had in the past. Worse than that, I hadn't really responded to her either. Neither of us had come away from our night together in any way satisfied. This was a new feeling for me, and one I didn't relish having. "Sex isn't everything, Kenny. It was probably a result of the pressure the two of you have been under. Joyce will understand." My father really didn't have a clue. He lived in a different world than the rest of us. I should stick to discussing business with him. He was always helpful in that arena. "I don't think so Dad. I'm pretty confident that she'll believe I deliberately held back. She knows I can do much better. We've always done much better together. Last night was pathetic. I wouldn't blame her for giving up on me now." It was me who abruptly changed the subject on him. I suddenly grew tired of discussing my failures and shortcomings with him. Instead, I started talking about the need to begin expanding the Quick Snacks program outside the confining geographical area we'd been limiting ourselves to. I wanted to keep five full sales teams in the South, but send five others out to the west coast, and the other five up along the Eastern seaboard. It was time to find out if there was more than a narrow regional appeal for this particular distribution strategy. I wasn't expecting any serious objections from my father. I'd been the one who had shown enough faith in the program to loan the company the money it was costing to hire, train, and equip the sales teams. I was underwriting all current expenses, and had assured my father that I would continue to do so as we expanded outward. We were growing quickly enough so any uncovered expenses were nominal in size. In fact, we were operating in the black, but there was a big lag time in paying for the sales commissions being earned and accrued by the existing team members. I was handling that part of it as well, paying out the earned commissions and waiting for the company payments to catch up to me. "I've been letting you run with this, Kenny. It's your program, and you know best whether you're ready to expand it or not. I appreciate you shouldering the financial burden for getting the program launched. I don't want you going forward the way you have been though, if doing so will jeopardize your trading program results in any manner. That program remaining on track and profitable is one of the keys to all our other results remaining profitable. With the credit commitments we have in force, we can't afford to begin losing margins on our bakery operations. We need a cheap and steady supply of grains and other ingredients. We're in a tough economy right now, and competition for every dollar of sales has tightened from what it once was. We can't afford to take any steps backward." "You needn't worry about that, Dad. I'm not sure why things have been going so well with the trading programs, but it seems like I'm finding many more profitable opportunities to make trades. My volume of trading is up sharply, but the risk I'm assuming has never been lower. It seems like people are lining up to give me their money. I've never seen so many people in the market, all trading in the wrong direction. This last month has been far and away my most profitable trading month. Sometimes, I end up worried that I must be hallucinating. Billy Ray gives me the final balance reconciliations for each of my trading accounts, after each day's trading, and it seems like everything I'm doing is working out well for me. Last week there were seven out trades, with six of them settled in my favor. The other one was basically a wash anyway." "You do seem well focused in your trading. Frank has been calling me, wondering why there is such a big difference from before. I didn't know what I could say to him, other than no one has been calling me to complain about their grain prices, or about the manner and quality of their grain deliveries. In fact, its just the opposite of that. People are calling to tell me they'd be really up against it if they couldn't count on your grain brokerage prices." "Tell them not to be worried. It's the one area where I still feel confident of my competence. I just wish everything else was going as well as the trading is." After I left my Dad's study, I went in to tell Gerta that I was going to head over to the country club to hit some balls for an hour or so. I drove Joyce's car out there. I was alone on the range, pounding out ball after ball, concentrating on nothing other than the contact I was making. Most of the time I wouldn't even look up to see the flight of the ball. I didn't even notice when Shirley and her father came out on the range to hit two small buckets of balls. Mr. Jones and I had spoken on the phone several times in the past month or so, mostly about me needing another training crew to come down and help get salesmen trained and ready to get out in the field producing new accounts for us. I nodded to both of them as soon as I noticed them hitting over at the far end of the range from me. Ron Jones nodded back to me, a neutral expression on his face when he did it. Shirley didn't say or do anything. I saw her blushing, and knew she was uncertain about how she should react to me. I didn't want her being uncomfortable at running into me like she had, so I put my head back down and began hitting ball after ball again. I was surprised when I looked up again, half an hour later, to see Shirley standing less than ten feet from me. Her father was nowhere to be seen. I had only stopped hitting balls when I reached the bottom of the jumbo bucket. "Hi, Kenny." Shirley seemed hesitant about even speaking to me. I wondered why she hadn't just hit her small bucket of balls and left with her father. "Hello, Shirley. Are you and your dad playing here today?" "We were going to play nine, but, I decided it was a good time for you and I to have a talk. I wanted to tell you myself why I've decided to leave the rest of the family and find somewhere else to live." I could tell that Shirley was uncomfortable speaking those words to me. Her face reflected the uneasiness she was feeling. "Joyce didn't tell me you had decided to leave again." "She doesn't know yet, no one does. I've just decided this morning. I don't want to be a part of what's happening with all of us now. I don't think it's healthy for the children, not living like we have been. They're beginning to get older, and they ask so many confusing questions now. It really isn't healthy for them to be growing up in such a different and uncertain living situation. Derek has started playing this role with all the girls. I'm worried that he and Little Bertie are getting into things they're both too immature to handle." "Kids are just naturally curious, Shirley. They're getting to an age where they notice differences and want to find out about them firsthand." Joyce had warned me that Derek had been caught, several times, touching some of the girls inappropriately. Like me, she believed it was a natural, normal, phase he was going through. I knew the wives had all taken pains to speak with Derek, and the others, about what was appropriate, and what was off limits to them. "I don't want Derek acting that way. He thinks he's acting just like you do with us. He has been fighting with Bunny, trying to show all the girls that he's the Alpha Male." "I talked to Joyce about some of this, Shirley. She says it isn't as bad as what you're saying. They're all still little children. I think you're overreacting." "It doesn't matter, Kenny. I was simply telling you what I've decided. When I get things moved and settled, I'll let Joyce know what I've decided about you having visits with the children." It was only when Shirley turned and started running off towards the clubhouse that I began to realize how difficult talking to me about her decision had been. I also began to see how hard it must have been for Joyce to convince Shirley to move back in with them again earlier. To me, this was just one more sign that the whole family situation was in trouble. I knew Shirley was overreacting, but if it hadn't been her fears for Derek, it would have been something else. The same was true for Emily and Brenda. All of them were uncomfortable with the way things were now. Joyce and I were the two key players all the others revolved around. Everything I'd seen and experienced since leaving the clinic told me that this was true. Unless Joyce and I found some way to bridge our differences, our family was doomed to disintegrate. I couldn't hold it together, and now, apparently, neither could Joyce. I took my golf bag down to the pro shop and turned it over to one of the assistants there. I'd come to the club to pound on some balls and lose myself in thought while I did so. Shirley's visit was unexpected and troubling to me. Instead of me having a chance to work on my latest problem with Joyce, I now had to come to terms with this new reality. I didn't remember all these undercurrents operating in my life before my breakdown. Things had happened then, but they were usually short lived, because they were brought up and dealt with fairly promptly. What we had occurring now was a host of problems that had festered too long, and were now spawning new problems for all of us. No changes being considered would do anything to help the underlying problems. Shirley taking the children and leaving wasn't going to solve the real problems. I was back in Joyce's car, driving back to Mama's house when it finally hit me fully. I was the problem. In spite of my reconciliation with Eddie, Dale and Cindy, the differences in me were still coming between all of us. I had them with me, but it wasn't the same as it once had been. I'd seen too much evidence of the differences in our relationships with each other. I wasn't appreciating them like I had been, and they weren't getting all they wanted from me either. We were all compromising, hoping that time would bring the improvements we needed. For some reason, listening to Shirley telling me that she was leaving the family, brought all those differences up into my conscious mind. For the first time I could remember, I realized that it was going to be an all or nothing proposition for me. No compromise was going to be possible because our lives together were too intertwined. It took all of us to make any of it stable. We were bleeding off our emotional resources and reserves. To me, Shirley's worry about Derek was proof enough of the correctness of my thinking. I couldn't imagine her being that worried about Derek's behavior before my breakdown. It would have just been something we laughed about and handled, nothing that required such an overwhelming response. At noon, Joyce came over to Mama's with our five children. It was obvious, looking at the defeated look on her face, that she hadn't been able to talk anyone else into coming over with her. Even Dale, Eddie, and Cindy had decided not to come with her. Mama and Gerta tried their best to put a happy face on the day, but, though it seemed to work out well enough with the children, Joyce and I both had long faces throughout lunch. As soon as lunch was over, everyone else melted away, leaving Joyce and me alone together. "I saw Shirley at the club, Joyce. She's decided to find her own place to live again." "I know. She called me right after she finished talking with you. Emily and Brenda are going back to Lawrence after you leave too. You can't just treat them like you did, Kenny. I had a hard enough time getting them both to agree to come back to Ridgeline in the first place." "Last night wasn't very good for us, was it?" "This isn't about that, Kenny. I really tried to do all I could to make this weekend a success for us, and look how it all turned out?" "I know. It's my fault, Joyce, not yours. I'm not blaming you for any of this." "Cindy thinks she's going to go back to how she was before she came over to your house again. She said everything's too different now for her. I think Eddie and Dale are having second thoughts too. I can't keep going through all of this with you, Kenny. I'm too tired to do it anymore." "I'd probably give up too if I was you, Joyce. I can accept now that the problem is me. I'm not the same, and I can't ever be. We can't keep trying to force something that doesn't fit anymore. I don't fit the role I used to fill with all of you. I wish I did, but I know I don't. Even when I try to be that Kenny for people, it isn't working. I can't see things the same way as I did before. I don't like the same things I used to like." "We all can see that, Kenny. You don't have to tell us that. Things always have to be your way now. None of us can adjust to that much of a difference in you." "I believe you. I accept that too. Now what?" "I don't know. I don't want to think about it right now. It doesn't matter what I say anyway. In the end, you'll decide, and then you'll tell us what you've decided. I'm going to quit worrying about it. Nothing I do seems to help anyway, so I'm going to start worrying about just me and the children." Joyce was acting defeated and depressed. It wasn't like her to just give up in anything. For her to be talking to me like this, the situation really had to be bad. "You never answered my question about last night, Joyce. It was bad, wasn't it?" She got up from the table and started walking away from me. She shot me one last look, letting me see how angry she had become with me. "I tried to give you what you asked for, Joyce. I warned you what would happen if it was just your old Kenny by himself." Joyce spun around and glared at me. I was once again glad that I was so much bigger than her. This time though, in spite of our size difference, I thought she really might attack me. "You made it as bad as you could just to make me think I should accept how you now are." "I didn't. When I did that, I left it up to him to do whatever he was going to. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be like what we were used to, but I didn't interfere in any way." "It isn't about the sex, Kenny. None of us like the way you treat us, or how you act when we're around you. Eddie told us how good the sex still is, but that isn't enough, not by itself. We miss the love, and the way you used to act with all of us." "I still love all of you. I never stopped loving you." I felt myself getting angry. This was just another way Joyce had of making me feel bad about who I had become. They all had to know that I still loved them. I'd told each of them that I did. "I think you believe that, but you aren't showing us anything we could say demonstrated any of this love you supposedly have for us. We see it with the children now, and that's a big improvement. You can't just tell people that you love them. You have to show them as well. You think all you have to do is give someone three or four orgasms and it will prove something to them. It doesn't, Kenny. I'm not saying it doesn't help things, but, if that's all we get from you, it isn't enough." "We have to begin somewhere, Joyce. I'm not spending all my time trying to come up with new reasons why you and I can't be together. I'm trying to make us fit again. There are so many things we could be doing together, things that benefit all of us, but all you seem to be concerned about are the things that are changed that you don't like. Today, after Shirley told me what she was going to do, I thought about it. None of these things have to happen, not if we were working together to prevent them. The way we're going now, everything is going to be lost, just because a few things aren't the way we'd both like them to be." "It isn't just a few things, and the things are a lot more important to me than they seem to be to you. It isn't just me that feels this way. You make it sound like I'm the only one standing in the way of all of us being happy together." "No, that isn't what I believe. I believe that you and I being split up allows all these other things to seem more important, and harder to solve, than they really are. This is a problem that is primarily just you and me. All the others are taking their lead from what happens with us." "Now you've gone right back to saying I'm the problem again." "No, I'm the problem. What I'm saying is you need to be part of the solution to my problem. You need to make a sacrifice if you really don't want the family to split apart like it seems ready to." "I tried that already. It doesn't work for me." "You never tried. When you saw problems, you pulled away from them, and from me. That isn't how you solve problems, Joyce. I'm trying to change, but you make it harder when all you seem to do is tell me you don't like who I am now. I've made changes. You said yourself that I've gotten better with the kids. I've tried with Eddie, Dale and Cindy too. It isn't as perfect as I'd like it, but I'm trying to make it better all the time. I could use your help with that. I trust what you say to me." "You don't trust anyone, Kenny. That's part of your problem. Even Mama and Gerta tell me that. You used to listen to people before, but now you just do whatever you want to." I knew she was right about that. This weekend had been a good example of me making so many changes to the agreed upon plans. I'd done it at the house with Emily, Brenda and Joyce, and again, with Joyce, over at Mama's house. Always, as it was happening, I'd believed it was change for the betterment of the existing plan. It hadn't turned out that way though. If I'd stuck with the original plans, things would probably have gone better. "I trust you more than anyone else, Joyce. I can learn to listen again. All it requires is some self control and practice. I have self control. You need to see if you can learn to live with the differences in me that I can't change. We won't know which differences are changeable as long as you don't try to discover them." "I want what I used to have with you, and you can't give me that." "No, I can't. We can get into a circular argument about that, making no progress, or we can try to work together to see how much we still do have together. You made your decision without really knowing what was left that you did like." "Why don't you tell me what's left then?" Joyce had come closer as we spoke to each other. This was our longest conversation about this subject since I had come out of my dormant period in the clinic. "I'm not sure what's left. So far, all I know is that you aren't happy with the whole package. We had good sex while I was at the clinic, I thought. We still work pretty well together when we're working on the business, the meal programs, or the group homes. We don't seem to still be having the same kinds of problems with me being around the children that we once had. Mostly, it seems like you just don't like the way I act around you and the other wives." "I think you were being on your best behavior in the clinic, because you wanted the doctor to release you. Since you've been released, you act more like you did before you started getting better. You don't try to cooperate with me anymore." "It's difficult to cooperate when someone is telling you that they hate who you've become, without even pointing out any specific small changes they need you to make." "It isn't small changes, Kenny. They aren't even the kinds of things you can change. It's your whole attitude, the way you look at us, and how you treat all of us now. You aren't the same. You don't act like you used to, and that was what we loved most about you." "We're getting very close to the point where we'll agree to give up trying anything, Joyce. Maybe you've already reached that point. If I had died instead of just getting sick, you'd have gone on with your life. If you had later met me, I'll bet you I would have reminded you of your old Kenny. I look like him, and I move like him. I have a different personality than his, but, you don't really know me well enough yet to be certain you couldn't live with the differences. You'd probably give me a chance, if there wasn't this hope that your old Kenny would return someday. That Kenny is dead, Joyce. He isn't ever going to come back." "You don't know that. Dr. Fellows told me that things could change, depending mostly on what happened to you after you were released. She said you'd want to assimilate with us, and might change to be able to fit in better." "I have made changes. I've made a lot of changes. I can't keep guessing about which small change is going to end up finally being enough for you." "So far, none of your changes have come close to being enough. I hardly noticed any changes in you at all since you left the clinic. The thing I've mostly noticed is you've become meaner than you acted at the clinic, once you started getting better." "I guess that proves my point then. I've changed a lot. The fact that you don't think so tells me that it wouldn't ever be enough for you. I've tried telling you that I'm still a lot like how I used to be before I got sick. I guess you don't want to settle for what's still possible, and go on having a relationship with me. I'm sorry you feel that way. I think the problem now is with my letting go of all the rest of it too. I already discovered that the other wives needed both of us for those relationships to return to anything like they once were. I don't want to try to maintain something that wouldn't be possible to keep for the long term. All I really insist on is being allowed to see my children whenever I want to." "That's it then? You think we should just give up too?" Joyce seemed surprised that I wasn't pushing her beyond the point where I'd already taken things. I didn't see anything to be gained by it. She and I both knew where we'd each drawn the line for ourselves. We were at an impasse. I couldn't give her what she said she needed from me, and she wasn't willing to explore the possibility of settling for less than what she thought she needed. "Tell Cindy, Dale and Eddie that I'll be picking them up at eight in the morning to return to Alabama. If they have other plans, have them call over here to let someone know." "Does this mean we're going to divorce?" "I don't care, Joyce. Do whatever you think is best. If you file, I'll sign the paperwork." "If you went back to the clinic and tried to let the doctor help you." "I don't want any more of her help, Joyce. This is who I am now. Just because you don't happen to like who I've become, that doesn't mean that no one will. I think you're going to find it difficult to replace me." "I'm not going to find it difficult, because I'm not going to try to replace you. If you think I did anything I did for that reason, then you are too changed to ever be with me again." "That's what we're talking about, never being with you again. I think you have this belief that you can keep agitating on something until whatever it is gives up and lets you have whatever you want from it. This isn't like that. I've tried to let you know I can't do what you're asking. It's impossible for me to do it. I can't change back again. The option to do that doesn't exist." This time, when Joyce turned, she didn't hesitate to walk completely out of the room. I gave her a few minutes before I went out back where I heard the children running around and playing. We stayed out in the back playing together until around four o'clock when Mama came out and told my children that it was time to leave. I kissed all of them before they left. I felt sad, knowing that my conversation with Joyce earlier had forever changed the way my children and I would be interacting in the future. After the children left, I went into the kitchen and had Gerta make me a couple of cold cut sandwiches to take up to my room. I could see, from the way she avoided eye contact with me, that Joyce had relayed to her and Mama the main particulars of our little talk in the dining room earlier. I informed her that I had some thinking to do, and that I wouldn't be down for dinner later. Gerta didn't say anything to me, but I knew she was disappointed and upset with how things had turned out on this visit. ------- All four of us ended up flying back to Birmingham the next morning. Hans drove us over to the airport, but I sat up front with him on the trip, not wanting to get into any deep discussions with the three women. I had already decided that they would end up doing whatever they chose to do. Nothing had really changed, but everything had changed too. I wasn't sure when it would actually happen, but I already knew I'd end up living alone again in the Birmingham house. Back in Birmingham, Cindy was the first to come up with an excuse to leave the house, claiming she was concerned with her father being alone at his house. It was pretty funny, with both of us going through the motions, neither of us comfortable enough to admit what had already been decided. It was Tuesday, after work, before Eddie and Dale came to talk to me about their plans. Eddie was honest about what she was feeling. "It isn't the same now, because of how things are with you and Joyce. It isn't fun like it used to be. Me and Dee think it might be better to go visit Mama for awhile. We both love you, Kenny, but it isn't the same for us being here with you now. All you do is work and worry." We spoke for awhile. My heart really wasn't into trying to get them to change their minds. They were right, it wasn't the same. I did get them to agree to letting me fly them both back to Chickasaw on the coming weekend. It didn't feel like another abandonment. It felt like all three of us were acting responsibly, given the existing situation. After our talk, the sex was more carefree and abandoned. I felt relieved that we had cleared things up in a way that allowed us to still be lovers and friends. I didn't feel like I'd failed with Eddie and Dale. With Cindy, I felt that way to some extent. Eddie and Dale had made it clear that their attraction was to the whole group that existed before, and the way we all chose to live together. With Cindy, it had been more of an attraction to Joyce and me, and to the way I interacted with my wives, letting them all be with each other sexually. Somehow, by allowing this, I made myself appear less threatening to her. Enough so that she was able to enjoy making love with me, and getting past some of her earlier fears of men. Joyce called me after I got back from flying Eddie and Dale to Oklahoma. She was crying. Emily and Brenda had decided to move to California, rather than to move back to Lawrence as had been originally planned. I was surprised by their moving to California, but not overly upset by it. In my mind, I'd already been trying to let them go. This way, it seemed to make the break somehow cleaner and less painful for me. Joyce didn't share my belief about that. "Shirley found a house too. She wants to move as soon as escrow closes. Frank called all of us about you releasing the money in all our trust accounts. Brenda was really upset when you did that. I think that was when she started listening to Emily about moving to California. I wish you'd checked with me before doing that." "It was their money, Joyce. The money was always for them, in case I wasn't around to look after their needs." "Why did you split up our money, Kenny? I wasn't asking for you to do that." "There was enough in the trading accounts to do it, and I didn't want you thinking any of the money mattered to me. I still have enough to do what I need to do." "Its like you don't want us to have anything we share anymore." "It isn't like that. We still have a lot that we share. I wanted you to have options too." "What are you going to do about Cindy?" "What do you mean? She still works for the company. She moved back to how things were before, and we don't see each other outside of work now. We still talk at work. Did she say something to you?" "She said she feels uncomfortable now. You never talk to her about personal stuff anymore. She thinks you're mad at her." "I'm not mad. Her doing what she did made things easier for me. Now its like all of us are starting over again. It wouldn't have been good if she had tried to stay with me. I'm not ready right now to try to hold on to anyone from before." "Including the children?" I felt myself getting angry with her again. She had to know how bad that kind of question would make me feel. "No. I don't mean the children, or my parents. I meant you and the other wives. I'll always hold on to the children." "When are you going to hold on to them, Kenny? Its been three weeks now, and you haven't even called them once." She was right, I hadn't called any of the children. I'd been working out my own thoughts, and trying to get adjusted to how things were changed for me. I'd been busy clearing out the different parts of my life, memories that were no longer an active part of my present reality. "I could come up this weekend to spend some time with the ones still in Kansas. Did you work things out with Shirley about me having visits with Derek and our other two?" "You know Shirley wouldn't stop you from seeing the children. These are things you say now, Kenny, that you never would have even thought of before. You keep asking for specific suggestions from me, but you don't bother to listen when I give them to you. Are you going to stay in your old room on your visit?" "I'll probably stay at Mama's. I don't want to fight on this trip." "You should stay here. Shirley wants to see for herself. You never slept with her after you started getting better. She doesn't know who to believe about your changes." "I'm not going to sleep with Shirley. If you think I am, then you really haven't been listening to what I've been telling you. That part of it is over, Joyce. We're all split up now, just like I told you we would be at Mama's house." "Shirley didn't do anything to make you treat her badly, Kenny. What difference does it make to you anyway? If she wants to do it, why won't you have sex with her?" "She isn't part of my life like that anymore, Joyce. None of you are. This is a part of the whole thing, you know? You can't just pick the one or two parts you want after you've gone out and rejected all the other parts. I can't just turn it on and off like that. Maybe after more time has passed, or after Shirley has her own place. Right now, I feel like all of you are part of the same situation with me. That situation is ending. I'm not sure if any of what I'm now feeling will change. If it doesn't, then I probably won't do that sort of thing with any of you again." "Shirley isn't me, Kenny. You're angry with me." "Maybe that's how it seems to you, Joyce. Not to me though. Shirley is a part of you to me. All of them are. I'm not angry with Shirley. I'm angry about our situation, but I'm as angry with myself as I am with anyone else." "What about me then?" "Yes, I'm angry with you too." "Not that. I meant in bed with you, when you come visit the kids." "We tried that, and it didn't work well for either of us." "I meant back like it was before the last time. Not just with our Kenny, with both of you." "There is no both of us, Joyce. There's only me. It's always been me. The personality changed, but I'm still me." "It doesn't matter what you call it, Kenny. You know what I mean." "I might have said yes before, Joyce, but not now when I'm angry and upset about things. I wouldn't trust myself now." "I trust you now. I'm ready to do what you said before. To see if I can find a way to be married to who you are now." I knew she was serious. Joyce had a strange sense of humor, but not about something as important as this was. I wondered why she was suddenly changing her mind about this? She had been consistent before about not being open to accepting any of the changes in me. "Have you been talking about me with Dr. Fellows again?" I don't know why I asked her that. The question just sprang forth from my head to my lips without passing through any type of regulator I normally would have working to control what I said. "We talked. She told me you weren't likely to change your mind if you ever decided to give up on us. She said I'd have to be the one to make a move to change things if it came to that." "I don't think our sleeping together is the best place for us to start working out our problems, Joyce. That isn't even one of the places where you've complained about me being different." "That's what you say. I complained quite a bit about the last time because I didn't like it very much. Dr. Fellows told me you were probably telling me the truth about our Kenny not being very good in bed. She told me a lot of the reasons why that might be. You never told me about a lot of what had happened to you when you were young." "I don't remember a lot of it, Joyce. I don't want to remember it either. I told you it was a bad time for me. I don't want to revisit those bad times." "She told me you didn't remember. She also explained to me about why you need to be like you are now. She told me you don't really have a choice about being that way. I don't want you getting sick again." "I told you that too." "I thought you were saying it because you didn't want to change. I thought you could be more like the old Kenny without hurting anything." "I'll think about it before flying up there. I'll let you know." "Think about Shirley too, Kenny. She still loves you, but it isn't easy for her going without anyone." "She has you, Joyce." "Not for a long time, Kenny. Maybe six months or more. Before you got out of the clinic. She spent one night with Dale a few weeks ago, but they didn't do anything. Dale told me. She was hurt because she thought Shirley was mad at her or something. Shirley hasn't been with any of us, not for a long time." "I'll think about her too, Joyce. I don't know if I like you talking with Dr. Fellows like you did. If you have any questions about me, then ask me first. This isn't a mental problem, this thing I'm having with you now. You just don't seem to like who I am." "It might be my mental problem, Kenny. I'm losing my husband and most of the rest of my family, and I needed to talk to somebody who understood my situation. I called her about me having problems. She talked about you, but only to try to help me understand why you weren't able to go ahead and just change yourself back for me." After that phone call I needed to try to shift gears again. It seemed like something always came along to derail my plans. It was turning out like that every time I took the trouble to make some. Maybe I shouldn't even bother trying to plan out my personal life? Nothing ever went from plans to reality for me anymore anyway. My whole life had turned into some long trek over quick sand. I couldn't rely on anything it seemed. I called Dr. Fellows, and she and I discussed my lack of progress in my ongoing personal relationships. I brought up Joyce's name, but she told me she couldn't discuss one patient with another. When I questioned her about discussing me with Joyce, she just laughed, telling me I wasn't qualified to discuss treatment modalities with her. She was another woman I found very frustrating. When I told Dr. Fellows about Joyce wanting to sleep with me the following weekend, she didn't seem surprised at all. She refused to recommend a course of action with Joyce, or to advise me concerning Shirley either. In all, it was a very unsatisfactory phone conversation. Reading between the lines with Dr. Fellows, I decided her lack of cautioning me about the dangers with Joyce was tantamount to her giving me permission to make my own decision about what I should do. I was unhappy with how things were. I knew I was at a critical juncture in my life, and my next few decisions might very well decide my future, both with Joyce, and with the other wives. I knew I needed to act cautiously, not go off acting impetuously like I sometimes had. I realized there were changes I could make to myself, ways I could present myself differently in front of others. I hadn't been acting mature about very many things. I realized that a part of my new self wasn't mature, and wasn't very responsible either. Worse, that part of myself didn't seem too aware of the possible lasting consequences from giving immediate vent to his emotions around others. It wasn't enough to refrain from the threats and the other, obvious, signs of anger. What was needed was a higher level of emotional maturity and a willingness to communicate with other people as equals. I hadn't been doing too much of that. It was a big part of my problems with the family. One other thing I realized was the obvious truth that I didn't always listen to what I was telling myself. I hadn't been aware of that being the case before I got sick. Whatever awareness I might have had of my separate identity states, I'd always felt like I was the one person making all the decisions. It probably wasn't true then either, but it was what I'd always believed. Now, I knew this wasn't necessarily the case. In fact, I knew it definitely wasn't true. 'We can't hope to function adequately, not as long as we insist on making separate, conflicting, decisions.' I thought this to myself, not really believing I was actually communicating with any other entity inside my head. I don't know what I hoped to accomplish by thinking that. I felt some stirring inside my head though. Not words or thoughts, more a slight feeling of being uneasy about my thought. By this time, I really thought of myself as a single identity state, one I wasn't completely comfortable being yet, but certainly not two separate identities still. Regardless of this, I found it interesting that I had felt any response to my earlier thought. 'We aren't going to be getting many more chances. If I can't work something out with Joyce, I don't see much hope in being able to have any other successful relationships. If this one ends up as a failure, I don't think I'll attempt to find any new ones.' Again, I felt something. This time it was almost like an angry reaction from inside my head. It felt like me getting angry with myself. 'It isn't working for anyone the way it is now. It was better before.' What I was feeling was something. It was some kind of emotion, and it had grown stronger. I was actively engaged in an argument with myself. Talk about not having the ability to get along with people. Here I was in serious conflict with myself. Worse, I was arguing both sides of each area being questioned. 'It wasn't me that gave up on Joyce. We can stay like we are now, pushing everyone we love away from us. For me, right now, I can get by with just trading and working in the business. I'm not willing to set things up, only to see them fail each time. You can participate in all the social parts of our life, but only in a passive role. Unless I'm the only one running things, we'll both just have to do without. No one likes the way you do things. We tried it that way for long enough to realize it isn't going to work.' For a few minutes, I felt like my head was going to explode. It hurt, sitting all alone at my desk, doing nothing other than thinking my thoughts. I was aware that my entire body was beginning to react to the turmoil I was feeling. I was careful not to project any new thoughts. I'd already given myself enough to think about for the next little while. ------- Chapter 67 "Joyce, I'm flying up tonight, after work. I should land no later than seven o'clock. Can you have Hans meet me at the terminal?" It had been three days since our last conversation. I'd had my own thoughts in the time since we'd spoken together. I was still undecided about what I should be doing. To be more accurate, I wouldn't know what I'd decided until after Joyce and I got together. That we would get together was something I felt confident about. What I didn't feel confident about was how I'd act when we did. "Did you think about where you'll stay?" "I'll stay at the house again. No sense shifting all the children around for a short visit like this." "What about the other thing we discussed? Did you decide about that?" "Not yet. I'm still negotiating about that." "I told you we both wanted to sleep with you." "I didn't mean I was negotiating with you or with Shirley. I've been trying to think about what my life is going to be like, both now and in the future. I see two different scenarios. Only one possible scenario interests me, but I'm trying to make sure that what I want to happen will actually take place. For this to happen, I need to be sure its what I want, all of me has to be sure." "You aren't making sense now, Kenny. Either you want to, or you don't." "I'm making sense to me, Joyce. I'm coming up to spend some time with my children. I'm not planning on anything else right now. It might seem like a simple choice to you, but I'm still trying to negotiate for what we can do now. I'd like to sleep with you, but only if it wouldn't cause problems for us later. Right now, I don't have any assurances that it wouldn't." "Are you arguing with yourself again?" Joyce had a lot of concern in her voice when she asked her question. "You can call it that. I'm trying to decide some things. Whatever I decide, it will open up some doors and close a few others. I'm making up my mind about what kind of life I'm planning to live. Whatever I decide, I need to be sure this time before I go ahead with it." When I got to the house in Ridgeline, Joyce wasn't at home. Shirley was there though, and she opened the door to greet me. She looked nervous, and more than a little embarrassed. Seeing her that way around me was more than a little upsetting. It underscored the divide that kept us separated from each other. "Joyce thought you might be more comfortable if she was over at your mother's house. She told me to tell you she had made her own decision." "She probably made the right one. Were you expecting to sleep with me this weekend?" Shirley's face got even more of a strained look on it. She looked like she wanted to run off somewhere, to hide from me. I could see her fighting against that desire to run off. "I was hoping we could spend some time together. We haven't really talked about what was happening to us. I didn't want to leave before finding out why you decided to treat all of us like you did." Shirley was never comfortable arguing with anyone. I could see why she wanted to have a talk with me, if for no other reason then to allow us to say we were both sorry about how things ended up for us. "Were you planning on sleeping with me when we had this talk? The reason I'm asking is so I can plan for it. Those things are no longer simple for me, Shirley. I have to prepare things so nothing goes wrong if it happens." "If you want to sleep with me, then I'd like that too." Shirley rushed out the words so fast it made me smile. "Is today a good day for that with you?" I smiled back at her, relieved that she'd come right out and told me she wanted to sleep with me. It didn't matter as much with Shirley, not like it did with Joyce. If I messed things up again with Joyce, the repercussions would be far greater. Shirley would be less complicated for me. I knew we could enjoy having sex with each other. "Right now would be a good time for me, Kenny, but I guess you'd like to put your things away, and then go spend some time with the children? It's almost eight and I told Joyce I'd give her a call when you decided about us." "I decided about you, Shirley. That's all I decided about. Joyce and I still need to discuss our things." "That's what I meant. You and me, us. Joyce said you'd probably find it easier with just me, instead of having to deal with both of us, and then you still having to make another choice." I made no further comment, instead I turned and carried my bag up to my room. I went down to the children's play room and spent time with all eight that were there. I couldn't help feeling sad about the other four. I wondered why I couldn't just be happy about the eight I was there playing with and talking to? I knew it had to do with me feeling guilty about having turned things around so much that their moving to California seemed like a good thing for them to do. They were gone because of my having problems. I wanted to remember that. I didn't want to lose sight of why things were the way they were. By ten o'clock, all the children were up in their rooms, in their beds and asleep. It had been a good visit for me, up until that point. None of the children seemed to have any problem with me other then wondering why I wasn't coming home every night like I used to do. Derek seemed upset about being moved back and forth so much. I watched how he interacted with Little Bertie, but it appeared to me that she still dominated their relationship. If anything, I would have been worried that she had too strong an influence over Bunny and Derek. The three oldest were all growing up so quickly. I started worrying about the day when they'd all be adults. I was in my bedroom, undressed and under the covers by ten fifteen. There was no sign of Shirley. Briefly, I wondered if I had misunderstood her, wondered if she was perhaps expecting me to come over to her room. I think I'd spent maybe a total of two nights in her bedroom though, so I doubted I was waiting in the wrong place. I must have lain awake until some time after eleven, before deciding that she must have changed her mind about wanting to sleep with me. I thought back to our earlier conversation and knew I hadn't misunderstood about which room. I rolled over on my side and went right to sleep. At some level there had been tension over the prospect of once again sleeping with and making love to Shirley. Perhaps it had been another test that I had been given by Shirley or Joyce. If it had been, I was sure that I'd failed it. Failure was no longer something that came as a surprise to me. If anything, I expected to fail when it came to my family relations. There seemed to be sides to all questions, and I always seemed to be finding myself all alone on my side. ------- I woke up before seven. With the heavy curtains on the windows, the room was still fairly dark. Something had awakened me. I rolled over on my back and tried to think about what had awakened me. It had to have been a noise of some kind. "Are you awake now, Kenny?" Joyce was in the room with me. At first, I didn't know how I felt about that. I had been prepared to speak with her about the two of us sleeping together. She didn't stick around to give me the chance. Maybe she was coming over to discuss it with me now? "I'm awake. Why did you leave last night, Joyce?" I tried to keep my tone neutral, make it seem like a search for information, not a judgment on her action. "I didn't want you being uncomfortable, or having to make decisions when you weren't sure about them. Shirley was going to be here and I thought it would be more fair if you decided about her without me here distracting things. I think now I made a mistake. Shirley isn't ready to deal with you being so direct and so cold and detached about things." "Shirley was supposed to come in to sleep with me last night, but she didn't show up. If she was changing her mind about wanting to sleep with me, she should have come to me and said something." "I know. That's one of the reasons why I came back here this morning. Did you think you handled yourself well with Shirley last night?" From the way she asked this question I knew she expected me to answer in the negative. I thought back to the short conversation Shirley and I had shared. It didn't seem cold or detached to me. I had to admit I'd been direct though. Possibly too direct as I thought back on it. "I didn't give it much thought when we were talking about things. She asked me if I wanted to talk with her. I asked her if she wanted us to sleep together while we talked. I thought we had agreed to spend the night together, but she didn't come to my room. Did she get angry at the way I spoke to her?" "I wouldn't say angry. She was afraid. Did you even bother to spend more than five minutes with her before you propositioned her?" By now, Joyce was unleashing her full ire in my direction. Looking at it now, I could understand some of why she might be upset. I knew I didn't want to do anything to make her more upset. I could see where all this was heading. I didn't want to go there. It was time for me to retreat, to try to salvage some of the good I'd gotten from my visit. "I enjoyed spending some time with the kids, Joyce. That was my main reason for showing up here. If you remember, it was you that brought up the idea that Shirley wanted to sleep with me again. You seemed concerned for her. I remember a hundred times when I asked Shirley if she wanted to sleep with me. It never caused anyone any problems before. I guess now it does. I'm sure it has to do with how I asked her. Next time, I'll wait until she brings it up herself. The same thing goes for you, Joyce. I'm not planning on asking you for any sex either. If you want it, you'll have to ask me." "I did ask you, Kenny. The last I heard from you, you were still negotiating with yourself about it. If you have that many qualms about even wanting to sleep with me, then I don't want you to attempt to." I knew Joyce, and I knew she didn't mean that. Once she got something like this in her head, very little could change her mind about it. She wanted to sleep with me. I'd have bet every penny I had that this was true. I reached for the covers and threw them off of me, exposing my hard dick. It was dark in the room, but both of us had adjusted to the low light level. I knew she could see my cock, waving firmly in the air like it was. "If you have nothing else to discuss with me, Joyce, I need to take my shower." I watched her face as she stared at my cock. I knew she was hungry for me, as hungry for me as I was for her. "Did you decide about my question, Kenny?" In spite of what she had just said about not wanting me to attempt it, her words gave the lie to the earlier claim. "I don't want to just fuck you, Joyce. It never was just about that. It's hard on me knowing you don't want me like I am now. Even when you tell me that you might want to have me fuck you some more, you don't say its for any other reason than so you can get laid. I don't want us to get in that type of a relationship, Joyce. We had a lot better relationship than that." I stood up on the side of the bed that was away from her, and started walking to my bathroom. I knew she was already excited from just having looked at me like she had. She had come over to make a few points with me. To make me feel bad about how I'd treated Shirley. It had made me angry with her again, but not so angry I wanted to jeopardize future visits with the children. I'd leave her with something to think about. Neither of us should use sex as a political weapon. We both wanted each other, but it wasn't the basis for rebuilding the first lines of our relationship. "Why did you agree to Shirley when you said you hadn't decided about me?" Throughout all the years of our involvement, Joyce had felt insecure about why I'd chosen her over the other wives. It took very little for that insecurity to make itself felt. That was what was happening then. Joyce was also reacting to my telling Shirley I would sleep with her. "Shirley's easier for me. I don't have as much riding on my relationship with her. You're the key person, Joyce. Once you make up your mind, the rest will follow your lead. Look how quickly they abandoned the house after we decided to quit trying to fix things. All the others can live with the way I've changed. What they can't live with is you not being able to live with those changes. Neither of us are a big enough draw to hold things together by ourselves." "I can't stand the way you do and say things now, Kenny. I get upset every time I hear something new that you've either said or done. Even now, here with me, its obvious that you're just toying with me. You know how I get when I see you hard like this, and you're using that now to try to control me. You never did that before you got sick." "You say I'm doing it to control you. I'm not the one saying it. I do know how you react to my hard dick, that's true enough. I'll even go so far as to admit I showed it to you to try to get your attention and interest. I don't see how that necessarily makes it an attempt to control you. I love you, and because I do, I'm trying to convince you that there's still enough of me left for you to be able to love me too. You found a way to love me once, and part of it was because I got you excited, sexually. I can still do that. We both know I can. I wanted you to feel that excitement for me. I'm using whatever I still have to try to get you to find out if there's enough of me left for you to love. You've just been assuming there isn't. You've assumed that because some things I do now are offensive to you. I never did this before I was sick, because I never needed to back then. I need to do it now, and you should be happy that I want you enough to keep trying to find a way we can stay together." "Do you really believe I'm going to love you now, just because you might still be able to fuck me good?" If she was trying to make me think I was wrong about thinking that, she needed to put a lot more conviction behind her words. I turned back to face her. The head of my cock pointing up in the air, aiming itself right at her face. "I guess not, Joyce. If that were the only reason you loved me, it wouldn't be enough for me. I can think of plenty of other reasons than just that one though. We have five kids together. We've also helped each other solve hundreds of problems in the business. Another reason, and one you need to consider carefully, is something I already think you're beginning to see. We both know neither of us are ever really going to be with any of the other wives again, not the way we were, unless the two of us somehow manage to get back together. I know how much we both enjoyed our old lifestyle, Joyce. Not all of that enjoyment on your part was just because I was here then either. When you add up all those other reasons, and then you add in the fact that together, we can get all of that back again, that forms a pretty strong argument for you figuring out some way to start loving me again." "What about the bad things? The things I don't like about you now? Why do I have to accept all those things?" "Why? I don't know. You have to decide about those things for yourself. You need to weigh the bad things against all those good things, the things that you do like. I did that myself too. I've always done it, even before we got married. You weren't the perfect bride you know? You could have been a lot prettier, but I was more interested in all the other things about you, the things that I did love. I wasn't that concerned about the few areas where you didn't come out on top. You think my parent's marriage is perfect? You make the best of things, and you try to have as good a life as you possibly can. I wish I could still be everything you ever wanted, but I can't. We both know the only reason you've decided to see if you could live with my problems now was because you really miss what you've lost. That's fine with me, but it isn't me trying to control you." "Dr. Fellows told me that you could be helped with more therapy. Different therapy this time, just to change the way you do things around people." For Joyce to tell me this was the same as her admitting that she had never given up on us. In spite of all we were going through, she still retained hope for us. Knowing that meant a lot to me. "I'm not going to go back and allow them to do anything else with my mind, Joyce. I'm not too happy with how things are right now, but I know it could be a hell of a lot worse. I've already told you all the things I still have for you, things you could have again if you learned to love me like I am right now. I want you to accept me like I am. I accepted you like that, and I want you to do the same for me. We could have a great life together. Not perfect, but still great. We can go back to helping each other with things. We've done a lot together already, and we could do even more. You saw how easy it was to get Cindy back in bed with you when I was around. I'm lonely without you. Things aren't as good for me when you aren't there to share them with me." "If I agree to try, will you agree to think about getting some help with some of your anger, and the way you talk to people?" It was becoming too late for us to have this conversation. It was enough that she had given me a reason to hope again. She was considering accepting me, even with the ways I had changed. I needed to have that much from her. If she gave me this much, it meant I wasn't the only one trying to find a way to make this work. "I'm going to take my shower now. I'm glad we had a chance to have this talk, Joyce. Maybe I gave you the wrong idea when I told you I don't enjoy things as much when you aren't there to share them with me. You've always been my first choice, but you aren't my only choice. I've been used to you always being the one beside me. I've focused on you being the one, because I always believed that was how it needed to be for me. You need to be careful that I don't start thinking that it doesn't need to be that way. Now that I'm changed, I can see how much it was the situations themselves that created the pleasure for me. I know what I want now. Perhaps I could still have all of that, even if it meant substituting someone else in your place?" "Why do you keep lashing out at me whenever I suggest that you could get help to make yourself better? I'm thinking about what's best for you, and about what we need for all of us." "I guess because I keep looking for you to care more about me than you do about how I present myself to other people. I understand why you hope I'll change and be more like you wish I could be. I've told you why I don't think I'll let them try to do that to me. This is as good as I'm going to get. This is the Kenny you need to decide about." "Even if I knew it meant you'd leave me and never come back, Kenny, I'd still want you to get some help for yourself. You always thought I wanted you to change just for me, but it never was for that. I wanted it for you. Being the way you are now, you aren't very happy. I don't think you can be happy, not as long as you feel like you do now." This wasn't what I'd expected her to say to me. I turned away from her so she wouldn't notice the effect her words were having on my rapidly shrinking dick. Even if I doubted what she was saying, it had never occurred to me that she might want to change me for my own happiness. If even a tiny part of her reasoning had to do with that, another plan of mine was already doomed to fail. I retreated into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I felt frustrated by her words. My neatly ordered assumptions were all in disarray again. It was becoming more difficult to imagine scenarios where Joyce was to blame for any of the problems I was having. This was undermining my confidence in coming up with some satisfactory resolution of the situation. It was beginning to look like I might really be the one who needed to change. What would it take to make me decide to seek professional help again? When I came out of the shower and the bathroom, Joyce had gone away. Shirley wasn't around either. I spent the whole day and evening with the children, and with Phil, Claire and Thelma. When Hans came by to take me to the airport, late on Sunday morning, I was feeling subdued and uncertain. I had made a decision to speak with someone about the way things kept changing for me, and about how I was having trouble reconciling what I was feeling with the observations of all the other people that I had once trusted. Either I was wrong, or else everyone I loved was participating in a conspiracy against me. It made sense for me to check into it, just in case it was something that could be fixed without a long drawn out process being necessary. I flew back to Birmingham with a lot on my mind. If I was still sick, what would I need to do to get better? I didn't want to go back to the clinic. If they let me go that one time, then discovered they'd made a mistake, I could end up spending another long time back in therapy. I was feeling unhappy though. I wasn't sure anyone could help me with my feeling that way. I'd been unhappy before, but something had always come along to help take my mind off of feeling that way. If I did decide to go get some therapy, that would be the same as me coming out and admitting I wasn't able to cope with things on my own. I had already had too many episodes in my life where I hadn't been able to cope with my problems. People couldn't place much faith in people with a long history of having mental problems. I needed to be cautious. I could explain to the therapist that I was only doing it for Joyce. I could say she was demanding that I go to someone to be examined. I could say I needed to prove to her that there wasn't still something wrong with me. I knew I didn't want to be forcibly committed again. If I went to someone voluntarily, I could just quit going if things didn't look like they were working out too well for me. I knew I had to keep myself in a position to continue my trading program, and to oversee the Quick Snacks expansion effort. My father had just gotten through telling me how important it was that the company continued having a cheap and reliable source of grains and other ingredients, so they'd be able to compete with our competition, while still retaining the high gross margins we needed to satisfy our banking partners. If the economy was difficult for the company, this was reason enough for me to proceed with caution. The last thing I wanted was to have my personal problems jeopardizing the future of any of our employees. My father was counting on me to do what I'd promised him I would do. Things seemed too complicated right then for me to be selfish about getting help for my personal problems. It could wait for a short while. I could find someone local for me to talk to. Not really intensive therapy, just someone to listen to my problems and advise me about how to better cope with the way things seemed to be going in my life. As it often happens, I was keeping an eye open for someone to fill that role for me when I happened to find Denise Coleman. We were both having dinner in the same restaurant, and were both eating alone. She was an attractive woman, somewhere in her early thirties. We started talking about the coincidence of both of us having ordered the same dish for dinner, and later decided to share a table, so that our conversation wouldn't seem as awkward. We were talking over an after dinner drink, when I learned she was a marriage and family therapist. While it wasn't the same as a psychologist or a psychiatrist, she was still a trained therapist. A major element of my current unhappiness was centered around my marital problems. It just seemed a natural fit to begin speaking to her about the worries I was currently experiencing. Denise was employed by the City of Birmingham, working primarily as an intake interviewer for people applying for financial aid or other living assistance. I felt comfortable telling her about my family situation. I mostly stressed my discomfort at being unable to get Joyce to accept the changes in my personality. Denise listened to what I was telling her, not interrupting me until I paused to see if she was understanding what I was saying. "Kenny, people develop and change at different speeds. It might just be a case of her being uncomfortable because you are changing at a faster pace than she is. I've listened to you for the past few minutes, and I see no reason to believe you aren't perfectly well, emotionally speaking. From what you've told me already, I'd have to say you seem to be functioning at a very high level. People with clinically significant emotional problems seldom perform at a superior level in open environments. Your current level of performance and accomplishment is too high for you to be suffering any serious emotional difficulties. I'd be willing to bet you aren't currently suffering from any problems acute enough to require therapeutic counseling. If you could see some of my intake applicants you'd understand better how I could make such a bold assumption about you." "I have to agree, Denise, but you have to understand that Joyce is the person that needs assurance about my mental wellness. I did have some problems, serious problems, but I went through intensive therapy in a clinic. I worked with my doctor until she told me all these problems had been dealt with and resolved." "In my experience, most of these so called therapists have a tendency to exaggerate a patient's problems in order to extend the therapy period, or to make themselves seem more competent than they really are. There are exceptions, of course, but I believe my statement is generally true, especially at these private psychiatric clinics. From spending this time with you, I'm confident that you were never a person with serious emotional or psychiatric problems." I wanted to believe her, but I knew she wasn't correct about my prior history. She was meeting me for the first time, comparing me with those she processed in her work for the city. Perhaps I did appear to be functioning better than those people. I was desperate for someone to validate my own opinion of myself, someone to tell me that I was fine just the way I was. Denise didn't know me, not the real me, and, as the evening progressed, I discovered that her interest in me wasn't a professional one. She started hinting strongly that she was open to a sexual encounter with me. I wasn't shocked at her interest, or in the way she openly stated her desire for me. I wasn't interested in her like that though. ------- Chapter 68 I threw myself into working again, concentrating on performing in the one arena I felt comfortable in. We sent out five teams to California and another five up the Eastern seaboard opening accounts in all significant population centers. It worked out very well for us. Well enough that we started recruiting sales people from all across the country. While I didn't involve myself with the selling or the training, I did provide all the logistical and financial support needed. The sales figures started climbing significantly as each new trained sales team went out into the field and began opening new accounts for us. We opened a new sales training office in Delaware and another in Omaha. We started getting a better group of applicants as soon as it became known that we were hiring for openings across the country. Kyle, and four of his original sales team members, were switched over to finding people to purchase the sales routes being set up. The income from these route sales started becoming a major source of money being used to underwrite travel expenses and sales incentives. My trading continued being extremely lucrative and successful. I'd made minor adjustments, becoming faster at identifying developing profitable trading opportunities. There seemed to be no end of the speculators who seemed willing to take the other side of any trades I wanted to implement. When all the information available, and the fundamental price bias favored one of my positions, I started loading up with considerably larger numbers of contracts. These I held longer, unless it became obvious that something had occurred to change the underlying assumptions I'd made. It seemed like every week I broke the records I'd set the week previous for both my profits and the trading volume. I had purchased a computer program that assessed my trading risk based on historical trading patterns as well as many other points of trading data. According to it, my risk exposure was nominal. In fact, according to my program, I needed to increase my exposure by a significant degree in order to enhance the probability of taking full advantage of the trading opportunities I was foregoing. I spent several weeks running the recommended trading changes alongside my then current trading strategies, simulating the new trading method being recommended. At the end of three weeks, convinced of the benefits to taking more risks, I began trading more aggressively. My profits more than doubled, even though I had to unwind trades for no gain, or for slight losses much more frequently than in the past. It didn't take too long for me to become comfortable with the new pace of trading. By late October or early November, my father began to get worried that we were going to outstrip our production capacity due to the increasing growth of the rate of our Quick Snacks sales. We already had five plants dedicated to producing product for the vending and mini market route sales. It was a problem for him, but a problem that created its own solution. The Quick Snacks program was beginning to throw off significant sales at a margin comparable to the vending results. Even the cost of new sales was less than those of the vending operations, considerably less, because we weren't paying for the delivery or for the route maintenance functions like we had to with the vending routes. Moreover, we didn't need to pay anyone to let us put our product in their buildings. Dad went back to our bankers in New York and negotiated a new, separate, credit facility just for the Quick Snacks program. This facility was large enough to provide for the most optimistic growth of the sales program any of us had dared projecting. As soon as the facility was signed and accepted, three new plants started construction. We also bought contiguous land for the Nashville plant, and undertook a plant expansion that converted more area to baking, and provided packaging and storage space over in the newly built plant facility. Professionally speaking, things couldn't have been better. Personally, I started admitting to myself I was very depressed. I no longer felt close to anyone, and, I wasn't getting any satisfaction from those other parts of my life that were going well. I worked hard to get ahead of things at the Birmingham plant, even bringing in Gene and Larry Macklinson to oversee two critical parts of the Quick Snacks operation. I put Larry in charge of handling the logistics for Kyle's team, and the Southern sales teams that were still out opening new accounts in the South. Gene took over all the national account sales teams logistics for me. I gave both men detailed instruction for what they needed to do. I had called in Gene first, interviewing him at some length before telling him what I wanted from him. He was still unhappy about the job offer being limited to him implementing my instructions. It took some negotiating, but we were finally able to come up with an arrangement he could live with. I was only going to be providing him with the initial framework, a broad outline for him to fill in with his own touches. He'd be the one making all the implementation decisions within that broad outline. We both knew it was a face saving gesture for Gene, since I would be in daily phone contact with him to oversee his actions and approve his decisions before they were implemented. I knew Gene would actually welcome my input to him. His entire career would have gone better if he'd had someone helping him to steer clear of some of his more disastrous ideas. He knew he needed the help, he just didn't want to acknowledge that he did. Larry was a different case altogether, being mostly concerned about only two things. One was where his place would be in the chain of command. Being the eldest brother, he felt like he should be given his chance to finally lead. He didn't like being unable to command Kyle's actions. I told him that Kyle reported only to me, but I did say I'd listen to any suggestions he might want to offer. As for him wanting his chance to lead, I assured him that he would be competing with Gene's results. Whoever I thought had done a better job would be given even greater responsibility. That seemed to satisfy him. Gene might not have wanted to compete, but after spending more than twenty years not being allowed to be the leader, Larry was ready to show what he could do. The other problem was with the compensation package both brothers were being offered. I had long since discovered that all the Macklinson family knew exactly how much any other Macklinson was making. Kyle and Billy Ray were both earning more than I was offering to Larry or Gene. Phil was making slightly more now then they would as well. In fact, their sister earned more than either of them were scheduled to make. Cindy was due a raise as well, one that would put her either at or just slightly below what Gene and Larry were supposed to be earning. I knew I had to address this issue directly with Larry. I explained my view that compensation should be based on the added value an employee brought to the company. I told him I would observe closely what his efforts did to increase our productivity, and to enhance the overall operation within his department. After I was satisfied that I knew what effect his efforts had brought us, I'd sit down with him again and renegotiate his compensation. He asked me for some time frame for when I'd be able to adequately evaluate this. I told him I would sit down with him again after he'd been on the job for ninety days. He tried to make it sixty days until I told him that I doubted sixty days would be sufficient for him to have had that much of an impact. I was about to agree to his request for sixty days though, when he reversed himself to say he would wait for the ninety day period. In the end, I was happy that I hadn't just gone ahead and told Larry that it was a 'take it or leave it' offer. I had intended to do just that at first. I only changed my mind about doing it because I didn't know if Gene would quit in protest or not. I did go into Larry's interview knowing that I wasn't going to allow him to dictate what his pay should be to me. If he had refused to take the job at the initial wage I'd offered him, I would have found someone else to do that job for me. Shortly after Gene and Larry were back on board and had gotten familiar with what was required of them, I announced that I'd be taking some time away from the plant to attend to other business matters. I didn't tell anyone where I was going or for what purpose, simply letting it be known that I planned to maintain daily phone contact with some of my key people, and that I expected them to function at a high enough level that they could find ways to implement any instructions I'd be giving them during the period when I'd be away from the plant. I waited for a week after I made my announcement, more or less expecting someone to do something to interfere with my plans. No one did. I told my father that I needed to get away, to get some time for myself. He asked me some questions, but once I told him that my trading would continue during the time I was away from the office, he just asked me to keep him informed about things. I could tell he was worried about me, they all were. My father seemed to realize he shouldn't try to take any action to attempt to dissuade me from going ahead with my intended plans. He knew I wasn't happy, and while he was concerned, he didn't feel it was his place to try to intercede with me. I called Joyce at home, telling her that I was at a point where I knew I needed to make some changes, admitting to her that I wasn't very happy with the way my life was going. I told her I was going to be away from the office more, telling her I wanted to think about my future. I did say I'd stay in touch with her, by phone, if she wanted me to. She told me she'd appreciate that, saying it was mostly so she wouldn't need to be as worried about me. I flew my plane from Birmingham to a private airport not far from Dr. Fellows clinic. I took a taxi over there then checked myself in as a voluntary admission. Dr. Fellows had agreed I could check myself back out of the clinic at any time. The only person I took into my confidence about my planned stay at the clinic was Frank Clooney. I only told him about it because I needed access to funds, so that my stay at the clinic could be paid for without me having to resort to using any other accounts that could be traced back to me by the various members of my family. It wasn't necessarily a secret, me returning to the clinic, but I didn't want to tell anyone until I knew if it was going to be something I thought was beneficial. I was there as much for the comfort of being able to tell myself I was attempting to do something, as for any other reason. I wasn't confident that anything would change, or that Dr. Fellows could assist me with relieving my personal unhappiness. I'd considered going to another therapist, but in the end, decided there was too much of my past history that Dr. Fellows already knew. With anyone else, I'd have to begin all over again. Dr. Fellows and I had discussed my living situation and the way I was feeling extensively during frequent phone conversations. She told me she was uncertain herself about whether she'd be able to help me much with my current situation. In the end, even though neither of us expressed much optimism about the outcome, we both agreed to try. I had it set up so that I'd stay in the clinic, as an inpatient, for two weeks during the first phase of my therapy. I would spend the early part of each week day working on my trading activities and making any outgoing business calls I felt were necessary. During all the afternoons and evenings, I'd make myself continuously available to the doctor so that she could work me into her schedule in any manner she felt was convenient for her. The first two weeks, we did nothing, except for the two of us talking for hours at a time. There were no drugs or medications administered, and no hypnosis or attempts at counseling or giving advice. We simply talked with each other. She kept asking me questions about how I saw things, and I tried to answer them to the best of my ability. Always, while I tried to answer her, she would interrupt and point out something I'd said and either ask me a question about that, or else tell me something else I'd said earlier that either contradicted what I'd just said or expressed that same thought in a slightly different way. I flew back to Birmingham, pretty much convinced that nothing had changed for me during my first two week stay. The doctor and I had agreed that I would have the next three weeks, from the time of my leaving the clinic, until after the first of the year, to myself. She told me to do whatever I normally would, but to think about what we'd been discussing. After the three weeks were up, she expected me back at the clinic for a one week follow up. After that week, I'd make visits to her clinic every other week for a five day's stay each visit. She told me we would continue like that until one of us thought any subsequent visits would no longer be productive. I only agreed to keeping up this arrangement because my trading had been going as well as it ever had, and Gene and Larry seemed to have everything I'd assigned them to well in hand. Even my father had made several comments about how smoothly things were moving while I was taking my time away. I began taking pleasure in being able to keep things on track without having to be there overseeing everything. I had about ten people I was keeping in touch with at least several times each week. All of them seemed to be either performing as well as I needed them to be, or else, like Joyce, were people I checked in with who had no responsibilities under my jurisdiction. I made it a point to speak with Mama and Gerta both, several times a week. I didn't tell them what I was doing, but several things Mama had said to me led me to believe she at least had some idea about what I was up to. Whenever I called her, she made it a point to be very encouraging. She was always telling me that she knew I was going to find a way to get everything in my life back working again. She made repeated references to her father, explaining that he had often sought out places of solitude to allow himself to work through his own problems. She made it plain to me that I had her full support, just as long as I stayed in some kind of contact with her and the others. By others, she meant Joyce, my father, and people I knew in the business. Again, it helped with her that the trading had been progressing so well, and also that the Quick Snacks program was showing every sign of becoming a real money making winner. Mama always loved success. People who knew how to make her money were given every possible benefit of the doubt. I don't mean to imply that she didn't love me for my own self, only that my success, in the business, and with my trading, had elevated that love, and had bought me her forbearance to some limited extent. The one definite thing I had accomplished during this time away from the office, and this was something that really pleased me, was the resumption of my daily phone conversations with Joyce. I'd taken to calling her at night, usually right after nine o'clock when I knew the kids were in bed, and she'd be free to talk with me. At first, we spoke mostly about business, and the need to increase shipments as the new account sales being generated created greater product demand. When we were through discussing business, she'd fill me in about what was going on with the children. She was curious about where I was and what I was doing, but all I told her was that I'd gone away to do some thinking. After a week of talking mostly about business, and a little about the children, we started talking more about ourselves, and about all the changes we both were being forced to make. We were both unhappy with most of the changes being forced upon us by our changed domestic circumstances. There were fewer functions each of us were able to delegate. We even started discussing how each of us perceived my changed attitudes, and how they affected my way of thinking and of talking. We didn't exactly argue about any of this. Neither of us expressed any change in the beliefs that had led to our separation. The biggest change was that neither of us thought I was going to change. In spite of that shared belief that I wasn't going to change, we continued talking. For the first two weeks of my new attempt at therapy, my increased communications with Joyce were really the only concrete improvement I could point to with confidence. It was enough for me though. We were talking, and each of us was doing it in spite of having accepted that we were at an impasse as far as what my personality now was. Back in Birmingham after leaving the clinic, I was surprised with how easy it was for me to get caught up with all that I'd missed. I seemed to be able to accomplish more than I had before I left. Cindy even made a comment to the effect that I seemed changed. She said I seemed more relaxed to her than I had been before. During my absence, I'd had her traveling around to several different bakery plants under the Macklinson's Bakeries umbrella. I had her looking into some production questions that I needed some answers for. Cindy had become someone I felt I could rely on to find things out for me. This was only as long as they didn't have anything that might conflict with her own family's interests. There, I chose not to rely on her findings. She had done her usual thorough job for me, finding out what I needed to know, while at the same time, making copious other notes for me about things she had observed, things that she had either found interesting and wanted me to know about, or things she suspected I might find to be important information, for one reason or another. Many of the notes she'd made raised further important questions for me. The answers she'd found for my earlier questions had made some of my future decisions much easier to formulate. I thanked her for doing such a good job, careful to praise her more for what she had accomplished on her own initiative. I told her about several changes I would be making also, based on the extra information she'd gotten for me. "I really like the differences I see in you since you came back from your trip, Kenny. Being more relaxed and less intense now, it makes you seem more like your old self. Whatever's happening, it's making you easier to be around." I knew she was curious about where I'd been and what I was doing. Quite a few people were. I'd been asked, in numerous ways, about where I'd been, and what I'd been doing, during my two weeks away from the office. I still believed that no substantive changes had occurred in me because of the time I'd spent at the clinic. If what people were commenting on was anything, it was me being more relaxed because Joyce and I seemed to be getting on better. There is a certain change in attitude I've noticed that takes place as soon as the confidence pendulum begins to swing in the opposite direction. I was beginning to feel more positive about things. It was this renewed optimism that was being sensed by those who knew me well. It made them see what they wanted to see, and it made them start to feel better about things too. Cindy was an example of this, I thought. Cindy had hinted, several times, in those first days following my return to Birmingham from the clinic, that she'd be open to her and I getting together, for dinner, or just to talk, somewhere away from the office. I didn't make any comment to show her that I was interested in taking her up on any of those hinted offers. After a few times of her overtures being left unaccepted, she stopped making any further invitations like that to me. I was working on one problem at a time. Joyce was my first, and at that time, only, focus as far as my personal situation was concerned. Right before Christmas, I asked Joyce if it would be all right for me to come spend the holiday with the children. We had previously discussed what her plans were for them before I told her what I'd like to do. What I had in mind for a visit wasn't anything special or fancy. I just wanted to be included in their Holiday celebrations. I loved watching their excitement at Christmas. I'd already sent packages out to California, and over to Shirley's new house, for my other children. I had shopped for all the children myself, and I wanted to be there to see them as they opened up my presents. I didn't want to spend another Christmas alone again. Of all the things I'd talked about with Doctor Fellows, the one thing that was troubling me the most was not being around my children while they were growing up. This was something that had bothered me right from the beginning. It was the consequence that kept popping into my head first whenever I thought about the high cost of my not being acceptable to Joyce. I had mentioned several times to the doctor, that I'd settle for just having my children with me again. She had asked me many questions about that, drawing me out at length about my feelings for each child, and my feelings for each of my wives. She kept coming back to this even when we were speaking about other things, things not directly related to my family situation. I had explained carefully, that being a part of the children's lives once again wasn't all I wanted. Instead, it was just the very least I was willing to settle for and not end up feeling as lonely and unhappy as I then felt. We kept getting off on these side tangents, whenever we talked about what I thought constituted either happiness or unhappiness for me. This happened a lot, almost whenever we talked together. It caused us problems. Sometimes, it ended up being very irritating to me that she would constantly do that. Other times, I could begin to see where she was going with her side trips away from what I wanted to talk about. It was as if she were deliberately leading me away from what I'd come to seek her help with. I had to assume she had good reasons for doing it. She knew how much it upset me most times when she did it. In spite of that, she continued doing it. When I yelled at her about it, she still wouldn't stop doing it. Sometimes, when I was yelling at her, I said things she thought were important, and we'd begin our next conversation speaking about whatever I'd said. ------- I ended up staying in Ridgeline for five days, even though Joyce and I had only agreed on me being there for Christmas day. I spent the first two nights with my parents, and with Gerta and Hans. I went over to the house on Christmas morning, but somehow ended up spending three nights at home with my children. Shirley surprised me on Christmas morning by bringing our children over and leaving them at the house for the whole time I was there. I saw her only when she came to drop them off. We were polite to each other, but remained somewhat strained with each other. She was obviously still upset with the way I'd treated her the last time I visited. Joyce and I were much less strained on that Christmas visit. Probably some part of it was all our phone conversations, and part of it was because we had both began treating our marriage as though it were over. We spoke in person much like we had been for the past few weeks over the telephone. Feeling like we'd ended our marriage left both of us dealing with the consequences and emotional impact of such a big decision. We spoke about everything, but carefully, both of us hoping to avoid another big fight. We played it safe. We were both excited about the growth in the Quick Snacks program, and with the easing of all the financial constraints on my father. Our new credit facility had put an end to his need to juggle around the company finances in order to support our internal expansion costs in areas where adequate funds for it just hadn't been available. On my final evening at the house, Joyce approached me with a proposition to have a night of sex with her. She came right out and asked me if I'd be willing. She had deliberately waited until the night before I was scheduled to leave, not wanting to spoil my visit with the children in case it didn't work out. She was honest about that and told me beforehand why she had waited. "What's changed now to make you think it would be all right for us to do this again?" I was a little surprised at her request, and was very curious about what had changed her earlier reasoning enough to allow her to be asking me to do this with her. "For one thing, I've been very horny ever since that last visit. I've been lonely too, since all the others left. Asking you for this is my Christmas present to me. I know this is the best chance for me to help both of those things without having to go out and be doing something I'd definitely be pretty uncomfortable with. We don't have to if you don't want to. I just thought that it might be something that was all right with you too." "I'm not saying it isn't what I want too. I'm just a little surprised that you waited until now to bring it up. I guess its all right. We're still married, and I wasn't the one who wanted us to ever stop making love." "Don't go getting into that with me, Kenny. We'll just end up getting into another fight if you do. I want us to call a little truce, just for one night. I'm tired of being around you and getting tensed up all the time. If we do this, all I'm asking is that you don't make it like it was the last time. Okay? I want us to have some real sex this time, like we used to have." I nodded my agreement to her, not really trusting myself to say anything. In my mind, our doing this risked all the progress we'd been making since my last visit. We were at least talking together now. I didn't want to say or do anything that would change that condition. On the other hand, except for a couple of times, sex with Joyce had always been a source of comfort and pleasure for both of us. It was one way I might be able to communicate with Joyce, a way to show her, without any words, how much she still meant to me. It was a risk, I knew that, but a risk I believed I needed to take. I was horny too, and I wanted to be with her on a basic fundamental physical level again. We ended up going to bed together at around eleven o'clock. I was flying back to Alabama the next morning, expecting to have Hans drive me to the airport at around ten o'clock. It was strange being back in bed with Joyce after so many failed attempts on both our parts. Both of us started out being a little shy, tentative and uncomfortable. Our first kisses were very tentative and awkward, with me trying to be more gentle and less demanding than I would have preferred. Fortunately, for both of us, Joyce soon made it abundantly clear that this time she didn't want either gentle or loving. She had a need to be fucked. She was frustrated and angry about how things were with us, and she blamed me for all that had gone wrong. She tried to take her frustration out on me by making me service her. She tried to treat me like I'd seen her treat one of the other wives when the two of us had ganged up on one of them. We ended up engaged in some sort of a contest of wills. Me with the greater strength, but holding back, and her with the greater need and trying to take by force what she felt she needed. It went like that for a few intense and frustrating minutes, with neither of us willing to give the other what they wanted. It ended up with the impasse being broken by me taking command, and trying to fuck her into submission. In the beginning she resisted me, refusing to be subdued. Through it all, we each managed to take our own separate pleasures. It wasn't making love, it was fucking, plain and simple. We went at it hard and nasty, me dominating her physically, and her goading me on to an even greater effort by refusing to acknowledge it was me in control. I would say it was maddening for me, but it was so intense, on a purely physical level. I came three times before my cock lost its stiffness. In the physical sense, we both went beyond our usual boundaries. I was rougher, but she much more resistant. She fought, but not to get away, only to seize control of our sexual activity. I refused to yield to her. The emotional pleasures were obviously not there for either of us. In spite of their absence, it was still satisfying to me on several other levels. It wasn't just good for me either, Joyce responded physically with much more than even her usual high level of orgasmic energy, several times pressing herself rigidly against me and gripping my cock tightly in her vaginal sheath as she came too. She wasn't holding anything back, but it wasn't a loving joining, not the kind of sex married people like us usually would have. It was more of an athletic competition, or a pitting of two wills against each other. It was almost fighting, but the purpose wasn't to hurt your opponent. At one point, I rolled off of her, completely spent, thinking that it was all over. Joyce wouldn't allow that, taking me in her mouth and sucking me back up to the point where I was hard enough for her, then mounting me from above, and riding me feverishly, until she had achieved several more cums while she was in control. I hadn't been able to cum while she was on top of me, but when she finally rolled off of me, she made no offer that I should continue in another position to achieve my own release. In her mind she had defeated me, taking what she wanted and leaving me wanting more. In my mind, it seemed similar to that as well. I was too tired and too physically satisfied to argue the point further with her. We each fell asleep after that, Joyce, almost immediately. It took me quite a bit longer before I finally dozed off. When I woke up the next morning, Joyce was gone from my bedroom. I was able to feel the remnants of her previous presence though. For the first time in a long while, I awoke feeling less tense and depressed, but sore enough to know I'd been under some physical strain. For all her lack of size, Joyce's tenacity made her a worthy opponent, even at sex. Joyce and I had taken yet another step forward. We had started off talking again and it had been guarded and cautious at first. After awhile, our conversation had improved, and we began speaking more normally to each other. I felt like the sex we'd had the night before had been a little like that, strained and not like any we'd normally have. We would improve with more practice. The important thing was we'd had sex, and both of us had insisted in getting what we each were after. It was a definite step forward for us. At breakfast, Joyce's whole demeanor had changed. Now, she was being shy and reserved around me, almost as though she was embarrassed by what we'd done. Before I could even begin to discuss anything with her, she shooed me off to the playroom, saying I should spend my remaining time with the children, urging me to be with them to tell each of them goodbye. I did as she demanded, and was surprised at how quickly the two hours slipped by. Before I knew it, Phil came into the playroom to tell me that Hans was ready to run me over to Bolling for my flight back to Birmingham. When I came out to tell her goodbye, and to thank her for allowing me the longer than planned visit, Joyce was nowhere to be seen. It didn't really surprise me that much, although I had to admit to myself that I was disappointed. After leaving the house with Hans, I started worrying about whether our sex the night before hadn't gone as well as I'd thought it had. Maybe Joyce had been hoping for and expecting us to have more emotional sex. She hadn't said anything, or made any comments during the time we were engaged in having sex together in my bedroom. I hadn't either. In truth, if I had more to say about it, I would have preferred it if there had been less of a physical taking, and more of a loving giving. It had been selfish sex, but it had developed into that with both of us allowing it to be that way. Still, selfish or not, it had been good in just the physical sense. I felt drained in one sense, but surprisingly, more energetic, because of it. ------- I thought about my visit all the way on the flight back to Birmingham. It hadn't been exactly what I'd hoped for, but, in some ways, it had been more than I'd hoped for. I felt like all the children had enjoyed me being there with them. I enjoyed being with them too. I called Joyce at nine o'clock that evening, trying to stay with the comfortable routine our phone calls had settled into being. "Hi. I got home before two. The flight back was nothing special. I did have to change altitude twice, to avoid some weather, but it was actually pretty smooth once I got above the weather." "I'm sorry I didn't come to say goodbye, Kenny. I didn't want to spoil things by crying, or us getting into a fight about anything." When she said that, I started feeling numb. It was as if all my worst fears were being confirmed by her words. It hadn't been good for her. These were exactly the kinds of mistakes I always seemed to keep making. I'd be thinking things were one way, only to find out later that no one else saw things like I did, except for me. "I'm sorry, Joyce. I really wanted it to be good for us. I thought maybe we were both a little too anxious." "Wasn't it good for you, Kenny?" There was a slight catch in her voice when she asked me the question, like she was mad because she didn't believe it wouldn't have been good for me. It made me feel guilty, because the truth was it had been good for me, real good. It was different, I recognized that it was, that it didn't have all the emotional satisfaction I would have liked too, especially when making love with Joyce after such a long period of not making love. Even with that lack though, it had been very satisfying in so many other ways. Not the least of these ways was just the fact that we were together in bed, connected again, with a part of me inside her. "I love you Joyce. I've missed you, and I've gotten used to thinking we might never sleep together again. It was good for me just because it meant I was wrong about us never doing it again. I'm not saying it was perfect for me, but it was still the best thing I've done in a long time. The most enjoyable thing I've done for sure." "Didn't you think it was too cold and impersonal? We were like two animals. It wasn't making love, it was only sex" "Maybe we both needed it like that this time. I'm sorry, Joyce. I thought this was how you wanted it. You should have said something to me." "That isn't what I meant. I did want it like that. I just wanted more too. I didn't feel, when we were doing it, that you loved me. While it was happening, I wasn't missing that feeling, but I missed it this morning, I missed it a lot. Last night I just wanted to have all those sensations that I was having. After though, that's when I missed all the other part of it we used to have. It definitely wasn't the same for me." "I missed it too, Joyce. I thought about that part too, but it didn't seem like it was the time for us to stop and discuss what we each wanted. For me, right then, it was enough that we were back to touching each other. I felt love, but it didn't feel like it was the right time to start talking about it." "I didn't feel that from you, Kenny. I felt like we were both just using each other to get ourselves off. I fell asleep, physically satisfied, but when I woke up this morning, I felt like I'd just cheated on my husband. I thought my old Kenny would be somewhere in there with us." "You can't have it both ways, Joyce. Either your old Kenny is dead, or else he's still a part of me, and he was there with us. You have to decide. If you had been more loving, I would have been too. I was giving you the same thing you were giving me. Where was your love?" "I love my old Kenny. I keep hoping to find him with you. I keep getting disappointed." "I'm sorry. We don't have to have sex anymore. You might have been disappointed, Joyce, but I can honestly say I wasn't. What happened last night doesn't have to ruin what we've been having this past month. I still want us to continue with the phone calls and with being friends again. I won't try to get you to sleep with me if the way we do it now is something that would bother you." "I didn't say that was what I wanted you to do, Kenny. I know I can't spend the rest of my life being celibate. I guess I had just built my hopes up too far. It will be better now that I know for sure that you aren't my old Kenny, and that he isn't going to ever be coming back to me. My main problem is that I don't love who you are now, and I can't just pretend to you that I do." "That isn't the problem, Joyce. The problem is you want things to be exactly like they used to be. It isn't going to happen. As long as you hold out any hope for it, you'll be closed off to what is still possible for us. I could be much more like your old Kenny if you'd only gave me half a chance to show you I could. You keep looking to find all the differences. There was a lot of who I am now in the old Kenny, and, if you'd just be honest, you'd admit you loved that part of him too." "I enjoyed being fucked by you, okay? That should be enough for you. I'm trying what you said I should. It worked to relieve some of my stress, and it didn't exactly feel like I was being unfaithful when I was with you. Shirley was asking me today all about what we did last night. I wish you'd done her too while you were here, Kenny. She's driving me crazy with all her complaining about how terrible things are now. I told her it was just fucking, but she didn't seem to care about that part. All she wanted to talk about was whether I came good, and how many times I came." "I'm still thinking about our things, Joyce. I don't want to complicate my life any more than it already is. Shirley isn't on my immediate agenda. For me, right now, its only you." "This is why I slept with you, Kenny. Sometimes, when I've given up expecting to hear anything that reminds me of before, you slip up and say something on the phone when we're talking. Things that remind me so much of the old days. I start believing again in what I've been hoping, but it never turns out like I hoped it would." "Maybe you're just hoping for too much. I've had to re-define all my new goals. I know I can't satisfy all your objections, and that we can't go back to the same way things used to be. I remember those times though, and I'm willing to settle for a lot less. Mainly because it could be a lot less, and still be a lot more than what I have now." ------- My next stay at the clinic was supposed to be for only one week. I asked Dr. Fellows to let me stay for a second week. She was helping me to see more of the good things happening to me, allowing me to try to expand my focus away from just the bad parts in my life. It was helping me. I wanted to consolidate what I was beginning to feel, so I opted to remain. I still didn't consider what we were doing to be real therapy. It felt more like I was doing a lot of talking with a friend. One who knew me very well. I continued doing all the business things during the early part of the day, and having my conversations with the doctor in the afternoon and evenings. At nine every evening I called and spoke with Joyce. We had both gotten past discussing what was wrong with the sex we'd had on the Christmas visit, and the mixed feelings she still had about that sexual episode. Joyce was excited about an upcoming visit from Emily and Brenda and the children. She was urging me to visit while they were there. I resisted doing it, knowing that it would just increase everyone's tensions, and cast a pall over their visit. I wasn't ready to deal with anything except my situation with Joyce. A week after Emily and Brenda returned to California, I flew up to Ridgeline for another visit with the children. This time, Joyce and I had both agreed that we'd sleep together while I was there. Joyce told me she wasn't expecting anything other than sex. I knew it wasn't going to be just sex with me, but I didn't want to say anything to possibly scare her away. It was a great visit. The sex was much better, more fulfilling, on several different emotional levels this time. We were both more relaxed, and started being playful with each other. There was more touching while we talked in bed. More of the fingers tracing along the other's body. Kisses given for no other reason than to confirm the interest in and the closeness of mouth to the affected body part. We didn't speak about the differences, but we both were very aware of them. This time, when it came time for me to leave, Joyce and I spent five minutes saying our goodbye's. It felt good to leave this time. I had a definite belief that I was in touch not only with my own feelings, but with Joyce's response to how the visit had gone. My call home to her that night just confirmed what I already knew. Joyce admitted, on the phone, that she could see more of the old Kenny in me now. She brought up the subject of me coming home for more regular stays. The only thing that cast any negativity on the phone call was when she again brought up Shirley's situation to me. "Joyce, let's just work on figuring out some way the two of us can manage to get along together. If we try to add anything, it just makes the whole situation that much more complex and complicated. We're making good progress. We shouldn't do anything that might set us back from that." "She knows about our visits, Kenny. I tell her about everything we do, and about how things went. Now that things are better for us, she wants things to get better for her too. I can't just keep telling her you don't want to see her yet." "It isn't time for me to be with Shirley yet." I knew, just from listening to the way Joyce was talking to me that she'd decided she needed to get her way with this. "It isn't fair to her or to me for you to be like that. You don't realize how hard its been on all of us. Now that I'm doing better with you, it makes the rest of them feel like they're being left out of things again. Emily and Brenda have both complained about me only thinking about myself. They think I can get you to do whatever I want you to do. It looks bad for me when I'm the only one who has any close contact with you." "I could call and talk to any of them that want to hear from me. That's how we got started again this time. Find out if any of them want to talk to me. I'd like to talk to the children too. I just don't want to try for too much too soon. Things are improving with us. We're getting along again, and I'm not feeling as down about my personal situation as I was." "That's another thing, Kenny, none of us know much about your personal situation any more. Where are you calling me from right now? When I told Emily and Brenda about these frequent trips of yours, both of them said you probably have a new girl that you've been seeing. If you do have someone else, you should at least be honest and tell me you do. I wouldn't be angry if you did, but I'd like to know about it. I don't want to find out about it later, from someone else." It didn't really surprise me that Joyce would finally think I was away because I was having a fling with some girl. That was how her mind worked. I doubted that Emily or Brenda had said anything like she claimed they had. This was again Joyce's basic insecurity about me. I had to decide what I should say to her. We'd been doing so much better. I didn't want to let anything spoil that. "I've been staying at the clinic, Joyce. I signed myself in as a voluntary patient. I don't have any interest in any new girls. I've been working with Dr. Fellows, trying to make some of those changes you think are so important. So far, all we've done is talk about things. We aren't really doing any therapy, just talking together. She helps me understand things. She asks questions that force me to think about some things differently than I used to." "You went back to the clinic? Why?" I could hear the relief in her voice. I didn't know if it was because I was seeking the help she'd asked me to get, or because she had been worried that Emily and Brenda had been right about there being another woman. "Because you suggested it. I wanted to see someone, to help me with the way I was feeling. It just seemed easier to see someone who already knew about my past, and about my problems and all the changes in my living situation. I go there and we talk for a few days before I come back here to Birmingham. I work in the daytime, with the trading, and the Macklinson's things when I'm there. In the afternoons and evenings, we get together and talk. I get more done when I'm not seeing so many people. Its more peaceful knowing I can get some questions answered, or find different ways to handle some situations that seem to always be coming up. I've learned some things here that have already helped me." "I'm glad you're getting help, Kenny, but, for some reason, I feel bad about that too. I thought that was why you were calling me, so we could talk and I could help you with those things. I thought I was helping. Haven't I helped you with your questions?" Joyce was beginning to sound upset. I had thought she'd be happy to find out I was getting help. She'd been the one to first suggest it to me. Now, after I told her that I'd done what she asked, she was beginning to sound like she was jealous of Dr. Fellows or something. Joyce was not a normal person. I had always known that, but now it was becoming much clearer to me. "I call you Joyce, because I love you, not because I want or need you to help me change. The reasons I call you are just to talk with you in order to feel more connected to you, and to the rest of our family. I'm seeing Dr. Fellows to help me with my connections with all kinds of people. She helps me think about how I do things, and why I sometimes say things I really don't mean around others. I want us to work, Joyce. I'm trying to make changes so it will be easier for you to accept me the way I'm going to end up being." "I don't know why it bothers me, Kenny. It does though. I know what I told you, but I really thought it was our talking that was causing all these changes in you. I was beginning to believe everything was going to work out for us. Now, I'm not as sure." "Things will work out, but only if we both want them to. I'm not sure about all of it working out for all of us, but I know you and I can work out as long as we both want it badly enough. Unless you and I are strong together, the rest of it doesn't have any chance of working. Even if we are strong together, some, or even most, of the rest of it might not work out for us again." "Don't say that. You don't know it won't work out. If you go into it thinking it might not work out, then it won't." "That sounds like some advice I gave you earlier, Joyce. About us. I'm not saying it won't work out with the others. What I'm saying is it won't work out the way we both want it to unless you and I have worked everything out ourselves first. Neither of us is strong enough to keep all those relationships together if we're off on our own." "It would probably help our relationship to get stronger if you were to come back home and spent more time with us, Kenny. What I've been trying to tell you is that it would be better for all of us if you and Shirley worked things out too. I'm confident that she would want to move back here again if you and she ever got your situation resolved. She doesn't like living by herself in her own house. Another thing, and this has to do with the urgency of you getting things straightened out with her, is that she's getting just as tempted as I was to get some sex from somewhere. Regular sex, with some other guy." "Did she tell you that?" I heard her, and felt the fear clutching at my stomach. I hoped Joyce wasn't about to tell me that Shirley had already done something with someone else. "We've both been talking about it, for at least the last six months. If I hadn't gotten back to doing things with you, I probably would have gone out looking for someone else soon. Shirley is the same as me that way. Masturbation only relieves some of the physical pressures. It isn't the same as having a man inside you. Shirley is getting desperate." I didn't like thinking about Joyce or Shirley being with another man. I didn't like hearing that both had seriously considered it. I hadn't liked it when I'd learned about the others going out and having sex with the people they had. Even Cindy, with her being with her other women, outside the family. I had gone ahead and accepted it, having no other options, but I still didn't like it. I wondered if Joyce was deliberately pushing one of my hot buttons. She could be telling me this about Shirley in order to get me to do what I knew she wanted me to do. She knew how possessive I could be. She knew all my secrets. I'd always enjoyed sex with Shirley anyway. I felt myself starting to rationalize the decision to include Shirley in our sexual activities on my next visit home. I told Joyce I'd call Shirley and talk to her about how things now stood with the two of us. Having said that, I felt better. This was Joyce and I agreeing to cooperate together on something involving our family. This was something I'd asked her to do with me, and I'd come close to not cooperating myself, because I had concerns about her motivation for talking to me about it. I also felt better about telling Joyce where I had been going, and what I was trying to do when I went there. Even with her less than overwhelmingly positive response to my news, I figured, after she had time to think about things, she would realize that I'd only done what she told me she wanted me to do. It was important to Joyce, for her to have some kind of control over my decisions, to know she had influence with me. It was important to me to do whatever was necessary to regain all that I'd lost. I'd tried resisting and fighting Joyce, and all it had gotten me was a life that seemed drained of all the happiness I'd once known. With Dr. Fellows help, I was beginning to find what I was hoping would turn out to be a path that would lead me to achieve my goal. I was convinced that Joyce and I needed to be solidly together in order for our joint goals to have any chance of being realized. I hoped that Joyce too had learned some lessons about what it would take to get back to the life she obviously still wanted. If she hadn't learned, then it would never happen. ------- Chapter 69 When I went back to the clinic, after my visit with Joyce and the children, Dr. Fellows and I spoke at length about my feelings, and about Joyce's reaction after I told her that I was getting some help at the clinic. Dr. Fellows told me Joyce probably would have some resentment about having been left out when I made my decision to seek help from the clinic, because she thought of her role in my life as much more than being just my wife. Joyce felt like we were partners in all things. When I told her that Joyce was pressuring me to get back together with Shirley as well as her, we immediately started getting into something that stopped being simple conversations. What we'd done before this hadn't seemed like therapy to me. As soon as I brought up what Joyce was telling me about Shirley though, it stopped being just conversational between us. For some reason, and I didn't have any idea why, when I brought up my misgivings about trying to get back with Shirley before Joyce and I had settled our situation, our sessions became more formal, more of a doctor patient atmosphere surrounded them. It seemed like it was more clinical and there was a definite professional aspect that hadn't been present before. It wasn't subtle, and I noticed the difference immediately. It was as though what I had told her had triggered something that caused the doctor to become more alert. She questioned me at some length about how I felt about Joyce's request about Shirley. After I answered her, admitting to having some misgivings, she told me she wanted to hypnotize me again, and ask me some other questions. I was a little resistant about having her do this. I'd grown comfortable with the way she had been doing things. I liked being awake and aware while she asked me her questions. It made me feel less like a patient, and more like someone who was a true participant. We spent another half hour discussing her reasons for wanting to put me under. In the end, she convinced me it was necessary. She accomplished this by telling me there was a big discrepancy between what I was telling her I wanted and what she had come to believe I actually wanted. She explained it as being like the difference between how someone actually viewed himself and how he wanted other people to view him. She said it was normal for there to be some wide differences between those two, but that people were usually more aware of these differences in viewpoints than I seemed to be. Something in what she was telling me struck a responsive chord. I think having all those times when people reacted differently than I thought they would, or when I found out they weren't seeing things the same way I was, tended to make what she was telling me much more believable. I saw these discrepancies often in my daily living. These differences, between what I thought was occurring, and what others thought was happening, were worrisome to me. They were something I really felt I needed to overcome. I gave her permission to go ahead with the hypnosis. For the remainder of our week together, each day Dr. Fellows would bring me into her office, usually for two or three times in the afternoon and evening, and immediately put me into a hypnotized state. When she brought me back out of it again, we would usually have a long talk. I noticed she always seemed to want to focus in on one particular area each time we talked, right after she had finished hypnotizing me. Before that, when we were simply talking with each other, we'd jump around, talking about many things, but now we usually stayed on the same narrow topic during these talks. In the beginning, most of what we were talking about concerned only Joyce and me, but after awhile, it was more about what I thought about Shirley and all my other wives. Finally, she questioned me about how I thought Joyce felt about each of the other wives. I'd give her the same answers all the time, but, no matter what I told her, she would come back and ask me several times again about why it was I thought that way. I started getting worried that she might be thinking I wasn't answering her correctly. I was also beginning to be worried that she might decide I needed to come back to the clinic and stay there for another long period of time. This fear probably kept me from expanding on most of my answers. I knew my real feelings weren't as clear cut as what I'd tried to make them seem when I answered some of her questions. My feelings about all the other wives were complicated. Some of this was because of their actions, but most of it was because of my reactions to what had happened. I felt guilt over what had happened to me, and anger about what they had done during the time while I was sick. It wasn't easy for me to tell someone about the mixed feelings I had about most of the other wives. I'd had them about Joyce as well, but now, I didn't feel I could afford to allow those angry feeling to come to the surface. Some of what had troubled me about her had been resolved by me. The rest of it, I'd decided to just accept and internalize. I wanted Joyce back, so I chose to accept what I couldn't dispel. "Doctor, I'd feel better for now if we just concentrated on Shirley, and on whether it would be better if I did what Joyce wanted me to do, or if I told her it was still too soon to add Shirley to the process we're trying to go through." I think this was the first time that I'd actually told Dr. Fellows what I specifically wanted to work on. Telling her felt right to me because Shirley wasn't the same to me as any of the other wives. She was the one that Joyce seemed most concerned about, and she was still in Ridgeline. Also, Shirley had remained faithful to me. I didn't want to tell Dr. Fellows that, but it definitely made a difference to me. "Kenny, a large part of the anger and unhappiness you exhibit has to do with you trying to pretend you weren't as hurt and affected by what you think of as your wives betrayals. This is a carryover from your early life at St. Cecilia's. Pretending not to care isn't the same as not caring. Your true feelings are still finding outlets for expression. The disparity between what you are saying and how you are acting towards your family is harmful and confusing to them. We need to take a good look at possible ways to bring your feelings and actions back into line with each other. The first step to doing that would be for you to be honest with yourself about your feelings." I had a moment of panic when it became obvious to me that Dr. Fellows, when she had me hypnotized, had access to all my innermost secret thoughts and beliefs. I hadn't thought too much about the access I was giving her when I consented to her hypnotizing me again. My immediate reaction was to try to take control again. "I want you to limit our discussion to the immediate problem of what I should do about Shirley." "What do you want to do about Shirley?" "I told you that I thought I should do what Joyce wants." "I know what you told me. What I'm asking you is what do you want to do." "I want to talk to Shirley first, just like I did with Joyce. I want to see if we can find a way to get along together again. I don't want her deciding that there's no hope for us, because I'm not sure yet that there isn't. I don't want her being with someone else. I don't want her giving up." "This answer is consistent with your true feelings, Kenny. You've expressed these same beliefs and desires to me under hypnosis. Whenever we talk about Shirley, I find you to be internally and externally consistent. This isn't the case with most of the other women in your life. Perhaps, with time and more honest discussions together, these conflicted feelings you have about the other wives will resolve themselves into something we can better work with and understand." "I should do what Joyce wants then? It won't cause problems between Joyce and me?" "You should do what you want to do, whatever you think should be done. All I'm telling you right now, is that what you've just told me you wanted to do isn't in conflict with any of your subconscious feelings or beliefs. If you go forward with this, you won't have any inner turmoil from doing so, or be divided with yourself about it." "I should talk to her first then?" "If that is what you believe would be best." She was deliberately provoking me by not giving me a clear cut answer to my question. I wanted directions, something I could fall back on later and point to in case things didn't turn out well. She had the answers for me, she just didn't want to give them all to me at once. "It would have been quicker and easier if you had just told me that in the first place. It would probably make things simpler if you made me a list of all the areas where I think something different than my subconscious does when I'm hypnotized. That way, I could get some idea about how much I still need to change." "Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. It isn't simply a case of finding an area of conflict and then applying a solution. You had a certain lifestyle at an earlier time, one you were able to accept and feel comfortable with. There have been significant changes to your personality with this merger of your two identity states. With your present personality, you no longer feel comfortable with some aspects of your old lifestyle. This may change. In fact, I'm reasonably certain that it is changing. This is partly a result of our discussions, and partly because you have become more willing to accommodate change. Whether these changes will prove to be enough or not, that is what we're now working to discover. I believe the primary issues we have left facing us all have to do with what I'd call your newly developing tolerances. There are discrepancies between what you wish you believed and what you actually do believe. These discrepancies are having an adverse effect on your conscious desire to reconcile with some members of your family." "I've already accepted everything that happened while I was sick. I forgave all of them for those things. I've been with most of them since I became well again. I haven't noticed any problems because of what happened before." "How upset were you when Eddie and Dale decided to go back to Oklahoma? Or when Cindy stopped staying with you like she had been?" I hadn't been very upset. Cindy's leaving hadn't troubled me at all. Still, no matter the easy time I had of letting Eddie and Dale go away again, I hadn't really thought about them being unfaithful since I picked them up at the airport in Chickasaw. I had tolerated things pretty well I believed. Part of me believed Dr. Fellows was wrong. I knew I had to make a choice about what the doctor was telling me. I could either fight what she was telling me, or I could accept it, then see what we could do to repair these apparent conflicts. I chose to accept what she was saying. The choice was made easier for me because of the failures I had experienced trying to put my life back together without her help. It felt good to decide that. It felt like something I wouldn't have been able to do before when I was trying to work things out on my own. I didn't comment on that to the doctor. I wanted to savor it for myself, as my reward for being able to come to a good decision. When I got back to my room, I called Shirley. It was only six thirty in the evening, but I was anxious to speak with her. I expected things to go slowly with her at first, just like they had with Joyce in the beginning. I was prepared for that. Naturally, because I was prepared, it didn't go like that at all. "Hi Shirl, its Kenny." There was a long pause. "Kenny, I'm in the middle of giving the kids their baths. Can you call me back in fifteen minutes?" She didn't seem surprised that I was calling her, even though this was the first time I'd ever called her since she had moved into her new house. I figured Joyce must have told her I'd probably be calling soon. I waited for twenty minutes before calling her back. This time Derek answered. He and I talked for fifteen minutes. I got caught up on everything he and his two sisters had done since I'd last seen them. I spoke with Leah and Becky too. Leah, at eight years old, communicated like someone much older. She was super intelligent, and given to some very moody periods. I worried about that with her. Becky, at six, almost seven, was almost the opposite of her older sister. She wasn't as bright, although she was bright enough, but she was the happiest, most carefree child I'd ever come across. She was always laughing at anything, and able to see the good in situations when no one else did. Even the smallest things kept her out on the far edge of excited. I always felt better after spending time with Becky. Only after I'd spent time talking to each child did Shirley come on the line. "Thanks for calling back. I was having a hard time with Derek, getting him to take his bath. He only finally agreed to take one because I promised to let him talk to you when you called back." "Why don't you let him take showers? He's old enough now, and showers are a lot quicker. Boys aren't into baths at his age. I never liked baths." "You told me you didn't take baths at the orphanage." "I didn't, but if they had baths for the older boys I still would have preferred showers. Its faster, more efficient, and you aren't left sitting in all that dirty water." "Okay, I'll try it. Would it be all right for me to tell him you said he should take showers? He might do it easier if he knew it was you that was telling him to." "Put him on the phone for a minute. I'll talk to him." "Daddy?" "Hi again, sport. Listen, I've told your mother that you're old enough now to begin taking showers. I told her you'd like them better than baths. I want you showering every night while the girls take their baths. Make sure you get completely wet and use the soap all over too. A good shower only takes about five minutes. I hope your mother tells me there aren't any problems with you keeping clean from now on." "Kenny. Whatever you said seems to have made an impression. He was grinning from ear to ear when he gave me back the phone." "I hope it works. It was good to talk to all of them. I miss having them around me." "They miss you too. Especially Derek. We all miss you." "That's part of the reason why I called. You know I guess that Joyce and I have been trying to get past these changes in my personality. I've been trying to show her it can work for us. I think we're really starting to make some progress towards maybe getting back together. I wanted to do the same with you too." "You haven't acted like you did." "I know I haven't. I feel like Joyce and I are the ones who needed to be the first ones to get things worked out so we could get back together. We had the most problems that needed to be resolved. She's been telling me it was time for you and I to start talking about us now. I think she's right, that now is a good time for us to start talking and working out our differences. I'd like to start talking to you more, on the telephone, and maybe come by to see you and the kids when I come up to visit Joyce and the kids. You and I need to work out some things too. We need to talk more." "Are you saying you think you have the time now to squeeze me and our children into your busy schedule?" This wasn't like Shirley, being so confrontational and angry. Her anger wasn't helping things either. I could see that this could quickly turn into another failure. I hadn't tried to ignore her. If anything, it was Shirley going out of her way to avoid being where I was. We hadn't really spoken to each other much since I'd left the clinic. "Is this really how you want to use this time, Shirley? Having another fight? I'm willing to sit here with you and we can talk about why you're angry. We can talk everyday on the phone, and you can tell me how you feel. I had to go through that with Joyce too. I called you tonight because I wanted us to start taking steps to get back together again. I've been getting some help back at the clinic, hoping to be different than I've been since I was released. If now is too soon for you to want to do this, or if you honestly feel it is too late for us, tell me, and I'll do whatever you want." "Too soon? You've slept with everyone now, everyone but me and Emily. I've tried everything to get you into bed with me, but you keep pushing me away. Emily has Brenda at least. I don't have anyone else. This is what happens whenever you finally manage to get around to me again. You say something that sets me off, and then, when I get mad and leave, I have to wait another few months for you to finally get back around to me again. It's been almost four years now, Kenny." "This time it was you who set yourself off. Last time we were at the house together, I thought we had a deal for us to talk, and to sleep together. You didn't ever show up. That time at the hospital, I was having some anger problems, and you were becoming frightened of me. In spite of how it might seem to you, Shirley, I really do want to be with you." "Do you have any idea how ashamed I felt when you talked to me like I was some kind of whore that time? You acted like I was just going to be some convenience you wanted provided for your visit. It didn't matter that it was me, it could have been anyone, you wouldn't have cared." Shirley was crying and we weren't getting anything positive from this conversation. It was obvious to me that she wasn't ready yet to discuss our future. She was still dealing with the past. She probably needed to deal with that first, before we could get to our future. I was still dealing with the past too, according to Dr. Fellows. "Shirley, I'm sorry. That day we were talking, I wasn't even thinking about how long it had been for us. We were at the house, and I wanted you. I'd have said the same thing to you four years ago, and you wouldn't have been upset. Maybe I should have realized I couldn't speak to you like that before we cleared up all the things that had happened from when I was sick. These are some of the things I've been trying to work on." "Why aren't you getting mad and yelling at me?" Shirley changed tactics. It seemed to throw her off that I wasn't exploding in anger at her. It was sad, but that is what she'd come to expect from me. Shirley was somewhat meek, and, while I was sick, I'd often picked her out as an easy target for my ridicule, or lashed out at her verbally, on the telephone. "I'm not mad at you. You have a right to be angry. A lot has happened, and none of it was your fault. A lot of my anger was because I knew it was my fault, and that I'd let everyone down. I know now it wasn't anything I could have controlled. I'm trying to find areas I can do something about now, to change from the way I do things when I see the way I did them before was wrong." "So now the kids and I are an area you need to fix? A problem you need to deal with?" Shirley obviously wasn't going to let me off the hook on this first phone call. I remembered having a lot of calls like this in the beginning with Joyce. Shirley needed to get out some of her anger at me, at the situation we were all in. Dr. Fellows had gone over this with me before. She said it was a normal part of reestablishing communications and achieving emotional balance. "You aren't a problem. All of us being separated and apart is the problem I was referring to. I want us to begin to change that. If we're going to make that happen, at some point, we're going to have to get over being angry and start to work together to start on the path to reconciliation." "You think it's that easy? I'm supposed to just ignore everything you've said and done? That seems pretty convenient for you, Kenny. What about me?" "I don't know what you're supposed to do. What I'm doing is trying to speak to you more, finding out what needs to happen so that we can begin to resume some sort of relationship. I'm tired of not having us together. I miss you, and I miss the kids." "I don't know either. Let me think about it. When are you planning to call us again?" Shirley didn't sound optimistic. After the conversation we had though, I was willing to accept that she even expected me to call her again. I answered her quickly. "Tomorrow night?" "What time tomorrow?" She seemed businesslike, not betraying anything with her question. "How about seven thirty?" "Are you going to call Joyce right after you hang up with me?" I looked at my watch. It was a little past seven thirty. I didn't call Joyce until after nine. "I'll call her after nine, after the kids are in bed." There was a pause. I wondered if she was upset that I called Joyce more than I called her? "Call me later tonight, after you finish talking to Joyce. By then, maybe I'll be in a better mood, and we can really talk to each other." I knew it would be late, because Joyce and I usually spoke for more than an hour. I told Shirley it might not be before eleven o'clock. She told me to call her anyway. I hung up feeling good about the call. While it was true it hadn't been an unqualified success, it hadn't been a total disaster either. I'd spoken with my children, and Shirley wanted me to call her again. I was pretty certain that she and Joyce would be on the telephone from now until almost nine o'clock. I knew Joyce wanted what I wanted, and I expected she would get Shirley into a more receptive frame of mind for my later phone call. I talked to Joyce until almost ten thirty. The last fifteen minutes of our call was mostly her telling me to hang up so I could call Shirley. All the rest of our time on the phone together was spent discussing my earlier phone call to Shirley. It got upsetting to me after awhile, having to listen to Joyce carefully explaining repeatedly about what was going on in Shirley's mind. Just as we were winding up our call, Joyce told me that Shirley was hoping I'd be talking sexy with her when I called her back. By the time I got off the phone with Joyce, I was upset that she had insisted on keeping the focus of our conversation strictly on Shirley during the entire hour and a half that we were talking. I wasn't in any mood to be talking sexy with Shirley after that. I didn't like having Joyce taking over and orchestrating my reconciliation efforts with Shirley. I was angry with myself for not having spoken to Joyce about that while we were on the telephone. This was another reminder of the problem Dr. Fellows was telling me I was having. I called Shirley right after I got off the phone with Joyce. I didn't want to allow my anger with Joyce to spill over with my conversation with Shirley. I probably should have waited a few minutes before calling her. I needed time to allow myself to change gears. I wasn't angry with Shirley. I should have waited until my anger with Joyce had subsided. "Hi Shirley. I just finished up speaking with Joyce. We spent an hour and a half discussing you." "You sound like you're mad. Did she tell you something that upset you?" "I am mad, mad at her. Joyce is doing everything she can to try to turn this into some sort of a package deal. I wanted to keep each thing separate. I can't handle having everything tied in together like she seems to want. I don't want her butting in everything that happens with us either. That isn't why I called her. She didn't talk about her and I at all." "This isn't working for me right now, Kenny. You say you don't want things tied in together, but you're doing just that with me now. Let's say good night, and you can call me again when you aren't all angry about something else." "We can do that. I'd prefer it if you just gave me a few minutes to get myself calmed back down again. I should have waited to call you until I got back under control, but I knew it was getting late." "I was in bed already anyway. I've been having some fun while I was waiting for you to call me. Today was a very good day for me to be having fun. I think just knowing you were going to be calling me helped it be so good." I liked the way she decided, right away, to do something besides end our phone call. In some ways, Shirley was a lot more flexible than either Joyce or me. She wasn't quite as willing to give up on her plans just because something else came up that put a cloud over them. I started picturing her in my mind, lying on top of her covers, two screwdrivers inside her, buried deeply in her two holes. "Have you been in your tool chest again?" "I don't use tools anymore, Kenny. I have other toys now. The same things other girls use when they get horny." "Vibrators?" "One of them is, the small one. The other one is just a dildo, made out of some kind of hard rubber. It's a lot bigger." "As big as me?" "Way bigger. Joyce brought this one over to me as my housewarming gift. I'd never seen anything this big before. I don't use it very often, because it's too big, but sometimes I'm just in the mood for that." I remembered that big oven screwdriver handle. It had been a favorite of Shirley's. I wondered if what she had was thicker than that handle had been? "Is it as thick as the oven screwdriver?" "Bigger than that too. It just barely fits in me, and only after I take a lot of time working it in. I don't even dare to try to move it. I move the vibrator instead. I'm doing that now." "I wish I was there to see it." "I wish you were too. If you were here though, this big thing wouldn't be in me. I wouldn't want you to see me doing this. Hold on a minute, okay? I'm getting close again." I sat there at my desk in my room, listening as Shirley got off loudly with her two appliances. I wondered if she hadn't planned this out in advance of my call? Was she thinking teasing me like she was would be some kind of revenge on me or something? If that was what she had planned, it was backfiring on her. As I listened to her having her loud orgasm, I had my hand gliding up and down on my stiff cock. By the time she had recovered herself and started in talking to me again, I had already managed to get myself off. It had been awhile since I'd played with myself, long enough to make my cum a six or seven tissue emission. The first one is always the one that has the most cum. "Are you still there, Kenny?" "I'm here. That sounded like a good one. Now I really wish I was there. I know how you get after you have that first cum out of your system." "That wasn't the first one. There were three before you called me. Did hearing me make you want to start playing with yourself?" "Of course it did. In fact, I did play with myself. I came about half a minute after you started. My hand is still sticky. I had to change ears with the telephone." "Are you going to hang up now?" There was worry in her voice when she asked me that. Shirley was a marathon runner when it came to sex. She liked taking full advantage of those times when she had everything working well for her. "I thought we were going to talk too?" "I just wanted you to call me back on the phone to make my cum better. What was it you wanted to talk about?" I wondered if this was something Shirley had thought up all by herself, or something that Joyce had helped her with? I found myself starting to get angry and upset again. I remembered our earlier conversation just in time though, and then I knew this was just Shirley's way of paying me back for that other time when she said I'd made her feel like a whore. I was starting to pause longer before losing my temper. Well, I was starting to pause longer before acting on my losing my temper. The phone was a lot better for me than if I'd been there in person with her. I'd found that out with Joyce before too. "Listening to you having fun made it better for me, Shirley. We always used to have fun in bed together. Now we have had fun in bed when we were apart." "Are you in bed too, Kenny?" "No, I'm sitting in my chair in front of the desk in my room at the clinic. Its the one I use when I do my trading during the mornings. My phone cord doesn't reach all the way over to my bed. If it did, I'd have been on my bed when I listened to you doing that." "Why aren't you mad at me now?" This was either the second or third time she'd asked me that. It sounded like making me angry was her top priority. "Is that what you want? For me to get mad at you instead of being mad at Joyce?" "I don't know what I want. You've been confusing me by not doing what I've come to expect from you. All I know is that I don't want us to be like we are now. I hate being mad at you, but I hate everything that has happened to us. I've got to blame someone for that because I know I didn't do anything to make any of it happen. The kids didn't do anything to have it happen either." "I know, none of you did. I got sick, and that caused most of the things that ended up happening. You're absolutely right about needing to blame somebody though. I feel like that all the time. If I could, I'd try to forget everything that happened, and just change things back to how they used to be. We can't do that though, so we just have to try to put the pieces of our life back together as well as we can. After we find a way to do that, then we'll find out if whatever's left is enough for us to go on." "We aren't pieces, Kenny. You don't realize it but you treat all of us like we're just these separate pieces in your life. Everything you say is just about you now. The rest of us should all be at that clinic, not you. All the wives should be there getting help. We all must be crazy if we still love you after all this." "I could talk to Doctor Fellows and find out if she'd give me a group discount rate. It might not be such a bad idea, you know? Talking to her has been helping me. I know Joyce talks to her too. I've made all of you mad and unhappy, but sometimes, I'm not always sure about what it is I've done that makes you feel this way. I think you all still blame me because I'm changed now. Why won't any of you accept that I didn't wish for any of this either?" "Listen to what you're saying, Kenny. That's you again, telling me about how all of this is affecting you. I worry about you too, but I'm also worried about myself, and about our children. The rest of our family feels the same way. Joyce keeps telling us that you do still care about us, but all any of the rest of us are hearing is you keeping talking about how hard this has been on you. Something did happen, but everyone knows that you're the one who made it happen. No one is saying it was deliberate, but it happened, and none of the rest of us can do anything to fix it. You can do something, but I can tell you that we don't have faith that what you've been doing so far is making things better. We aren't seeing any progress, except for some you've been having recently with Joyce." "I thought today was progress for us, Shirl, progress with you and with our children. This isn't going to be something we can just snap our fingers at and fix. If it was, I would have already done that. I'm not sure this is the right time for you and me. Joyce told me something that really bothered me. It bothered me enough to try to speed things along." "She said I was going to start looking for another guy to sleep with." "She told me you both had talked about it." "We did, and we still do. After we get done talking about it, we give our kids baths and take care of a hundred other things that need to get done to keep all of us going. I'm not going out looking for anyone, Kenny. If that's why you called me, you can relax and go back to the way you were doing things before. The same is true with Joyce. Who are we going to find that would be able to replace what we had with you? Let's face it, maybe Brenda and Emily can go out and find someone that could compete with you, but that isn't true for either Joyce or me. We don't have the looks to do it. Having all these kids doesn't make us into such hot prospects either." "Maybe not, but you guys are my two hottest prospects. Having all those kids is a big plus with me too." Shirley laughed. "Joyce said we both should have known you were crazy before, otherwise you wouldn't have ever picked either of us." "Joyce is wrong again. I'm only in the very early stages of getting things put back together again. Even if Joyce hadn't said anything to me about you, Shirley, you'd have been the next one on my list to do that with. My doctor has been talking to me about my subconscious mind. She was looking into the differences between what I say I feel and what I actually do feel deep down inside myself. I'm not certain about why it is, but the doctor told me today that there is no difference at all between the way I say I feel about you and the way I really do feel. She says I'm going to need to work on changing my tolerances for this to be true about all the other wives, all except for you. I think its a lot more complicated than what I'm able to understand, but I know I do love you with all my heart, and that I want for you and me to get back together again. I don't have any reservations about it. None at all." "Its late, Kenny. I want us to quit talking now, before we say something else to ruin what I'm feeling at this point. I'm very happy to hear you still feel something for me. I needed to hear that from you, and to find a way to believe it. Right now I do believe it, and I want to go to sleep with that in my mind. Good night. I love you too." You take people loving you for granted. Sometimes, you take it too much for granted, and then you find out that you did, but by then, it's too late. When Shirley told me she still loved me, it was a huge relief for me. I didn't think things were going to get any worse for us, and if she still loved me already, there was a lot for me to be hopeful about. ------- Chapter 70 The next day, the doctor and I had several long conversations. She didn't hypnotize me. She did caution me about getting too far ahead of myself, or trying to put things back together again too hastily. Life has a way of diffusing a lot of activity being cast in any one particular direction she told me. She also said that proceeding cautiously was probably something for me to stick with, at least for the short term. We spoke at length about the conflicts she said I had over my relationships with all the other wives. It wasn't simply their acts of faithlessness, although that was a big part of it. It had to do more with commitment, and with the subconscious me believing that they had all betrayed the commitments they'd made to me. It wasn't just their commitments to me either, it was the commitments they were supposed to have with the whole family. Interestingly, for me at least, this subconscious belief I had about being betrayed didn't come from the values I now had as an adult, but from the values of who I'd been before. These were carryovers from my earlier childhood. From a time when I tended to deal only in absolutes. This was what Dr. Fellows was telling me. She said we needed to work on getting my current values back in line with my past values. To do this, one or the other would have to change. She hinted strongly that this was something I needed to focus on before I went too far forward with any plans to reconcile with any of my wives. Naturally, none of this was what I wanted to be hearing. I felt like Joyce and I were close to being fully reconciled already, and that Shirley and I had made a good beginning. I didn't see risking this just because I still needed to change the way I'd felt as a child. I was in control, the adult me. She should do whatever it took to reprogram this subconscious voice that had these problems I wasn't feeling now. I didn't know what to make of all this new information. I was aware of what she was talking about, but I didn't think I owned it as a part any of the emotions I thought I now felt. As far as I was concerned, I was willing to call all of us even, and either go back to how things were before I got sick, or, if that wasn't possible, to begin everything anew. I was being told this wouldn't be possible. I couldn't force what I wanted through, not if these things ended up going against the opinions and beliefs I subconsciously held. If ever there was a time when I wanted to object and rebel, it was when she kept repeating the admonishment that I couldn't simply force my conscious opinions or values on my subconscious self. That had to be wrong. Why would any part of me want to take a position guaranteed to make the rest of me unhappy? Or, in my case, keep me unhappy? It just didn't make any sense to me. It was only when Dr. Fellows started talking about possible ways of changing these subconscious opinions and values that I started paying closer attention to what she was telling me. She was saying there was a way, as long as the conscious me wanted to change the way my subconscious felt. I assured her that I did. We began discussing everything that had to be involved. It meant me confronting all the wives, dealing with these areas of hurt and betrayal, in order to satisfy my subconscious enough to forgive them, and to drop the objections that it now felt. Later, I thought about what the doctor had told me. It was depressing to me. I had believed I was done with dealing with this sort of thing. I had dealt with this during the long process of integrating my two separated identity states. Now, it seemed like I had to go back and do much the same thing with my subconscious. I couldn't see myself going through all the anger of these confrontations in order to get this forgiveness that the doctor said would be necessary in order to achieve what I'd need to be with Emily, Brenda, Eddie, Dale and Cindy. Before I left to go back to Birmingham, I informed the doctor that I'd decided to hold off on making any attempt to reconcile with any of the other wives. I'd keep going on with Joyce and Shirley, for now at least, and let the rest of it stay the way it was. It wasn't from a lack of wanting them back, it was just an unwillingness right now to be put back in a position where I'd be creating more anger and resentment. With Joyce and Shirley, I felt like I'd been given a green light. It wouldn't be a difficult fight to get them back. The three of us now wanted the same thing. I wanted it too, and that had suddenly become an important distinction. After I told the doctor that, she warned me that Joyce and I wouldn't be workable, not the way things now stood in respect to the conflict with her that my subconscious now felt. It was at this point that I realized that I was in conflict with Dr. Fellows. From the very first, I'd made it very clear to her that my main purpose in returning to work with her had been to help me with Joyce. All the time we had been talking, she must have had a good idea that this situation would prevent Joyce and I from regaining our former closeness. Why didn't she tell me this in the beginning? I ended my discussion with her, having stopped short of venting my true feelings. I spent several hours fuming about what this did to all my plans for Joyce and me. I realized I hadn't discussed what, exactly, these conflicts were that my subconscious had with her. I decided to call her back from Birmingham, to find that out before I made any further important decisions. It turned out that my one major problem with Joyce had to do with her deceiving me about her sexual interest in women, and with her using me to help provide her with entree in developing sexual relationships with all my other women. My subconscious had always had this problem with this area of Joyce's behavior. I remembered having some problems with this as well, but I thought I'd gotten over them. This was just the way Joyce handled that part of her sexuality. She had always understated that side of herself, often denying the level of her interest in being with women. No one else had been fooled by her understatements. You couldn't be with Joyce in bed and not see her real intense interest in other women. When I called Shirley that evening and spoke to her, I didn't bring up anything the doctor and I had spoken of. I spoke with Derek and Shirley when I called and it was a good conversation we had. Derek was excited when Shirley told him I might be coming for a visit at his new house. Shirley had brought this up to him, not me. I wouldn't have pushed her for a visit so soon, but I admit I was happy that she had been anxious, and was already thinking along those lines herself. Later, with Joyce, I did get into some of what the doctor and I had spoken about. At first, I concentrated on what the doctor had said about the other wives, not about Joyce. She first accused me of making the whole thing up. Later, when I told her I was leaning towards not attempting to reconcile with the others, except for her and Shirley, she got quiet and didn't say too much. I knew Joyce well, her being quiet was like anyone else screaming. "You don't think I should take this position, Joyce?" I wanted to get her talking to me about it. I was curious to hear what she thought about delaying dealing with these problems until after she and I were reconciled. Joyce didn't answer me right away. I could almost hear her thinking about how she wanted to express her thoughts to me. "Our old Kenny wouldn't ever hold a grudge this way. That's one reason I'm finding it hard to believe what you're telling me. What you've said is more like what I'd expect from how you are now." "I thought that too. I even told her that, but she says we're both wrong. I remember when Eddie and Dale left this last time though, and I really wasn't upset to see them go. I thought I would be, but I wasn't." "I wasn't upset either, because I knew they'd be back if you ever started acting like your old self again. After we get back together, they'll be back again. As long as you treat all of them good, they'll want to stay with us. It happened like that with us, Kenny." Now it was my turn to say something. I didn't want to face this with her alone, because I knew I'd end up saying the wrong thing to her. I thought I'd let Dr. Fellows explain about the part that concerned Joyce and me. I didn't want all the gains we'd made slipping away again. "Joyce, call Dr. Fellows. Let her explain it to you. I can't explain it to you, because I don't really understand it that well myself. I have to believe what she's telling me, because she's the expert. I guess what she says feels right to me too. Do you remember when we talked before? I told you then it might not be possible to get things all the way back to what they were. Right now, we can probably have you, me, and Shirley, with all of our children. That's quite a bit. It's at least a good beginning." "Are you telling me that you wouldn't want all of us to be together again, just because she says you aren't totally comfortable with things that happened back when you were sick? Even if this means being without all the children, and not being with any of us?" "No, that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying it wouldn't work for us to do that, not as long as I'm conflicted about them. This isn't about the children. I'd love to have all of them back with us. I miss all of them, everyday." "You can't just give up on it then." "I'm not giving up. I'm talking about taking a short break. Maybe we can think of another way to do this in a better way, after we get all our own things settled again. Right now, there's too much other stuff that needs to come before we tackle something big like this." "You listen to me, Kenny Parsons. You aren't going to change our deal. You said if I could find a way to live with you, and with all the changes in you, we could all be together, just like we used to be. You promised me. Now you want to change what you said. I want what you told me we'd have. I want Emily and Brenda back here at least." "What about Eddie, Dale and Cindy?" "I'd like them back with us too, but we don't absolutely need them right away. I think they could wait for awhile. Emily and Brenda, we do need. Cindy, Eddie, and Dale, maybe they don't need us either, but Emily and Brenda, they both do need us." "It doesn't work like that. Talk to the doctor, she'll explain how it works. I need to change things inside of me for any of them to be okay to be coming back to us. It isn't like I can say okay to those two and no to the other three." "Kenny, I already told you what you have to do. You talk to the doctor. The two of you are just going to have to find a way to make it okay for all of us to be together. Without Brenda and Emily, it would be like if you were asking me to give away two of our children. I won't do that, not even if it meant the two of us could get back together again." In a way, Joyce had given voice to some of my own concerns. It didn't change how I felt though. I'd need time to change any of what Dr. Fellows was talking about. The immediate problem was going to be getting Joyce to accept a delay on my part. I knew better than to try to discuss delaying anything on the phone right then. I changed the subject, complaining to her about delays in shipments to the Quick Snacks sales locations drop points in California. Naturally, she wouldn't be put off by such a transparent attempt from me to change the subject. She asked me point blank about what I was planning to do. "What I'm not going to do is rush into making any commitments that I can't keep. I listened to what you want, and I understand your position. I haven't made any final decisions on this, but I need to keep going forward with what I can do until I do make some other plans. I expect you to keep things on an even keel with us until I do." "What you mean is you want things to be like they were, even after you just got done pulling the rug right out from under my feet." "Joyce, we're either in this thing together, all the way, or we aren't. You giving me ultimatums, or deciding to stop trying to help us work on our problems isn't going to get you any closer to getting Brenda and Emily back. I thought we both agreed it was necessary for the two of us to get our problems resolved before we could afford to try to put all the rest of it back together?" "You said we could do it easily, once we got back together." "That's what I thought when I told you that. It looks like I was wrong. I'm disappointed too, you know? I thought we were getting close to being in a position to start working on some of the rest of it." "You're close with Shirley. She came over here this morning and was looking in all the empty bedrooms. She didn't admit it, but she's already planning on which room she'll get when she moves back here. She's probably as upset by all this now as I am." "I didn't tell her about any of this yet." "You called her tonight, and you didn't tell her?" "Joyce, I don't have the same kind of relationship with any of the other wives as I have with you. Shirley and I don't usually discuss these types of things, not even when it's family things. Usually, you're the one they talk to about these kinds of things." "You don't think this is something that will have a direct impact on her decisions?" "I didn't say that. It does, I know that. It just isn't anything I'd bring up with her to talk about. I wanted to talk to you about it before I spoke to anyone else. I've always done it this way, because I value your opinion, and all the feedback you give me. I didn't think you'd get as upset about this as you have gotten." "You really thought we were going to just continue on like we have been? Even after you just decided, by yourself, not to try to get anyone else back except for Shirley and me?" "I didn't expect anything. I haven't even made up my mind about anything yet. I'm leaning towards not doing anything, for awhile, but not forever. It isn't like my subconscious doesn't know what I'm thinking and expecting. It isn't going anywhere, and we still have time. The doctor said we need to get some things resolved first." "How do you know we have time? When did you last talk to either Brenda or Emily?" "Joyce, you need to back off a little and let me have some time to make some decisions here. We aren't debating here, we're discussing. I haven't spoken to either of them in a long time. As for knowing if I have time, I have to believe that I do. It isn't like they can do anything about any of this on their own. The conflict I'm having is inside me. The doctor says I'll need to confront them about some things, in order to allow my subconscious to resolve any objections it now has." "It could be too late by the time you get around to deciding you should be doing something." "Would you prefer it if I put you in charge of handling this then? You can if you want to, Joyce. All you need to do is find some way to get inside my head and force my subconscious to do whatever you tell it to do." For some reason, when I said that to her, Joyce decided to switch our conversation over to a whole different topic. I was startled by the way she could just switch subjects so suddenly like she had. "Cindy has been calling me. She says she wants to come up for a visit, whenever the next time is that you come here again. She says she wants to talk to both of us together." I was immediately on my guard, as soon as she mentioned Cindy's name. This was a big part of what the doctor had told me was causing the problems between Joyce and my subconscious self. I felt it then too. There had always been an undercurrent of resentment with the way Joyce presented these types of things to me. It was as though she didn't think I was smart enough to figure out that she was manipulating me to get whatever it was she wanted. I felt that way now, and she hadn't even begun yet. I decided to react this time to what she was attempting to do. "She just wants me to sleep with her, Joyce. She's been hinting around about it ever since before Christmas." "I think it might be that too, but she did make it a point of saying she wanted to talk to both of us. She's been acting the same way she was when I was in Birmingham with you before. That time we first went back there, right after you decided to go back down there again. If she's been after you like you claim, why haven't you slept with her since she started hinting around again about wanting to?" "I'm not sure. I guess because it didn't seem very important to me. Maybe it's part of what Dr. Fellows is saying. I've always felt bad about Cindy just leaving all of us right after I got sick. In a lot of ways, I still feel bad about her doing that to us." "You slept with her for awhile after that though. You must have been able to forgive her? Didn't you like it when she was staying with you?" "Sure, I liked it. It wasn't the same as before though. She must have felt it too, and that's why she decided to leave us again." "I liked it fine that one time that we had. I never blamed her for wanting to stay with her family. It wasn't her fault you got sick before she had a chance to get comfortable with the rest of us. I think you should bring her up with you when you come here the next time. I'll take her if you don't want her." She said this casually, like it was more a case of her offering to do me a favor by taking Cindy off my hands. "She still gets you going, huh? Maybe I'll talk to her about it. If I do, I'm going to have to tell her about this conflict thing that I'm having. She might not be so anxious to come up and talk to both of us, once she finds out that I'm having this problem with her coming back to us." "You don't have to put this conflict thing to her the same way you did it with me. Tell her that you're working through some problems with your old doctor. Tell her it might take some time before everything is back to where we can all be together again." "You mean lie to her? I don't want to do that, Joyce. I'll tell her the truth, then let her decide for herself, after she understands about the problem I'm having." "You can tell her after she's already here. Why ruin it for me? I don't have any problems with her, only you seem to." "I'll tell her that too then. That you're anxious to sleep with her again. If you want her to come up for a visit just to be with you, you should have invited her yourself. I'm sure she would be willing to come just to visit with you." I had a good idea that Joyce had already tried getting Cindy to come up for visits on her own. None of these invitations had met with any success I'd have been willing to bet. This was why Joyce was so agitated that I wasn't jumping to do what she was asking. If she had just come out and been honest with me, I wouldn't have had any problems with doing what she wanted. "You'd have Shirley if you brought Cindy up for me. It isn't like we both haven't done it this way before." "I'm fine with asking her to come up, Joyce. I just think I need to be honest with her when I invite her. If she comes, I have no problem with her sleeping with you. It was never my intention to try to separate you from your harem." It came out sounding a lot more mean spirited than I'd meant for it to. "That wasn't nice." Joyce wasn't really upset. What she'd really heard was me agreeing to bring Cindy up with me. This is what she'd been after. I knew she was already anticipating seeing Cindy again soon. "You never did tell me, Joyce, why did you and Shirley quit doing things together?" I certainly hadn't been intending to get into any of that with her when I'd called. This was opening a can of worms that I had already decided I'd wanted to postpone opening. "She just decided she didn't want to anymore. She said it wasn't the same as when we were all together doing things. She wasn't that much into doing things with girls. She wanted to fit in with the rest of us who were though. Brenda's like that too. Emily said she's different in bed than she was before you got sick. She lets Emily do what she wants to her, but she doesn't usually participate the same way as she used to. Brenda stopped sleeping with me even before Shirley did. After Eddie and Dale left, I was pretty much left alone every night. Emily would come see me sometimes, but even that was more from pity than because of anything else." "I almost feel sorry for you, Joyce. Almost." What I was thinking was that Joyce had probably shown the others that she suspected they were with her out of some sense of obligation, rather than because they really enjoyed being with her. She had tried that with me all the time, but I just ended up fucking that idea right out of her head. You had to really get to know Joyce if you wanted to be able to see past all her ego defenses. Nothing anyone could do would convince her she was really loved for very long. Most people ended up giving up trying to convince her after awhile. I never had. "Don't spoil things for me with Cindy, Kenny. Even if we can't get back together with her right away, this might help all of us when we do get back together again later." I knew what Joyce wanted. She knew I knew also. As long as it didn't involve us deceiving Cindy, I thought I could go along with it. I certainly enjoyed sex with Cindy, and she was someone I could be myself with. This recurring problem of Joyce using me to help her get girls though, while trying to disguise her true intent. This was something I was having problems with. For once, I was in sympathy with my subconscious. It wasn't even necessary to her to try to disguise how she felt in order to get what she wanted. In fact, with Joyce and I double teaming Cindy, I was sure I would be more like my old self than I'd been with anyone else lately. It was only when I had that thought that I remembered then that Joyce and I had never double teamed Cindy before. We had done it with all the others, but never with Cindy. Joyce had never seemed to want to share Cindy with me. "If I bring her up Joyce, this time we're probably both going to fuck her together. I'm not bringing her up just so you can sleep with her this time." "Suppose Cindy doesn't want that? She's never wanted to do you and me together before, Kenny. It wasn't me that was keeping all of us from being in bed together and doing things. Cindy is the only one who isn't comfortable with it." We'd never spoken about that before. I'd always just assumed that it was Joyce who insisted on it being that way. I guess I assumed it because of how obvious it was to all of us that she was really crazy about Cindy. I thought it was amusing that I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion. If it turned out that Joyce was lying to me about it having been Cindy's choice though, that wouldn't be amusing at all. Now that Joyce had said this to me, I wanted to speak to Cindy, to see whether or not she would confirm it. "Tell Shirley I'm coming up on Friday with Cindy. I can either come over to her house all day Saturday and Saturday night, or else she can come over to our house, for the whole weekend, and we can all be together with the kids. Ask her what she wants, and we'll see how it goes." "She'll pick having you all to herself on Saturday. Are you going to leave work early? If you get here late on Friday and leave Sunday morning, there won't be much time for all of us to be together. Especially if you go over to Shirley's early on Saturday." "I told Shirley and Derek that I'd come over to be with them in their new house. Maybe I'll fly up Thursday morning and spend Thursday with Shirley and the kids. It might get complicated moving everyone around like that. Maybe we should hold off on having Cindy come up until some later date." "Come up on Thursday and you can drop Cindy off with me. On Friday you can all come over to the house and we'll be together until Sunday. Cindy wants to come up as soon as she can. She really does want to talk to us. She wouldn't tell me what it was about." "I'll talk to her tomorrow and let you know what we've decided. Find out from Shirley if Thursday is a good day for me to be coming over there." "Kenny, promise me you won't say anything to Cindy to make her change her mind about wanting to come here." "You know I can't promise you something like that. I will promise I won't deliberately say anything to try to make her change her mind." "Promise you won't tell her that you don't think you want us to get back together with her." "Joyce, you're beginning to worry me with all this anxiety of yours. It's Cindy. It isn't like we don't already know each other pretty well. I'm going to talk with her, and I'm pretty sure she'll still want to fly up with me for a visit. You should remember that she's left us several times already. It isn't going to bother her too much if I tell her we're taking everything slowly. She probably doesn't even want to get back together with us right now. I think she just wants to have some sex. If I had to guess, I'd say she only got you involved because I wasn't picking up on any of the hints she's been giving me." "You're probably right, but she did call me, and she did say she wanted to see both of us, to talk about something. Don't be mean about this, okay?" "You better leave it up to me to negotiate with Cindy, Joyce. You seem way too anxious to get your hands on her. She'll sense she has a big advantage with you, and she'll find some way to try to exploit it. Maybe she already knows she does. I'll do my best to deliver her into your hot little hands. I might need to promise her that she and I will be together on the trip too." "You're enjoying yourself now, aren't you?" "In some ways. This reminded me a little bit of some of our conversations back in the old days. Remember the first time we did Brenda together? We talked about all the things that might happen, but she finally ended up not resisting anything. Maybe Cindy will end up being just like Brenda was?" "I wish we could go back to just like we were then, Kenny. I was so happy then, and everything was so new and exciting to me." "You should have faith in me, just like you used to have back in those days. You weren't questioning my every statement or trying to second guess me with everything I told you. Things seemed to work out pretty well for us back then." "They started working out even better, after we both were making all the decisions." "It isn't about who makes the decisions. I already told you I'd do my best to bring Cindy with me when I come up there. I'll do it my way, but I'm going to try not to disappoint you. I'm not as concerned about getting with Cindy as you seem to be, but I am concerned about you, and about trying to please you. You should try to relax and trust that I'll come through for you." "Call me and let me know after you speak to her. I'll talk to Shirley about Thursday. I think it would be better if it were the two of you alone when you get together again. Her house, after the kids are asleep. I could put the kids up here on Thursday night if you think it would be better for the two of you?" "Talk to Shirley. Whatever she decides. Derek said he wanted to show me everything at the new house when I get there, so all the kids should still be there when I first come over." "Does it bother you so much now, about me and Cindy? Is it just with her, or is it also about me with all the other wives? Dr. Fellows said something to me once about how you might have changed in the way you look at things like that now." "I usually don't think about it that much. The only thing I don't like is when you pretend something's for me, when it's really more for your benefit. It's always been like that with us around the other women. I guess I've learned to expect it from you. I always liked it best when it was you and I together, ganging up on one of the others. Thinking about us doing that with Cindy is pretty exciting to me right now. I did Eddie and Dale together down in Birmingham, quite a few times. Eddie's a lot like you are with another girl and me. It didn't bother me at all then." "If things were to go well with Cindy and us, even if it wasn't the same as all of us getting back together again like we were before, it would help us, you and me. I think it might be enough for me just knowing that all of us could still be close again. Not just for the sex, but to be with each other without having fights, or any of us being mad at each other. Ask Dr. Fellows about that. Even if none of us were sleeping with each other, or if they still lived somewhere else. I can't stand thinking that we're all going to end up being apart from now on. I miss us all being together." "I don't want any of us to be enemies either, Joyce. Even if things don't get back to how they were before, we aren't going to stay mad with each other forever. In spite of what Dr. Fellows says, I know there's still this attraction I have for all of you. It might not be something that is entirely consistent or completely non-conflicted inside me, but that basic attraction is still there, with all of you. I don't think I'd have any problems at all with sleeping with any of you, if I had the right opportunity. I might not go out of my way right now to get that chance with Cindy, or even with Emily and Brenda. I think that's what she means about me being conflicted. I'm definitely like that with Cindy. I might not have ever done anything anymore with her, not on my own. If it's something I'm doing for you though, something I know you really want, I'll look forward to it. I guess I am already looking forward to it." "Now you're asking me to believe you're only willing to do this with Cindy because it's what I want?" Something gave way inside me right after she said that. I'd been holding myself in, but all this attempting on her part to get me to do what she wanted about Cindy had been getting to me. I felt like she must not have much respect for me to be talking to me in this way. I knew she wanted Cindy. She didn't have to be quite so obvious in how she went about it though. After I first agreed to do what she wanted, she should have dropped the subject and been grateful. Instead of that, here she was, challenging me as to what my real motives were. This was more upsetting, because I'd just gotten done explaining to her why I'd agreed to do it. "You need to be careful about testing my patience like this, Joyce. I'm not lying to you. Sleeping with Cindy again isn't high up there on the list of things I want to do. I'm agreeing to doing what you asked, because I'm hoping my doing so will help my chances with you. That hope lifts it a lot higher on my list of what I want. If it wasn't for you wanting her at the house with us, she'd probably never get another invitation to fly up to Ridgeline with me." "You're always going to find some way to let me know that you're still unhappy with me, aren't you, Kenny? You want me feeling bad because of the fact that I would like to see Cindy again. This is how you work things now. I'll admit though that you're definitely getting better at getting my hopes up. The problem with me getting my hopes up is that things always keep turning out bad for me whenever I do let them get raised up." "Do you want me to talk to Cindy about coming up with me or not? Most of our problems aren't about what actually happens, they're about what you manage to convince yourself could possibly happen. Why don't you just try waiting until after I've done what you're so afraid I'll do before you start getting yourself all upset?" "You think its all me causing these problems we're having?" "No. I do think you contribute to them though. This thing with Cindy is just one example of that. In your mind, I've already ruined this for you. I resent you thinking about me like that. I resent even more you not being honest and admitting that this was all about you getting to sleep with Cindy again. I may be a lot of things, Joyce, but I'm not a mental incompetent. I can figure out what's going on. Talk to Shirley for me. Tell her I'll phone her tomorrow evening." "Are you going to call me tomorrow? After you talk to Shirley?" Joyce sounded worried. I couldn't remember too many other times when I'd been so frank with her about something she did that was troubling to me. I wasn't sure about how she'd take me doing it regularly. It felt good to have gotten things off my chest. Maybe, if I did do this regularly, she'd understand better that she didn't need to be so manipulative about this whole girl thing. I found myself hoping that Cindy would confirm what Joyce had told me about it being her that didn't want a threesome with Joyce and me. If not, I knew Joyce and I would be having some serious arguments about her lying to me. "I'm going to call you every night, Joyce. I won't stop calling you until you either stop answering the phone, or until we're already living together in the same house again." "Why do you think we've been fighting so much tonight?" "I'd say this was just normal friction for us right now. I'm the new me, and you're the same old Joyce. Before, I'd have stayed quiet and then gone ahead and done whatever I was going to do anyway. We wouldn't have needed to argue, but neither of us would have really known where the other one stood." "I preferred it that way. I don't like getting upset with you every time we talk." "I believe you. You might have to get used to this though, because I prefer it this way. Before, I'd have been upset after I didn't stand up to you. You probably wouldn't have known why I was upset. Right now, I feel fine. It's still going to end up the same way as it would have before, but now, when I'm fucking Cindy from behind, and she's eating you out, I'm going to be remembering how you were wrong about me getting her there. Keep your eyes open when it happens, and you'll see me smiling at you." "I'm going to be mad if she decides not to come here. If that happens, after you just went ahead again and decided that only you knows what's best, I'm going to be really angry. I worry because there isn't any reason for you to not want to bring her up here with you. I admit I want to be with her again. I usually won't say that to you because I'm afraid, if I do, it might make you think I like girls too much. I don't." "I don't understand why you're so worried that I will mess up Cindy's wanting to come up here. I already know I can have sex with Cindy, Joyce. She's already told me things that made that pretty clear to me. I'm not even worried about whether I can convince her to come here for a visit with me. You're worried, because you know you weren't able to get her to come up to visit you on your own. Instead of getting all upset with me about this, you should be thinking up things you can do for me to give me more reasons why I'd want to help you out like this in the future. This is one of those changes in me you're just going to need to get used to. I won't just be letting you have your own way all the time anymore, and I won't put up with you trying to deceive me about the reasons why you need me to do some things." "I'm not sure I want you to come visit me now. This is the same attitude you were having before you went back to that clinic again." "If you decide that you don't want me to visit you, I still think I'm going to fly up to see Shirley and the kids anyway. You'll probably be able to find some way to convince her she shouldn't want to be with me though." "Do you mean, if you come up just to see Shirley, that you aren't going to bring Cindy up here with you too?" "I'll bring her up if I can. When I tell her that I'm only coming up to Ridgeline to be with Shirley though, she might decide not to go up there with me. I think her decision will depend a lot on if I'm going to be there spending time with her too. She might decide not to make the trip if I'm right and she's only coming up because she wants to be with me. Sometimes, especially when things like this come up, I'm afraid you've forgotten some of the other reasons why you used to love me, Joyce." "I haven't forgotten, but that doesn't mean I enjoy having you throw it back in my face whenever you see a chance to either. You never used to do that. That's another thing I always loved about you. You always wanted me to be happy with everything, and tried to make sure that I was. You didn't keep telling me that I only got any of those things because you were there to help provide them." "We'll get along well enough even if I am doing some of that now. I love you, Joyce, but I'm not going to keep doing things in ways that make me feel bad, or make me feel unhappy. If you're going to get me to do things for you, you need to help me find good reasons for doing them. I don't want to keep on ending up feeling bad, or worse, feeling like I'm being used by you. I like helping you to get what makes you feel good, but I don't appreciate you using me for that, then thinking I'm too dumb to realize what it is you're really doing." "This is going back to that "my" harem thing you talked about before? We've been talking about this for years. I get some definite benefits from having all of the wives living together, but you were getting a lot of what you needed too. How come you never say anything to Eddie or to Emily? They both did more of that than I ever did." "We both know you've been missing the other wives, Joyce. You never said that you were the one who decided to quit sleeping with any of them. I'm pretty sure, on the other hand, that I can still sleep with all of them if I wanted to try to. I've always liked sleeping with you, and sleeping with all of them also. This was especially true when it was you and I doing things together with one of them. You always claimed that me having all those wives was for me, but I didn't ever see you acting as if it really was for me. Dr. Fellows hasn't exactly come out and said it to me, but I'm pretty sure, if I asked her, she'd tell me that my greatest conflict involves the relationship I have with you." "This was all so you could tell me this and then throw the other wives back in my face? You didn't have to go to such great lengths, Kenny. I had already figured out, from everything else that's happened since you got out of the clinic, that you have mixed feelings about me. I never pretended not to like doing things with any of the other girls. I didn't ever try to hide that from you." "No, you didn't hide that. What I think you did hide was how you were using me to get you all those other girls. I was fine with getting them for both of us, right up until Cindy came along. Something didn't feel right about her to me. I guess she was the only one who made me worry that you loved her more than you did me." "That isn't true. It never could be true. I will admit to feeling differently for her than for any of the other girls. Not as far as loving her more, but just about feeling like my relationship with her was more of a mutual attraction than it ever was with any of the rest of them. As far as me loving her more than you, that's too stupid for me to even bother to tell you how wrong you are to worry about it." "In the end, whatever this thing with Cindy was, it just became something I accepted about you. Now, after everything that's happened, we're back to almost where we first started. It's just you, me and Shirley, and all the children. This time, if we're going to build something together, I want to do it honestly. Let me know what you really want, and why it's important to you. Don't tell me one thing, just to get what you want, while actually knowing what you're telling me is a lie." "I can't deal with this paranoia of yours anymore. Do whatever you want. Think whatever you want. Don't bother me with any of it anymore though. I give up, Kenny. Whatever I do, you come back with something else to try to make me look bad. I never loved any girl even a tenth as much as I loved you. Do I like having sex with girls? Yes. I like the sex, but I don't like sex with anyone as much as I love being with you. They all left here, but I stayed. If it was all about my getting girls, why would I have stayed here? The way you are now, everyone's afraid of you. That's why they all left." "I'm not giving up on us, Joyce. There's a difference between us fighting like this and me giving up. I don't care how much conflict I'm having with my subconscious over you. I know what I want, what I need, and that's you. For you, I'm willing to go through whatever we need to go through. I'm not going to not say the things that I think anymore though. If I say what I think enough, we'll find some way to get through all of this. I know you don't like this part of it. I don't like it much either. Tell Shirley I'll be up on Thursday. I'll bring up Cindy too. You can keep her company until I come over to the house on Friday." "You think just by bringing Cindy along with you that this is going to make me forget about all these other things you've been saying to me?" "I won't know if it will or not until after I get over to the house on Friday. I hope it does. I'm going to tell Cindy to be extra nice to you while she's visiting with you on Thursday. If you don't treat me nice after that, then I'll have to come up with another way to make you forget about the pain of us needing to go through this together." "You're becoming impossible again. Something isn't working at that clinic. Last week you were a lot better than you are today. Last week I knew I loved you again, even with the changes. Now, I'm becoming afraid of you again." "I'm closer to being well right now than I was last week. I know what we need to do to make it possible for us to really be together again. You just don't like being caught up in the process of me doing what's necessary to change things so our being together again will work. I'm getting used to the idea of what it is I need to do, Joyce. Today, I'm making us both all upset, and, by doing that, I make a tiny bit of progress. By Thursday, I hope you'll have gotten over what's bothering you now. All of us will have a great visit together, you'll see." "I don't think Dr. Fellows told you to be like this, Kenny." "She didn't. She also didn't tell me that I should try to work out these problems with my subconscious without her. I'm doing what I think is necessary to get you and me back together again. We already both knew you were going to accept being with me, even with the way my personality is now. There was too much you were miising about us no longer being together. Now, we just have to find some way to make my subconscious self accept you too." "This is you being crazy again. You can't treat me like you just have been and expect that it will help us get back together. Why would I want to get back with you when you're always trying to make me feel bad?" "I'll call you tomorrow. Talk to Shirley for me. Tell her to expect me sometime early Thursday." "After all this tonight, you still think I'm going to tell Shirley that she should welcome you into her home?" "Did I mention that Cindy will be coming up with me, Joyce? She'll need a nice place to stay, and someone to keep her company until sometime Friday. She wants something from me too. Since I'm planning on giving it to her anyway, I thought I'd let you help her think of some way to earn it." "What does she want from you?" In spite of herself, Joyce was curious. I'd counted on that. I was counting on being able to give Joyce plenty of reasons to put up with the trouble she and I still had to work our way through. "She wants to train some teams of women, to have them go out and begin opening new accounts for the Quick Snacks program. She wants to run that program for us. She has everything figured out, precisely, and it's all plotted out on her pie chart graphs." "Why just women? We have women on the sales teams already, don't we?" "As far as I know, we don't. Actually, what she's after is a good idea, and will end up saving us having to answer some law suits that otherwise would be filed. I'm going to hate to lose her to this new program too, but she needs to be given more responsibility anyway. She's too valuable to the company to be wasted on what I've been using her for." "Why not just give her the promotion then, and not make her go through all of this?" "I've thought about doing exactly that. If she had just come to me in the first place with her idea, instead of spending the last few weeks trying to lure me into bed with her, I might have done it. She wants something from me, and that's a big part of the reason why she's so anxious to sleep with me again. She's the one who chose to get favors from me by doing things this way. What she's after is going to probably cost us an extra million dollars, just in the first three months of the training period. She's ambitious, I'll give her that much. This weekend, we'll both make her work to earn her favor." "You'll do something like this to her, but you wouldn't feel right about not telling her you have conflicts about taking her back with us?" "I'll be honest with her. The only thing I won't tell her is that I would have done what she wanted anyway, just on the merits of her proposal. It isn't like she won't be enjoying herself anyway. She always enjoyed herself before. She just likes getting a little something extra with her sex. This time we'll be the ones getting the Lagniappe." "You wouldn't have done things this way before, Kenny." "That's where you're wrong, Joyce. I did do things like this with her before. I did them when she wanted to help her family in getting their jobs back. I did it while hiring her aunt, and with buying that land from Gene. I was going to do all those things for her anyway too. The only difference between then and now is that this time I'm admitting to someone else that this is what I'm doing." "You really are planning on bringing her here Thursday?" "Bringing her there and telling her that the best way to get what she wants is if you and I get what we both want from her." "What happens to her after we do something like this to her?" "I guess it depends on what she wants from us next. Don't make this into some big sacrifice she's making. She gets off on doing this too. The whole thing is a game with her, believing she gets what she's after by using her irresistible charms. It isn't just that she's willing to do this to get her project approved. If it was only that, I wouldn't think of taking advantage." "Do you think this girl's sales program is what she wanted to talk to both of us about?" "I believe that just as much as I believe what you said about not loving any of the women even a tenth as much as you love me. I want you to love them, Joyce. It isn't a contest about how much you love any of them. What I hated was you thinking you could deceive me about it, or that you needed to use me like you sometimes do. I hated you thinking that I wouldn't even be able to figure out that this was what you were doing." "That isn't what I did." Even though she protested what I said, her protest wasn't laden with any of the emotion she'd shown before. We were back to just talking again. My explanation about why I believed Cindy would come up and do what we wanted had been accepted by her. "After we hang up tonight, Joyce, I want you to think back to this last part of our conversation. Especially the part after I told you I was bringing Cindy up with me, even after we'd had our fight. Think about what we both said, and how we said it from that point where you told me you didn't want me coming up there. I think it will show you how we both can work together in the future. We don't have to be on different sides, just because I'm not the same as I used to be. We can still do a lot for each other." "I already knew we could. I don't feel comfortable doing things this way though. Can't you just yell at me, or tell me what you want me to do to make whatever it is you're mad about okay again? I don't like fighting like this all the time. When we get done with our fighting, I won't be in any mood for the making up part." "I'm hoping the fighting isn't going to take nearly as much time as the making up part will. I already knew about all the conflicts I had with you. I need to start telling Dr. Fellows the truth now. She surprised me with what she was able to learn when she was poking around inside my head. I think she convinced me I needed to be more honest, with her, with you, and with the other wives too. We haven't always been as honest with each other as we should have been. Some of that is causing us problems today." "You were right before, about me not being the one who was willing to share Cindy with you. I knew I didn't want to be with either of you while you were doing things together. It was because of both of you though, not just because of her. I imagined how the two of you would be together. Cindy is more than just pretty, like Emily and Brenda. She's also smart, and she's very good at business too. She's as good as I am with business, and she has the looks to go with it that I don't have. I was worried. I didn't really like it when you were with her, but I knew you would have to be, if I was ever going to be with her too." "She isn't you though, Joyce. She does some things pretty well, and she is pretty, but she isn't someone who's a part of my soul the way you are. She couldn't ever come between us, not in the ways you're worried about. She is someone we both can love, but she isn't competition that you'd ever need to worry about." "She isn't competition you need to worry about either." "Do you still want me to give her that promotion without telling her she has to earn it?" Joyce laughed. It was her guilty laugh, the one she used whenever she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't be doing. I hadn't heard that particular laugh in quite awhile. "You really do believe she enjoys being with us too? I don't want to take advantage of her." "I can't be one hundred percent certain. What I can tell you is that all those times when I let her convince me to do what it was she wanted, those were the same times when she was absolutely at her wildest in bed, almost insatiable. It was like how Brenda was that first time when you and I had her at the office. That's how big a difference in her there is. Getting her way by using her feminine wiles like that seems to do something to her libido. How about if I don't say anything to her about her project before I bring her up there on Thursday? You can find some way to bring her project up, and then let her try to entice you into supporting her proposal with me. You'll see what I mean." "Don't you feel a little guilty about talking to me about this sort of thing, Kenny?" "Not a bit. Sharing things like this with you makes them more fun for me. It always was like that, from that first day in the office when I let you listen in to me talking with Brenda on the telephone. You getting all excited has always made it better for me. You shouldn't try to hide that excitement from me." ------- Chapter 71 The next morning at work, I called Cindy into my office, supposedly to discuss a small project I was asking her to handle for me. It involved looking into an access problem we were having with one of the small railway storage yards over in South Carolina. The real reason I'd asked her to come see me was to let her know that Joyce had mentioned that she might want to fly up with me on my next visit home to Ridgeline. I spent the first ten minutes with her outlining several possible temporary solutions she might decide to implement in order to get us increased access to the rail cars containing our Quick Snacks products. They were being stored on a back rail spur inside the rail yard, in a place where access was narrow and extremely limited. The product distribution procedure was just too cumbersome in the way it had been set up. As things now stood, there were too many route drivers coming into an area too small to allow them to handle the task of loading up their trucks with all their daily product requirements. Our superintendent at the rail yard was now having to take care of handling the daily distribution of product from an unused lot just outside the gates of the rail facility. The lot's owner had made a complaint to the railroad about his property being used without his consent. When contacted by our man at the rail head, the lot's owner had refused to negotiate with us for our continued use of his property. It was a question of the railroad not having enough space inside the yard to accommodate the growing number of route drivers needing their Quick Snacks product each day. When I felt confident that she had enough information to take care of this problem, I changed the topic to what I'd really wanted to see her about. "I'm going up to Ridgeline Thursday morning. Joyce mentioned to me that you told her you might like to fly up for a short visit with me. If it isn't too late for you to change your current plans, you're welcome to fly up with me this weekend. We'd be flying back here early Sunday afternoon." She tried to act surprised, but I could tell she'd been expecting my invitation. I had realized, almost from the very beginning, that Cindy knew she could get almost anything she wanted from me by appealing directly to Joyce. Back before I got sick, Cindy had often used Joyce as a kind of an advocate to get whatever she wanted from me when she was hesitant about asking me for it directly. "Do you think I'll be able to be back here from South Carolina by Thursday morning? I know you wanted me to try to get this product flow problem handled immediately." From her smile, I felt confident she already knew it wouldn't take her more than a day to find a workable solution for that kind of problem. The product superintendent himself had already suggested what I thought was a fine solution; us paying for cutting in a new entrance gate to the back of the spur area where our rail cars were stored on space leased from the railroad. All it would take was her contacting someone with the authority to authorize us to contract for the work, with the clear understanding that we would be underwriting all the costs of installing the gate. Cindy's only real task would be getting the manager of the rail facility to secure permission from the railway's home office. I could have handled it myself with a few phone calls, rather easily. "Colin said there was enough room in the area behind where our rail cars are being stored to handle all the necessary loading. He says our problems would be solved if we could just get the railroad to let us put in a new gate behind there. We'd also have to clear and pave most of the area behind the spur where they've got our rail cars sitting. You might try calling the manager of the rail yard there and offering to pay all the expenses to put in the new entry gate. Tell him we'd also handle any costs involved in putting in a paved lot, one big enough so all the route drivers can drive up in the mornings and load up with their own individual daily product needs. If it comes down to a problem with us getting permission from the home office, have Joyce call over there and speak with whoever she knows has enough authority to give permission for us to do it. You might not even have to make a trip there at all." "I'll get right on it this morning. What time are we leaving on Thursday?" "I'd like to leave early. I'm going to be spending all of Thursday over at Shirley's house, with her and the kids. Depending on how that goes, we might all come over to the big house sometime Friday morning." "Did Joyce tell you that I had asked to talk to the two of you together?" "She mentioned something like that, but she said you didn't tell her why." I left it there for Cindy to either begin to explain what she wanted to talk to us about, or else to wait until the three of us all had a chance to sit down together. Cindy seemed undecided at first. She finally decided to wait to tell me. "I better get to work making those phone calls. Is it okay if I come over to your house a little early so I can leave my car there while we're on our trip?" I told her that would be fine, and she got up and left. I went back to my trading. I had scheduled a working lunch with Gene, Phil, and Larry later in the day. I was getting into the habit of going out regularly with my department heads, whenever I was at the plant, and having these working lunches. All of us seemed able to speak less guardedly when we were outside the office. I had to eat anyway, and it seemed to me that the discussions we had during these lunches were always more relaxed and informal. We also tended to be able to get more accomplished without the constant distractions from our being available to be told of some minor disaster that was occurring. There were always things people thought required our immediate attention. I had found, if none of us were there when they occurred, they still managed to get handled just as well as they would have with our presence and input. I was trying to create a more independent work force anyway. This was something the Macklinson family hadn't particularly tended to encourage. I was also aware that someone being invited to these working lunches was considered a sign of the invitee being currently in favor with me. I did nothing to disabuse anyone from having that notion. We were having a discussion about the need for increased baking capacity for the Quick Snacks program during this particular lunch, and Phil came up with what I considered a novel solution, suggesting that we farm out some of our current production requirements to other bakeries who were operating below their full production capacity. Phil was the first to admit not knowing how we could go about finding out who might be interested in adding our product runs to their own production schedules, but he did tell me he'd heard of this being done for smaller, private bakers, ones who had greater demand than their own small baking capacity could fulfill. He wasn't sure if it would be something that was economically feasible for us to try doing. I remembered my father talking about how difficult the current economy was for our company, and for a lot of those other bakers we were providing grain to. Their problem was one of trying to stay afloat in markets that were too crowded with competition. It was difficult for any of them to maintain good profit margins when engaged in the cut throat pricing that was necessitated by the bitter competition facing them as they attempted to maintain their existing market share. With our Quick Snacks program, we had the opposite problem. We needed more product, and we needed it quickly. It didn't appear to any of us sitting there in the restaurant that any of our new plants would start to come on line for us quickly enough for us to justify continuing to push for new convenience store accounts. We were already beginning to outsell our current maximum production capacity. It was causing us slight problems already, and it would soon become a critical problem, especially if we continued growing at our current pace. I wondered if any of my father's friends would be interested in handling some of our overflow baking needs, just until we managed to increase production capacity enough to handle all of our own demand. It was certainly worth our while to investigate a little, to try to find out if something like that would be possible. The only other alternative would be to cut back on our current sales efforts. We could then slow down until we were able to produce enough new product to meet the increased demand our successful sales program was providing for us. I hated to do that. This was a time for us to expand our markets, not a time to even think about pulling back from the pace of our current growth. Five minutes after I returned from lunch and had gotten back to my office, I had my father on the telephone. I mentioned Phil's idea to him, and he was immediately enthusiastic. He was extremely happy to have been given an idea for a possible solution to one of the problems he was most worried about. He was also pleased that the solution to his problem entailed him doing something that could help out several of his other business associates who were finding it almost impossible to operate in the black under such difficult business conditions. Being able to do a favor for friends, when doing it also helps you, is a fortunate circumstance. My father thought this situation rare enough that he wanted to savor it with me. My father discussed all the mutual benefits this could bring at some length with me. I finally managed to get him off the telephone long enough for him to make some phone calls of his own to determine whether Phil's idea was going to be feasible or not. My Dad called me back a little before four o'clock to tell me that he had made arrangements to handle all of our excess product needs until our own production capacity was increased enough to allow us to once again take up all of our own baking functions. He mentioned that our costs for jobbing out this extra product would, of necessity, be somewhat higher than our own regular internal costs. He also mentioned this extra cost was nothing we couldn't easily absorb, while still managing to stay comfortably profitable. He said we could do this while continuing to maintain all our existing pricing formulas. He also wanted me to thank Phil for his idea, and to reward him with some tangible expression of our gratitude and appreciation. He said he was going to express me down a check for ten thousand dollars, made out in favor of Phil, asking only that I make the presentation at some appropriate public ceremony. He hoped to encourage some of our other workers to volunteer solutions to these kinds of problems. Just before I got ready to go home for the day, Cindy showed up in my office, telling me that everything had already been accepted by the railroad, and that Colin Dilgon, our product distribution superintendent at the rail yard, was already putting out bid requests for the gate construction, and for all the grading and paving work that would be needed. Preliminary cost estimates he'd given her indicated the whole thing was going to end up costing us a little more than sixty five thousand dollars. The work would probably be completed in less than a month. I did a quick bit of figuring that told me we'd recoup our costs in a matter of months. The new access would allow us to double the number of route people serviced at that railhead, letting us consolidate our presence in that area. I congratulated her on a good day's work, asking her if she had enough left to do, either in the current mix of what she was working on, or with any pending projects. I wanted to keep her close by, but busy, until we finally left for Ridgeline on Thursday morning. "I've been working on something, mostly on my own time, Kenny. It's an idea I had that Aunt Patricia and I have both been working on together. It's a sales idea for the Quick Snacks program. Can I tell you about it?" As soon as I agreed to hear her idea, she went somewhere for a few minutes before returning with a box filled with notebooks and larger boards made up of some pie charts I recognized, and some other visual aids I hadn't ever seen before. She was prepared, and I began to see at least part of the reason why she hadn't brought her idea to me any sooner. She had taken the time to put together some professional looking graphs and charts. This wasn't just a little idea she claimed to have been working on, this was a full blown presentation that she had crafted together and now planned to perform. I had already known quite a bit about this program of hers. Billy Ray had accidentally come across several files someone had stored on the company computer. His curiosity aroused, he ended up copying them over to his own computer. He later printed them out and brought them over for me to look at. Cindy had done a lot of general research into the demographic make up of all the small business owners of convenience markets within our general geographic area. I still didn't know why she had taken on such a task, but I felt certain I'd eventually find this out. In the process of looking over some of the findings of her research, she had discovered that many of these small independent business owners were women. From this initial discovery, she had then conveniently developed a major new premise designed to exploit her findings. Not coincidently, this was a premise that would provide her with an opportunity to apply for a major career advancement. The premise, which I'm simplifying here, was that women trained for the specific purpose of selling to other women could produce sales results superior to what men had been able to produce. This was supposedly because they would be able to relate to other women a lot better than a male salesman could. I didn't necessarily buy into her conclusions about that, but I couldn't argue with some of the figures her research was showing me. These were figures taken from her actual research data. She even had the raw data in the folders to prove she hadn't fudged on any of the numbers she'd come up with. This research suggested very strongly that our company's marketing success with women owners was lagging well behind what it had been for stores in the same geographical area that were owned either by individual men, or by male dominated corporations. There could be no doubt about this conclusion. I'd rechecked some of her raw data myself. We were definitely doing poorly in marketing to convenience outlets owned and operated by women. Her plan was to put together sales teams made up exclusively of women, all specially trained to pitch our product lines to these women owners. Naturally, she wanted to be the person in charge of this program. Initially, she wanted us to hire and train a sales force of one hundred women to perform this specialized function. The thing that had immediately caught my eye was the amount of information Cindy had been able to glean from private databases that contained only public record information. To me, it was simply amazing the amount of information that was now available to anyone who was willing to pay a very reasonable fee to secure it. I knew, immediately, that the information Cindy had already shown she had at her disposal, before any single sales call had been made, was much more comprehensive than what was then being developed by any of our other sales teams. They were all essentially cold calling on the stores as the primary method of their normal sales routine. Cindy's people would have a distinct advantage, just by knowing each store owner's name, age, sex, address, and phone contact information. I let Cindy tell me all about her program idea, pretending to not have any previous knowledge of the work she'd already put into it. She made a strong presentation, right up until the point where I asked her how much she thought it would cost us to hire, train and provide vehicles for this army of women she said she wanted to set loose around the country. "I thought we could set it up and have them all out in the field for about two hundred thousand." "How much do you think one hundred fully equipped delivery vans are going to cost us? What about insurance and travel expenses? We'd be fortunate if we could lease everything we needed, and still be able to put these women out on the road for anything less than a million dollars, Cindy." She seemed taken aback by the amount of money it would take, but had none of her own data available that would contradict the estimate I'd just quoted her. I had already gotten some preliminary fleet lease figures for another hundred vehicles, and had given our fleet specialist orders to go ahead and let this additional contract. The vehicles were already being painted and reconfigured to meet our standard Quick Snacks company specifications. Our insurance people had already assured me that, given reasonable prior driving record histories, adding another hundred drivers to our existing vehicle insurance policy wouldn't be any problem. From a logistical support standpoint, Cindy's program would have pretty smooth sailing. I had already transferred funds from my own personal grain trading account into a separate account I was opening just for this program. All I was really worried about, after calling and talking to Ron Jones, was whether we'd be able to find one hundred women who were available, and willing to begin training for this program. We needed women who wanted to travel by van, all across the country, and who were also willing to sign on for a career that in the past had been almost totally dominated by men. The idea of traveling saleswomen hadn't yet reached our portion of the food services industry. It would be a radical departure for us. I liked the whole concept, a lot. "We could scale the program back, maybe start out with only twenty five women. Could we do that for two hundred and fifty thousand?" Cindy appeared overwhelmed by the cost estimate I'd quoted her. Her first reaction was to try to scale her idea down to a size she thought might seem more reasonable to me. In business, this usually isn't a good idea. There is something called 'the economy's of scale', which generally means the more of something you buy, the less expensive it costs for each unit bought. Even starting with a hundred women, our scale savings would only be slight. At twenty five, they would be non-existent. This wasn't what I had wanted, or expected, to hear from her. She should have been more willing to fight for her original idea. She'd already put in enough work to be able to justify why she needed to start out with a big enough sales force to make an immediate and significant sales impact. If she were to be given this sales division to run, she would need to produce large enough sales numbers to justify going to all the trouble and expense of creating it. Twenty five sales people wouldn't have enough impact on sales to justify the women having their own sales division, or the salary Cindy hoped to be given for running it. Fifty women wouldn't have been enough for that. "Why bother creating something separate that was going to be so small? With only twenty five new saleswomen, we'd be much further ahead simply integrating them into our other sales teams. Someone could still feed them all the leads available on stores having women owners. I do like seeing all this information you were able to develop on these convenience store owners. That was good thinking, Cindy. We could use more information like this for all our people out in the field. Just knowing the owner's name and contact information would give our people in the field a huge competitive advantage." "Thank you, Kenny. That was Aunt Pat's idea. She has a friend who got us all the data we've used to work with. I really think this idea would pay off for us in the long run. Sooner or later, someone else is going to have the same idea, and then we'll have to compete with them." "Was this what you were coming up to Ridgeline to talk to Joyce and me about? This is something she might be more interested in then I would. She's always telling me we need to start hiring more women." "No, I wanted to talk to you guys about something more personal. About all of us, and what I could do to help us all get back to like we were before you got sick. I've seen you changing, Kenny, and I wanted to see if both of you would give me another chance to come back?" "You know that Joyce and I still haven't settled a lot of our differences? I've been putting most of my energy into trying to get back with her. It isn't as easy as she and I had hoped it would be." "You told me you were going to spend time with Shirley on this trip too. That must mean you've decided to do more than just try to get back with Joyce. I'm not talking about us getting everything settled right away anyway. I mostly wanted to find out if there was anything I could do to help get it started for me and the other wives to come back." This was probably the first time since I'd been released from the clinic that Cindy had referred to herself as one of my wives. "Shirley and I have children together. She also stayed with the family during the whole time while I was sick. She deserves some special consideration." "She does, but I don't? Is that what you mean? I guess that's fair. I'm not saying you have to give me this special treatment. All I'm asking for is for the two of you to consider me when it does get to be the right time." "I wasn't making that particular comparison, but now that you bring it up yourself, I guess that's fair for you to say about Shirley. I wasn't looking at it that way. I know Joyce has really missed you, because she's made that very clear to me. She might be willing to put you ahead of others, but that would be because she's thinking about this tremendous attraction she has for you. Let's face it too, her great love for you." "Are you saying that you don't love me too?" Cindy made her little girl's pouting face. She was expert in knowing how to appeal to people in certain kinds of situations. She was beginning to pull out all the stops now, and ramping herself up, into what, for her, was a high gear. "I guess I still do, but I can't say I love you more than any of my other wives. I also look at things like loyalty or commitment differently than Joyce does. Joyce already told me that she never blamed you for staying down in Birmingham to be close to your family. She didn't see it as you abandoning all of us." "I don't see it like that either, Kenny. I care for Joyce, and for Shirley, probably more than I care for any of the other wives, but it was always you that meant the most to me. It was you that first attracted me to your family. I'm not saying that all those other wives weren't important for me when I was deciding how I felt about the overall package. For me though, you were always the main attraction. This was because of how you were with all your other wives. You were so secure in your relationships with them, and all of them were so filled with their love for you. I can't explain it, but this definitely added to the attraction I immediately felt for you. When I first saw how all the other wives acted around you, it drew me to you, almost irresistibly so." "We haven't had a history of being able to stay together too well ever since I first came back down here, Cindy. I'm not saying that any of that was necessarily your fault. Like I said to you earlier though, my main focus right now has to be on repairing my relationship with Joyce. If she hadn't insisted that I try to work things out this soon with Shirley, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be going to see her over at her house on Thursday. I hope things will work out well, and that, eventually, all of us will get back together again. I think Joyce will be the one who primarily decides how this is going to work. Once she's satisfied that she and I are safely back together, and that I've gotten back with Shirley, she'll probably tell me what she believes I should do next." "Joyce still loves me, Kenny, and you tell me you love me also. Since I still love both of you too, I've begun to wonder why none of us ever seem to talk or do anything else together outside of work? I'm not saying we all have to go back to living together right away, but is there any reason why the three of us can't be closer while all these other things are in the process of being worked on?" "Are you talking about something besides you flying up with me for this visit we're talking about now? What exactly is it you're saying?" "I'm saying that things have changed for me ever since you started becoming more relaxed again. Now, you seem more like you used to be before you got sick. Before, whenever we tried to get back together, you seemed nervous to me, anxious and too intense. It was too easy for you to get angry or upset. Now, whenever I'm around you, I keep seeing how you're changing. Because of seeing this change in you, I've really been wanting all of us to try to get back together again. I'm starting to miss the other wives too, especially Joyce and Shirley." "Are you sure you aren't just saying all this because you're hoping to get Joyce and me to approve this idea of yours? I think it's a very good idea, I'll be honest with you, about that. Still, a million dollars is a lot of money to invest in something that isn't really a proven concept. There are also a lot of other ideas and programs ahead of yours, programs that have already been proven, that are just waiting for a time when money isn't so hard for us to come by. Joyce and I wouldn't want you doing anything with us if it was just because you were hoping that we'd approve your program afterwards. You shouldn't believe that you could jump ahead of any of those others, just because you were someone who'd slept with us." "I wouldn't do it for that, Kenny. Give me some credit. I'm not trying to sleep my way into getting a promotion. How many times have I tried to get you to take me out since Christmas? Ten or so? I can't help it that we also happen to work together. My being around you now makes me think about what else I wish we could be doing again. We wouldn't even have to talk any business this weekend. It can just be a little relaxation holiday for the four of us." "I think I should warn you before you get on my plane, that Joyce and I were talking about both of us being in bed with you for at least one of the nights you were visiting. When we do that, we sometimes get a little carried away with whoever it is we're ravishing together. I remember you were sometimes a little skittish about any sudden movements around you, especially in sexual situations. Joyce and I, when we get together like that, we tend to usually overpower our other partner, and then we simply take whatever we want from them." "I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Do you think it would be more overpowering than the time I spent in bed with Eddie and Joyce together? They both had those contraptions they like to tie around themselves. It was different, but it didn't worry me or anything. I'm not as fragile as I used to be before I met all of you." "Strap on dildos? Was that what you meant by contraptions?" "I think that's what you call them. Anyway, whatever it is, I don't think I'd be worried about anything we did, if it was only us doing it. I think we could all have a good time. I could use some time away from here right now, too. Daddy and Uncle Larry are both being so childish about this competition thing they now have with each other. You need to do something to stop them before it breaks out into a real feud of some kind. Uncle Larry is really pushing things with Daddy." "It isn't really a competition. I told Larry I'd look at how he does compared to how Gene does. They've both been going great though. I'm not sure I want to do anything to change whatever they've been doing. My job is made a lot easier by the work they've performed." "Daddy's going to be furious if you end up giving Uncle Larry more money than you're giving him. They're both still upset about Kyle and Billy Ray. They probably don't even know how much you're paying Aunt Pat." I had an urge to mention that I was considering giving her a nice raise soon too, but I held off. I didn't want to bring something like that up so soon after we'd been talking about our having sex together. "Let's call Joyce and tell her that you're definitely coming up on Thursday. I know she was worried that you might not be able to make it on such short notice." "I talked to her earlier, Kenny, about that loading space problem at the South Carolina rail yard. We talked about me coming up on Thursday. Shouldn't I have mentioned it to her?" "Sure, no problem. I'll bet she was excited." Cindy just smiled. She was right, I didn't need to concern myself about exceeding her limits. Cindy had a firm grasp on what she wanted, and on what she was willing to do to get it. She was like her mother, ambitious to a fault. ------- When I got home from work, late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Cindy's car was sitting parked in front of my garage. I was surprised to see it there, and my first thought was that something had come up to change her plans about coming to Ridgeline with me. I remember thinking that Joyce was going to blame me for that. I found her sitting in my living room, watching some TV program. Apparently, Joyce had given her a house key that time she came down to Birmingham with me. The time she and Cindy had spent the one night together. "Hi, Cindy. What brings you out here tonight?" "Hi. Well, you said you wanted to leave early, and that I could leave my car parked here if I came over here before we left. I thought it would be more convenient if I spent the night here, and then we could get up whenever you wanted and just leave from here." I was somewhat taken by surprise by this bold move on her part. Not shocked by any means, but still, surprised. She'd given me no prior indication that she was planning something like this. My first thought was she wanted to get an early start on having sex with me. My next thought was this was something I should phone Joyce about, before I decided to take any action on my own. I excused myself, telling her that I needed to make some phone calls, then retired into my bedroom for some privacy. Cindy went back to watching whatever TV show she'd been watching when I came through the door a few minutes before. "Hi Joyce. Guess who was waiting in the living room for me when I just got home five minutes ago?" "Cindy? It doesn't surprise me that she'd do something like this. She told me yesterday about the conversation the two of you had in your office. You weren't leaving anything to chance were you?" "It just seemed like the time to make sure she wouldn't be surprised by anything we'd be doing to her. She took the news of our intentions pretty well I thought. She certainly wasn't making any protest." "She told me she was really looking forward to her visit. She also told me that the two of you had discussed a business idea she'd had. Was it the one you were telling me about? The one where the women sales crews would be out opening new accounts?" "That's the one. I asked her if she was going to sleep with us in hopes that it might lead to her getting her plan approved. She said it wasn't anything like that." "Did you believe her?" "Not for a second. This isn't the first time something like this has come up. It fits the same pattern for her. She'll be working hard to get us to approve her plan. I think she wants to begin working on me tonight. How do you feel about that?" "Honestly? I wish she'd waited. I don't think you should try to put her off though. I guess it shouldn't matter any that you two got off to an early start. You make sure you don't get over to Shirley's house tomorrow so tired out that you'll end up disappointing her." "I'm going to call Shirley right after I get finished talking with you. How should I bring this up to her?" "You shouldn't mention it at all. This might present another problem I wasn't thinking about when I first heard about what you'd told Cindy. Shirley isn't going to be happy if Cindy sleeps with you again before she gets her own chance to be with you. Now, I do wish Cindy hadn't decided to come over there tonight." "I'm thinking you could be right. In fact, I don't think Shirley is going to appreciate me scheduling anything with Cindy this weekend. Maybe I should let you have her all to yourself for this weekend? I really don't want to put Cindy ahead of Shirley again either. I think I'm going to have a talk with Cindy, explain this problem we'll have if we go ahead with doing what we have planned. I'll call you back, later tonight, and tell you how it went." After I got off the phone, I sat on my bed thinking of the best way to even begin discussing this new complication with Cindy. I wondered why I hadn't already thought about the impact something like this might have on Shirley. I phoned Shirley then, telling her I'd probably be over at her house sometime right around noon. The first thing she asked me after I told her when I expected to get there was whether or not Cindy was coming up with me. I had hoped to speak with Cindy before getting into any of this with Shirley. Now, it looked like that wasn't possible. "She's coming up on the plane with me, but she's going to be spending her visiting time with Joyce. We might go over there on Friday, if you want to, or else we can stay over at your house and see about having this weekend be just you, me, and the kids. When Joyce and I discussed letting Cindy fly up with me this weekend, I honestly wasn't thinking about how it might look to you. I wish now we hadn't even invited her to come up this time." "Did you sleep with her yet this week?" Her tone was accusing. It irritated me somewhat. Then, I remembered the elaborate plans I'd already made for Joyce, Cindy and me. Just because I hadn't committed the act yet, it didn't mean I hadn't already had the intention. I could honestly answer her that I hadn't, but I thought she'd ask me then if I planned to. "No, I didn't. How about you, did you sleep with her, or with anyone else this week?" I realized this was too strong a reaction for me to be having. I hoped it hadn't angered her. "Are you planning on sleeping with her anytime soon?" So much for me not mentioning any plans I might have had for Cindy and me. I wasn't going to lie, so I needed to make a quick decision before answering her. "I won't lie to you, the thought has entered my head. In fact, all of us have even talked about it. It isn't anything I wanted to do so badly that I'd go ahead and do it if it means making you angry or even if it meant that you'd feel bad about it. How about if I promise you that I won't sleep with Cindy again until after you've slept with her again yourself?" I knew I had to defuse this somehow. I wasn't expecting Shirley to push me like she was. "I might never sleep with her again." Her tone was determined, not in the least conciliatory. She was giving me a little room to take back my other statement. To back away from what I'd said about not sleeping with Cindy unless she did it first. I realized, while I was there on the phone, that I didn't want to back away from it. All my earlier talk with Cindy about the reasons why Shirley deserved special consideration was coming back to me as I waited, thinking about what I could say in response to her last statement. She did deserve it, and, if I could manage it, I'd try to give her whatever she believed she needed or wanted concerning my future actions with Cindy. "If you don't then I won't. Is that okay with you?" I knew, as I said it, that this was going to alter a lot of options I might have had if something went wrong with my attempting to get back with Joyce and Shirley both. I'd given my relationship with Cindy to Shirley, to hold hostage. We spoke for a few more minutes. I hung up, realizing that, in the few minutes we'd talked, I'd really backed myself into a corner with the promise I'd just made to Shirley. She hadn't given me any more room to wiggle out of my promise after that first time either. I couldn't blame her for that. This was all my own fault, for failing to put myself in Shirley's place before agreeing to do all of this with Cindy and Joyce. There was nothing else to do but go out into the living room and explain to Cindy about the recent changes that had been agreed to. What I felt myself regretting most was making these decisions without having the opportunity of first consulting with Cindy. I should have done that before I spoke with Shirley. I hoped she'd understand the reasons why I'd put this promise to Shirley in place. I wasn't expecting her to take any of these changes well at all. Nothing that had just been agreed to with Shirley was going to sit well with Cindy. All I could hope for was that she'd realize that blowing up in anger at me wouldn't help her to get closer to achieving any of her ambitions. I was mostly thinking of her ambitions concerning the business idea we'd been discussing, not whatever personal ambitions she might have concerning Joyce and me. "So, you really promised Shirley that you weren't going to sleep with me before she did? Did Joyce agree to this too, or is this something you did all by yourself?" As I'd expected, Cindy didn't like what I'd needed to tell her. At least she'd listened without interrupting me. That was a skill I was learning to appreciate from her. "This is all my fault, Cindy. I made a big mistake in making any arrangement with you. I didn't give any prior thought to how this would seem to Shirley. She's waited for me these past four years. I've treated her pretty badly for almost the whole time. I'm surprised she ever decided to give me this chance, but she has, and it's very important to me that I don't ruin it for her. I'm not willing to take any action that has any chance of spoiling this weekend for her." "I could understand you thinking this way, Kenny, except for the fact that you already knew you had this Thursday visit set up with Shirley before you told me what you, Joyce, and I would be doing together for the rest of the weekend. I've really been looking forward to spending this time with you two. You can tell how anxious I was just by the fact that I showed up here like I did this evening. I must look very desperate and pathetic to you now." "You shouldn't think like that. It isn't even close to the truth about how you look to me. I'd never think that about you. Anyway, if you choose to look at it right, there's really no reason why what's happened has to spoil anything about this weekend for you. You and Joyce can still have a great weekend together. It will give you an opportunity to make your case with her about why the three of us should start trying to get closer together again. It might also allow you the chance to explain your idea to Joyce, to try to win her over to supporting your plans. She'd probably be in favor of the idea. Joyce has considerable influence with my father. If she's impressed enough by your idea, it wouldn't surprise me if she took you over to see my Dad and made him listen to your idea too. Mama's going to be over at the house too. If you manage to get her on your side, your project is almost certain to be funded. It could be on track for immediate implementation, perhaps as early as next week." "This wasn't about business, Kenny. This was about us, and about me hoping we could begin getting back together again. You don't know how happy I was when you told me you and Joyce both wanted to be with me again. Its all I've been able to think about since Monday. I almost had to tie myself up to keep from driving over here last night. Don't think you can try to buy your way out of having disappointed me like this. Who knows whether Shirley and I will ever sleep together again? You've given her this power now. I can't do anything to make any difference to change what will happen." I thought she was pouring it on a little heavy with some of her comments. She'd certainly shown remarkable resistance to all my charms, and to Joyce's too, when she had practically ignored the two of us for almost four years. Admittedly, I was someone she was smart to avoid for most of this time, but Joyce would have definitely loved any attention from her, and she was no different now than she'd been before when we'd first started talking together again. I couldn't buy Cindy's claims about how much this was hurting her. "This can be a test of your ability to take bad news and then manage to make the best of it. I'm not telling you how you should react to this. That's entirely up to you. I've made a promise to Shirley though, and I'm not planning on breaking it. You can either fly up with me tomorrow, determined to have a good time in spite of what has happened. This will make Joyce a happy woman. You can also decide to stay here, and that would disappoint her in exactly the same way that I've apparently just disappointed you. Remember too, I only promised not to sleep with you until after Shirley slept with you. I seem to remember you and Shirley being pretty compatible with each other a few years back. Joyce might even be persuaded to help you with her, if you ask for her help in a nice enough way. You can still make this weekend work out the way you say you wanted it to, if you really put your mind to accomplishing it." Cindy wouldn't be consoled by my words. After another half hour of listening to her complaints about how unfair I was being to her, I excused myself to go back into my bedroom to call Joyce again. She didn't like it that I was walking away before she was finished telling how much my decision was hurting her. I was on the phone with Joyce, sitting up in bed with my head back against two pillows I'd propped up against my headboard to make it comfortable. I had just finished explaining to Joyce what I'd said to Shirley, and how Cindy had reacted to the news of what Shirley and I had finally agreed to. She had surprised me by being reasonable about what I had offered Shirley. "You didn't have any other choice, Kenny. You had to tell her something like that. Did Cindy tell you she had changed her mind about coming up here now?" "Not yet. I left her in the living room before she said what she's planning. When I left to come in here to call you, she was just getting started explaining how unfair it was that I got her hopes up like I had, and then took it all away from her. She's upset that this was decided without her having done anything to deserve being disappointed. She told me earlier that she still loves both of us though, and she wants for the three of us to be a lot closer then we have been." "You aren't going to suggest to her that she not fly here with you, are you?" "I told her she has a choice. When I said that though, I made it clear that I thought she should still come, just for the chance to spend some time with you." "Do you remember me predicting something like this was going to happen, Kenny?" "I remember. I could kick myself for not thinking about how Shirley would react to our plans for Cindy. It isn't like she hasn't made it clear that she feels like I'm always making these kinds of decisions when it finally gets around to being her turn for something. She's been saying the same thing to me for years. I think it's true now, but I don't think it has ever been like that before." "That's why it was a good thing that you told her you wouldn't do anything with Cindy until after she did something with her. Don't ever tell her that same thing about me though. Did you know she has always dreamed about it being just you and her living together? She told me about that being her dream, back when you were still very sick, after you had spent about a year in the clinic. It was before you started getting well again. You were being so mean to her, whenever you saw her, and I said something about how she should take a break from visiting you, to stay home for awhile when the rest of us went for a visit. She told me she needed to see you. It was right after that, when I asked her why she needed to see you, that she told me about her dream for it to someday be just you and her. It was the first time I really believed that someone else loved you as much as I did. None of us ever understood why you picked her to be the meanest to." While Joyce was telling me this, Cindy came into my bedroom and started getting undressed. The whole time she was taking her clothes off, she was trying to smile. She wasn't able to force a real smile. She was too tense for that. "Joyce, Cindy just came into my room and is stripping out of her clothes. What do you think I should do?" I tried to sound a little amused, but I was very worried. I remembered how she looked naked. I remembered how she felt naked. I knew what I didn't want to happen, but, I also knew it was going to be a powerful temptation for me. "Tell her I need to talk to her, Kenny. Get up now and hand her the phone." I got up and walked the phone over to where she stood. She had paused in her undressing when she heard me telling Joyce what she was doing. She was down to her bra and a slip and panties when she reached out and took the phone away from my outstretched hand. I started getting a tremor before I quickly pushed the hand back against my side. The two of them started talking. Cindy was turned away from me, mostly listening to Joyce talking, but I could see her talking into the phone about every minute or so. She looked upset. After a few minutes, she raised her voice a few times, but when she did that, there was a longer time pause between her finishing what she said, and her saying anything else. They spoke for perhaps ten minutes before Cindy walked over and handed me the phone. Having done that, she turned and walked out of my bedroom, leaving her discarded clothing on my bedroom carpet. I noticed her butt still had that little jiggling motion when she moved. I had been distracted watching her, but I heard Joyce calling my name, and that brought me back to the present. "Joyce? She's gone. What did you tell her?" "She left the house, or just your bedroom?" "The bedroom. What did you tell her?" "I told her I'd fix things with Shirley so she could sleep with you soon. It was the only way to keep her from doing what she was planning to do. If she had succeeded, it would have ruined more than just this weekend for Shirley. The rest of the time I spent getting her to understand it might take me some time to make Shirley understand that you sleeping with Cindy again would be a good thing. I'm going to tell Shirley that you sleeping with Cindy means we're all another step closer to having things back like they were before." "Do you really believe that?" "I don't know if I do or not. I'm convinced that Cindy believes it's true. She thinks the more things go back to how they used to be, the more relaxed you'll start to be. She thinks the main difference from how you are now and how you were before you got sick is you being on edge all the time. She says we need to try to get you to relax more. She said she was going to relax you when she finished getting undressed." Joyce laughed at that last part, and I joined her. "Did she tell you what her plans were for the trip?" "She said she was still coming. She wants me to talk Shirley into coming over to our house. I'm pretty sure she's going to try to get Shirley to have sex with her if she can. I hope she succeeds. Shirley shouldn't have gotten you to make that promise, Kenny." "She didn't get me to make it. I felt guilty when she asked me about my plans. I was trying to tell her something to let her know I wasn't going to put Cindy ahead of her. That's what came out." "Get up early and fly up here before Cindy decides to do something different. I'm going to talk to Shirley as soon as we hang up. I don't think she has to change anything before you and she get together Thursday, but, she needs to see she can't prevent you from getting back to doing things the way you did before you got sick. That means you being with all of us." "Good luck with convincing her about that. This is what I meant before when I was talking about how things keep getting more complex and harder to control whenever a new person gets added in with us. Even though Shirley had nothing to do with Cindy, and the two haven't spoken together in months, what happened today could have set everything back to before we first started talking again. That's what I've been afraid of." "You worry too much, Kenny. I can see why you do, but it doesn't help when we both already know what has to happen. There are eight of us that need to get back together. For one of us to try to make that happen alone, it would be terribly complicated. If four of us were trying, then it would be less complicated. I've been talking to Eddie and Dale, keeping them informed about what's been happening with us. They feel like Cindy does, they want to help get things moving faster. If six of us were all agreed about wanting to get Emily and Brenda back, we could do it a lot easier than if it was just you trying. Brenda already wants to come back to Kansas. If she leaves Emily and comes back here, how much longer do you think it would be before Emily comes back to us too?" "You've changed your tune quite a bit from what you were saying just two weeks ago, Joyce. Why?" "This thing with Cindy, and the big fight we had over it. You told me how you felt, talked about thinking I was just using you to get me girls, but then you went ahead and made an effort to get Cindy to come up here with you. I couldn't keep telling myself that there was none of our old Kenny in you, not if you could think what you did, and still do your best to get Cindy up here for me. The only real grounds I had for objecting to you was that you had changed, that you were no longer the Kenny we all had loved before. I was convinced you didn't really love me, or love any of us. I couldn't watch you sitting with the children though, and still manage to convince myself I was right. Then, there was this thing tonight with Shirley, and what you said to her. In a lot of ways, what you said to Shirley was stupid, but it was stupid in the same way my old Kenny would have been stupid." "So, now I'm starting to remind you of your old Kenny?" "I wouldn't quite go that far yet. You're still a lot different than him. You're here though. We can touch you, and we can talk to you. I haven't been able to do that with my Kenny in four years, none of us have. What you said before, about him either being dead, or, if he is still alive, he has to be somewhere inside you, that made me start to think differently too." "You do know I think I'm mostly your old Kenny, don't you?" "You aren't though. You told me a hundred times before that you aren't ever going to be. I don't want to be alone anymore, Kenny. I'm tired of seeing everyone I love made unhappy because they can't have something I made them think they needed. You aren't our old Kenny, but I think I can learn to need you, just like I needed our old Kenny. I know I already love some things about you. Shirley told me what she told you about how I said we should have known you had to be crazy since you chose us when you had girls who look like Emily and Brenda to choose from too. She told me that you look the same to her, and she still didn't think she could ever do better, or even as good as you. I think she's right, and I feel like that for me too." "All this sounds like you just decided to settle for less than you wanted, less than you had before?" "No. We don't have anyone now. We haven't had anyone for years. We have a choice right now, with you. That isn't settling for less, that's adding more. Settling for less would be holding out for our old Kenny to return to us." "It might end up being closer to that then you believe now." "For me, what you have for us now is enough. If something happens, and it ends up getting better, that will be really great. If it stays like it is right now though, it's still enough. I'm ready for you to come back home to us." I still had some problems. I knew I was going to have to find a way to bring my subconscious self around to seeing things the same way I now saw them. I could no longer afford to deal in the absolutes of an emotionally crippling childhood. I hoped that Joyce really meant what she'd said, and that she'd find some way to put up with whatever I needed to do to get myself to a place where being with my family was no longer something that would force me to be conflicted with myself. I desperately wanted to succeed in making myself whatever they needed me to be. Joyce was the key. I'd need her to help me keep the family together until I managed to get my emotions back under control and synchronized again. I hoped that Kenny, the orphan boy trying desperately to survive, would realize he could afford to let himself loosen up so that Kenny the man could enjoy all he'd been given. Dr. Fellows had told me repeatedly that I couldn't force my subconscious to change how it viewed the world, or how it saw my place in it. I needed to surrender myself to this frightened pathetic little boy who was controlling my subconscious values, knowing that by doing so it might mean losing forever all those I now loved. I didn't know how I could convince Joyce that I needed to go back into the clinic to be reborn yet again. I hated having to do it, but I couldn't see any other way to be sure my family would be safe and protected. Is there such a thing as loving people so much that you'd risk losing everything to protect them from yourself? I thought so. ------- Chapter 72 Cindy had seemed sullen to me when we had our breakfast together early the next morning. She was as subdued as I'd ever seen her during the first part of the flight up to Bolling. She had this resilience though, it was a trait I'd always admired about her. After about an hour of silence in the cockpit, she started talking to me again. She was apparently curious about whether I planned to bring Shirley over to the other house, too curious to continue being silent. We spoke about what my options were, now that everything had come out about what Joyce and I had been planning to do with Cindy. "I think Joyce has already talked to Shirley, Cindy. She told me she planned to last night. She said she was going to tell Shirley that I would be with her all day today, but she expected me to make an appearance at our house sometime tomorrow. I've already told Shirley we might make this a weekend for just us two and the children. I think it needs to be left up to Shirley. She's been waiting for something like this weekend to happen for awhile now." "You can't just leave everything up to Shirley, Kenny. She'll keep you all for herself if you allow her to do it. That's what I'd do too." "Joyce is going to be talking to her. Usually Shirley listens to whatever Joyce tells her. You should have more faith in Joyce. Usually she knows how to handle things like this whenever they come up. She's certainly better qualified to deal with this than I am." "Joyce is always saying she'll fix things, but she means she'll fix them the way she wants them to be. Sometimes, even when she tries her hardest, she can't deliver when she tells you she'll do something. When you talked with Shirley last night, did she sound like she was mad at me?" "I couldn't really tell. I was busy trying to make sure she wouldn't be so mad at me that she'd want to cancel our weekend plans. She didn't say anything to me about blaming you for anything. She sounded more frustrated and disappointed than angry at anyone. So many things have happened, whenever we try to plan anything together. Now she always gets suspicious that something will ruin whatever we have planned. I'm hoping this time things will end differently, that we'll both enjoy ourselves. We really need for it to be different this time, not like all the other times we've tried to do something together since I went to the clinic. It's really important that we have a good weekend together." "Together? There's that same word you keep saying. You say that word a lot to me now. You and Joyce getting together, Doing things so you and Shirley can be together. Whenever I talk about together, as in us being together, you either change the subject, or talk about me getting together with Joyce. Have you already decided that you and I won't ever be together?" Cindy was pretty perceptive. I hadn't consciously tried to give her the impression that I was pessimistic about the two of us getting back together. I hadn't decided that she and I would never be together, only that it wasn't going to happen unless the other wives were together with us too. Somewhere in my mind, a long time ago, I had made a decision that Cindy was more Joyce's women than she would ever be mine. I might be the one sharing some of the other wives with Joyce, but with Cindy, I felt like I was having Joyce share her with me. It was exactly the same way I felt about Emily sharing Brenda with all of us. Brenda always insisted, when she was alone with me, that it was me that she felt closest to. Whenever we were together with just Emily, Brenda and me though, it became apparent that Brenda was more Emily's wife than she was mine. I had always had Joyce back then, so it hadn't troubled me too much. It was a reality that I had been willing to accept. Shirley fell into a grey area with me as far as her loyalties were concerned. Sexually, she was definitely my wife, but much more than any of the other wives, Cindy included, she looked to Joyce for any important decisions being made that would either be affecting her or the children. With Shirley, it was more like she was both mine and Joyce's together. Some of our interrelationships were even more complex than that. There were secondary and tertiary influences that could change who was ascendant in these primary loyalty roles. Not forever, but from time to time. Joyce and I, acting together, were stronger with Brenda than Emily was all by herself. Eddie and Dale were closer than any of us could ever be with either of them. Joyce had more influence with Eddie than I did, but Dale looked to me rather than to Joyce. Of all of us, it was Emily that usually stood most ready to make important decisions all on her own. She also was the one most likely to take action once she'd decided something. She had always had this independent streak, and this, coupled with her natural tendency to argue about most things, is what kept creating division inside the family. Emily liked to polarize things. Sometimes, I felt like she'd just get bored and want to stir up some emotional energy because of that. If I hadn't loved her as much as I did, I'd have simply allowed Emily to drift away from our family. Unfortunately, whenever she did that, I realized how vital it was to me that she remain an important part of my life. While I was thinking all this, Cindy was waiting for me to answer her. "I really don't think of it as you and I together, Cindy. I think that way about Joyce and me. I even think that way if it's you, Joyce and me together, or if it's Shirley, Joyce and me. There are different kinds of together. I can't imagine you and me together, not without Joyce being there with both of us. The same is true for Emily and Brenda. Over the years, I've begun thinking of those two as being inseparable, like Eddie and Dale are. I see you as being inseparable from Joyce." "I don't see myself that way at all. I don't know why you have to believe something like that either. Why won't you believe me when I tell you that it's you that I've mainly been attracted to?" "I didn't say I didn't believe it when you tell me that. Brenda tells me that too. Dale and Shirley have both told me that as well. What I'm talking about now is how I see things, not about how you or the other wives might see them. I see myself as being inseparable from Joyce. For a long time, Joyce saw herself the same way, but then she stopped believing we were inseparable. When she stopped believing that, things started falling apart for me." "We all thought you two were inseparable too." "We are. I didn't say we ever stopped being inseparable, only that Joyce had stopped believing that we were. Connections weaken when they aren't tied firmly to each end. All our family's connections were weakened while I was sick. I wanted to reconnect, but there's another part of me that objects to making all the connections firm again. I'm not strong enough yet to make these connections again if I'm alone. With Joyce, I think I'm strong enough, so I'll have to begin by making all these connections through her." With Shirley too?" "I don't think so. Shirley is in a different category than the rest of the wives. I'm strong enough right now to make my own connection with her. She still has her strong connection with Joyce. I'm hoping the three of us will each be inseparable with each other." "Are you telling me that we can be like that, but only through Joyce?" "I'm telling you I'm hoping we can. I know Joyce wants all of us back together. Joyce doesn't have any problems with the idea of getting all of us back together. I'm the one who has the problem. I'll need to change some things before I'll be able to get back together with all the wives myself. I'm hoping that all the wives can reconnect with me through Joyce, and through her I can then do what I have to do in order to reestablish my own connections with all of you." We talked some more before we landed at the airport in Bolling. I wasn't sure Cindy understood what I was trying to communicate to her. She might have just believed I was trying to pawn her off on Joyce for the weekend. When I'd been speaking with her about connections, I'd been practicing on her for what I wanted to say to Joyce. I saw Joyce as our best hope for all of us getting back together again. Joyce was the only one who could keep us all connected until I was able to manage to come to some workable arrangement with my subconscious self. I planned to check myself back into the clinic, allowing Dr. Fellows to hypnotize me as often as she needed to, while I used her as a go between to negotiate some form of workable compromise with my subconscious self. Shirley was waiting at the airport for us with Hans. Derek and the girls were there with her as well. There was a period of awkwardness between Shirley and Cindy while they waited for me to get done with speaking with the maintenance people about what I needed done with the plane. Shirley and Cindy hadn't been speaking to each other when I turned back and started walking over to where they all were. They weren't glaring at each other or anything, it was more like they were ignoring each other being there. "Shirley, I've been looking forward to us having a pleasant time today. Cindy hasn't done anything to justify you making her feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. If you're angry, then be angry at me. I'm the one who deserves it." "She could have picked another time." Shirley was looking at Cindy although she was directing her words to me. "Joyce asked me to invite her this time. All Cindy did was accept our invitation. In half an hour we're going to be dropping her off at the other house. If the two of you haven't gotten this straightened out by then, I'm going to be disappointed in both of you. I hope you don't decide to get this weekend's visit off to a disappointing start." "I didn't say anything bad to her. I'm disappointed that it isn't going to just be the three of us. That's what we talked about. You'd spend time with us, then we'd spend time over at the other house, with Joyce and the other kids." "You're acting as if she did something you have a right to resent her for. What is it you think she did?" "Today was supposed to be ours, Kenny. I thought tomorrow and Saturday would be for all the children, and for you, Joyce and me." "You should be mad at Joyce then." "I am. I'm mad at you and her both." "Then it's lucky Cindy is here now, so you have someone around that you aren't mad at. This is an unfortunate time for you to decide to be mad at me. It's going to put a real strain on the time we have together. I'll be honest, I had real high hopes for this visit with you. I wanted to show you that we could get along again. You being mad at me is going to get us off to a bad beginning. I wish you'd been mad at me earlier in the week, before I went to all the trouble I did, changing my schedule around so that I'd have an extra day and night to be here with you and the family." "You hadn't done anything earlier in the week to make me mad. Why couldn't just being with Joyce, me, and the children have been enough for you on this visit?" "I haven't done anything now either. I invited Cindy to come up here with me. Joyce and I had made some plans for what was originally scheduled to be her time with me. I guess you're mad because I didn't decide quickly enough that I should spend more time with you, and less time with Joyce and Cindy? I didn't do anything to cut short, or in any way affect, the time you and I had agreed to spend together on this visit. What I did do was make an offer to you to extend the time I'd be with you from the one day we'd agreed on, to the whole weekend. Is that what you're mad about, me wanting to spend more time with you than we had agreed to?" "It's like you deciding to bring her along with you when we were supposed to be going on our own date." "It's like that if all you're trying to see is the worst possible interpretation of this. Is that what you want? That isn't why I think you're acting this way. I think you're afraid, worried that we'll have our time together, and it won't be as good as you've been hoping it would be. You're giving yourself an excuse for that disappointment already. You'd rather keep your hopes intact, in case we have a problem, than take a chance of trying your best to see that we do have as good a time as you were hoping for. I think you do that whenever there's any chance that we'll be together, like this weekend. It's been four years, Shirley. We can't keep making up these artificial problems to postpone finding out for ourselves if we can still be together. I want you to try to relax about this. It really is going to be fine. We'll get through this together. We'll show each other that we can be good together again. After we do that, we'll talk about what each of us needs to do to make our future together as good as our past was, before I got sick. I'm no longer sick, and its time we began celebrating that fact." Shirley looked sad, almost sad enough to lose her remaining composure. I reached for her hand and gently pulled on her arm until she moved slowly away from her seat across from and facing me, and over to me until she was sitting beside me on the seat I had been previously been sharing with Derek and Becky. The kids were all giggling as they watched their mother being pulled away from where she had been sitting. "Kenny!" Shirley wasn't resisting, although she made an attempt to seem like she was. It occurred to me that this was what she wanted and needed, for me to actively reach out and bring her back to me, just like I had when I reached out and pulled her closer to me in the limo. "Hush, Shirl, we've been apart for too long already. This visit wasn't planned so we could have another fight and postpone our being back together. We both agreed that we'd spend this time together. I'm living up to my part of that agreement. You need to live up to your part of it as well." I happened to glance forward and see the expression on Cindy's face. It was wistful. I knew she would have greatly preferred that it was her I had reached for, and not Shirley. For the remainder of the trip over to our house, I held Shirley's hand and kept her close against me. Even the children cooperated by being quiet and well behaved. Beck had a happy smile on her face, as did Derek. Leah spent most of her time and attention just staring at Cindy. I was glad when we arrived at the house and Joyce came out to greet us all. Cindy got out of the car and went over to kiss Joyce. Hans had come around to retrieve both Cindy's bags and carried them up to the front door. I'm sure he would have taken them inside, if Phil hadn't appeared to take the bags from him. I waved through the open door at Phil, and told Joyce I'd give her a call the next day, as soon as Shirley and I made up our minds about what we were going to do. She didn't look happy to hear me telling her that, but she waved to us anyway. When Hans got back in the limo, we drove about another half a mile over to Shirley's house. It was an older two story wooden house on the main road going to the country club. It was less house than I had supposed it would be. I had made certain that Shirley had full access to the money I'd put into the trust I'd set up for her and our children. With years of trading profits, it had grown to be a considerable sum, more than fourteen million dollars. The house I was looking at couldn't have cost more than fifty or sixty thousand. It was an older house in an older neighborhood. Even though it was a two story house, it wasn't large or spacious by any stretch of the imagination. "Why didn't you get something nicer than this, Shirley? You have enough money to afford a lot better than this." "I wasn't planning on living here forever, Kenny. I just needed a place for us to live until you made your choices." "Which choices?" "I'd rather not say right now. Little pitchers have big ears." She looked at the three kids sitting on the seat opposite ours. Shirley and the children went into the house, but I waited outside to speak with Hans about getting a ride back to the airport for Cindy and me, sometime during the morning on Sunday. I told him I'd let him know what time I'd be ready, later on in the weekend. I told him too, that I was planning to come by Mama's house for at least one meal, and that I wanted to spend a few hours there to give me a chance to touch bases with all of them. I said it definitely wouldn't be before Friday afternoon or sometime Saturday though. The inside of the house was much nicer than the outside had been. The furniture was nice, and everything looked like it had been freshly painted and all the flooring looked like it had been newly varnished. It was a cozy house, even though the ceilings were low, and the rooms seemed smaller than I was used to. I could see that Shirley was expecting me to comment on the interior. "It's nice inside, Shirl. I can see your taste in all these pieces of furniture. I bet you and your mother had a lot of fun picking everything out?" I had noticed the furniture was different than her mom's but not so different that I'd believe she hadn't had a hand in helping Shirley pick out some of the pieces. Some of the rugs on the floor might even have come from her collection. She was always moving these rugs of hers around from one room to another, or from one spot on the floor to a spot that gave the rug a different appearance. Her husband had spent about fifteen years in the carpet business, but all Mrs. Jones kept in her house were these Persian and Turkish carpets, some were just runners, but some of them were large enough to mostly cover a good sized room. She had bought all of them used, from flea markets or from estate sales. She was quite proud of her collection, and claimed some of her rugs were very valuable. "Would you like to see our bedroom?" Ever since we had dropped off Cindy with Joyce, Shirley's attitude had taken a turn for the better. I didn't miss the reference to it being 'our' bedroom and not her bedroom. I smiled and nodded to her that I would. "Bring your suitcase. I have a dresser in there just for your clothes." The bedroom was the biggest and nicest of all the rooms. Shirley told me one of her brothers and her father had converted it over from having been three bedrooms before. There was a nice connecting bathroom with a large deep bath tub and a separate shower. Her dad had completely redone the bathroom for her. Small house or not, Shirley had a comfortable room for herself. I put most of my clothes away, with help from Shirley, then we went back downstairs and she showed me the two bedrooms the children had. Derek led the way. I could tell he was quite proud of his bedroom, and saw by all the football and baseball posters on his walls, that he had developed quite a passion for the Kansas City Royals and the Kansas City Chiefs. This wasn't surprising to me, given his maternal grandfather's own fanatical reverence for those two teams. We allowed Derek to show us all the other parts of the house, including the full basement, with a special room that had been built for them to ride out any tornado activity. Most of the basement had been converted into a big playroom for the children. I was able to see that Leah had added quite a lot to her book collection, which had been considerable even before they moved. Becky's dollhouse had somehow gotten enlarged, and her collection of dolls and doll clothes had also been greatly expanded as well. Inside the doll house there were many pieces of furniture and also some appliances. Most of these had been hand made for her by either her grandfather Ron or by Phil from our house. Both of them liked to make things like that for her. Whenever she wanted anything new, she would start dropping broad hints for both men. I knew she had several boxes of duplicate pieces that she used whenever she felt like redecorating the doll house. She even had curtains and drapes, and a working vacuum cleaner that Mama had found somewhere, and brought home for her to have and use. All five of us spent the rest of the day together. Most of the time I sat on the sofa and talked to the children as they took turns traipsing off to go get me another small part of their belongings so they could show me everything they had that was all their own. One of the things they seemed to prefer now was sole ownership of their toys and other possessions. At the house we had communal toys and even the bicycles were shared toys. I made a mental note to myself to discuss the children's obvious preference for their own individual toys and games with Joyce when we talked again. I wondered if the same thing had taken place with our children after all the other kids had moved away? I guess it's just natural to want to have things of your own. I should have remembered that from when I had grown up. It was just with so many children, all close in age, individual toys and games would have taken up too much space. Plus, I never wanted the children fighting over what toy belonged to which child. It took me only a short while before I caught myself, and realized that my way of thinking had somehow shifted just from being around Shirley rather than Cindy. I felt more at home, and less on my guard. I was thinking more as a husband and father, and less as a person always needing to be on the alert. I almost made a comment about this to Shirley, but decided to wait and tell her this when we were all by ourselves, later. I thought about what Joyce had told me, about how Shirley had a dream that it could just be her and me, living with our children. I knew it wasn't ever going to be that way, but I also knew that it wouldn't have been a bad life for either of us if it had turned out that way. We had both made earlier choices though, and for this reason, I knew we'd never get back to where Shirley's dream would ever become a reality for us. Still, it was nice to know it would have been possible at an earlier time. We still had this comfort with each other. Not as intense a feeling as it had been when we were children ourselves, but, I could still get very relaxed with Shirley when we weren't fighting about something. By nine o'clock, all the children had been bathed or showered and put to bed. I took Derek to his room, after his shower and spoke with him as he got settled in for the night. "Are you going to start living with us again, Daddy?" "That's something your mother and I are planning to talk about later, sport. It was nice today though. Thank you for showing me everything. One of the reasons I'd like it if we did start living together again would be because I'd get to spend more time with you. I miss seeing you as often as I used to." "I miss you too. I hope you do come here and live with us. Bertie told us you were going to come live just with her and Mama Joyce, but mommy says you didn't decide anything yet." I didn't want to say anything to encourage any rivalry in my family. In some ways, it was a shock to me that Derek believed it was going to be one way or the other, or that we all wouldn't be living together like we once were. I wondered if Shirley had said something to make him think that way? "I'm hoping all of us will be back together again. All the mommy's and all the children. That way we could all be together. I don't want to have to only be with some of you." "Bertie says you already decided. She says you picked Mama Joyce. Mommy told me we all had to be real nice to you, so you'd pick us instead. I've tried my hardest to be nice. I'm nicer than Bertie or Bunny." I looked at my son and I felt bad for having helped to get him caught up in something so potentially heartbreaking as this was. One thing was obvious, and that was that there were sides already drawn. These were all barriers to us succeeding in getting ourselves reconnected again. I knew I didn't want my children taking sides, or even feeling that they needed to do anything to convince me to want to choose them. I kissed Derek as I tucked him in. He wiped off my kiss, telling me he was eleven years old and too old to be kissing his father. I smiled and kissed his other cheek telling him he might be too old for that, but I certainly wasn't. He wiped that kiss off too, but I thought I detected a happy smile in his eyes when he did it. After I left Derek's bedroom I went to the girl's room and watched Shirley finishing up getting them settled down for the night. Leah saw me standing in the doorway and asked me to tuck her in too. I went over and tucked both my daughters in, kissing each one as I did it. When I turned to leave the room, Becky giggled, and told everyone that Daddy was a big cry baby. I had gotten emotional, but I wasn't crying because I felt bad. I was crying because it felt so good to be doing something so normal again. I felt like I had come home again, even if it was only for a one day trip back. I went upstairs to the bedroom while Shirley checked that everything was turned off and the house was locked up. By the time she came into the bedroom, I had brushed my teeth and gotten undressed. I was pulling back the covers when she walked into the bedroom. I heard her closing the bedroom door behind herself, then I heard her closing the bathroom door as well. Shirley took about fifteen minutes before she finally came out of the bathroom. By the time she came out, I was at least as worried and anxious as she must have been. It was funny how we could both be so worried about something we'd done at least five hundred times before. I knew this was going to be the most critical part of our visit. Up until then, the visit had been more about me and the children. It had gone very well, but the real test was there in that bedroom. Shirley and I no longer had any distractions or buffers separating us. We were alone, and we both knew what needed to happen. I had been told that Shirley had questioned each of the other wives who had slept with me since I first became ill. With a decision I didn't understand, Shirley had come to believe that she and Cindy were the two most alike in their sexual responses to me. I have no idea of why she might have thought that, but she did. In my mind, there was a world of difference in how they each responded to me. Shirley really wasn't like any of the other wives in that regard. She was unique, and I had often told her so. It was her belief though, not mine, and Cindy had apparently told her that the sex was good, but not as warm as it had been before. I didn't know what she meant by warm. I guess she meant I acted colder than I had before I got sick. I wasn't aware of treating her differently. I'd liked the way we had sex together. In any event, I felt warmer and closer to Shirley than I had with Cindy. I had years of very satisfying relations with her, and believed she had been the one wife who disappointed me the least. I too was curious about why I had treated her so badly when I was first sick, and why being with her again hadn't been something that was one of my top priority's when I first was released. By the time Shirley had turned off the light and walked around to the other side of the bed, our joint tension was palpable. I understood that I was going to have to slow myself down and try to get both myself and her more relaxed before we tried anything physical together. We were both wound up tight, and Shirley needed to be relaxed to really begin to enjoy being touched. When she got in bed, I moved over nearer to her, pulling her in closer to me. She was a tall girl, but not heavy at all. She slid easily over towards the middle of the king sized bed. Instead of trying to kiss her or begin anything, I started talking to her about our children, about things I'd noticed and noted in my head to speak to her about later. It was mostly questions I had about ways they had acted which seemed changed from how they might have acted before when I was with them. I quickly found out that Shirley was intimately familiar with all the changes I'd observed. She knew the children much better than I did. Shirley had always spent more time with all the children, more than any of the other mothers had. She was aware of much more than I would have been aware of, even if I'd been home spending as much time with them as she had. She just had an eye to pick up details, and a good awareness for what was going on with each of the children. We probably spent another two hours just discussing all the children. I learned quite a bit, and it relaxed Shirley to be talking about an area where she obviously knew she had a greater command. Greater than mine was naturally, but greater than any of the other wives too. "Our children seem happy living here with just you. Derek complains about having to move around so much, and he says it isn't as much fun to be with Leah and Becky as it was to be with Bunny and Bertie. That might just be an age thing though." "No, he grew up closer to them, and closer to some of the others too. He's not close with Becky or Leah, although he's better with Leah now that they spend more time together." I had moved onto my back while we'd kept talking. The shoulder I'd been leaning down on had fallen asleep. When I changed positions, Shirley had shifted hers too, so that she was now turned facing me. She had put her right hand on my stomach. Originally, this was probably because there was no other comfortable place for her to put it. I was very aware of her hand as soon as she started moving up to my chest and to one of my sides or the other. I had a sheet between my body and her hand, but I knew she was telling me that she wanted to do more than just keep talking to me. I felt one of her small breasts pressed up against my arm too. Her nipple was aroused. I could feel it when it popped out and she deliberately pressed it against me more firmly. I turned back on my side so that our faces were close and I leaned in even closer to kiss her. She was still talking when I did that, but she didn't make any attempt to complete her sentence after I leaned my head back away from her. "I've been wanting to kiss you since before we left the girl's bedroom tonight. Seeing them like they are made me remember what a good mother you are, and how much I've always loved that about you. Feeling your nipple pressed against my arm here, that reminded me of some of the other reasons why I love you too." "What other reasons?" "Lots of reasons. Right now I'm thinking about what I'm going to have to do to prevent you from waking the children when you start screaming and saying some of those things you are known to yell out when you're cumming." "My father added sound proofing material in the walls, and the bedroom door was fitted so that it keeps noises from carrying out of the bedroom too. Besides, what makes you think you'll still be able to make me start screaming?" "You don't think I'd still be able to recognize all the signs that you're ready to have one of your really good days? I could tell when we were eating dinner tonight, just from the way you kept trying not to look at me." "That's because I was worried about whether you'd noticed I'd burned the pot roast and the vegetables. I was going to order out, or ask Gerta to come over and cook something, but I wanted to cook something for you myself. That's why I wasn't looking at you. I didn't want to see you being disappointed by the meal I'd cooked." "I could smell your pussy juices at the dinner table too. Does that happen often when you burn the meat?" "You couldn't smell anything, Kenny. Besides, I wasn't wet anyway." Shirley was pushing at my chest with both her hands. She was happy to be well started on what she was now looking forward to. "You were making squishing sounds when you carried in that big platter with the meat, potatos, and carrots. If you weren't wet, why were you making those squishing noises?" I made my squishing noise impression for her when I told her that. By then, she was laughing, and telling me to stop telling lies about her. "If you don't admit you were making squishing noises, I'm going to put my hand between your legs and prove it to you." "That wouldn't prove anything. I might be a little damp now, because I'm here in bed with my husband. I certainly wasn't wet at dinner." "I bet you're more than damp. I bet you're laying in a puddle of your juices right now. You could give Brenda a run for her money when it comes to female lubrication. If I put my hand down there, it isn't going to get a little damp, it's going to get soaked." "Maybe now it would. A minute ago I was only just barely damp though. Now you've made me start thinking about you touching me like that, and doing other things too." "Other things? What other things? I want to see that big dildo Joyce gave you. I bet that's the real reason you had your father put in sound insulation. Did it stretch your pussy very much?" I started reaching my hand across her stomach. I knew it was okay because she had already brushed her hand against my hard on at least ten times while we'd been talking. Shirley spread her legs wide, welcoming my advance on her treasure. At the same time, she used her hand to take me firmly in her grasp. I heard her breath escape when she had me in her tight grip. It took me a few seconds to put my own hand under the cover and reach over to cup her hot sex. There already was a puddle underneath her. Her movement when she felt me moving down her pubic arch was signal enough that she was going to have one of her really good days. She was primed and ready. I could have thrown off the covers and just entered her, and it would have resulted in her cumming in very short order. Instead of doing that, I took my time. I caressed her pussy and played with it, having a running commentary with myself, as I moved from one point to the next. When I inserted a finger inside and then told her it was still just as nice in there as I remembered, she began actively trying to get me to put more of myself inside her. "I want to taste you first, Shirley. It's been a long time since I've had the taste of you on my lips." After that, things all run together for me. We did what we'd been doing, off and on, for about thirteen years. We made love, we had sex, we fucked, and we pushed each other to try to mold ourselves into one inseparable entity. The sexual pleasure we had enjoyed for so long had been great for many years. There was never any problem with our being able to enjoy each other that way. We weren't having a problem with that now either. I made more of a conscious effort this time to verbally express my love and appreciation for what Shirley was then giving me, and for what we'd had together through all those years. I wanted her to know that she was someone who had lived in my thoughts and memories for many years. In spite of what she sometimes complained about, Shirley had always had a special place in my heart. She seemed to think, just because she almost never had caused me any problems, this somehow meant she was being taken for granted or overlooked somewhere in the background. I knew she was always worried about how her appearance stacked up, especially when she was comparing herself to how both Brenda and Emily looked. She mistook my overall contentment with her as being just a lack of interest. My frequent comments to Brenda, remarking on her beauty, were seen by her, as being the same as my making some negative comment about her own looks. I complimented Brenda's looks, because there was little else favorable enough to remark upon about her. I valued many things about Shirley, not the least of which was her steady dependability. In the past, I knew I'd reacted unsympathetically whenever Shirley had brought up feeling either left behind or taken for granted. I resented her complaints, feeling like she was trying to make it seem like I was more interested in beauty than I was in the many good qualities she had freely given to me. I'd done what I wanted to do, instead of giving her the reassurance she wanted and needed from me. It wasn't easy to try talking about all the fears she had expressed to me. How do you tell one wife that maybe some of the other wives are more attractive than she is, but that you still love her as much as any of them, because she doesn't cause you the kinds of problems that they do? Will it mean the same thing to her as it does to you when you tell her you feel more comfortable with her than you do with them? Think about it. These weren't typical romantic compliments that I'd be offering up to her. It wasn't a simple matter for me to address when I spoke to her. I knew that Shirley didn't place as high a value on these things as I did. Almost anything I said could be taken the wrong way. I had thought about this for awhile though. I needed to tell Shirley something that was true, but which would also reassure her that she would always have a permanent place in my life too. We were on our backs, my arm around Shirley, under her head. I'd said a few things, words to let her know how much I'd enjoyed what we'd just finished doing. I knew we weren't done yet, but were just taking this little breather before taking it up to the next level for her. "If I knew I was only going to be able to make love one more time in my life, Shirley, I'd choose you to make love with that final time. I've always loved the way you throw everything you have into making love. You don't hold back anything at all. If I could have only had one woman be the mother of my children, I'd have picked you too, because you're the best mother our children could possibly have asked for. These are two of the reasons you never have to worry about any of the other wives. I can relax and rest easy around you, because I know you aren't always thinking of some way to get me to do something more for you. You've always let me decide whether I've done enough for you and the kids or not. You don't try to cause me any trouble, and you don't put yourself in front of anyone else. I can't tell you how many times I felt better about something because I knew you were there to protect the children or to look out for the other wives for me. When I was at my sickest, I think I was trying to get you to give up, because I knew if you gave up on me all the rest of them would too. At that time, I wanted to destroy everything the other part of myself had." I had more to tell her, a lot more, but she stopped me from saying anything else. She didn't want to hear anymore words. It was a very good thing that she had had the foresight to increase the soundproofing. I had forgotten how loud she could get when she was at her screaming sing songing best. She hit all the high notes, and outdid her usual litany of obscene epithets. I stayed with her, slamming myself into her as she spouted through her sexual frenzy. When she was finally done, and her body had quieted down from the tremendous expediture of energy she had put it through, instead of letting her slide down from in front of me and regather herself, I flipped her over and hugged her closer to me, from head to toe, while planting hundreds of kisses on her face and neck. With each kiss, I'd tell her something else I appreciated about her. All of them little things, tiny, perhaps to most people, insignificant, things. What they were to me was more than a decade of things I'd noticed about her, but had never commented on before. I finally ran out of things to tell her, but I didn't end the little kisses. They were my punctuation for what I'd really been trying to tell her, for what I should have been telling her all along. I loved her and valued her no less than anyone else in my life. Perhaps Joyce was the exception to that, but I'd told Joyce similar things for many years. I'd felt them for Shirley, but had never seemed to get around to telling her until this night. With Shirley, I never had to wonder how she was taking my words. I could feel her vibrating with emotion as I held her. My words and kisses were finding a welcome home with her. I felt the differences between her and Joyce. Things were so much cleaner and unambiguous with Shirley than they were with Joyce. I was content with all that we'd said and done that night. I had expressed something I never should have held back from expressing. I felt better for having said these things. I wanted her to feel better too, but it was enough that I knew I had taken care of something that had needed to be set right. Whatever happened now, I had made my own peace with my feelings for Shirley. I thought we'd rest for awhile longer and then go for that final leg of our sexual journey. I was emotionally spent, but I wanted to make the night memorable for Shirley, and I knew I could summon the strength for one more frenzied coupling. Shirley would explode when we took this last one for ourselves. She had always gained sensitivity in her body after each successive orgasm. After this last time, she'd be tightly strung. I knew she'd be surpassing all her old responses. I had barely begun touching her again when she stopped me, grabbing my hand and pulling it from between her legs. "No more tonight, Kenny. Let's go to sleep. I'm too full of love and contentment. I couldn't stand the thought of doing anything to take any of that away right now." In one way, I understood what she meant. I might not have understood at all if we hadn't just gone through what we had. There is such a thing as too much, and anything more would have been just that. We'd made a very satisfying love with each other already. Anything more would only be sport fucking. Nothing wrong with sport fucking, but it wasn't as satisfying as making love was. Shirley had understood that intuitively, while I still needed to be told. I added that to the list of reasons why I loved her. ------- Chapter 73 I woke up early, at around seven, but Shirley had already left the bedroom. I was just about ready to grab myself a shower when she came back in, carrying a tray laden with our breakfast. Luckily, it was just some cold cereal and slices of hot buttered toast. Shirley wasn't much of a cook. I could still feel the remnants of the night before's burnt pot roast and over cooked veggies. They were still sitting heavily in my stomach, waiting to be broken down, but needing more stomach acid to complete the task. The meat hadn't quite been leathery, but it hadn't been that far from it either. None of the children had complained though, and Derek had even asked for seconds, on everything. After breakfast, I grabbed a quick shower. I invited Shirley to join me, but she said she needed to supervise the kids getting their own breakfasts. When I came downstairs, after getting myself cleaned up and changed, Shirley left me in charge of the kids while she went back up to get herself ready for the day. We were taking the children out to a local park to play for awhile, and then over to Bolling, for lunch at Gracarie's Cocina, before heading off to the petting zoo. I called Joyce over at the house to fill her in on what Shirley and I had agreed to on the night before. I would spend the first part of the day just with Shirley, and with our three children, then all of us would be coming over to the big house in time for dinner, somewhere around six thirty. We would then all spend the night over at the big house. I told Joyce that Shirley and I would again be sleeping just with each other. In the morning, she and the children would go back to their house, and I would head over to Mama's, for both breakfast and lunch. Joyce wasn't happy with the plans Shirley and I had worked out together. She told me she thought Shirley should be satisfied with having me all to herself the day before. I told her that my visit with Shirley and the children was going very well, and that, instead of worrying about Shirley and me, and what we were doing, she needed to be working on convincing Cindy that her only path for getting back in our family would go through Joyce, not through me. Joyce didn't like hearing me telling her that. I told her I'd be able to explain things to her later, but for right now I felt it was both necessary and important that I spend more time with Shirley and the children. I told her that I believed Shirley and I had made great strides towards working everything out that we needed to, but that we still needed this extra time together for us to regain that comfortable feeling we had once enjoyed. Shirley and I had both agreed that after being at Mama's house for breakfast and lunch on Saturday, and having spent several hours talking with both my parents and with Hans and Gerta, I would then be returning to the big house, spending the remaining time of my visit with Joyce, and, if I wanted to, with Cindy. These plans were mostly suggested by Shirley. I was sure Joyce had spoken with her earlier, even before my visit had started. I felt like it had been Joyce's influence that had caused her to come up with most of these plans she had suggested to me. We discussed her plans for the remainder of the visit, and Shirley informed me of what she would be comfortable with. She was the one who had inserted the "if you want to" part, concerning me spending time with Cindy after my visit over at Mama's house. She was also the one who had later assured me that she knew Joyce had been right about her needing to share me with all the other wives, if she ever wanted all of us to get back to being a family again. This conversation had taken place late Thursday night, after we had finished making love. It was Shirley who had brought the subject up, and she took the lead by first spelling out how she wanted things to be. I knew she wasn't really anxious to share me with any of the other wives, with the possible exception of Joyce. One thing she did tell me, was that she was agreeing to doing things this way mostly because she wanted to live up to some of the things I had told her earlier that I loved about her. She also said she knew I wouldn't really be happy unless all of the wives, and all of the children, were back with me, living under one roof together again. I was glad that I had insisted on Shirley and I spending the early part of Friday together, just us and our children. I had also managed to talk her into coming over to the big house and spending Friday night alone with me in my bedroom. Shirley's plan had called for all of us to be going over to the big house Friday morning, and us spending the day and the night there. She was assuming that I'd be sleeping with Joyce, not her. The next morning, she had then planned to return to her house, with me going off to Mama's house, sometime after she and the children left on Saturday morning. When I made my own modifications to her plan, she seemed quite happy with all my suggestions. I wanted her to know that I was serious about paying more attention to her, a lot more than I might have done in the past. I was conscious of the shift I'd been making in how I viewed and valued each of the wives. Part of this I attributed to what had taken place during my period of illness, but another part of it was because I now had a different personality than before. I still appreciated beauty, maybe even more than I had before, but, I had gone through a lot, emotionally, and had been forced to deal with some life altering circumstances. I saw many things differently than I had before I became ill. Part of this change in me was now starting to benefit Shirley. This wasn't even something totally new with me. It had happened before, helping to change how I felt about all of the wives. Probably the most obvious example of these changes had been in my relationship with Joyce. In the beginning, when we had first met, the main reason why I'd hired her as my new assistant was because I knew Shirley, who was my girlfriend at the time, could never be jealous of her, because of the way she looked. In spite of these looks, after becoming aware of her many other great qualities, her fighting spirit, and her awesome determination, I grew to depend on her, to value her. Eventually, although it had been a slow transition for me, I grew to love her. Brenda and Emily had both first attracted me to them by their looks, and by their interest in me and their physical appeal to me. I was more interested in how their looks appealed to me, than in any of the things they actually said and did. Brenda's early behavior had turned me against her. I had decided, on several occasions, that she and I were through, and that she was forever out of my life. Somehow, she was always able to find her way back into my life though. It was her looks that had made this possible. Later on, it was still her looks, but it was also the way she added to the relationships I enjoyed with the other wives. Most notably, this was with Emily, but it was also present in adding to my relationship with Joyce. After she had my children, I knew that we'd always be connected. I stopped fighting against it. I had found a role for Brenda, one that suited her, and justified, in my mind at least, my making allowances for her past behavior with me. Joyce was happier having Brenda with us, and Emily wouldn't have come to be with us without having the added incentive of also being with Brenda. I had made allowances for most of them at one time or another. I was attempting to do that now, once again. Emily and I had an uneven relationship. I believed I loved her far more than she loved me. It had always been that way. She had only come to be with all of us because of Brenda. Later, she had mostly stayed with us for that same reason too. If it weren't for our children, and the fact that there was something about her that really appealed to me on levels I can't adequately explain, I'd have been willing to see her out of my life on quite a few occasions. It was only when she was gone that I felt the heavy weight of my love for her. Perhaps it had more to do with always knowing I could never be as much to her as she was to me. Our relationship had certainly changed over the years, but Emily had been her consistent self, constantly finding things to complain about, and fighting against what she saw as the unfairness with how she was being treated. There were constant shifts in the balance between Emily, Brenda, and me. With my illness, the balance had once again been shifted. According to what Joyce had been telling me, Brenda wanted to return to Kansas. Her roots were in Kansas, all her family were here too. I knew that Mama had been working on Brenda, wanting Dwightee and April back closer to her, so that she could continue molding them into becoming the kind of people she wanted them both to be. It wouldn't have surprised me to learn that Mama had a hand in helping Brenda decide she wanted to return to Kansas. I didn't think Emily would have gone out to California in the first place, not without Brenda. If Brenda returned, eventually, I was sure that Emily would return as well. Joyce blamed at least part of Brenda's decision to go out to California on the fact that I had released all of her funds to her. Brenda had made a lot of money with me trading her account. It had angered her when Frank informed her that I had closed out her trading account and was releasing the money back to her. It was more than twenty six million dollars, maybe she thought she now had enough money. With Eddie and Dale, I felt like they weren't as committed to all of us as I'd wanted them to be. Maybe they were just too involved with each other. I loved them both, but it was different from the love I had with my original four wives. I wanted Eddie and Dale with us, just like I wanted Cindy with us. The difference was, I needed the original four wives with me. Maybe it was partly because of the children we shared, but I thought it was something more than that. I knew I loved all of them, and that I hadn't wavered in that love. You can love someone but not need them, and you can need someone and not love them. With Joyce and Shirley, I needed them, but I also loved them. With Brenda and Emily, I loved them both, and I really wanted them close to me, maybe even needed them close to me. It wasn't the same though as it was for Joyce and Shirley. Perhaps it was our history together, the fighting, and, yes, the betrayals. I no longer had the sense that our future paths needed to be the same. I had that need with Joyce and Shirley, the sense that our futures needed to be together. With Emily and Brenda, it was more wanting our futures to be together, but being able to see myself still being happy if they were close by, but not necessarily together with me. I knew that Joyce didn't share this sense that we all didn't need to be together. I also knew that she wouldn't give up on trying to return everything to how it once had been. I wasn't against this happening, not if she could somehow manage to make it be like that. Emily and Brenda would always be my wives, whether or not we were actually living together, or even if they each thought of themselves as my wives or not. ------- The kids had a great day. The novelty of having both parents with them had probably kept all of them staying closer to us than they would have been if it were something they were already used to. We spent a pleasant hour or so, running around, all five of us. The children playing on the swings and slides, with the park setting allowing each of them to show off some of their physical skills. At the restaurant, we were greeted and immediately seated and treated like royalty by Grace and Marie. Phone calls were made, and soon we were joined by Jane, her two surprises, and by Marie's husband. We all sat together, enjoying the company, and trying to get caught up on all the changes that had taken place. Jane was staying at home now, taking care of the two daughters that she and Grace had adopted. Mama had helped them get the adoptions approved, and the children seemed to have completely taken over both their lives. I'd never seen Grace happier, or more content. Watching Jane fussing over Diane and Lorraine, their two new daughters, was a sentimental thing for me to see. I'd gotten too caught up in my own life and problems to manage to keep up with these good friends of mine. All of them expressed their worry and concern for me. It made me realize how many lives my own now touched in so many different ways. Both daughters had, at one time, been placements in our group home program. Seeing them with us, I couldn't even tell that they were once orphans, and had been part of the institutional child care system. They looked like any other happy and normal ten year old children. There was no sign of their earlier struggles in life. The petting zoo after lunch was a lot of fun. Jane and her daughters decided to come along and share the experience with us. I marvelled at the different ways each of the children approached their visit with the animals. I had thought Derek and Jane's two girls might be too old to enjoy visiting a petting zoo, but I was mistaken. He seemed to like the larger animals. Diane and Lorraine were excited to be able to sit on the ground and help feed a baby goat. Becky was more into the rabbits and the chicks and baby ducklings. Leah seemed to enjoy throwing corn feed at the rooster. Not to the rooster though, just at him. She spent most of the rest of her visit to the zoo observing everyone else as they enjoyed being with the animals. I felt like Leah favored me more than any of the other children. I didn't remember being so moody, but I remembered being more interested in how other people reacted to things than I was in reacting to them myself. The similarity was enough to sound minor alarms for me. When I mentioned my concerns to Shirley, she just laughed at my worry. "She's fine, Kenny. The other children are more boisterous, that's all. Leah enjoys quieter pursuits. In her own way, she's enjoying this visit to the zoo every bit as much as any of the other children. She's always watching and learning. What you think of as moody behavior is more her ability to be calm and enjoy the stillness. She can get so focused on things that she appears moody or standoffish to people. She might not have the social skills or the outgoing personality of someone like Becky, but she isn't having a difficult childhood. She's actually quite happy now. She does better in smaller groups. When she gets older, we'll need to watch out, to make sure that she doesn't start retreating too much into these solitary comfort zones she uses, times where she's content to just observe life. Right now, we should let her express herself in her own chosen ways." I nodded to Shirley, but I wasn't convinced. I didn't expect Leah to be like Becky, but I didn't want her standing on the sidelines, just watching other people living their lives and being participants in the things happening around them. I'd keep my own eyes open, and when I had a chance, I'd try to help her see that being a part of something was just as easy, and much more rewarding then simply being an observer. Some children need to be helped out of their natural personality tendencies. We had a great dinner later at the big house. Claire and Thelma had done all the cooking, and it was a welcome change from Shirley's pot roast, or from the corn dogs we'd eaten earlier at the zoo. I noticed a little bit of tension between Joyce and Shirley, and between Shirley and Cindy, but I already knew what was causing it. I had managed, when we were all talking together earlier, to lay out certain conditions for future behavior. As soon as we got to the house, Derek and the twins had run off somewhere to catch up on things with each other. There was a minor argument between the three of them when Derek told the twins that I had decided to move in at his house. Bunny and Bertie had both come running back to the living room to tell Joyce that Derek was telling lies, and was being mean to them. All us adults were in the living room, talking while we waited for dinner to be ready. Joyce listened to what Derek had said and then pointedly looked over to me, leaving it to me to respond to the twins complaints. "Derek was just teasing you two, because of what you said to him before. We're all going to live here together again, probably soon too. That other house would be too small for all of us to fit in it. You shouldn't have told Derek that I had decided to come live with you and not him. You just did that to make him feel bad." "I told the twins that you were coming back to live here, Kenny." Joyce spoke up to let me know that the twins had been saying only what they had been told by her. I'm sure she hadn't said anything about Derek not living with us too, but that is what they'd just assumed. "I am going to do that, but when I do move back here, Shirley and the kids are going to be moving back here too. We're a family, and we should all be living together." I was addressing the three children, but I was speaking to the three ladies also. "Is that right, Shirley, are you really moving back here?" Joyce sounded pleased when she asked Shirley the question. She probably thought it had all been settled, or else I wouldn't have said anything to anyone about it. Shirley and I hadn't discussed any specific plans beyond this one weekend. I hoped she wouldn't decide to get angry at my presumption. "Kenny and I need to discuss a few more things first. I know he wants all of us to be together. He and I have pretty much talked through all our earlier issues." Joyce clapped her hands together and laughed, clearly happy that Shirley was pretty much confirming what I'd stated. Her next comment was provoked by her disappointment with my newly announced plans for spending Friday night in my room with Shirley, and not with Cindy and her. "Don't take too long discussing things with him, okay? You're already walking funny from last night's discussion, and the rest of us have a few things we want to discuss with him too." I looked at Shirley to see how she would react to Joyce's teasing. "Last night's discussions were only preliminary discussions. Tonight we're going to get into much deeper things. It will probably take us half the night to get everything worked out. There's still quite a bit we haven't yet gotten to. Maybe we should retire early tonight, Kenny?" Shirley was seldom known to give it back to anyone who was teasing her. Usually she would just sit there and take it, coloring up with a deep flush whenever the teasing contained any sexual innuendo. "We should get right on it after dinner, Shirley. I want to get something straight between us as soon as possible, especially if you meant what you said earlier about those deeper things we still needed to spend half the night working on." I knew I shouldn't have joined in with the banter, knowing it would be better if Joyce and Shirley worked this out amongst themselves. I wanted to support Shirley's unexpected effort to stand up to Joyce's comments though. Derek and the twins looked back and forth at all of us as we three bantered back and forth. After another minute of this, not hearing anything interesting enough to keep them in the room with us, they ran off to play together. Their earlier argument all but forgotten. As soon as the children were out of earshot, Joyce spoke up again. "You shouldn't wear him out, Shirley. We all want to spend time visiting with him too. You had him all to yourself last night. Let us have him tonight, and you can be with him again in the morning, before you leave to go back to your house." I got a strong feeling right then that Joyce had made some promises to Cindy, promises concerning her ability to deliver me for that evening's bedroom activities. I'd told her earlier on the phone that Shirley and I would be sleeping together in my bedroom. Now she was appealing to Shirley. I'd made it clear to Joyce that it had been my decision to sleep with Shirley again that night. It was my choice, and now, she was attempting to overrule what I had specifically told her I wanted. "Joyce, I already told you that I wanted to be with Shirley tonight, just the two of us. I'll be here tomorrow night, and you and I can be together then if you want. I'd like that. As for Cindy though, you know that Shirley and I already have a deal about that." "I won't hold you to our deal, Kenny. I know you want to get all of us together again. I don't mind about you doing things with her now." Shirley tried to sound calm and sure. There was just the tiniest bit of doubt apparent in the way she spoke each word a little slower to me. She was willing to say she was all right with it, but it obviously wasn't what she wanted. "I'm holding you to our deal though, Shirley. I'm still not sleeping with Cindy until after the two of you get back together. Cindy already told me she was willing to be with you again, now I guess the rest is up to you." "You shouldn't leave it up to me, Kenny. Right now, I've got too much else on my mind to be thinking about doing anything like that." As I spoke to her, I began realizing that I really meant what I was saying. If Shirley, Joyce and me were going to truly be inseparable again, then Shirley needed to work and cooperate with Joyce, just as much as she needed to work and cooperate with me. I was prepared to do my part, and I knew Joyce was ready too. Shirley needed to decide if the three of us were going to really be together again or not. Sleeping with Cindy would be something that Shirley could do to show both of us that she also was prepared to do what it took to get our family back together again. We'd spoken earlier about her preferring that I be there whenever she did things with other girls. I knew if I offered to be there with them, it would make it easier for Shirley to go along. "We could invite her in to spend time with the two of us tonight, Shirl. Just for long enough to have us both meet the conditions we agreed upon." We might have worked something out right then, if Cindy hadn't spoken up to make everything more complicated for us. "I never agreed to doing that, Kenny. I said I'd do it with you and Joyce." Cindy seemed more upset by this than Shirley had been. I wondered why? I could see there was a lot of downside to pursuing this any further though. "Let's not get upset, okay? We'll have a nice dinner, and if anyone wants to talk about this later, then we'll all sit down and discuss it. For right now, we'll leave things just like they were. Shirley and I will sleep in my room tonight." No one said anything more about it. Joyce started talking about wanting to hear more about Cindy's great plan for the Quick Snacks program. I gathered that the subject had come up between Cindy and Joyce sometime earlier. "I wish I'd brought up all my files, and some of the charts I made up. It really is something we need to be doing to make sure we're able to get our products into all these small convenience stores owned by women. The number of new female business owners in these independent convenience stores is growing all the time. I have a theory that in some cases, where a married couple own the store, it's the woman who really runs it. Probably the husband kept his other job to have a good, guaranteed, income coming in." Once Cindy was well launched into talking about her project, the rest of us started to relax again. Shirley moved to sit closer to me on the couch, pretending to do it so she could hear Cindy easier, but also, I thought, to send her own clear message to Joyce. The two of them seemed to be conducting a silent kind of negotiation. I had a good idea I was what they were negotiating over. I wondered if Shirley was now bargaining for her being allowed to spend more time with me, in exchange for her clearing the way soon for me to be with Cindy. Shirley knew it would be necessary for her to do that in order to help Joyce with Cindy. Cindy had already shown me her willingness to spend more time pursuing an intimate relationship with Joyce. She had also made it clear to me she would be willing to do that, but only if it meant her being with me again too, and meant her being once again considered a part of our family. If that was what Shirley was offering, I thought it would be a very fair trade for Joyce. If she were willing to enter into such a trade with Shirley, that gave me some ideas about what Joyce and I might agree to try to get Emily and Brenda back here with us again too. Unlike Emily, Brenda was a good one for Joyce and me to try negotiating things with. It would be difficult for me to approach her. After considering where the two of us had left things the last time we were together, I thought we needed a third party to bring us together for some discussions. I thought Mama would relish another opportunity to intervene, especially if I went to her and made the request myself. If Joyce were to talk to Brenda, and mention that I'd probably be willing to start investing all her money for her again if she were moved back in the area, that might be enough, all on it's own, to motivate her to decide to come back to somewhere closer to us than California. If Brenda returned to this area, we wouldn't need to negotiate anything with Emily. She'd be coming back here on her own, doing whatever it took to get things back to where she could be with Brenda again. It might seem like a cynical way for me to look at getting what I wanted, but I wasn't trying to trick either woman into coming back to me, only to offer an inducement for one of them to move back close to where I was. My cynicism, if that is what it was, had been made more palatable to me because I had already come to a decision about what I now needed. I was sure that what I wanted wasn't what I actually needed. It was Joyce that said she needed all the wives back together again, in order for her to be happy and fulfilled. I wanted us all back together again, but I already knew, with the way my personality and interests had changed, that what used to be an absolute need for me was no longer absolute. I needed Joyce, and I needed Shirley. I also needed free and unhampered access to all my children. I wanted to be deeply involved in the day to day lives of all my children. This meant they all had to either be living there with me, or else living really close to where I lived. I could manage to meet my absolute needs without the necessity of Brenda or Emily being willing to be my wives again. Eddie, Dale and Cindy were no longer a necessity, not as far as them needing to be intimately involved in my life. I'd like for all of them to be, but it wasn't necessarily critical in determining if I was going to be happy with my life or not. I was willing to leave the decision to be with us again strictly up to them. Joyce would need to decide for herself whether the three women were a necessity for her being happy or not. Her decision would affect how much effort I'd be willing to expend on getting the three women back again. I wasn't as clear in my mind concerning these things, not where it concerned either Emily or Brenda. We would always have these connections with each other, no matter how things turned out. I was hoping we could all be together. I would settle for something less than all of us being together, but only as long as it meant me not having to be estranged from our children by this lack of togetherness. I hoped that more therapy with Dr. Fellows would clarify all these value choices in my mind. Perhaps it was my reluctance to put myself through the process of trying to realign the conflicts my subconscious self had with all my wives except Shirley. I couldn't bring myself to accept the idea of not being with Joyce. I knew, for certain, that Joyce wouldn't be happy with a future that included just Shirley, me and all the children. There was a small chance she'd be able to get by with only us, but none at all that she'd be happy. There was a much better chance for her happiness if she were at least back in some kind of regular contact with all the other wives. I was sure that Cindy, Eddie and Dale would all be visiting more often once we returned our home to some semblance of what it had been before my illness. Having them coming by with some frequency would be enough for me. If they decided to stay for either long visits, or permanently, then so much the better. It would be better for me, but it would be even more important to Joyce, and to her happiness. Her happiness was important to me too. All these thoughts ran through my head as I listened to Cindy. ------- Right after dinner, I went in to spend some time with all the children. I assumed my absence would allow the three ladies to get some things worked out together. I believed Joyce would offer Shirley whatever inducement she required to get her to go along with having sex with Cindy. I knew she really wanted to get all the impediments removed so she could offer Cindy a clear invitation to come back and be with us again. These were the kinds of negotiations Joyce had a real gift for. I came back to the living room a little bit after nine o'clock to find Joyce sitting alone. From the way she was grinning when she saw me, I had a pretty good idea I'd been right about the three of them working something out between them. "Where did Shirley and Cindy go?" "They went up to your bedroom together, about half an hour ago. Shirley wants to move back here as soon as we can get Emily and Brenda's old wing redecorated the way she wants it. She wants Derek and the girls to each have bedrooms up there with her. She doesn't want the kids all living together like when they were younger." "She's taking Emily's rooms, all of them, and Brenda's two rooms as well?" "That's what she told me. She said it shouldn't be a problem, since the rooms have been empty for awhile anyway. It won't take us long to move the other stuff out of there and into some of the other empty rooms. I also told Cindy that I'd talk to you about starting up that women's program of hers. I told her we'd put up the money ourselves, if that was the only problem you had with it." "I've already taken care of it. Were these all things you needed to do in order to get the two of them to agree to having sex together?" I wouldn't have offered Cindy anything more than what she was already getting, a chance for all of us to ask her to come back into our family. I had already planned to implement her sales program. Then, I thought to ask Joyce something else. "Did you promise Cindy she'd be the one we promoted to run her program?" "Nobody even discussed them having sex together. I knew Shirley wasn't going to offer that just for me letting her have what she wanted. Cindy already knows she has to please you first, if she's ever going to be a part of our family again. I didn't say anything to her about any promotion. That's something I left up to you. She has big plans, that girl. Someday, she wants to take over all of Macklinson's, did you know that? Shirley wanted those rooms, and she didn't want me fighting with her over separating the children and putting them upstairs with her, in the adult wings. You know, if the kids live up there with her, you can't ever sleep with her over in her new bedroom, because of all the noise she makes? I was thinking we might want to build you your own new set of rooms downstairs, back over where the old nurseries used to be. Shirley told me that the soundproofing her father did for her, really works pretty well. It might not be so obvious what we're doing to some of the older children. Shirley doesn't want them overexposed to our unusual lifestyle." "Nothing Cindy might want would surprise me too much. She might get what she wants someday too. As far as Shirley worrying about the kids getting too good a look at how things are with all of us, she can quit worrying. She's way too late to be worrying about that now. The kids all know what's going on. You only have to talk with them for a few minutes to see that they know that we're all having relationship problems. I'm surprised they've all managed to handle things as well as they appear to be handling them." "Did I say thank you yet for bringing Cindy up here with you? I know it would have made things a lot easier with Shirley if you'd decided to not bring her." "You know I seldom do anything the easy way anymore. I'm glad Shirley is starting to ask for what she wants. She'd be a lot happier, and feel better, if she were to make more of a fuss whenever she feels someone is trying to take advantage of her. We're both going to have to treat her better, more like an equal, from now on. Shirley's been doing some growing up while we weren't paying any attention to her." "I haven't told you yet what she said to me before she and Cindy left to go upstairs." "What did she say?" "She told me I had to go with you when you go back to the clinic. She said I need to help you get the rest of this worked out." "I didn't put anything like that in her head, Joyce. Did she tell you why she wanted you to go with me?" "She said something, but I'd rather not tell you what she said. It was personal. Something she told me about what Brenda and Emily had said to her, right before they moved out to California." Joyce seemed embarrassed by my question. I decided not to press her for any more of an answer than what she'd given me. I didn't know whether I was supposed to go up to my bedroom too, or wait down in the living room for someone to come back downstairs first. In the end, not wanting to seem too anxious about joining them, I waited downstairs, talking to Joyce some more. It was an hour before Cindy came back downstairs, all wrapped up in what looked like a very thin and sexy bathrobe. "Shirley told me to send you up now, Kenny. She said you were still hers for the rest of tonight." Cindy made a face when she told me that. I got up, smiling as I said good night to a seemingly disappointed Cindy, and a beaming Joyce. I made my own way back upstairs to my bedroom. I was sure that Joyce had plans of her own for Cindy. Things seemed to be working out even better than I'd hoped for. I was concerned about why Shirley had told Joyce she needed to go to the clinic with me the next time I went to see Dr. Fellows. I wasn't sure having her there with me would help me to address the problems I still had. Shirley was warm and welcoming to me when I came into the bedroom. She told me that Cindy had only managed to whet her appetite with all the girl things they did together. I got into bed with her and did my absolute best to finish up what Cindy had managed to only get started. It was a good night, but not one of our very best ones. We both enjoyed ourselves, and Shirley had several orgasms. It never approached the closeness we'd both shared the night before. What I enjoyed the most was the time right after we were finished making love. It was a peaceful and contented time for both of us. We were getting relaxed in each other's presence again. I wondered when I'd feel that relaxed again with Joyce? By morning, I was already thinking about being with Joyce and Cindy. Before that though, I needed to get over to Mama's house and set the rest of my newest plan into motion. It was ironic that I was going to ask my mother to interfere in my affairs this time. I wondered if my acceptance of her meddling was even further indication of the changes to my old personality? Before I had gotten sick, I'd been very opposed to allowing her to meddle in my personal relationships. Before I left the house, I spent some time telling Derek and the girls goodbye, and promising all of them that it wouldn't be very long before I'd be coming back to see all of them again. I told Shirley almost the same thing, although I went into graphic detail about what I wanted us to do when the next time arrived. She seemed pleased with my goodbye and told me that she too was looking forward to my return. I had a good visit with my parents and with Hans and Gerta. We spent most of our time together sitting in the kitchen, Mama, Gerta and me, discussing what I wanted Mama to tell Brenda the next time they talked together on the telephone. Mama told me that, in her opinion, Brenda was very close to being ready to move back to Kansas. She also told me something I hadn't known, that Emily and Brenda were arguing with each other about many things, not just about Brenda wanting to move back here to be closer to her family. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I didn't want to see Emily or Brenda hurt, and I knew Emily would be devastated if it turned out that this fighting with Brenda had permanently damaged their relationship. After giving things some thought, I realized I didn't want to take part in anything that made it easier for Brenda and Emily's problems to escalate. I told Mama I didn't want her to say anything to encourage Brenda to leave Emily. She looked at me and just shrugged. I could see she thought I was being too considerate of their feelings and not considerate enough of hers. Mama wanted Dwightee and April back close by her again. In her mind, I was well enough, so she could once again turn her energy back to promoting what she wanted. I knew, even before we finished talking, that Mama was going to interfere like I'd originally asked her to. Unlike me, she was willing to see Emily and Brenda's relationship damaged, if that damage meant she'd be reunited with her two favorite grandchildren. My father and I spoke about the business. I told him that I was definitely going ahead with Cindy's idea for forming a woman's division. I told him what I'd found out about our lack of success in selling to women owners of convenience stores. Once again, after he discovered I was putting up the funds for creating the new division, he told me he was giving me full authority and control. What he wanted to discuss was our keeping the sales growth steady with the Quick Snacks program. He had already devised several advantages for us in strengthening our ties and relationships with some of his other bakery friends and associates. He was involved in the initial stages of working out a possible merger with one of those bakery companies. It was something that had been proposed for him to consider by the owner of the other bakery. He was older and beginning to want to retire. He wasn't interested in maintaining control of his company, just in making sure that it could continue operating successfully, even without him there to preside over it. My father revealed to me, for the first time, that all of the company's that we were providing cheap grain for had one common similarity. The owner was getting old enough to be considering retirement, and there was no one else, in the family, that could be considered as a logical successor. In his opinion, each of these operations we had been working with offered an excellent chance of being an asset we might later be offered an opportunity to acquire. In some other cases, ones where he had refused to allow me to broker their grain needs, he either didn't like the present owners, or the management team they had in place, or else he knew they had already taken steps to provide for ownership continuity, once the present management person had decided to step down. He was only aiding those companies he hoped to someday buy. It was a new revelation into how far into the future my father was able to think and plan for. He wouldn't do anything to undermine any of these companies we worked with, but he was only willing to provide help to those he had later ambitions for. I ended up staying at Mama's house until sometime after four in the afternoon. Mama had gotten me to disclose to her all of the recent progress I'd been making with both Joyce and Shirley. She surprised me by telling me she thought it was a good idea to bring Cindy back to Ridgeline with me. I had a good notion that Mama too had understood the special feelings Joyce had for Cindy. When I mentioned, in passing, my belief that only Joyce and Shirley were wives that I believed I truly needed, Mama told me I was mistaken. She wouldn't get into why she believed that, only willing to state once more that I was. She surprised me again by telling me that I shouldn't just rely on using Joyce when it came to keeping my relationships with all the other wives healthy and strong. When I asked her to elaborate on that statement, she again refused. I felt like I was playing some game with her, one where I didn't know any of the rules, and was uncertain as to what the game's objectives might be. Right before I was getting ready to leave, Gerta took me aside and told me to trust Mama, and to keep doing everything I could to bring all of my family back together again. It was a little disconcerting for me to be told to do things, and then be denied any explanations when I later asked for them. I certainly didn't remember these two treating me like this before I got sick. I said my good byes, promising to keep in close touch with everyone, and then drove back to the big house again. I spent the rest of the time before dinner playing with my five children that Joyce and I had together. Cindy spent quite a bit of that time sitting in the playroom with me. We talked some, but she mostly spent her time watching me playing with all the kids. I didn't know where Joyce had gotten off to, or what she was doing, but I didn't see her from about five minutes after I got back to the house until right after Phil came in to tell us that it was time to get cleaned up for dinner. At dinner, I found out where Joyce had been. She'd been over at Mama's house. She said Mama had been concerned about some things I had said to her, and wanted to check to make sure that Joyce was aware of where my thoughts were taking me. Joyce told me that Mama too had told her that she needed to go to the clinic with me. What she told me next really surprised me. "Kenny, Mama thinks you and I need to be alone together tonight. I already asked Cindy if it would be all right if she waited until you two went back to Birmingham for her turn to be with you." I looked over at Cindy, and she nodded, confirming that Joyce had spoken with her about it, and then she said it was fine with her, just as long as I didn't forget that she was supposed to get her turn. I started getting a terrible feeling, thinking back to what Shirley and Mama had both said. My first thought was that everyone but me knew something and had decided to let Joyce tell me tonight. Whatever it might be, they didn't want Cindy knowing about it. I didn't have enough real information to go on, so I started imagining the worst. I felt myself getting upset with the thoughts that began popping up in my mind. I wasn't able to relax until Joyce noticed how agitated I was beginning to act, and told me it wasn't anything bad she had to tell me, only that Mama thought it would be much better if I continued just being with one wife at a time, during this first period of all of us trying to reconcile. That made sense to me, and I started to relax again. In bed Saturday night, Joyce and I talked as much as we ever had when we were in bed together having sex. It was as if the sex was secondary to what we were talking about. This was very unusual. It was seldom that Joyce and I did anything else while it was just the two of us together like that. We usually just went at it, taking pleasure from each other until we were too tired to do anything more. She was on top of me, moving slowly up and back, trying to prolong her next orgasm. "Kenny, you know I'd do anything I could to help make you well?" I nodded to her that I knew that. I'd always felt like Joyce loved me more than anyone else. "Mama and Shirley, they both think the way I've treated you, ever since you came out of the clinic, has helped to make it harder for you to come back to all of us. Shirley told me that Emily and Brenda both think this too. They now seem to think I wanted all of this to happen. This is mainly why they all want me to go to Dr. Fellows with you. They think she could help me see things in the same way she's been able to help you see things differently." I could tell it hurt Joyce to tell me what Mama and the others said they thought. Joyce always wanted to help everyone. She wasn't used to people thinking she was the one causing problems. I didn't believe Joyce had done anything that she believed would hurt any of us. At the same time, I was definitely aware that Joyce wasn't currently held in very high esteem by my subconscious mind. There was a definite conflict problem with Joyce. I felt it whenever we were together. I wished it didn't exist, and was determined not to let it interfere with us being together. Whatever I wished for, I could still feel some conflict when we were together. If affected our lovemaking, and it colored the things we could safely talk about. Before, I'd always felt like I could share anything with Joyce. Now, I didn't feel as confident about doing that. I had to force myself sometimes to tell her things. If possible, I'd like to get over feeling that way around her. "Joyce, we'll go see the doctor and ask her what she thinks. We don't have to do anything if you don't want to. I can live with the way things are right now. You said you could too." "Suppose they're right, Kenny? What if we go to the doctor and she tells you that I am the problem? I don't think I could accept that." "I already know that you aren't the problem, Joyce. I have this problem between what I believe and what my subconscious wants me to believe. It isn't just what I believe with you, believe me. There's only one good reason for going with me to the clinic that I can see, and that's so we both can find out what needs to change to make things like they used to be before I got sick. I can't get the doctor to tell me any specific things I need to change. If you find out, then you could tell me, and we could make whatever changes I need to make." ------- Chapter 74 Sunday, the flight back to Birmingham was much different than the flight to Bolling had been. Cindy seemed quite happy, and spent most of the flight time flirting with me shamelessly. I wasn't able to figure out what had caused such a change in her. I could only take not knowing for so long before I decided to ask her about it. "Cindy, what's changed to make you seemed so carefree and happy?" "You've changed. Joyce has changed now too. The whole atmosphere around you is starting to get back to what it was when I first met you." "I'm happy that you think that, but, I can't see that much difference between Thursday morning and now. What made you think things have changed so much from then to now?" Cindy looked at me, smiling. She had this look people get when they know something that you don't. I wondered if there really was something happening that everyone but me knew about. Joyce had seemed happier that morning than she'd been when we went to sleep the night before. I had slept well myself, something that was unusual for me anymore. In fact, I'd slept pretty well all three nights, probably because I wasn't sleeping alone like I had gotten used to doing. "Didn't you notice anything different this time, Kenny? Something that has usually happened with us lately, something that didn't happen this time?" "Are you talking about our not having sex during the trip?" I couldn't figure out what she was alluding to. I knew her mood had changed completely. All I could think of was that she had enjoyed having sex with Joyce and Shirley, or else she was excited because Joyce had told her we were going ahead with her work project. Maybe she was happy that I had agreed to make love to her after we got back to Birmingham too. I just didn't know. Puzzled or not though, I much preferred this happy Cindy to the one who'd been accompanying me on the flight up to Kansas back on Thursday morning. "Kenny! Think about the trip. What was different about it?" "I don't know, Cindy. Why don't you just tell me?" "All of us worked out the problems that kept coming up. We haven't managed to do that in years. It wasn't just one problem that came up either. Every time I've been with you before, since you came back to Birmingham, unless it was a business problem, these things never got worked out. You'd get mad, or else you'd just walk away from whatever you didn't like. You wouldn't stay and help to find a solution to the problem. This weekend, you stayed." "No, this weekend, I let all of you work things out. I see the difference now too though. Whenever I did that before, things never got resolved. This time they did. I don't know why though. Maybe it was because Joyce really wants things to get better?" "She seemed the same to me. Shirley seemed more willing to bend to what Joyce was asking her for. That was probably your doing too though. Maybe we all get more reasonable when we see that other people besides ourselves are willing to be reasonable too?" "Maybe we all see what we want to see, Cindy. You see us all resolving problems now, because you got most of what you wanted on this trip. Maybe Shirley feels that way too, I don't know. I saw some things get taken care of, but I still see a lot that's going wrong, and I'm not sure if any of us are going to be able to fix those things." "Everyone says you're worrying too much, Kenny. Instead of looking at all the problems you still see, you should pay more attention to the progress you've made. Joyce really seems much more loving towards you than she was the last time we were all together. Sure, she's still concerned with how things are going to get back to the way they once were, but at least she thinks they might get back that way now. Before, all she thought about was how bad things were getting. Joyce never used to let herself accept how things really were. This time she did seem to accept it. She was willing to make changes to help get things worked out. Before, she would have waited to see if they were going to get fixed on their own." I didn't know whether Cindy was the right person to make those kinds of observations or not. Usually, she only looked out for herself and her family. This was really the first time she'd had a conversation like this one with me. I had noticed a big change in Shirley this visit, but only after we'd made love and she'd allowed some of her guard to come back down. Maybe Cindy was right about Joyce too. Her guard had come down with me as well. We were talking more, and we were also listening to each other again. For a long time, that hadn't been the case. We both talked, but neither of us really listened to the other. This weekend, all of us had listened for a change. All of us made an effort to give the others what they were asking for. Maybe that was the difference, something as simple as going into a conversation and being willing to listen, and at the same time, be disposed to trying to give the other person what he or she said they wanted. We hadn't always done that on the visit, but, I had to admit, we'd done it a lot more than we'd done in the recent past. It was something for me to think about. I sat there quietly, listening to Cindy as she described to me all the changes she had seen in me. While I didn't know how accurate these observations were either, I could certainly tell that Cindy had been paying a lot more attention to what was going on with me than I had thought she was doing. When we got to my house, we just seemed to both drift naturally to the bedroom. Partly as a result of what we had talked about on the flight back, I found myself wanting to make love with Cindy. I knew I had already agreed to doing that, but now, I really wanted to. Her words had encouraged me to feel better about things, and I was starting to think she had a lot more invested in me than just her immediate hopes of being given a promotion. If that was all she wanted, she wouldn't have kept nearly as close an eye on my moods and my actions over the past months. She knew a lot more about what I'd been going through than I'd given her credit for knowing. We stayed in bed together for about three hours. It was satisfying in a way it hadn't been for a long time with us. It was more than sex, and it was a deeper communication than our earlier talking together had been. We were feeling each other again. There's no other way to describe what had happened. I knew the relationship was changed for me. Cindy had gone along with almost everything I'd asked of her this weekend. She'd also gone along when Joyce told her that Mama had said it would be better if I concentrated on just one wife at a time. She had balked about being in bed with Shirley and I at the same time, but had gone up to my bedroom with Shirley willingly enough later on Friday. She had, in a word, been helpful in doing whatever Joyce and I had asked of her. There had to be a reason for her doing that, and, for the moment at least, I was willing to attribute that to her honestly caring about us. After Cindy got out of bed to get ready to go back to her apartment, I had a chance to think about what I should say to her. I didn't want to go too far, but I did want her to know I was beginning to think about her a little differently after this weekend. When she came out of the bathroom, all clean and ready to leave, I walked her out to her car. "Thank you for coming up with me, Cindy. You helped make this a better visit than it would have been without you. I hope you're right about things being better for all of us now. I'm beginning to feel more optimistic too. About things in general, and about you too." Cindy reacted to my words by leaning her head and body up as much as she could and kissing me. Her arms were around my neck and she was squeezing me. When she released me, I could see definite signs of emotion in her eyes. "I'll see you at work in the morning, Kenny. This was my favorite part of the weekend, out here in your driveway. I enjoyed a lot more than that, but this was the best part for me." With that, she got in her car and drove off. I stood there, watching her drive away. She was still confusing to me. There were so many contradictions. One thing I'd noticed though was she never brought up her project with me even once after we left the big house in Ridgeline. It was as though it had taken a back seat in her interest for awhile. I knew it was an important thing in her life, so I had to conclude that, for the past seven or more hours, she believed our family relationship was more important than her project. If my conclusion was accurate, then my earlier assessment about Cindy's reasons for wanting to get back with me had to be mistaken. If they were mistaken, how much else was mistaken too? I walked back into the house. For once, the possibility that I'd been mistaken didn't worry me. Maybe everyone was right, maybe I should try to be relaxed more, and just let things work themselves out. At six thirty, I called Shirley. We had a good phone conversation. We talked about the just concluded visit, and about her hope that she could get moved back into the big house in time for my next visit. She asked me if Cindy had made any comments about her, or about the time they'd spent together in my bedroom. "She didn't really say anything about what she did with you or with Joyce. She did say she thought we were starting to get back to the way things used to be. She said it was because we all stayed around to work out our problems when they came up. I think she was referring to us all getting the sleeping arrangements worked out in the end." "I thought Joyce was trying harder to get things worked out. Lately, she doesn't seem to work as hard to make things come out okay. Before, I think she had given up. She isn't like that now though. I'm going to go to the office tomorrow, so we can spend the day together. She and I need to get some things straightened out too, especially if we're all going to be living with each other again." "Go easy on her, okay? She's got a lot on her plate right now already. She isn't looking forward to what Dr. Fellows might have to tell her." "I wasn't planning to argue with her. I meant we should try to be closer than we've been for the past months. We were so close before, all of us, but things came up that seemed to make us all want to take sides. I didn't want to do that, and I'd already decided I wasn't going to just stay there, doing nothing, while Joyce tried to keep things together all by herself. I guess I thought it would be easier for her, if she didn't feel like she had to take care of me and the kids too. I can see now that it was a mistake. I guess I already knew it would be, but I was being selfish. I wanted the children acting differently with each other than they were doing. I wanted Derek to get to really know his sisters, instead of only choosing to be with Bunny and Bertie like he had been doing." "Cindy thinks everything is going to get worked out with us. All of us. She thinks the more I become relaxed, the easier it will be for that to happen. She already says I'm a lot more relaxed than I was." "I'm not sure relaxed is the right word. I think you've started caring again. When you were sick, it was as if you didn't care about anyone. You only seemed to care about whatever it was you wanted. I think you started caring again when the children started being allowed to really visit with you, not just see you like they'd been allowed to do from the beginning. I think they changed you because you knew you couldn't say anything bad to them, or hurt them. Dr. Fellows told us you wouldn't hurt your children, and she was right." At nine o'clock, I called Joyce. We talked for a little while about Cindy. Joyce made me give her a graphic account of what we'd done together in bed. She seemed a little disappointed that my account didn't include many lurid details, but it hadn't really been very lurid sex. We had been together, but it hadn't been that sexy in some ways. It had been more romantic, or even friendly, than it was sexy. We had enjoyed each other sexually, but it hadn't been the main emphasis of what we were sharing. I told her about what Shirley and Cindy had said about the visit, and why each thought it had gone as well as it had. I told her about Cindy's relaxed theory, and about Shirley's caring theory. "I hate to say this, Kenny, but I think both of them are wrong. I don't think you've really changed that much from how you were when you first came out of the clinic. I think all the rest of us are doing the changing, not you. I've talked to Shirley and Cindy about this, asking them to describe all the changes they say they see. What I think happened to them, and to me, was we all got so lonely and discouraged that we just decided it was easier to give up. When you give up and have nothing left, you make things up to trick your own mind into accepting what you know you still need. I think we've all done that with you. I think it was the best thing we could have done too, because we finally realize what you've been saying is mostly true, who you are now is all that's available for us, so it has to be enough. "You made me realize why it's enough for me this weekend, when you brought Cindy up for me. If you were my whole life, then it probably wouldn't be enough, not with you being the way you are now. You're the main one in my life, but now I'm understanding that you aren't the only one. I can't have most of the others, not unless you're there too, and only then, if they also accept you just like I have. I woke up this morning realizing that. It made me feel better. I needed to understand about all those other people in my life, to realize it wasn't just you I was rejecting. When I did that, I realized how much everything I loved about our old life came from these other people too, and from all of the other things I do. I also realized that what you said to me before was true. I needed to be with you, to accept you, if I wanted to have all these people and things back in my life again." "You really can't see all the changes I've made?" I was a little hurt by what she'd said, and a lot disappointed that she didn't see all the ways I'd changed. I'd worked hard to change the way I looked at things, and the way I now acted in certain situations. I knew I'd developed a lot more patience and self control. If I couldn't change my personality that much, at least I had changed the way I treated people. I was still me, just not the same me I'd once been. I was changing how I did some things to make myself act closer to how I'd acted before. "I see the changes you're talking about, but those aren't changes in you. You've changed some of the ways you come across to people, but you haven't changed who you are now. That's okay though. How you are is important, and who you are is fine with me now too. I decided it was okay. What made it easy for me to decide this was understanding all of what you had always meant in my life. We can still have that life together, even if you are different. We both want that life again, and, I'm sure I love you now, even if you are different than you were before." "You think this is the same way Cindy and Shirley see things too?" "I'm sure about Cindy. We had some talks together this weekend. She hasn't been happy for a long time. She thought she had something that was perfect for her, then she saw you get sick, and she knew it wouldn't be the same. For Cindy, there had to be a man involved. She really does love you. You should have heard her being so upset when she first got here, because she said you didn't believe it was you she mostly loved. "Shirley is different. She liked our life too before, but, with you out of it, she still had the children, and her friendship with me. The sex parts, with all of us girls, they were never that big a draw for her. When you were sick, she lost most of her reason for going along with that part of it. Shirley felt secure with all of us before. She felt like she was a part of something, and she hadn't felt a part of too much when she was growing up. She liked belonging, so she was willing to put up with some things she wasn't too crazy about in order to be able to belong with us. You know how she always was about you. She knew she wasn't going to get all of you, but she had part of you, and she always had her dreams. She knows she can't have her dreams unless she's with you. She'd rather fool herself that you've changed, than continue to live without her dreams. We all would." After I got off the phone with Joyce, I looked at my watch. It was almost ten thirty. I'd been disappointed by what Joyce had said to me. Still, disappointed or not, she was telling me how she had arrived at her decision to accept me again. More than that, she was telling me that she'd decided to accept me in spite of believing I hadn't changed. To her, I was still this new Kenny, a man she hadn't liked at all when I first came out of the clinic. I definitely didn't believe she was right about that part, because I knew I felt different now. I felt much more now than I had when I'd first been released from the clinic. That Kenny wouldn't have ever gone back to the clinic looking for help with the unhappiness he was feeling. I made a decision, picking up the telephone and dialing Mrs. Pipkin's phone number. When she answered the phone, I identified myself and apologized for disturbing her. She told me I was always welcome to call her house, and asked me which of her daughter's I wanted to speak with first. I thought this an odd question. Usually, it was Eddie who came on the phone to talk with me. "I'd like to speak with Dale if I could please?" "Kenny?" I was glad to hear Dale's voice. "Hi, Dee. I wanted to ask you some questions about something you and Eddie said the last time I took you back to Oklahoma. You both said it wasn't fun anymore to be around me. Eddie said it was all the laughing and everyone being happy that she missed the most. Did you feel like that too?" "I'm the wrong sister to be asking that, Kenny. Dee Dee is the main one that thought we had better go away again. It wasn't as good as it had been, but I thought you needed someone to be there with you. You know I'm not as willing to run around having fun like Dee Dee always is." "After you two left, I started going to see my old doctor at that clinic. I was hoping she could help me make some changes so I'd be happier. I hoped she could help me change some more. I think it either started working, or else things were about to start changing anyway, and this is part of the reason why I called you. Joyce and I have mostly worked out our problems. She says I'm still as different as I was when I got out of the clinic, but she says she's decided she can accept me like that. We've been talking, and now we're getting along a lot better. Shirley and I have been talking too. Even Cindy and I have started getting back to being more like we were before I got sick. Everybody seems to have a different theory about why things are beginning to get better," "What difference does the why make? Isn't it enough that things are getting better? You need to just accept anything that's good, Kenny. The bad stuff, you can think about and worry over." "Maybe. I wanted to tell you what each of them thinks it is, and then ask you what you think is happening." "I already know what's happening. All of you decided this whole thing was hurting everybody, so you've decided to quit acting that way. Mama told me and Dee Dee that all of you all would finally begin to get it. She even said you'd call us up one day and tell us you figured out a way for all of us to get along again. I already have my bag packed for when you tell me that." "What about Eddie?" "You know her, Kenny. If she thinks it will be fun, she'll try it. Do you think it would be fun for her again?" "I'm not sure yet. Emily and Brenda are still out in California. Shirley's having their old rooms fixed up so she can move into them with our children. I'm almost sure that Joyce will be happier when you guys see her again. I know I've still got some things that I need to get worked out, but I'm not creating so many problems with it now. I have a better idea of why I feel some of the ways I do. All of the wives get along with me better than they did, and we all say we want things to keep getting better." "So, what is it you want me and Dee Dee to do?" "I'm hoping you'll decide to move back into the Ridgeline house and help Joyce and Shirley get things going again. I'll be coming for visits like I was before I first got sick, and we'll try to get things as much like they were before as we can. Cindy will be coming up most weekends with me." "Are we going to be able to take turns coming down to see you like we did before?" "I'd like that." "I want to take my turn by myself, instead of with Dee Dee." "I'd like that too. You know I'd be happy to come pick you up and bring you back here, if you wanted to take that idea for a test ride?" "Just me, you mean? You'd fly here and pick me up?" "Of course. I'm not the one who said you two had to always do everything together." "Dee Dee will get her own chance after though?" "Sounds fine with me. I could fly up to get you tomorrow, after work. I could be at the airport by five thirty or so. We'd be back here by eight tomorrow night." "Talk to Dee Dee first. See if she has any problem with us doing that." "What do you want, Dale? I think you're old enough to decide this for yourself, based just on what you want." "Please talk with her, Kenny. For me?" "Sure. I'll see you at the airport tomorrow at five thirty?" "If she doesn't get all upset. Talk to her and tell her what you told me." I waited for more than a minute for Eddie to come on the line. She sounded like she'd been asleep and had just been woken up. "That you, Kenny? Dee said it was." "Hi, Eddie. I was telling Dale that things are finally starting to get better again with some of our family. So far, it's only Shirley, Joyce, Cindy and me, but things are looking better than they were when you went back home the last time." "Are you living with them again?" She sounded suspicious. "Not yet, but we were all visiting with each other over this past weekend. Cindy and I flew back to Birmingham earlier in the day." "What about Brenda and Emily? You talking to them yet?" "No. They're still in California. My mother and Joyce have talked to them. Mostly to Brenda. Shirley's getting ready to move back to our house, and Cindy and I will be visiting most weekends now." "You wanting me and Dee to come back and live with you again? In Kansas, or in Birmingham?" "I was calling to see how you both were and to let you know that we're making progress. I'd like for both of you to come visit Joyce and Shirley, and to help them get things back closer to the way they were before I got sick." "That's all you want? You didn't say anything about you wanting to get together with us. This isn't going to work if it gets set up like it was when we left the last time. How is this different than it was then?" "I'm not sure, but I know it is different. You should come, and see for yourself. I can always fly you back if you don't like it there." "What did Dee say when you asked her?" "She thinks it's a good idea, but she said I needed to talk to you first, to find out what you think." "I think I'm going to wait right here for a little longer. You seem to be doing fine right now. Get the rest of them girls back living in that house, and then we'll see. You need to get things settled with them first four wives before you start adding me and Dee back into it again." "If you don't want to come right away, I can understand that. Would you have a problem with Dee deciding she wanted to come, without you?" "That isn't going to happen, and you must know that. If you can talk her into coming, all by herself, that's just fine with me. I still think you should listen to what I'm telling you. Emily and Brenda are the two you should be working on, not us two. You get those two back, and I'll start to believe you've done something. Dee wants to talk to you again. You take care, Kenny. I hope you do get things back together. I miss the old days. We had some good times back then." "Kenny? I heard what she told you. We've been fighting about that. I guess we both look at this from different perspectives. Are you still willing to come here, just for me?" "Of course. Will you be okay without Eddie?" "I really don't know the answer to that, but I think I might be okay now. I'm sure I'll be okay with you in Birmingham for awhile. After that, I'm not as sure." "Let me talk to your mother if she's still awake, please." "Hello again, Kenny. What did you say to get Dee talking about flying away from here all on her own?" "I'm not sure. She told me she wanted to visit me in Birmingham on her own, and then she told me to talk to Eddie. Do you think having the two of them apart will be all right?" "I'll be happy to get rid of both of them, to tell you the truth. If they both can't leave, then either one going will be the next best thing. Both of them have been some fractious since you brought them back here this last time. They've been going at it with each other like you wouldn't believe. You'd think they hated each other the things that get said back and forth. They're at it again right now. If they don't stop it and let a body get some sleep, you can stop worrying about both of them, because I'm going to snatch both of them bald headed. Dee told me you're coming for her tomorrow at five thirty. I'll make sure she's there. I'll make sure Dee Dee isn't there too. That girl's gonna get her mouth washed out with some soap, just as soon as I get off this phone call with you. Come get my little Dee tomorrow, Kenny. I'll consider it the Lord's blessing if you do." After I got off the phone with Eddie's mother, I started worrying about how the other wives would be reacting to my calling Eddie and Dale like I had. I decided to call Joyce. I knew she'd still be awake. She and I ended up talking for almost another hour. I thought she reacted well to the news I'd called her with. The only concern she voiced to me was about Eddie and Dale not being together. I told her that Dale had requested coming alone the next time it was her turn to visit me in Birmingham. Joyce thought Eddie's advice concerning getting Brenda and Emily back before worrying about either her or her sister was said only to mask her not wanting to come back to Kansas right then. Joyce didn't seem surprised that Eddie felt that way. I went to sleep trying not to think about what Eddie's refusal to come back to our home might mean. I realized it wasn't as important as the fact that Dale had wanted to return. I knew Eddie and Dale were closer than Emily and Brenda were. Dale would be letting her sister know whether things were better now or not. Eddie's reaction just confirmed some of my earlier thoughts about her commitment to our family. Dale's reaction pleased me though. I had to confess that I too had been guilty of treating them like they were both one person. I wondered what they were arguing so much about? I didn't think it was over us. The next morning, Cindy decided she wanted to come with me when I flew to Oklahoma to pick up Dale later that afternoon. I told her I'd welcome her company. She asked me several questions about what had prompted Dale's decision to come for a visit with me in Birmingham. I told her about making the phone call after getting off the telephone with Joyce. Telling her this also led me to discuss what Joyce had told me about what she thought was happening to make the three of them start wanting to reunite back into a family. "Maybe all three of us are seeing the same things, but we're interpreting them differently. I definitely have noticed a change in you. It doesn't matter what people call it. It makes you more attractive to me, and it reminds me of how you were before. If Shirley saw you primarily as a caring person before, and now you seem like that again to her, that's how she would think of the difference. I don't understand how Joyce could say you weren't changed though." "It could be because she had already convinced herself that she wanted our old life back, or at least as much of it as we could get back. When she did that, she probably figured it didn't matter so much that I was different, and because it no longer mattered so much, she can't see all the ways I have changed." "I don't see how that could possibly be, Kenny. You're just so much more calm and relaxed now. Anyone could see that. Joyce probably knows you better than anybody else does." I spent my morning trading. At one, I decided to call Dr. Fellows to share with her the developments from my just completed visit back home. I thought she'd be pleased with how well everything went. She wasn't. We talked about her advising me to take things slowly when I had last spoken with her. She said what I had done hadn't been what she meant when she told me to go slower. She asked plenty of questions though. Many of these questions concerned how Joyce seemed to be reacting to Shirley and Mama's request that she come with me the next time I visited the clinic. "She seemed nervous and apprehensive. I'm pretty sure she's worried that you'll blame her for part of what happened to all of us. I think she's been having problems feeling certain about things ever since I first left the clinic. In one way, she just seems relieved to have made any decision." "I'm not someone who's comfortable finding blame, Kenny. I've spoken with Joyce on enough occasions to be sure she understands that about me. I think it might be useful for me to witness the dynamics of the actual relationship you have with her. From you, during our talks, I've gotten a very different picture of this relationship than I've gotten from her in our conversations. It will be interesting to see you both together, and to form my own opinions." "I'm planning on coming back over to the clinic next Monday morning. It's okay for me to bring Joyce then?" "It will be excellent. I was going to suggest this myself, at some later date. Will she be staying with you, in your room, or should I place her in another room, by herself?" I thought this a curious kind of question, especially after I'd told her how well the weekend had gone. "She'll stay with me. You weren't planning on using hypnosis on me while Joyce is with me, were you?" "No. I thought the three of us might sit and talk together. I need to get some feel for how the two of you are when you're together. Actually, this is something I'm looking forward to. It might accelerate your acceptance of dealing with some issues you've previously shown some reluctance to confront. I'll also look forward to hearing how Joyce defends her interpretation of what has happened to change your relationship." "There's one thing I want to make absolutely clear to you, doctor. Under no circumstances do I want Joyce leaving your clinic feeling like anyone thinks she let me down at any point. I won't stand for having her blamed for my problems." "You worry needlessly, young man. We all share the same goal, after all. We'll use this time together to explore your shared values and objectives. Often, by agreeing on what the two of you do want, we can, by a simple process of elimination, isolate what it is you don't want. Once you understand what you don't want, you can work to eliminate that from your recovering relationships. I think this might turn out to be something important for both of you, but we'll have to wait to see if there is anything at work here that we can uncover." I hung up thinking Dr. Fellows was reacting strangely to some of the news I had given her. She wanted me to proceed at a slower pace, and yet she freely admitted to being comfortable in accelerating her own agenda. I was nervous about these two people getting together with me in one room. Between the two of them, they knew me, both inside and out. Would it be a good thing having the two of them with me, able to compare notes? ------- Chapter 75 Cindy and I stopped off to get a quick bite at a diner by the airport. I found myself excited about flying up to get Dale. The fact that Eddie had decided to stay with her mother in Chickasaw wasn't troubling to me. I was just beginning to think I might be better served by getting to know each of the sisters as individuals. Even as close as they were to each other, it was becoming obvious to all of us that they were very different individuals. Cindy and I talked about Eddie and Dale. I was surprised to learn that she believed that Dale would eventually end up staying with me permanently, and that Eddie wouldn't. "That's the opposite of what I would have thought. Eddie and Joyce are closer than Dale and Joyce, and Eddie gets along with all the other wives, much better than Dale does." "Eddie's more outgoing, Kenny. We all like Dale though. She's quieter, but she's always been very helpful to all of us. It's more difficult to be comfortable around Dale in the beginning, but, once she gets to know you, she gets friendlier. Eddie is friendly, but Dale, she's more solid and dependable. I always trusted Dale more." I wondered what she meant by trust? By Dale's own admission, she had been the one to begin that affair while I was in the clinic. Other than that one disappointment with them, I'd had no occasions to distrust either woman. "I think it will either end up with them both staying, or else them both leaving. I can't see the two of them living apart from each other for long. They're too dependent on each other, too close to be separated for very long." Cindy didn't say anything more, but I got the distinct impression that she believed I was mistaken. We passed the remainder of the flight talking about business. I had asked Cindy to look for a free standing building in Birmingham where we could hold our sales training for the Quick Snacks program. It had grown to the point where it was starting to disrupt normal operations at the bakery. Cindy had found a few buildings for sale, and she wanted to schedule a time for me to go looking at them with her. "That's something you need to take care of on your own, Cindy. I've told you what we need as far as floor space, storage capacity and parking requirements goes. Once you've decided on the one you think is best, bring it to me and then I'll decide whether I need to go take a look at it or not. You should pick a place that has room for growth in case we later need to expand further. If possible, I'd prefer operating the whole Quick Snacks program from the new building. We can't afford to keep on trying to operate things from the baking plant like we're now doing. Make certain there's adequate room for increasing our product storing there too." "None of the places I've been looking at are big enough for us to do all that." "Then you need to start looking for a different property, one that is big enough. I should have talked to you sooner about what my future plans were for the Quick Snacks company. I'm really beginning to think it should be a separate division of the parent company. It's getting too big for us to continue operating it as a subsidiary of Macklinson's. I won't have the time to keep up with all the growth. I'm thinking of putting someone else in there to run the thing." "Kyle?" Cindy seemed like she hoped my answer to her question wouldn't be Kyle. "No. Kyle isn't ready yet for running both inside operations and the sales program. He needs to be out there building the sales force while we have free reign over this market. What I'm looking for is more along the lines of a CEO. I started out thinking about using either your father or Larry. I'm confident that either of them would be able to handle doing what I'd need for this appointment. The other one would need to take over the sales support job for all the teams." "Daddy would be a good choice." Cindy had that concerned look on her face. She looked over at me expectantly, waiting for me to confirm her choice. I hadn't been looking forward to discussing this with her, but I knew it was time that I did. I didn't want to end up having new conflict between Larry and Gene. I also didn't want to get into another situation where the two brothers would take offense over this and start quitting on me again. I was hoping that Cindy would serve as a go between for me. I decided to lay out what I had been thinking, and then hope she could present it to her father and her uncle in a way that wouldn't lead to more trouble for me. "I thought of your dad first, Cindy. He's the one with the greater administrative experience. The truth is though, Larry has done a great job for me ever since I gave him his new position. You know that Larry believes he's never really been given a chance to show people what he could do if he were put in charge. Your father has already had his chance to run things. Right now, I'm leaning towards the idea that Larry should finally be given his chance to run things. I'm still going to give the matter some more thought, before I make any firm decision or announce any appointments. I'll hold off on making my final choice until after we have the new building to house the company in. As it stands right now though, I'm leaning towards either asking Larry to do it, or else bringing in someone from outside Macklinson's to run things. I don't want to have more problems with your family. If it will cause bad feelings to give the job to Larry, maybe it would be better, in the long run, for me to bring in someone from outside Macklinson's to run this thing for me." "Daddy won't accept Uncle Larry being put in any job over him." I could see the stubborn set to Cindy's jaw as she made this statement to me. I'd pretty much expected this reaction, from Gene, and from Cindy too. "I hope you're wrong about that, Cindy. Like I said, I'm going to keep thinking about it. There's a big promotion for somebody with this Quick Snacks job. I can think of several people that would love to be considered. I just thought it might be easier if everyone already knew the new boss, that it would make it better if it was someone they were already comfortable working with. Whoever I put in that job is going to have a lot of say so in any future promotions or transfers. If my name was Macklinson, I'd want to have someone I knew making those kinds of decisions." "Did you want me to talk to Daddy, to let him know it's a choice between Larry and some outsider?" "I don't want to have any problems when I do decide. Things have been going very well with all the members of your family. I'd hate to see all of us having problems again. If you do talk with your father, make sure he knows it won't be him that's promoted. It will either be Larry or someone I'll bring down here from either Bolling or Omaha." "I don't feel right about you using me like this against my own father." This was the part I'd most worried about. I knew Cindy would look at it this way, like I was using her. "Then don't say anything to him. Your father is capable of making his own decisions when I announce the new appointment. I just thought it might be easier for him if he had some advance warning. I thought he might benefit from having some time to get himself used to the idea of not being the one getting this new job. I told you because I thought he might take it better if it came from someone he loved and trusted. I respect Gene, but I think we'd all be better served keeping him doing just what he's doing now." "Does this have anything to do with you starting up the sales idea I came up with?" "No. I'm already going ahead with that. We'll start interviewing people next week for the first sales training classes." "When do I start working on that project?" "That will be up to whoever I decide to put in charge over at the Quick Snacks company. Staffing decisions will be made as the need arises." "I'm not going to be running the women's division?" Cindy looked at me closely as she asked that question. I could see she was beginning to get even more upset. I had been right in thinking that she had just assumed she'd get the appointment to run the woman's sales division. "Cindy, I really can't say. It depends on who comes in to take over the program. Usually, when someone comes in to take over a new operation like this, they'll have some of their own people with them already. I'll make sure that the new man knows this was your idea, and that you want to be considered for the project director position when he fills it." "You're saying he might decide to bring in someone else though?" "His decision. If he asks me for my opinion, I'll tell him what I think." "What do you think?" She was clearly worried and concerned now. "I think you'd make a great project head for this woman's division." "You could give me the promotion right now, before you bring in someone new." "That wouldn't be fair to whoever I bring in to do the job. I told you that I'm leaving all staffing decisions up to the new guy, or the new woman. That includes all the positions that are currently filled." Cindy just stared at me as what I'd just said to her started to sink in. I had a feeling that she would make a real effort to get Gene to accept the idea that Larry would be a lot better for this new position than any outsider could ever be. I really didn't want to have any Macklinson labor problems. Things were going pretty smoothly, and the Quick Snacks program was starting to really hit a good stride. I believed Larry could keep on top of things for me, and I'd been honest when I'd told Cindy I wanted him to have his chance to be in charge. ------- Mrs. Pipkin was as good as her word, and she and Dale were waiting for us when we taxied over to the refueling area we used. I was glad to see them both. From the amount of luggage Dale had brought with her to the airport, it looked like she was planning on an extended visit. We were only on the ground for as long as it took to top off the tanks before heading back towards Birmingham. Dale appeared a little out of sorts until the three of us were airborne. "Thank you for coming for me, Kenny. Dee Dee has been trying to talk me out of going with you ever since we got up this morning." "I'm sorry that this is coming between you two. Eddie knows she was invited too. It was her choice to stay at your mother's house." "It isn't just you, Kenny. This is something that has been coming on for awhile now between us. We both just want different things I guess. I wish she could accept what I say I want, and then be happy that I'm going after it." "What is it that you want, Dale?" "What we had before, Kenny. Not exactly the same, but as close to that as we can make it. I know things won't ever be back exactly to how they were before. I can still be happy the way they are now." Dale had started tearing up as she spoke. It was pretty obvious to me that this situation she was in with her sister was troubling to her. Cindy had been standing behind us as we spoke. She came forward, into the cockpit area, and knelt down next to Dale, taking her hand. She didn't say anything to her, but still wanted to do something supportive. I didn't speak at all for a few minutes. There was something disturbing about Dale and Eddie being unable to reach an accord about what Dale wanted to do. I felt like I had failed them. We never had these kinds of problems before I got sick. I had always been amazed at the closeness Eddie and Dale shared. I wasn't comfortable being the cause of their discord. "Dale, I'm happy to have you back with me now. I've missed you. Eddie is always welcome to come visit, or to stay with us as well. I can understand the way Eddie feels though. Things are changed from what they were when you were here with us before. It finally looks like Joyce and I are working some things out again. The same is true with Shirley and Cindy. All of us are hoping to make things better than they have been. We're trying." It was well after dark when we landed back in Birmingham. It had been a relatively subdued flight for the three of us. We were all thinking our own private thoughts. Cindy had already informed me that she thought it would be better if Dale and I took a couple days together, by ourselves. I was fairly sure that she was going to be busy working on Gene. When we got to Birmingham, I dropped her off at her car, and told her I'd see her in the office in the morning. Dale and I went home and showered together before turning in for the night. It was a bit strange being in bed together at first. I felt comfortable with her, but I wanted to make sure she felt comfortable being there with me. I knew she was still worrying about how things had been left with Eddie. "Should we call Eddie and tell her we made it back all right?" I had been holding on to her, cuddling up against her back when I spoke. She giggled. "I was thinking more about calling Mama, and then Joyce. Isn't it funny, that we'd be in bed, all naked together, and both thinking about making phone calls?" I had my arm wrapped around her small waist, and began moving my hand up to her left breast while she spoke. Her left arm moved back, between us, reaching to take my dick in her hand. Again, she giggled, but only after first giving my erection a little handshaking wiggle. I was kissing the back of her neck and lightly licking her earlobe as soon as she started wiggling me. I could feel some of the tenseness leaving her body. Both of us had been too tense for some reason. I wasn't sure what it was, but I knew we both needed to learn again how to be more relaxed with each other. This hadn't happened before. It was covered up somewhat by the frenzied sexual activity I'd had before with the two sisters. Still, that sense of there being some tension between the three of us had been right there with us during the whole last visit. "One of the things I've missed is being able to feel relaxed around my wives. I felt that with Shirley this last visit we had. I was always most aware of it with her before, but I had it with all of you to some degree before I got sick too. When I was with Shirley though, I recognized that the relaxed feeling was back again. It makes everything seem more comfortable to me. Without that, I can feel the tension." "It's hard to be relaxed when you're excited about something. I've been thinking about us, and about our being like this since yesterday. I missed how big you seemed when you were laying next to me like this. You're so much bigger than either me or Dee Dee. I always liked your size." I knew she was referring to my whole body, not just my cock. Dale liked being enveloped by me. Not just dominated, but lost beneath my bulk and size. This was something I'd noted in both Joyce and Eddie as well. Tiny girls seemed to get something extra out of being overwhelmed by someone more than twice their mass. It didn't do any harm that I was also well endowed. Well enough endowed so that they all felt full while I made love to them. We never did get around to making any phone calls that night. Once we got over our hesitations, one thing inevitably led to another. It wasn't the most intensely physical coupling we'd ever shared, and it didn't lead to the high crescendo that our sexual efforts sometimes achieved. It was satisfying on another level though, the comfort level. We each wanted to be reassured of our basic compatibility with the other. We did have that. A quiet satisfaction from knowing we both had good intentions towards the other partner. In a sense, being with Dale was yet another revelation to me. It brought me closer to what I'd been searching for, and it also served to show me that I was finally on the right trail. It reduced the anxiety levels I'd been so used to feeling with all my wives. I hadn't any sense that I was on trial, or that my performance in bed would affect the outcome of our reunion in anyway. Dale had come to me without any conditions or demands, trusting in my good will towards her. I hadn't experienced that with my other wives. It was a welcome change for me, and one that I valued highly. I was speaking with Joyce the next morning, telling her about the night I'd spent with Dale. I told her that I thought I was becoming more relaxed about things, and that I was beginning to think that Cindy had been right in her observations. "Shirley says that too now, Kenny. The relaxed part I mean. She still thinks your attitude changed because of the children, that they have made you care more than you did when you first got out of the clinic." "Do you still think its just a case of everyone seeing what they need to see? So far, you're the only one I've heard say something like that." "I don't know. I don't think it really matters much what it is. The important thing is that we all find something that makes it work for us again. We all want to find something now, and that's been a big improvement. I just hope everyone isn't going to get disappointed and discouraged when they finally see that you aren't really changed like they hoped you were." "I feel changed. I'm disappointed and discouraged that you don't see that I am. What you think really matters to me. When you tell me that I'm not really changed, it takes away from all the good feelings I've been having about the last few weeks." "Kenny, that isn't what I want to happen. I'm telling you that you don't have to change for us to be together again. You should feel good about my telling you that. There isn't anything discouraging about this. Not to me." The truth was I didn't feel good about her saying that. To me, there was a huge difference between my being changed, and my only being an acceptable substitute for who I once had been. I didn't want to be someone they were willing to settle for. I'd always gotten so much love and acceptance from all of them before my illness. I didn't understand why things couldn't get back to how they once had been. I wasn't willing to settle, and none of them should have to settle for less than what they once had either. I'd been fine, confident that things were heading in that direction again for us until Joyce again insisted that I wasn't changed. Everyone else I'd spoken to had remarked on the changes they'd seen in me over the past few months. All except for Joyce. The problem for me was that it was only Joyce's opinion that I really trusted. She knew me better than any of the others. If she said I was unchanged, I could have no confidence that I really was. After I got off the phone with Joyce, my positive attitude was gone. I started questioning the validity of most of my previous observations. Right up until after this phone call with Joyce, I'd been certain that reuniting my family was an obtainable goal, and that I was definitely on the right track for doing it. I placed another call to Dr. Fellows, filling her in on the events that had transpired since our last phone conversation. She asked me several questions, then asked me for more details after I had answered all her earlier inquiry's. There was a pause after I had finished answering all her questions. "Kenny, I'm going to need to speak with Joyce about some of this. It seems obvious to me that she feels troubled about some aspects of what has been occurring during these last few weeks. For her to deny noticing substantial differences in how you have been dealing with her and the others, especially considering the rapid progress all of you have been making, well, it just doesn't make any sense for her to be doing that." "She thinks we're all responding to what we need to see. Making up things to justify doing what we know we need to do. I'm pretty sure this is what she believes she's done. I don't think she'd tell me this if she didn't really believe it herself." "She might do this, but only if she felt threatened by some of the changes she sees occurring. Joyce might no longer be feeling secure about her place in your life. Recent events may have destroyed some of her own confidence. Perhaps, she now believes her own best interests require that you not be seen as changing?" "She told me I don't need to be changed for us to be together again. Before, she always said the opposite. I don't know what to believe now." "You are changing, Kenny. There have been some quite remarkable adjustments in your attitudes and opinions. You have become more open, less guarded than you previously were. I would presume the catalyst for these changes was your own unhappiness with the turn your life has taken after your release from the clinic. You were motivated to make these changes by your desire to recover your previous position within your family." "I've made conscious choices to respond differently than I used to. I try to look at some things differently. I've always felt like I'm the same me I always was. For awhile, it seemed like the angry me was in charge. Now, it seems like there is better balance, but that angry me is still there. Maybe that's what Joyce means when she says I didn't change?" "Perhaps. More likely though, Joyce finds it more difficult to communicate with you now. You're the same in many ways, but your responses are different from what she is used to seeing from you. Once she learns a new way of communicating with you, something she can feel comfortable with, perhaps then she'll also be better able to acknowledge these changes you have made." "We've never needed any help with communicating. We usually just told each other what we wanted or needed." "We all have our codes, Kenny. We communicate with so much more than just our words. Do you get along with Joyce better over the phone, or when the two of you are in the same room together?" "Now, over the phone. Before, it was when we were talking in person together." "The problem is probably in your non verbal communication then. I want you to do a little experiment for me. I want you to close your eyes and picture Joyce for me. Tell me what you see." I closed my eyes as she had asked, trying to picture Joyce in my mind. Even trying with all my might, I couldn't bring her into sharp focus in my mind. I could describe her features perfectly, accurate in every detail, but I couldn't form a clear picture of her in my mind. I told the doctor that I was unable to form any clear picture. She had me try the same experiment with others, Mama, my Dad, Shirley, and then, all my children. In every case, I was able to easily picture each of them in my mind. I tried Brenda, Emily, Cindy and Eddie and Dale. In each of those cases too, I was able to form some kind of picture of them. The pictures of some of the wives wasn't as sharp and clear as I might have expected, but I could picture all of them. Only Joyce couldn't be brought into any kind of focus. "That's weird, what does it mean?" "I'm uncertain about what it means. I do remember there was a big disparity between how your two identity states viewed your wives, most notably Joyce, Eddie, Dale, and Brenda. You made a comment that some of your wives were brought into sharper focus than the others. Who, besides Joyce, seemed the hardest to picture?" "Eddie and Dale were hard to bring into sharp focus, but I could picture them both. Shirley, Cindy and Emily were the sharpest. Brenda was sharp too, but harder for me to get a picture of." I felt better after my call to Dr. Fellows. I had been reassured somewhat that my perceptions had validity. The problem with picturing Joyce troubled me though. I knew how she looked, perhaps better than I knew any other person in my life. Why couldn't I picture her? There was a lot of activity in the grains that morning. I was easing out of one contract month and into the next. Usually, when a futures contract ended, there would be a heavy flurry of trading activity. On this occasion, the action was fast and furious, with heavy spikes of up and down price movement. Volatility was my friend at these times, and I took advantage of the price divergence from the spot market to pound away at every price opportunity, knowing my downside was covered at both ends, by the current spot prices and by the positions I already had in the new active contract month. There were nine separate sell off's and rally's that day before the contract finally settled. In my trading excitement, I'd forgotten all about my earlier phone calls, and the way Joyce's comments had unsettled me. At three o'clock, Joyce called me. "Kenny, Mama just called me. Brenda is bringing the children here for a visit. She wants to stay over with your parents. Mama didn't tell me how long she was planning to stay. They're flying commercial, either tomorrow, or on Friday." "I'll come up on Friday. We're supposed to be at the clinic on Monday." "We should postpone that. It can wait. Are you going to ask Brenda to stay here?" Joyce was excited. In her mind, Brenda coming back to Kansas was further proof of her theory. I hadn't spoken to either Brenda or Emily since before they left for California. There was no way that Brenda was coming back because of any changes in me. I wasn't too happy with Joyce wanting to postpone visiting the clinic with me, but I understood. Emily and Brenda were as important to her as they were to me, maybe more so. Joyce had been hoping for Brenda to return like this. I was anxious to see my children, and curious about what was happening with Brenda. "I'll be up on Friday. I'll call Dr. Fellows and let her know you won't be coming with me next week." "Kenny, please try to be extra nice to Brenda this time. If you upset her and make her run back to Emily, it might be a long time before we get another chance like this." I heard the pleading in her voice. I already knew how important this was to her. In the old days, she wouldn't have worried about me doing anything to mess things up. This wasn't the old days though. In the old days, I wouldn't have been worried about it either, but I was then. After I got off the phone with Joyce, having promised her that I'd be on my best behavior around Brenda, I called Mama. Mama wasn't at home. Gerta told me that she had left with Hans to go see Georgia. I knew that Mama had played a strong role in influencing Brenda's decision to come back to Kansas. I wanted to speak with her to find out what mood I should expect Brenda to be in when next we met. I also started thinking about Emily, about how difficult this must be for her. It just seemed that Brenda always came between us. I was growing weary of the competition between the three of us, the seemingly never ending strife that competition brought to all of us. I wanted peace, but not at any price. Things seemed to be moving quickly, perhaps too quickly. In the past, when things moved really fast, they usually unraveled, just as fast, when some hurdle got in our way. I wanted to ensure that this time the foundation in place was more stable. I didn't want to keep having things show great early promise, only to later turn sour on us. I had a strong urge to wait for Brenda to come back to Kansas, and then initiate contact with Emily, either in person, or over the phone. This was a departure from what I'd done in the past. I'd used Brenda as an incentive, to try to lure Emily back to us. Each time, it would last for awhile, then fall apart for one reason or another. Sometimes, the problem could be resolved, but other times, it led to Emily and Brenda leaving again. It had happened to us often enough. I didn't want to continue the cycle. I knew Joyce felt differently about this than I did. For her, any return would have been a good thing. If I'd learned anything during my illness and the long recovery, it was that I couldn't afford to keep having these temporary fixes to these complex personal problems. When the fixes broke down, the emotional repercussions were too traumatic for all of us to go through them over and over again. We had worn ourselves out with trying to cobble together some sort of workable formula for living together. I had come to the belief that Emily held the key to any stable relationship possible between Brenda, Emily and me. Imposing my wishes on her hadn't accomplished it. I didn't think she'd ever be perfectly content, but I knew she wouldn't be willing to accept any situation where she felt like she was being coerced. I didn't know how I could convince her that I didn't want to force her to accept being with all of us as the price she had to resume paying if she wanted to continue being with Brenda. At some point I'd decided that I could accept not having an intimate relationship with either Emily or Brenda, but only as long as it meant I could have free access to the children. I hoped Emily might consider moving back to the area if I agreed to not interfere with her and Brenda. If Joyce managed to work out something with Emily and Brenda, or with either of them, for herself, I certainly had no objections. I believed Emily only resented me competing with her for Brenda's affections. If it meant I could have all my children close by, I'd be willing to relinquish having Brenda be an active presence in my life. I had some reason to believe this might be acceptable to Emily, but Brenda would be an entirely different matter. Each time Brenda had left with Emily, the ties she had to me had lessened. The same was true of Emily. I could conceive of a life without them in it, but only as long as it meant I still had access to my children. That was the only way I'd agree to having such an understanding with Emily. ------- Chapter 76 Cindy, Dale and I flew up to Bolling early on Friday afternoon. Joyce met us at the airport in her Lincoln. Hans, in Mama's limo, was busy picking up Brenda and the children from the airport in Springfield. They were all expected to arrive at Mama's later that evening. To say that Joyce was excited about Brenda's visit would be a gross understatement. She had already plotted out a campaign designed to woo Brenda back to us. In her mind, I was the only weak link in her plan. If I would just treat Brenda nicely, Joyce was certain her campaign would prove a complete success. In her single minded concentration on Brenda's coming visit, Joyce had failed to pay very much notice to either Dale or Cindy. She was like that sometimes, too focussed on one event to take any interest in other happenings around her. I reminded her that other people liked to feel welcomed and appreciated too. After I mentioned this to her, Joyce stopped her gushing over Brenda, and paid more attention to both Dale and Cindy. I spent an enjoyable weekend with Joyce, Shirley, and our children. I spent Friday night in bed with Joyce and Cindy, Saturday night with Dale and Shirley, and we didn't see Brenda until Sunday, when all of us drove over to Mama's for lunch. Mama had phoned over to the house early Saturday morning to let us know that Brenda was tired and upset from the ordeal of her trip back to Kansas. Joyce was the one who spoke with her, because I was occupied in the play room enjoying having some contact with my children. It had quickly become apparent to all of us that Brenda's return was more than the simple visit that she had spoken of. Brenda hadn't liked California. She didn't like being so far away from her family and friends. Right before she left to fly out here, she and Emily had one of their big fights. Both had said things they didn't really mean, and as a result, Brenda now had no intention of ever returning to California. In my mind, I thought this had probably been Brenda's intent all along. I could see her picking a fight with Emily right before leaving, in order to give herself some justification for doing what she already wanted to do. Emily must have seen it too. Things like that had happened too often in the past for her not to have anticipated the possibility. Mama had told Joyce that all of us should stay away from Brenda for another day. This was to allow her time to get her emotions back under control again. I was pretty sure it wasn't Brenda's emotions that needed controlling. Mama needed some time with Brenda, without the hindrance of any outside distractions, in order to consolidate the control she was trying to get over Brenda. Mama was mostly concerned that Dwightee and April not be taken again to someplace outside her sphere of influence and control. Seeing Brenda again on Sunday had only increased my determination to try something different with her. She looked as beautiful as she ever had, and she also seemed unchanged as far as being willing to trade on her looks in order to get what she wanted. She made it plain to me that she hoped I would take her back again. In doing so, she attempted to place most of the blame for our earlier troubles on Emily's ability to talk her into taking actions she wouldn't have necessarily taken on her own. "I'm happy to see you and the children back in Ridgeline, Brenda. Mama told us you were very upset about how you left things with Emily. She thinks it might be better if you took some time to get that problem worked out before we try to make any changes to our own situation." "It is worked out, Kenny. I came back. Things will be like they were before, if you let me come back. I want us to go back to being how we were before you got sick." Brenda could see the effect she was having on me, could sense that my attraction to her hadn't disappeared, or even diminished. She posed and preened in front of me, confident that I would once again welcome her back. I was sure a good part of her confidence was predicated on what she had been told by both Joyce and Mama. She thought all she had to do was let me know she wanted to come back. Joyce believed that would be enough as well. I'd been conditioned by her to accept Brenda back. "If we did that, it would only stay worked out until the next time Emily talks you into leaving again. I don't want to keep going through that. This time, for all our sakes, instead of letting you come back, I'm going to try to figure out something different, something that might have a better chance of working out for us." "I won't leave again, Kenny. I promise. I know where I belong now, where the children and I need to be, and that's with you." "I'd have to be sure that having you come back was the best thing for all of us. I'd need to believe that before I'd agree to anything. I'm going to wait until I am sure before deciding anything this time." "I came back because your mother and Joyce both told me that you were now ready for us to start things over fresh again." "If they told you that, then they both misled you. There aren't any fresh starts. We've both spent half our lives thinking that we could make things work by doing the same things that have failed for us every time. I don't want to keep on doing that. Your problem isn't with Mama or Joyce, it's with me. I'm the one you need to convince that being with you would be better than leaving it like it is right now. It doesn't matter what they told you, this isn't their decision to make, it's mine. I'm glad you came back here, and I really hope you decide to stay. As long as you are here, there's a chance we can work some things out." "I came back for us to be together again. That's what I want." I could see that Brenda was unhappy with the tone of my words, and with the words themselves. She too had been conditioned by Mama and Joyce to think it was already a done deal. "That will have to wait until I make the decision, if I ever do make it. Right now, I have more than enough to do just trying to rebuild relationships with the women who elected to stay here. I'll need to speak with Emily, to find out what her plans are before I'm even ready to give any thought to what should happen with the three of us. As far as Joyce and the other wives go, I'm sure you're welcome to spend time with them. I'd like to spend time with Dwightee and April too, whenever I come up here for visits." "If you aren't willing to take me back, to take me and the children back, then I have no reason for staying here." "You'll do what you want to do, you always have before. If you decide to leave again, it will just prove that I was right about nothing being changed for us. The only way you can show me that things are really different is if you stay and try to show me those differences. You already have Mama and Joyce on your side. If you leave again, you'll probably lose some of their support." "You already told me their support was worthless to me." "No. What I said was it was my decision to make. I also said I wasn't going to decide anything until I had reason to believe what I decided could work for us. If you leave here, I have no reason for trying to decide anything about us. When you were out in California, I left you both alone. I'm not the one trying to change how things stand now, you are." Lunch was strained. Apparently Brenda had discussed everything with all of the other women right after our private talk in the library had concluded. From the looks I was getting from Joyce and Mama, I was in for some trouble once either of them got me alone. Even Gerta seemed upset with me over the way my conversation with Brenda had gone. My Dad and I had a good business discussion about my plan for spinning off the Quick Snacks company from Macklinson's. I could see that Cindy was paying rapt attention to how my father was reacting to my ideas and suggestions. "It's your program, Kenny. Whatever you decide to do is fine with me. The bankers will need to be told about this new direction. There might be a lot of paperwork necessary to reassure them that they still have some recourse to the assets and income of the program after you make it an independent company." "That isn't a problem, Dad. It will still be a wholly owned subsidiary to our company, just like Macklinson's is now." "Technically, that's true, but bankers like everything spelled out clearly to them. They'll want their position reaffirmed in writing." "Give them whatever they need then." I thought the discussion was over until Mama asked me a new question. "Kenny, who owns the grain trading company? Is that yours, or is it part of the overall company, like the grain brokerage business should be?" I could see she was already maneuvering, trying to put me in a position where I might be easier to control. In my mind, there was some justification for her making a claim on the brokerage company. The capital was all my own personal money, but I had made use of some company assets to make everything work out more smoothly. What I already knew was that I wasn't going to deny Mama anything she wanted me to give her financially. If she wanted any or all of it, she was more than welcome to it. I was about to answer her that way when my father cut me off. "Bertie, that will be enough of that. I won't have you jeopardizing the very future of our business because of some pique you happen to feel over a purely personal matter. Kenny owns both those companies, and he also owns all their assets." "Mama, you know you can always have whatever I own. I won't be controlled by money though. Rich or poor, I'm going to do what I think is right for me and my family. If it suits your needs, I'd be willing to withdraw from any or all of what we currently own or manage together." "You say that now, Kenny, but what if it actually came to you having to make that decision? You're talking about an awful lot of money." Mama was probing me, trying to find any weakness she could exploit to get what she wanted from me. I knew how important Dwightee and April were to her, and the promises that both Brenda and I had made to her. "I'm willing to get up right now and leave everything, if that's what you want from me." "What I want is for you to stop putting your own selfish needs ahead of what is best for this family. Brenda has indicated her willingness to return. You should accept her sincere offer to start all over again. It is important that you really try to make things work out in a way that is best for all of us." "I'm not the one who is being selfish, Mama. I'm convinced that what you want won't work out well for our family. Not in the long term. It never has worked out and we've tried it many times. Unless something changes from all those past attempts, this reconciliation attempt would fail just like all the others. I'm tired of playing this Yo Yo game with Emily and Brenda. We all need to decide what we each want, then come to some sort of an arrangement that will accomplish that. What Brenda is offering me now won't do this." "You can't be sure that it won't unless you give it a chance to work." "I have given it a chance, and it didn't work. It's time to try something different. I can't make an arrangement with Brenda alone. She changes her mind like other people change their socks. This time I'm just going to wait until I come up with a plan that could possibly work. Nothing anyone else says or does is going to make me decide to do anything else before I feel I'm ready." "At least take Brenda back to Birmingham with you. I'll watch the children for you while you two try to work out your differences." I stood up from the table, excusing myself from it. I could tell that Mama was digging her heels in on this subject. We were about to have a real clash of wills if I stayed around. I went out through the front door and began the walk back over to my own house. I had to slow down after a few minutes in order to wait for Cindy and Dale to catch up with me. Together, the three of us walked to the house. I already had my bag packed and was waiting downstairs for Cindy and Dale, when the front door opened and Joyce came hurrying in. As soon as she saw I was still there, she stopped and stood in place, ten feet away, just staring at me. "Why, Kenny? You knew what I wanted from you. Why didn't you at least warn me that you were going to do what you did?" "Brenda isn't ready yet, Joyce. She may never be ready. I'm not going to just go along with you and Mama when I'm already sure what you want wouldn't work. I'm not ready either. I knew that as soon as I set eyes on Brenda again. I haven't worked through all the feelings she gave me from the last time." "It looks to me like you never intended to do what we both agreed you would do." "I'll do what I said, when I can do it. I never had any firm timetable. You're the one in such a big hurry, not me. I can't just force myself to do something because that's what you want me to do. I want to put things back to the way they were, but not if I know it won't work out doing it that way. I'm putting it together, slowly, carefully, piece by piece. Right now, I can't give you what you want, not as far as Brenda and Emily are concerned." "Mama's all upset. Brenda's making her worry that she's thinking about taking the children and returning to Los Angeles." "I don't think Brenda wants to go back. Right now, she's just negotiating, trying to make the best deal she can for herself. Brenda will settle down, right after I leave here." "Suppose you're wrong? Then what?" "Then nothing. We have a problem because the two of us want different things now with Brenda. I'm still open to the idea of you getting what you want, I just need some time to make it so that I want it too. Right now, I can't do that. Brenda's been coming and going her whole life. If she goes again, she'll eventually come back. What I've done with her in the past hasn't worked that well. I'd really like to find a way to be with her that will work. If not, then I'd like to find another way, one where I wasn't with her, but I was with Dwightee and April." "This is just what I meant when I told you that you hadn't really changed, Kenny. You make decisions based only on what you want now. You knew all you had to do was tell Brenda she could move back in with us." "I didn't say she couldn't move in here with you, Joyce. All I told her was that I'm not ready to take her back right now. You're welcome to take her back if you want to." "She wants you to take her back. She doesn't care about what I want." "Are you taking us to the airport, or shall I call Hans to do it?" "You can't just leave now with things all up in the air like this! You need to talk to Brenda again and get her calmed down. Tell her you'll come up to talk to her some more. Tell her next weekend." "I'll call Hans. I'll be at the clinic this week like I planned. I'll talk to Dr. Fellows about what happened, and how I feel. This thing with Brenda is going to take a lot of thought. I was hoping that you and I could get our situation sorted out better before we had to start dealing with this Brenda and Emily problem. I'll call you tonight, We can talk about it some more." "Don't leave like this, Kenny. I'm not sure I could forgive you if you did that." I looked over at her. To me, her saying something like that was a very strange thing. I didn't think I did anything to need forgiveness for. This was my life too that she was trying to impose her decisions on. Her happiness was important to me, but I wasn't going to do something I knew was bad for me just so she could get her way. "You better think about things before you say something like that, Joyce. I never agreed to try to get things back together your way. I have to do this in a way that makes some sense to me. Right now, taking Brenda back doesn't make any sense to me. I'm going to leave because my visit is over. I enjoyed being here, but its time to leave now. I'm glad I saw Brenda and the kids again, but, seeing her, I knew the time wasn't right yet for us to try to work things out. I know you didn't get everything you'd hoped for from this visit, but you got what was possible for me to give you. If you decide to set this thing up as a contest of wills between us, you're going to have as much success doing that as Mama did when she tried it earlier. I'm not going to be forced to do something I know I'm not ready to do yet." Joyce was crying while I spoke. I could see that she was just as determined as I was about this. I don't think I was very surprised. I'd known for a long time how important all the other wives were to her overall happiness. She had counted quite a bit on having Brenda back with us. Her frustration and disappointment were obvious. "I mean it, Kenny. You better not just leave like this. If you do leave, I don't know what's going to happen with us." I walked over to the telephone and called over to Mama's house for Hans. While I was asking him for a ride over to Bolling, Joyce walked past me and then started up the staircase. She didn't say goodbye to Dale or Cindy either. I could tell, on the ride out to the airport that Cindy and Dale were in shock over what had occurred between Joyce and me. I was pretty upset myself, but still believed I'd had no real choice in doing what I'd done. I believed Joyce would come around eventually. I also knew that I understood better what she meant when she told me I hadn't changed. I still defied her will. This was something I almost never did before I got sick. Instead of defying her before, I'd find some way that I could go along with her, or else find a compromise we could both live with. In that sense, my willingness not to give in or compromise with her was what she felt was proof that I hadn't changed from when I'd been released from the clinic. That was the single most important personality trait to her. Unfortunately, this was one of the changes in my personality that I most appreciated and embraced. One of the things I'd disliked about the old Kenny was the way he wouldn't stand up to Joyce. I'd give in to her and then carry resentments about having done so. The new way seemed better by far to me. I took Dale with me to the clinic early on Monday morning. I had tried calling Joyce Sunday night, but she wouldn't take my call. After I got off the phone, I called over to Mama's and spoke to Brenda. We argued about why she should do what I wanted when I wasn't willing to do what she wanted me to do. Brenda was a consummate negotiator. In return for her spending the week over at Joyce's house, making Joyce happy, I agreed to allow her to fly down to Birmingham to be with me for the weekend. Before I agreed to doing that, I insisted that her visit had to also include the children. After I got off the phone with Brenda, I felt some of that resentment I used to feel after letting Joyce have her way when we disagreed about something. Because I'd been the one who set this up, my resentment didn't seem as justified. The week with Dr. Fellows was productive. I had a lot to talk about with her, and she seemed quite satisfied with the way I had acted, towards, Joyce, Mama and Brenda. Even the deal I'd made with Brenda didn't cause her to take me to task. She asked my why I made the call, wanting to know what I hoped to gain by having done so. After I told her what I hoped to gain, she asked me how I'd felt when I agreed to meet Brenda's price for her cooperation. "I felt all right. I figured Joyce would feel better if she got part of what she had been hoping for. I felt sure that Brenda would ask me for something like that as the price for her cooperation. All three of us got part of what we wanted, and I still ended up not having to make a decision I'm not yet ready to make." "How do you feel about what you learned about Joyce's reaction to you standing up to her?" "I'm part angry and part relieved. I always knew she needed to get her way more than I used to need to. I'm relieved to see that is the main obstacle she and I need to overcome. I think we can learn how to compromise on things, once we both know that we're going to need to. I'm angry that she thinks she has the right to have absolute veto power over my decisions though. I don't know where she ever got the idea that she did." "Years of personal observation, and constant success in having done so. This was one of the matters I wanted to discuss with her about some of the changes between how you are now, and how you used to be. Without making too much of this change, she still needs to realize that you are considerably more headstrong than you ever were before. It also is a trait that, in moderation, is healthy for you to now have. You don't want to overdo it. In this instance, I don't believe you have done so. I believe you have become better attuned to your own emotional needs. You are the best judge now of what you can and cannot tolerate. Both Joyce and your mother are going to have to realize this, and begin to adjust their demands accordingly." At night, Dale and I indulged ourselves in each other. I didn't talk to Joyce at all during the week. Brenda called me on Thursday, to give me information on when to pick her and the children up at the Birmingham airport. While not going into any graphic detail, Brenda made it very clear that she was living up to both the spirit and the letter of our agreement. She also told me that she and Shirley had spent time in bed together. That surprised me a little, about Shirley, not about Brenda. I knew that Brenda was trying her hardest to impress me with her willingness to be cooperative. We left the clinic early Friday afternoon. I felt like I'd made some good progress with areas in my life that had been troubling to me. I didn't have a clear plan for anything, but I was gaining confidence that one would soon begin emerging. Dale was expressing satisfaction with the way our relationship was progressing. She seemed uncertain with what was expected of her when Brenda came to visit. I told her that I was leaving that completely up to her. She should feel free to opt in or out of things in any way that suited her. She did tell me that she was willing to sleep with either Brenda or Cindy if I planned or wanted to have the other one alone to myself that night. I remembered that Cindy and Dale had enjoyed each other's company in the past. I wasn't that sure about Brenda and Dale. I drove out to the airport to pick up Brenda and the kids at nine on Saturday morning. Instead of taking them to the house from the airport, I took all of us out to the Birmingham Zoo. Brenda seemed disappointed in my choice, but Dwightee and April loved it. April especially loved being pulled around in a red cart powered by a goat. When Brenda complained that she had thought the two of us would spend some time together, I told her that I had plans for that evening. While we were standing around, looking at some of the exhibits, I took her hand in mine. This small demonstration of closeness on my part seemed to reassure her. She immediately stopped complaining, and started leaning into me at every opportunity. I couldn't have counted all the many times when her breasts "accidentally" brushed up against my arm or back. As we walked around, letting the children enjoy all the exhibits, Brenda and I spoke about why I didn't feel like we could just jump right into being back together. Brenda kept assuring me that she didn't have any doubts or reservations about this being what she wanted. Part of her concern actually seemed to be about having Dwightee and April growing up without having me in their lives. That surprised me. We talked about Emily too. Some of what Brenda told me about Emily was surprising. Neither of us could understand or explain why Emily always seemed to resent how things were. Brenda thought Emily preferred being unhappy. I began to get a different picture of Emily and how she seemed to others besides me. It was obvious that Brenda cared deeply for Emily, but had grown weary of always feeling like nothing she ever did was good enough to make Emily happy. "She didn't act like that when we all lived together. It was only when it was just the two of us by ourselves. When there wasn't anyone else around to blame for things, she'd start to blame me. I hated that. We got along a lot better when we lived with you. When you were sick, we still got along okay as long as Joyce and Shirley were there for her to fight with. She always needs to have someone she's mad at." I was strangely happy to learn it wasn't just me that couldn't keep Emily happy. For years I'd believed that there was something about me that made her turn on me every few days. We'd spent so much time together, over all those years. I'd had an idea that Emily had this problem with being happy, but thought it centered around us, and the relationship that had been more or less forced upon her. If she wasn't happy having Brenda all to herself, then I didn't know what might make her happy. Scratch another idea I'd had for settling this thing with Emily and Brenda. When the four of us got to the house Saturday evening, it was around eight o'clock. Dale and Brenda saw to giving the children baths, and Cindy and I sat together in the living room discussing the zoo visit. I mentioned that Dale had told me that she would welcome a visit from Cindy since I was going to be in with Brenda for the night. Cindy just laughed. "I talked to Daddy all week about what you told me. He says he'll quit rather than have to work for Larry. He told me that again today, when I went over there to see him. He can be pretty stubborn about certain things." "How are you coming with your search for a building for us?" "I've looked at some places. So far I haven't seen anything that would meet all your specifications." "Maybe you're going to have to look for something a little further away. It doesn't necessarily need to be in Birmingham. Anywhere in this general area would do, as long as there is rail service and enough room to do everything I told you." "What about Daddy?" "Gene's a grown man. He knows what he can tolerate better than we do. Now I'll have to decide whether to find him something over at the plant, or if it would be easier to just bring someone in from one of the other plants to run things for the other program. I'm thinking of someone already, but he's too much of a cowboy. He likes to control everything, and prides himself on his quick decisions about things. I never liked that management style, but he's been effective for us where we've put him. Right now he's running a bakery for us in South Carolina." "Gunther Kriegal? I met him. You can't seriously be thinking of him for down here?" "Gunther's a good man. A little too blunt and full of himself, but that's his German upbringing. If I tell him to take it easy in the beginning, I'm sure he'll listen. Where did you meet him at?" "He was in Bolling when I went up there to see your father about that trip I'd made to Texas after we opened the plant again. I saw him a few months later when Joyce called me up for a visit after we started talking about needing to make some personnel changes down here. You were in the clinic then, and Joyce wasn't happy with some of the cooperation she was getting down here. She wanted me to pass the word around that she was thinking about letting some people go if things didn't start improving soon. Gunther's the worst possible person to put in charge for this. He doesn't like women in business. He'd be a disaster down here for the women's sales teams." I hadn't seriously been considering Gunther. He was too valuable to us where he was. I knew that he and Cindy had met and then had a run in over in Bolling. My Dad had mentioned it to me after I first got released from the clinic. We both thought it had been funny, because Gunther tended to really bray and bluster around good looking women. This usually scared most women away. For the few women who found that type of behavior attractive though, Gunther continued his antics. My real purpose in raising his name as one possible candidate for the promotion was to spur Cindy's efforts at trying to convince Gene to go along with my choice of Larry for the job. ------- That night, in bed with Brenda, I tried to keep myself as emotionally detached as I could manage. It wasn't easy for me. We had this long history together, and her beauty still had me enthralled. In the beginning, and at the end, before we both dropped off to sleep, I managed some level of emotional detachment. It was only during that lengthy middle period that I lost myself, once again, in whatever magic she had over my senses. I could feel every ounce of my being trying to please her, and saw myself once again hopelessly drawn to her. What prevented me from making this a permanent state of mind was my thinking about Emily, and the complications surrounding any relationship we might have together in the future. I do have to admit that, this time, I really believed that Brenda had surrendered herself to what we were doing. She departed from her usual mannerisms, of always seeming slightly detached from the proceedings, of not quite being a really committed part of them. It was like that last thin veneer of reserve she usually retained had been swept away. She really threw herself into our lovemaking with nothing short of total abandon. It was only after we were finished that she seemed to regather herself. It was as if she were just then remembering how things ought to be. I had the distinct feeling that, when we had finished, her thoughts had immediately turned to Emily. I woke up early the next morning. During the night, Brenda had somehow wriggled herself around so that both her arms were around my head and her leg was thrust between the two of mine. If her body language suggested anything, it had to be suggesting both love and trust. I slid away from her without waking her up, heading off to get myself a quick shower so I could make myself ready for the day. We spent the whole day seeing the sights of Birmingham. All of us, including Cindy and Dale. We ate out for all three meals. I took the children to the bakery to show them where Daddy worked. While I was showing them my grain trading equipment, Brenda asked me about how my trading was going. When I told her of my greatly improved trading profits, she mentioned that she and Emily hadn't done very well with their investing. They had put money into several mutual funds that hadn't performed well for them. "If you want me to, I'll start trading your money for you again, just like I did before. I meant to say something to you about it before. Joyce had mentioned that you thought I released your money because I didn't want to trade for you anymore." "Why else would you have done it?" "Because I wanted all of you to know that I wasn't trying to tie you to me because of the money. I wanted all of you to be able to decide what you wanted to do without having any financial pressure." "I'd be grateful to you if you would do that for me. I hated losing my money. Emily needs help with her money too. We fought about that lots of times. She has lent a lot of money to her parents. I think she has less than half left of all that money you gave her." "If she runs out, I'll be happy to give her some more. It was never about money, nothing was ever about the money." Back at the house, it just after nine o'clock. When I checked my answering machine, there were three messages from Joyce. The first asked me to call her. The second and third were just more of the same. I went into my bedroom to phone her while the girls were putting both the kids down to sleep. "Hi Joyce." "Kenny. I needed to find out when Brenda and the children are flying back. Mama didn't know when." "I was planning on flying them back sometime tomorrow night. We'll probably land in Bolling around eight o'clock. Can you have Hans pick them up there?" "Find out if Brenda is planning on staying with us, or over at Mama's. She never said what her plans were." "She's putting the kids to bed now. I'll have her call you in the morning, okay?" "How did things go at the clinic last week?" "Pretty well, I thought. We talked about a lot of things that I needed some help with." "I'm over being mad at you, Kenny. It was nice of you to ask Brenda to come spend some time with me. I was really afraid before that she was going to pack up and leave after that Sunday. You were right that she wasn't planning on doing that." "Even if I hadn't been right, you still wouldn't have the right to make those kinds of decisions for me, Joyce. I know I used to let you do that a lot before, but I never liked you doing that. One of the changes in me from before is that I won't be letting you do much of that anymore. We can't get ourselves into these big fights every time one of us doesn't get their own way." "You didn't even listen to me when I told you what I wanted." "I did listen. I knew exactly what you wanted. The problem wasn't that I didn't know what you wanted, it was that I didn't want the same thing you did. I couldn't give you what you wanted right then. I can't do it now either, but I'm still working on finding some way where we can both get as much of what we want as possible." "It wasn't the same with Brenda without you there too. She tried to make it as good as she could, but Brenda doesn't really get that excited just doing girl stuff. Not with me at least. Shirley told me the same thing about her time with Brenda too. Shirley and Brenda are both the same way about doing just the girl stuff." "I wouldn't know much about that. Last night Brenda seemed as enthusiastic as I've ever seen her, except for those times when the two of us worked her over together." "You can see now why it never worked out when it was just the wives without you being there. It is so much better when you're there with us too. Even if you aren't in the same bed with us, we all know that you're close by, and that adds something to it for us. I just wish we could all be together again." "It isn't impossible, Joyce. I know how big a hurry you're in, but I need to take my time and make sure it's something that I can live with. This is especially true with both Emily and Brenda. Even before I got sick, we had some problems with Emily never being satisfied or happy. I'm not sure she can even be happy for very long. I've never seen that from her. She must need something that we can't provide for her." "She wants Brenda just for herself." "That's true, but it's more than that too. Brenda says they fight a lot, when its only the two of them together. When the whole family is together, Emily doesn't fight with Brenda as much." "She needs someone to fight with, but it doesn't matter who it is?" "I don't know. I don't think Emily knows. She's probably the one that is the least happy in our family. I know I never figured out how to keep her happy for very long." "She seemed happiest those two times when she was pregnant. I don't remember her fighting at all when she was expecting." I thought back to those times when Emily was carrying Tony and Sissy. I thought Joyce was correct about that. There had been arguments during that time, but none of the big blowups that usually erupted from Emily on a regular basis. For the first time I started wondering if there wasn't some chemical imbalance that caused these mood swings of hers. I didn't think it could be as simple as her not having enough of some vitamin or mineral, but, if it was that, I'd like to find out about it. Emily, without her moodiness, was an entirely different prospect than Emily as she had always been. A sweet Emily, all the time, would be well worth making some sacrifices to win back. It was just a thought. All of us flew up on Monday afternoon. We had decided to spend the night in Ridgeline and head back early Tuesday morning. Cindy and I expected to be in the Birmingham office by the early afternoon on Tuesday. Hans picked us up at the airport in Bolling, and drove us all straight to our house. Sunday night had started out with me making love with Cindy while Brenda was in the other bedroom with Dale. After Cindy and I were done making love once, I went over to the other bedroom and crawled in with Brenda and Dale. They had already finished whatever they had done together, but Dale was very receptive to my attentions as soon as I started playing with her. We spent a couple hours, the three of us, trying to see how many different ways we could each bring the other two physical pleasure. By the time I went back to my own bedroom, I was completely drained. I was beginning to realize I was going to need to take steps to get back into decent physical condition again. At four thirty, Cindy woke me up with a nice blow job. If she noticed the different flavors of pussy on my dick, she didn't make any mention of it. Once she had me hard enough, she rolled herself on top of me and rode me to several orgasms of her own. When she was exhausted and sated, I rolled her over, and, after what seemed like at least another hour, managed to have one last trickling emission of my own. I was well and truly exhausted by the time I again dropped off to sleep. The flight North was uneventful. I had told Brenda that she and I would be spending the night in bed with Joyce. From her reaction to that news, she was looking forward to it. We had a good session, with Joyce and I double teaming Brenda. At three in the morning, I again woke up. I went looking for Shirley over in Emily's old bedroom. I didn't want to let a visit pass by without lavishing some attention on her. I woke her up, and we actually had a pleasant conversation while the two of us made love. It wasn't a hurried or a frantic coupling either. It was gentle and relaxing. With my fingers assisting the slow in and out action of me while I was moving from my position on my side, I managed to bring Shirley to that first, most critical, orgasm. After that first one, I rolled her over for some doggy style loving, her favorite position. I continued talking to her while I was doing this, but now the subject was no longer our children or what progress I was making with the other wives. Instead, I started speaking to her about something that was meant to provide stimulation on the subject of her fantasy about multiple male partners. I'm sure we woke up most of the household somewhere about five thirty or so. I wondered what she was going to tell the children in the morning after Cindy, Dale and I had gone back to Birmingham. Brenda had gotten up early to prepare a large breakfast for all of us. Phil took us out to the airport in Joyce's Lincoln. By nine o'clock, we were wheels up, and heading back to Alabama. It had been a good idea to fly Brenda and the children home, even if it meant having to scramble some to take care of everything later at work. At four o'clock, after Billy Ray left for the day, Gene walked into my office, carefully shutting the door after him. I knew he had come to tell me he was quitting. Cindy hadn't said anything about it, but I had seen a very worried look on her face after I saw her speaking with Gene right after she and I first got back to the office. "Kenny, I need to speak with you for a few moments, privately." "We're alone here now, Gene. What do you want to tell me?" "This thing with the new company that Cindy's been talking to me about. She told me what you've decided, and she really tried to get me to accept the idea of me working for Larry. I've given it my most serious thinking, and I'm afraid I'm not able to see my way clear to doing that. I think it might be for the best for everyone if I resign so that you can go ahead and give Larry the appointment. I really think that's for the best." "Well, I appreciate you having given it some thought, Gene. I'm sorry you've decided you can't work for Larry. If you quit though, there's no way I'm going to promote Larry to that job. I'll bring in someone else. Half the reason I decided on Larry was because of his relationship to all you Macklinson's. Are you still going to quit if I hire someone from outside for that job?" "I haven't given that any thought. I don't see why my resigning should cost Larry the promotion." "I'll announce the new appointment first thing next week. I was going to wait until Cindy found us a new building for the company, but if I give the job to someone who isn't from around here, there's no reason to locate the company near here either. Probably be less expensive to put it in South Carolina anyway." "This whole snack idea was Kyle's, Kenny. This is a Macklinson's program. I can see you making it a separate company, but it belongs right here with the people who first started it." "Actually Gene, it was my idea, not Kyle's. Since Macklinson's belongs to us, we get the right to move anything around that we want to. That's what ownership conveys to the owners, the right to make these kinds of decisions. Up until you came in here and resigned, I was interested in hearing your input on what we should be doing with the Quick Snacks program. Things are changed now. It was you that once told me that all you Macklinson's stick together. I believed you when you told me that. I was counting on you swallowing some pride and doing what was best for both Larry and Cindy. Instead, you've gone ahead and decided your pride is worth more to you than the future careers of your brother and daughter. I wouldn't be surprised if other Macklinson's aren't eventually affected by your decision to quit rather than give Larry his chance to lead this new company. The new guy is going to be making decisions that will affect Kyle's job, and the jobs of some of the other, younger, Macklinson people." "Now, you just hold on for awhile there, Kenny. A man has a right to make his own decisions. You've got no call at all to punish any of my family for my decisions." "You've told me what you wanted to, Gene, and I've told you what I felt I needed to say in response to that. You quitting rather than trying to work with Larry tells me all I need to know about what kind of executive Larry would be. If I'd been that sure about him, I'd have just gone ahead and made the appointment already. Larry will still get a promotion though, he'll take over your job in addition to the one he already has. I doubt if Cindy will get to run the women's sales division though. In fact, I'm pretty sure there won't even be a separate division for the women now. As for all the rest of it, we'll just have to see how the new guy fits in with the people from this area. I remember it took me some time before I figured out a better way to present my ideas to all of you." "You're really going to push ahead with this plan of yours?" "Absolutely. The only big change I see is with where the Quick Snacks headquarters is going to end up now. I can see where it would be a big advantage for us to put it next to a baking plant that already turns out the Quick Snacks products." "You trying to muscle me into accepting this plan of yours to promote Larry?" "I make business decisions, Gene. Hopefully decisions that increase the profits that my family and I will be making. If anything, I was allowing my fondness for your family to color my decision about promoting Larry in the first place. I won't be taking as big a chance by going with a proven executive from outside this area." "I just don't see where it makes sense for you to pass over Larry just because I don't care to work for him." "If you aren't here, doing your job and Larry's old one too, I can't afford to lose Larry to this other job too. The only way it would work is having you take over his job as well as your own. I figured we could make it work by consolidating both jobs into one position and then hiring you an assistant to help out." "Cindy never said anything about that to me. I can see where losing both of us might put you in a bind." "It might come to that anyway, if Larry finds out that your quitting has cost him a promotion. So many things are all connected together whenever I try to do anything at all with you Macklinson people. Sometimes, I wish there weren't so many of you that I needed to deal with." "Would I be getting a pay raise for all this extra responsibility I'd be having?" "Gene, there are so many other things I need to think about right now that have to come before I would ever be worrying about that. If Larry was the man I'd put in charge of things, employee salary would be one of his new responsibilities. I guess you'd have to wait and see what he decided, wouldn't you?" "Putting a Macklinson in charge of deciding how much other Macklinson people were paid is like letting a fox into the henhouse. Are you sure you want to leave our salaries up to Larry?" "I would reserve the right to approve all salaries. I wouldn't let anyone get too far out of line." "I'd take eighty thousand a year. We could shake on it?" I stood up and offered him my hand. We shook on it. Both of us were smiling when he left my office. I'd been prepared to offer him a hundred thousand. At that, it still would have been a bargain. Five minutes after Gene left, Cindy slipped into my office, all smiles. Her face flushed with her elation over my having worked things out with Gene. "You did it. Daddy just told me what you and he agreed to. Does this mean Larry's got that job?" "I guess it does. I suppose you'll be spending a lot of your free time with your uncle now, trying to make sure he's thinking of you when the time comes to assign someone to run the women's division?" "I don't have to do that. Larry already knows you want me to run that division. I've been telling him that for a solid week now. It would help though if you just happened to casually mention that to him." "When were you planning to ask me to step down here so that you could take over running the company?" Cindy laughed when I said that. I watched her eyes though, and her laughter didn't reach them. Joyce had warned me already that Cindy had ambitions to take over the company. I thought she already had some of the tools to make a good head of the company. If things worked out, I'd make sure she had a chance to develop some others that she'd need. I could do worse for a replacement. "I found a building for you to look at, Kenny. It might be too much for what you said we needed. It used to be the warehouse for a department store that went broke. There's rail access, truck access, and enough space for as much parking as you'd ever want. There's also a separate building where they had their own headquarter's offices. That building is a lot newer, and it is supposed to be very nice. They want to sell both together, and the office building isn't big enough, all by itself, to house everything you said you wanted. There's room for expansion on the land where the headquarter's building is. The other building is a lot older than the office building. We can get them both for a million three." "That's not cheap. What about financing?" "I could call the broker back if you want, or we could drive over first to have a look, on the way home?" We drove over there. It was only a ten minute drive from the bakery, fifteen minutes from my house. From the outside, the office building looked very nice. The warehouse, across the street from the office building, looked like it had seen better days. It was certainly a good size though, with room along one side to service at least five freight cars at once. "Call the listing broker tonight and ask him if we can come by to look inside here first thing in the morning. Find out about what the financing options are, and whether or not the owner will entertain a lesser offer on it. I can't imagine there are too many people interested in that big old barn across the street. Half the asking price has to be the warehouse. Find out how many square feet there are inside too." It is two hundred by three twenty on the main floor with some rooms upstairs that add another twelve thousand square feet. Forty by three hundred is the upstairs part. I don't know what they did with the other twenty feet yet." "Probably stairway and air conditioning or boiler rooms. I'd like to find out that the twelve thousand feet upstairs would all be usable for us as offices too. If we pay more than a million three, I'm not going to want to invest a lot more in improvements right away. I wonder how much of the land behind the other building is set up for parking?" The next morning we met the Taylor's, a husband wife team of real estate brokers. They were in their thirties, and very professional and meticulously prepared. They easily answered all our questions and provided quite a bit of written information to take with us when we left. The warehouse office space would serve, but only after someone went in and cleaned it up and did some serious cosmetic maintenance work. Across the street, we found everything in pristine condition with the interior of the other building. It looked ready to move into immediately. Grant Taylor took me aside and told me that the seller, a bankruptcy referee, would entertain reasonable offers. There was a large creditor that was anxious to close out the liquidation and realize some repayment on their outstanding obligation. We batted numbers around while Kathryn, his wife, showed Cindy some of the less obvious selling features in the building. "I like the idea of having so much room, even the separated buildings is workable for me. I'm not sure how much use all that old warehouse space would be for me. Our company has different ways of storing our products than most. If anything, our use for it would be to distribute product to our area drivers. I'm pretty sure we'd never have enough demand to justify all that space. If I could get a great price, or terrific terms with financing, I might be interested in making an offer though." I knew I was already prepared to go as high as a million one for the property. "Financing would have to be arranged by you, and it might be difficult, due to the age and condition of the warehouse building. I'm positive the referee wouldn't entertain any cash offer of less than a million dollars. I've taken lesser offers to him in the past." "Can we split the two properties up? I'm much more interested in this building than in the one across the street. I'd be willing to pay six fifty for this building by itself." "I've taken him offers like that before too. He doesn't want to sell this off and then be stuck with the other building. Isn't the warehouse building worth three fifty to you? That's less than seven bucks a square foot." He obviously wasn't that good in math. By my estimate, there was better than seventy thousand square feet of space across the street. At three hundred and fifty thousand, that was about five dollars per square foot. "I'm willing to offer nine hundred fifty thousand for the two buildings, all cash, with a quick escrow. I'll need an answer on this within five days." "I'll write up the offer right away. It has been awhile since I took him the last offer, maybe he'll look more favorably on nine fifty than he did the last time it was presented." From the excitement in the man's eyes, I was sure I'd given him a number he could work with. Even if I might have been able to buy it for less, I was happy with the price I'd offered. After signing the offer, Cindy and I drove to the bakery. Grant Taylor assured me that he would have some response to my offer by the next day at the latest. I got a phone call from Kathryn Taylor just before three, telling me that the bankruptcy referee had countered my offer and was asking for one million dollars, at the same terms contained in my previous offer. There was no doubt in my mind that the two properties were worth that much to me. There was very little chance that they would be worth that much in the current market to anyone else. I felt like the referee was attempting to bump me up, probably believing that he had almost nothing to lose. If I refused to accept his counter, he could always change his mind and go ahead and accept my original offer. What had happened though was that his counter had triggered my own competitive juices. I instructed Mrs. Taylor that I was withdrawing my original offer. I informed her that I now had my eye on another location, one outside the state. At three thirty I got another call, this time from Grant Taylor. He began by apologizing to me for being out of the office when the counter offer had been made by the referee. He assured me that he had expressed the opinion to the man that our offer was a fair one, and given current market realities, one that he recommended be taken. He was sure that he could prevail on the client to accept my original offer if I would only authorize him to reinstate it. "Grant, I'm sorry. I really thought I had made a fair offer. Cindy brought me another property to look at in Georgia, one that seems to meet all of our needs better than the property you showed me. They want less money for it, and have agreed to make some improvements for me at no charge. It isn't nearly as big as what you have, but the condition is better, and we never needed all that storage space anyway." "Mr. Parsons, what do I have to do to convince you that you'd be better off buying right here in Birmingham?" "I'm estimating it will cost me about forty thousand to get that warehouse into decent enough shape for us to be able to use it. If you can get your seller to accept an all cash offer of nine hundred and ten thousand, I'll make the deal. I won't entertain any further counter offers. Nine ten, or else I'm buying that property over in Georgia." "I don't see any possible way for me to take him a lesser offer on the same day, Mr. Parsons. Why don't we just go ahead and do the deal at your original offer?" "I tried to do that this morning, Mr. Taylor. I wasn't playing games then. I didn't start doing that until after he made his counter. A property is only worth what a willing buyer will pay for it. In my case, that has now dropped down to nine hundred and ten thousand dollars. Once I pick up the telephone and make an offer on that Georgia property, you will no longer have a willing buyer in me." "I understand. How long does he have to make his decision?" "I will instruct Miss Macklinson to hold off on conveying any offers on the Georgia building until after close of business on Thursday, or sooner, once I've been notified that my current offer has been rejected." "Nine fifty would have been a more than fair price for you to acquire those two buildings, Mr. Parsons." "I agree, and that was why I offered that much. I believe it is fair for the seller to attempt to get as much as he can, but you must agree with me that a buyer should attempt to pay as little as possible." "I think we're all going to end up getting nothing for our efforts." "Surely not nothing? I'm sure we all will have learned something by having gone through this process. I have, and I'm sure of that." On Thursday, at one in the afternoon, I signed the offer for nine hundred ten thousand. The seller had already signed off on his part. We had our buildings for the Quick Snacks company offices. Cindy was taking bids on the cleaning and cosmetic repairs needed on the warehouse by Friday. By the time we had made all the repairs and improvements needed, I had spent an additional ninety thousand dollars. It would have been more than that, but our maintenance people found a used boiler system that would serve. The other one was a total loss for us. I ended up in the property a million dollars anyway. A few months later Grant Taylor phoned me wanting to see if I was interested in selling off the warehouse. He said he had a buyer who might be willing to go as high as half a million dollars. He seemed upset when I told him I wasn't interested in doing any further business with him. Cindy had learned, after we closed the deal on the buildings, that the bankruptcy referee was Mrs. Taylor's step father. I had to assume that the three of them had been in cahoots with each other to maximize their fees and commissions. ------- Chapter 77 I had been getting regular phone calls from Mama, regarding her dissatisfaction with the lack of progress I was making in resolving my estrangement from Brenda. Strangely, I had received no complaints at all from Brenda herself. We had completed the transfer of her funds back into a trading account that I would once again be managing for her. When I had turned the money over to her, some months earlier, there was just a little bit less than twenty seven million dollars. When her funds were wired back to my bank for me to trade for her, all that remained was slightly more than sixteen million dollars. Her investment advisors in California had given her account disclosure paperwork and monthly performance reports. She gave me this information when she ordered that her California brokerage account be closed. A full third of the losses she had sustained in her account balance had been due to all the advisory fees and trading commissions she had been charged by her so called investment team. Brenda told me that Emily still had whatever remained of her money invested with these people. The advisors had been recommended by Emily's father. Apparently, he had used the same people for many years. There was little surprise to me that Emily's parents had found it necessary to borrow over half a million dollars from her. With this team of investment advisors working for you, any fortune could be whittled down to size in no time. Of the seventeen mutual funds Brenda's advisors had purchased on her behalf, some of these they had bought and sold more than once, not a single one had been a "no load" fund or one with reduced front end commisions charged. She had managed to make a profit with only one of those investments. It would have been difficult for Brenda to have fared as poorly if she had been picking stocks at random to invest in. On the bright side, she now had a lot of accumulated investment losses I could use to offset whatever gains I might be able to manage during the remainder of the tax year. Brenda was still nominally staying at Mama's house, but she was spending the bulk of her time over in Bolling, at the business, or else visiting with Shirley and Joyce over at our house. Joyce told me that Brenda was doing all of their cooking at work again, and had prepared most of their dinners at home as well. Each night, when I called to speak with Joyce, I somehow always ended up talking with Shirley and Brenda first. They had some system they'd set up. Dale and Cindy also spoke with Joyce on a daily basis. Cindy spoke with her from the office, and Dale from our Birmingham house. I really tried not to listen when the women were talking to each other. It was too unsettling for me, trying to interpret those small snippets of conversations when I was only hearing one side. I figured Joyce would get around to telling me whatever she wanted me to know eventually. I knew they were all plotting, but they always had done that anyway. It was too late to try to change something that was so ingrained into their normal living habits. By the time I got around to informing Larry that I was appointing him to run the Quick Snacks company, he had already heard the news from several members of his family. Our negotiations went more quickly than I had anticipated them doing. We were having a long business lunch together when I first started talking to him about it. All of his initial questions to me concerned defining what his chain of command would be, both up and down the line from him. All the rest involved him wanting me to clarify and define where his authority was going to be limited. I outlined, in very broad terms, how I saw the job, and what role he would play in guiding the company's growth. It was obvious that, as we talked, Larry was searching for the "catch" in what I was telling him. He was certain that I had set up some kind of secret limitation on his authority. I had to tell him, repeatedly, that the only limitation on his authority was with his needing to satisfy both my father and myself. When the last question had been answered for the final time, Larry and I sat across from each other at the booth we were in. We were both silent for a minute, possibly even longer than a minute. It sure seemed longer. I finally broke the silence. "I guess the only thing left for us to talk about is your compensation. What do you think a job like this should be worth?" In my mind, all I was hoping for was that Larry would make an effort to be reasonable in his initial salary demands. I hoped, at the end of our negotiations, that he'd think that a hundred thousand a year would be a reasonable starting salary. I also expected that he'd want to negotiate an upgrade from his company leased pick up truck, into something more in keeping with a high level executive's outside image. "Gene, Phil, and I, we all agreed that the three of us would each take eighty thousand a year." "I can see that much for both you and Gene, but why should I pay Phil that for the job he's still doing?" I knew what he was going to say, I was just stalling for time to let my brain adjust itself to what I now thought of as the "Macklinson reality". I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter to me how they had decided to divide their combined pay up among themselves. I realized it shouldn't matter to either me or the company, not as long as the total amount we expended in payroll came out to be something that was reasonable in our overall total budget. Factoring in the total payroll we would be expending on these three men, what Larry was asking me for was a reasonable expenditure for us to be making. "That's the way we decided to do it. We all agreed on it." "Is it going to go like that every time I decide that one of you deserves a raise or should be given a bonus?" "We never talked about bonus money. With us now working at two different companies, how do you think we should work that?" "Remember that money we gave Phil when he came up with the idea about outsourcing some of our baking needs? What happened to that money?" "We split it up. We each took two, and then we divided the rest up with the boys." "Who paid the taxes on it?" "We declare all our income, same as anyone else does." "All right, eighty for each of you then. How you split up anything else is your own business. Are you going to want to change company cars?" "Not until the new Jimmy's come out. I was thinking about getting one of them crew cabs this time." "Suit yourself. Are you going to need anything else?" "We were wondering about the company bass boat. Me and Phil, we both think we need something bigger now." "A bass boat? The company has a boat?" "It's on the books. We always have had one. We've got our eye on a real beauty this time though. With trade and all, they'll need eighteen thousand dollars difference for it." "Who uses this boat?" "We all do." "Macklinson people you mean?" "Us, and some of our friends too. Sometimes, we take out some of our customers, but only if we like them as people too." "Patty knows about this, and she doesn't have any problem with it as far as it being a legitimate business expense?" "Never did ask her nothing about it." "Does she even know the company has a boat?" "Of course. She's fished from it, the same as the rest of us. Patty likes to fish some." "Eighteen thousand? How old is the one you have now?" "Maybe twelve or thirteen years since we went and bought it. Still runs good, but a bigger boat would be better." "How much are they giving you in trade for the old one?" "Can't rightly say. Jenkins told me he'd do the deal for a difference of eighteen, and that's all he told me. I'd guess it wasn't much, because the new boat wouldn't run more than twenty one, not tricked out like it is. Maybe two thousand for that old boat, twenty five hundred tops." "Would two boats be better than one?" "Phil is the one you'd need to ask that question. We keep the one we have now in his back yard. I don't see why it wouldn't be better though. The old one is still a pretty nice boat. You want me to ask Jenkins what the new one would be with no trade in?" "If you do, and it seems reasonable to not trade the other one in, keep the old one on Macklinson's books and put the new one on the Quick Snacks books. Check with Patty to see what we need to do to make it a legitimate business deduction." After Larry and I left the restaurant, I replayed our luncheon conversation in my mind. From start to finish it had been unique to all my previous experiences dealing with the senior Macklinson men. I had expected at least some wrangling from Larry, maybe even a glitch that would be serious enough to close off any further negotiations with him. I hadn't gotten anything like that at all. I attributed it to the fact that Larry really wanted his chance to lead. Perhaps he thought he had something he wanted to prove to all of us. I hoped that was it. At home that night, while I was on the phone, talking with Brenda, she let drop the news that she and Emily were back to calling each other on the phone. She mentioned that Emily was thinking about flying out for a week or so, with the children, and she wanted to know if she needed to get a place to stay, or if she'd be welcome to stay at our house while she was there. "What did Joyce say?" "She said I needed to ask you about it." "Did you happen to mention to Emily that Shirley is living here now in her old rooms?" Brenda laughed and said she had. "Emily is always welcome to stay here with her family, whenever she chooses to visit. She never has to ask. The same goes for you, Brenda." Brenda didn't say anything else to me for awhile, and then Joyce's voice came suddenly on the line. "I hope you didn't tell her Emily couldn't stay here?" From her tone, she must have thought I had done that. "No, I told her we were still Emily's family, and she didn't have to ask permission to come stay with us." "I hope she doesn't tell Emily what you said, Kenny. I don't think she'll still come if she heard that you had said that." "Why would hearing that upset her? I wasn't as if I said anything mean or talked bad about her. I never told her she had to leave. When they left, it was all their own idea." "Kenny, Emily already feels bad enough. Telling her she's still family is going to just make her feel even worse than she does." "I give up then, Joyce. It seems as if it makes no difference what I say to any of you. Somehow, it always gets turned around so that I'm the one in the wrong for saying it." "When she needed for you to treat her nice before, you yelled at her. She already is feeling bad, so you being so nice to her will make her feel even worse about what's happened." "I haven't heard what's happened, Joyce, so I don't really know what she's feeling bad about. How about you do this? Tell her she can come, but tell her she better stay out of my way while she's visiting. Is that better?" "No, telling her that will make her feel worse too. You should just tell Brenda to tell her she can stay with us while she's here." "You go ahead and tell Brenda whatever you want her to tell Emily. The same thing goes for when you talk to Emily yourself. Leave me out of things like this. The one thing I will want is time to visit with the kids while they're out here. Other than that, what Emily does while she's out here visiting Brenda doesn't really concern me." "Brenda has already told her that you won't take her back." "Brenda or Emily?" "Brenda told Emily that you wouldn't take Brenda back." "Either way, Brenda or Emily. Not right away, that's for sure." "Dr. Fellows called me today. She wants me to come see her sometime, by myself. Do you know why she wants that?" "She said something about maybe needing to explain some of my changes to you. She doesn't think you really understand why I have to do some things differently than I did before I got sick." "Did she have this same talk with Dale, when she was out there with you before?" "No, but it isn't anything for you to be worried about, Joyce. When I was there the last time, she seemed to feel I was doing better than I had been before. She also seemed happy that we were getting along better. She probably just needs to explain some things to you to make it easier for us to keep getting along better." "Suppose she decides that I'm bad for you to be married to now?" "How could you be bad for me? That doesn't even make sense. She's only going to tell you some things that will make things better for the two of us. She knows how to explain these things so they start to make some sense. I've learned a lot from just talking with her. She knows about all this stuff we've been going through, Joyce. The more I listen to her, the easier it is for me to start making sense of what's been happening with us." "Are you going to sleep with Brenda while Emily's here visiting?" "I haven't even thought about that. Are you?" "Emily wouldn't like it if I did." "I don't have to sleep with her. Maybe we should ask Brenda to ask Emily what she'd like to have happen while she's here. Is Brenda going to sleep with Emily? That's the real question." "I can answer that one if you really want to know. I've been hearing Brenda's side of their phone conversations all week." "No, that's all right. It makes no difference to me anyway." "Brenda told Emily about sleeping with you. She told her you were better than ever." "Only right that Emily should find that out. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be a secret anyway." "We've all discussed that among ourselves. Don't let your head get too swelled up. Brenda's opinion isn't unanimous, not by any means. I can't honestly say that you are better in bed than you ever were." "You'd be able to say that if I had been trying to impress you, like I was with Brenda, back when she was visiting me down here. You don't give me enough credit for all the lengths I've been willing to go in order to make some of your dreams become reality. I labored long into the night to get that rave review from Brenda. If they gave out merit badges for diligence, persistence, dedication and devotion to duty, I'd be an eagle scout by now. Who else, besides you, doesn't think I'm better now?" "I was just teasing, Kenny. Brenda was also supposed to ask you if you would start trading Emily's money again too. It was Brenda's idea at first, but after Brenda brought it up, Emily said it would be okay for her to ask you about it. I think you should do it." "Brenda said she thinks Emily's money is down to less than half of what I turned over to her. If that's true, she sure has gone through quite a bit of money in a very short time. Most of it was lost with her so called investment advisors, but she loaned a lot out to her parents too. I wouldn't want to start trading her money again and then have her start asking me every couple of weeks to give her some of the money so she can loan more of it to her folks. It might just be better to let her keep the money she has left, and start up a new trust account for her and the kids. I could trade with that money instead." "I think she'd see it as more of a positive sign if you let her bring whatever she has left back for you to invest for her. You can always add to it if you want to. She doesn't even have to know that you did. She would see you agreeing to invest her money again the same way that Brenda does, as some kind of proof that you still care about her. You know Brenda thinks that way. I happen to know that Emily does too. Whenever we used to get a new trading account summary, she was always looking over my shoulder as soon as I got around to opening it. Having you taking care of her that way meant a lot to her, to all of us." "We're flying home on Thursday night, and I'll be leaving for the clinic, from there, on Monday morning. Mama wants me to spend time Friday over at her house. She still wants to bend my ear some more about Brenda. It will be late Thursday when we get in, so we'll probably end up going straight to Mama's and spending the night there. I'll be over at the house, either late on Friday, or else early Saturday morning, depending on how bad it gets when Mama and I get to discussing what I'm doing about Brenda and the children." "Brenda is going to be sleeping there too, and Mama already has her sleeping in your old room. Dwightee and April are in my old bedroom. I don't think Mama is expecting you to bring Cindy and Dale over with you. Maybe you should drop them off here before going over to Mama's?" Joyce was laughing. I'm sure she thought I had been trapped by Mama's cleverness. We got into Bolling at nine forty on Thursday night. Hans was there to meet us, and Brenda was there with him. It took me about half an hour to get everything straightened out with the aircraft maintenance and flight service people before we were able to leave for Ridgeline. Of course, even though it was almost eleven o'clock when we finally got to Mama's house, she and my Dad were still awake and right there to greet us. Mama didn't seem that surprised that Cindy and Dale were with me. I figured Joyce must have warned her about it. We spent an hour in the library together, talking about business, and getting caught up with this and that. We all headed upstairs at midnight, and I turned to the left and headed to my room with the two girls. Brenda went into the middle bedroom where Joyce had said the children would be staying. Twenty minutes after the three of us went to bed, Brenda came into the bedroom and crawled into the crowded bed with us. Dale and Cindy both started giggling. We hadn't been doing anything, being tired from the long day we'd all had. I figured that Brenda would try to get me interested by beginning to touch me, or else finding a way to rub her body against mine. I hadn't expected what she did do. As soon as she claimed a spot in the bed she began flirting with Cindy. I don't believe any of us were expecting that to happen. I know my interest and curiosity were immediately aroused, just as soon as I started to realize what it was she was up to. At first, I didn't believe Brenda would meet with any success. Cindy's day had been every bit as long and tiring as mine had been. It didn't take long for me to have to adjust both my opinion, and the hardening dick growing in my briefs. By then, Brenda had a serious lip lock on Cindy's neck, and I could see the outline of some hand movements beneath the sheets. By the time a low moan of excitement escaped Cindy's lips, I felt a tiny hand reach across my hip and slither down to the bulge between my legs. Dale too had been paying close attention to what was happening in our crowded bed. When Brenda's head disappeared beneath the sheet, we all knew what the near term outcome was going to be. I was betting that Brenda was going to somehow pull the old fakeroo on Cindy and find some way to reverse their positions so that it was Cindy who ended up being the one going down on her. I was eagerly waiting to see how she would manage it. I was still expecting it, even after it became quite obvious to all of us that Brenda's face was between Cindy's wide spread legs, and the main course of the flesh banquet had already commenced. From the pleasant smells wafting past my quivering nose, I'd have guessed the main course was some species of a delicate and flavorful piscean variety. Either Brenda's oral technique was much improved, or else Cindy was just in a particularly receptive mood. Usually, Brenda was a ho hum cunnilinguist, based on all my own, personal observations, and on the second hand anecdotal reports I'd received about her oral skills over the years. You certainly couldn't have said that about her then, not based on what I was seeing and hearing taking place. In a matter of moments, Dale and I had been inspired to commence our own wet and juicy oral activity above the sheets. Unlike what Brenda was doing, ours was a mutual exchange of tongue and tissue. She turned around and pushed her wet pussy against my face and then slurped the head of my dick between her own lips. I'm ashamed to admit that Dale and I were finished with our activities long before Brenda was through with her own tenacious assault on Cindy's tasty little honey pot. In point of fact, I had dropped off into an exhausted slumber while those two were still engaged in bringing each other further pleasures. At some point Cindy changed positions so that she was able to give as well as receive oral stimulation. In the back of my thoughts as I drifted off, was the expectation to be awakened sometime during the night with Brenda trying to entice me into slaking her burning lust. It didn't happen. In the morning, the four of us showered, two at a time. I was with Cindy, and Brenda and Dale followed right behind us. I don't know what those two got up to after Cindy and I had dressed and gone downstairs looking for something to eat, but neither of them made an appearance downstairs for another hour and a half after we first came down. When they did finally show up, they both looked like guilty children who'd gotten caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I assumed that this was just one more attempt on Brenda's part to show me how anxious she was to be accepted by all of us again. I thought she might have had some help deciding on this particular strategy. Call me suspicious, but I could definitely see Joyce being the mastermind behind this method of Brenda trying to mend some fences. What I couldn't see was why Brenda being more attentive to the sexual needs of all the other wives was supposed to sway me into making a favorable ruling on the request she was making for reconciliation and forgiveness. I could definitely see how this might have advantages for Joyce though. Brenda's beauty had great appeal, and not just with me. Cindy and Dale weren't immune, and Emily certainly wasn't immune. Like me, Joyce was using Brenda as a lure. Unlike me, Joyce was aiming her at the other wives, not just Emily. In the end, I decided that no harm would come from it, and I believed that Brenda had received far more attention from all the other wives in the past than she had ever reciprocated. This would help to balance the scales. What I wasn't aware of was that Brenda was in the process of clearing the way for another agenda, one I wasn't even aware existed. Had I known that, I'd have suspected Mama of having had a hand in the plotting. I should have gotten my first inkling of what all of them were planning when Brenda informed me that Mama had been building her a house of her own. Apparently, this had been in the works for some months, supposedly so that Brenda would have a comfortable place to stay whenever she came back to Kansas for a visit. The construction on the house had just been completed. She wanted me to go look the new house over with her. Brenda was hoping the house would be ready to occupy very soon. She wanted her and the children to be all moved in by the time Emily was scheduled to come back to Kansas for her visit. Instead of having to listen to Mama castigating me for my foot dragging with Brenda, which I had expected to take up most of the day, I found myself out in a car with Brenda, Dwightee and April. She wanted me to help her make decisions on where the children should sleep. I knew it was a ploy, but I hadn't been looking forward to spending the day arguing with Mama about Brenda either. I went along with it, as did Mama. Fortunately, I was going to be spared the additional trips that would be necessary for picking out furniture, appliances, bedding and all the small house wares and kitchen type household appliances she would need. Thank God for small favors. Actually, it might have been fun to find out what Brenda's taste in furniture was. After I first expressed my own serious misgivings about my aptitude for providing ideas for furnishing a home to her, I described things that I liked in all the different houses we'd been in together. She told me what she had liked too. I was more into earthtones and understated elegence while Brenda tended more towards colorful and glitzy. We both decided to confine ourselves to looking to others with more experience for all the decorating ideas. Brenda told me she was going to do the actual buying of her furnishings with Georgia and my mother, sometime during the following week. The house Mama had built was about the size of one of the group homes, with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms. the kitchen was absolutely huge. Brenda told me that she had already purchased everything she would need for cooking, including the ovens and twin microwaves. She told me she had helped design the layout for the kitchen. While we were looking through the new house, Brenda tried to start several conversations about Emily. Each time, she would say something to begin the conversation, before immediately switching back to something else about the new house. Whatever she wanted to tell me, she kept on losing her nerve. I almost tried to help her tell me what she wanted to, but, because it was about Emily, I decided not to say anything to her. I knew she'd find a way to let me know whatever it was she wanted to discuss, but couldn't quite manage yet. By Monday morning, all my previous plans for the week had been altered. Dale had decided she wanted to spend the week with Joyce and the children, in Ridgeline. Cindy was going to fly back to Birmingham with me before I flew out for a short week at the clinic. Brenda was going to spend the week at Georgia's house, and Shirley was going to spend the week with me, at the clinic. The younger children were being left at home with Phil and both his wives. Not a single one of these decisions had been initiated by me. In fact, I hadn't been consulted about any of it. I didn't really see anything there that I could reasonably object to, or even find some fault with. I did notice that Joyce wasn't bringing up Dr. Fellows request for her to come visit anymore. On balance, I found myself happy to have Shirley coming with me. I looked forward to having her provide me with some company as well as female companionship while I was at the clinic. ------- I had another one of those super profitable and productive weeks trading all the grains, most of the metals, and some of the currency contracts. Silver was particularly volatile all during that week. It sometimes seemed to me, during these great trading opportunities, that things were lining up in my favor, and then they seemed to stay lined up that way for several trading days in a row, allowing me to fully exploit them. This was one of those almost magical times for me. As a consequence of all these favorable trading situations, I spent quite a bit more of my time and energy trading than I normally would have done if the markets hadn't been so favorable. My talks with Dr. Fellows, though less extensive, were as productive as they had been the time before. I managed to clear up some of the earlier uncertainties I'd been troubled by. We focused most of our attention on my concerns over the direction things seemed to be moving with Brenda and me. I felt like I had been placed in a defensive posture with her, mostly because of the constant pressure I was getting from Joyce and Mama. This wasn't so noticeable from Brenda herself. When Brenda and I were alone together, I didn't sense any great urgency for me to decide on anything coming from her. When Mama or Joyce was with us though, Brenda seemed more anxious about changing the status of our relationship. Other than during those times, she seemed rather relaxed about how things were between us. My preferred posture would have been to take everything slowly. I thought I needed to allow myself time to deal with some of my underlying resentments about what had happened in the recent past. Doing that would also help me to begin thinking about the wisdom of having a possible future that would again include Brenda. The doctor told me she saw nothing troubling with my preferred approach to the situation. What she did encourage me to do was to try to negotiate a reasonable timetable with Mama and Joyce for this reconciliation to take place. She stressed that it needed to be something I was comfortable with. She even ventured a guess that they both might have been more anxious and concerned about the "if" of reconciliation rather than with the "when" of it. The doctor seemed to take it for granted that a reconciliation was inevitable. This bothered me, and I tried to explain my position. "There might never be a time for any true reconciliation with Brenda or Emily. At least not one where the two of them will be asked to rejoin our family. I can easily see them both being closer to all of us, and them having a much more active role in our lives, but I'm still not sure there will ever be a time when we can go back to being what we once were. This is more because of Emily, because of the negative impact she has always had on my ability to get along with Brenda. I'm not blaming any of Brenda's actions on Emily, but her being so close to Brenda will complicate the process of reconciling. There are a lot of changes that would have to take place. These changes would be necessary for there to be any possibility for the three of us to be getting back together. On her own, Brenda only presents certain kinds of potential problem situations for me. When Emily is there and a part of our family as well, the possibilities for problems with Brenda have always been dramatically increased. There is a built in conflict between Emily and me, because, in Emily's mind, Brenda is the real prize that she and I have always competed for." "From what you've told me, it sounds like Brenda has been reluctant to stick with any decision she has ever announced in the past, concerning who is her primary love interest. You and Emily continue to complicate the problem with her making any clear choice by constantly offering her all these new and conflicting combinations of alternatives. If you'll forgive me for saying so, Kenny, the best possibility for finding a solution would be for you and Emily to negotiate some firm understanding by yourselves. Decide, between the two of you, what course of action you could agree on, one that would appear to be best for the three of you." "I've already offered to step away from both of them, to allow Emily to have Brenda all to herself. We've tried it, but it hasn't ever worked out for very long. Joyce and Mama are always plotting ways to entice Brenda to return and try again. Brenda and Emily have their own problems when it's just the two of them. It isn't an easy situation to find a solution for. For me, our having those four children together makes it that much more complicated. I don't want to lose out on being part of the children's lives while they're growing up." "It sounds as though you feel like you're trapped right in the middle. Perhaps more progress might be made if there were a change in negotiators. Your mother and Joyce might be able to arrive at some negotiated agreement with Emily. One that allows for some workable compromise for this particular impasse you now seem to be having." "Yes, you'd think something like that might work, except for the fact that there's even more conflict between those three than there is between Brenda, Emily and me. Each of them has their own different interests and goals. Mama is primarily concerned with her being able to play an important role in raising Dwightee and April. Joyce is interested in reacquiring Brenda and Emily, as her co-wives and her occasional sex partners." "I refuse to believe that those are her sole interests." "She also wants the whole family restored to what it was before I became ill. To be fair to her, I think that is probably Joyce's primary concern." "What does Emily want?" "Emily wants Brenda all for herself. She absolutely doesn't want to share her with any of the other women, especially Joyce and Eddie. She seems somewhat agreeable to making some sort of an exception for me though. She says she doesn't mind sharing Brenda with me. That would only be true if she were always present during any of those times when I would be with Brenda. It's a lot more complicated than how I'm making it sound, but it's still close to how things actually stand between us." "How do all the other wives feel about this?" "They all say they'd welcome a return to how things used to be. I believe Brenda is probably valued more highly than Emily, by all the other wives. This is partly because of her looks, and her cooking, and partly because all of the other wives have had serious disagreements with Emily in the past. Emily has this knack for finding ways to alienate all of us at different times. Emily, by herself, has been responsible for disrupting things more than all of the other wives combined. It isn't in her nature to not be stirring up trouble for someone." "Do you value Brenda more than Emily too?" "No. In fact, I'd have to admit that the opposite is true. While I've always had this easy success in attracting Brenda to me, I think I've appreciated and respected Emily far more than I have Brenda. I'm still enthralled with Brenda's beauty, but, other than that, I can't say that I have really appreciated many of her other traits. I love eating her cooking." "Why do you suppose you feel as you do?" "I feel like I've spent my entire adult life running away from Brenda, and chasing after Emily. For a good portion of that time, I've been forced to resort to the tactic of using Brenda's presence as bait in order to induce Emily into remaining as a part of my life. I'm not very proud of having done that to either of them. I've been nearly convinced many times that Emily's attraction to me is too slight to ever be enough for us to have a permanent relationship. When I've told her that I believed this though, she's always denied that it was a valid fear for me to be having. She claims that she loves me deeply. She says she just loves Brenda a tiny bit more than me." "Would you accept Emily back if she wanted to come back by herself?" "No, because it would never work for her. She'd be unhappy without Brenda. I've thought quite a bit about what might work. I've toyed with hundreds of different scenarios. The only one that I ever came up with that I thought had any possibility of working would be for Emily, Brenda and me to live together, by ourselves. I wouldn't ever be willing to do that, but, I think this might be the minimum that was needed in order to completely satisfy all of Emily's needs." "You've given this a lot of thought?" "Yes. Over the years though, not so much recently. Recently, I've pretty much given up on finding something that could work. Joyce and my mother are the two main ones that want Brenda and Emily back. Emily and I have always had a very volatile relationship. Brenda complicates that relationship considerably. She enjoys being in the middle. She likes us both contending for her affections. She sees herself as this wonderful prize that we're both fighting hard for." "Would it surprise you very much if I told you that your subconscious self values Brenda far more than it does Emily?" "No, I'm not surprised. Bad Kenny always felt like that too. For her looks. I've known Brenda since we were both kids. Emily too. Separately, none of the three of us can get along with the other two for any length of time. When the three of us worked at it together, we were barely able to manage things, even before I got sick. There is a clash of interests that makes it too difficult for it to remain calm between us for long. I don't know of a good solution. I don't think there is one." "You sound determined not to even look for one." She sounded upset with me when she said that. Always, in the past, Dr. Fellows had kept herself emotionally detached from any discussions we were having. This time, what she said, well, it seemed far from emotionally detached to me. She sounded as if she were somehow disappointed in me. I realized that her being disappointed was really bothering me. I didn't understand why it should. I realized that her last statement had angered me. "Why am I even here then, if it isn't that I'm looking for answers that might lead to solutions? If I wasn't looking for ways to put things back together, believe me, I wouldn't be sitting here talking with you now. I've got a lot happening in my life right now, but I'm here, taking this time to try to find some answers. Answers I hope will help me start to put all of our lives back together again. If it were just for me, I wouldn't even be here." "Kenny, it is just for you. And that isn't all either. You've been the one who made it that way. You've been using this time we've been spending together to help you put forward your own agenda with your family. I won't continue acting as some shield you can hide behind and use to deflect their attention away from what you've been doing." "What I'm doing? Everything I've been doing has been to try to get things back to the way they once were." "You've tried to shift all their focus away from the real changes in the man you've now become. You cannot continue to try to distance yourself from these changes, Kenny. You're running away from yourself, from who you now are." "Because they wouldn't want me the way I am now." "Pretending to be different than you are won't work for long. You either need to change the way you now are, or else accept who you now are. Pretending to be someone you no longer can be has no possibility for success. Not in the long term." "I already tried being myself with them. No one liked that Kenny. I didn't like being like that around all of them either. They wouldn't have ever accepted that Kenny." I sat back in my chair, trying to clear some of my own emotions away. At least enough so I could think clearly again. If Dr. Fellows felt she could see me pretending with her, then what Joyce and the other wives had been telling me must have reflected what I'd been showing them also. Why would they have said something to me if they weren't seeing that? Why continue with all these attempts at changing if everyone else believed it was only an attempt at impersonation anyway? It must not be working like I'd hoped it was, not if they all thought they could see through it so easily. I was angry and confused. I hadn't been trying to trick anyone. I was really trying to change. Dr. Fellows sat there quietly too, saying nothing further. It had evolved into some kind of a contest. I knew I wasn't going to be the first one to speak again. After fifteen more minutes of silence, Dr. Fellows stood up and walked out of her office. I waited ten more minutes for her to return, before getting up and going back to my room. I'd been fuming over what Dr. Fellows had said to me. Shirley and I didn't speak about anything Dr. Fellows had said to me. Instead, when I returned to my room, she and I had gone right to bed. The sex had been hard and angry. Shirley seemed to enjoy it far more than I did. Her enjoying it had made me even angrier. I had gotten out of bed and went over to my trading set up to try to work on some of the reconciliations for the trading I'd done earlier in the day. Shirley, perhaps sensing my dark mood, left me alone to work on my calculations. At nine, I called Joyce. "When you say I'm not different from when I first got out of the clinic, what do you mean?" "I mean you haven't changed. You act nicer around all of us, and you say things differently, but, underneath all that, you're just like you were before. You still think I'm a monkey, you just don't say it out loud to me anymore." "That isn't true, Joyce. I love you. I never thought you were a monkey. When I said it, I was mad, and I wanted to hurt you." "I don't want to talk about this now. What are you going to do about Brenda?" "Do you think I'm the bad Kenny now?" "I don't know how to answer that. You aren't my old Kenny, I know that much. When you try really hard to be like him, I can almost make myself believe you are him, but, somewhere in the back of my mind, I've always known you weren't really him at all." "I am him, in part at least I am. I try to be more like him whenever I can be. If you don't give me credit for that, I might as well quit trying to do anything at all to change." "I know you're trying. I'm also very worried that, by trying so hard, you will end up making yourself sick again. That's the biggest part of the reason why I told you it was okay for you to not keep trying to change. Please don't make yourself sick again, Kenny." "I don't want to have to keep worrying about all of this, Joyce. I wish I could change things to the way you want them, but I can't just snap my fingers and make it happen. I don't want to have to keep saying this, but I need to see some benefits from me trying so hard to change for you." "You worry about too much, Kenny. Take this thing we have now with Brenda and Emily. Brenda can handle Emily for you if you'll let her. I've been talking to her, telling her about what she needs to do. Mama talks to her too. Some things you should stay away from and allow us handle them." "Don't you think it helps us to get along better when I try to be more like the old Kenny?" "I don't think so, but Shirley and Cindy, they both disagree with me, they think it's helping. Mama thinks we should all encourage you to just let yourself act however you feel the most comfortable acting. Brenda and Dale both think you've really changed. They don't see any problems with any of it." "I think I've changed too. Part of it might be what you keep calling an act, but I know that some of it just works so much better for me that I've already accepted them as permanent changes. Some other changes, I've always liked better. I never tried to hide those changes from anyone." "I just don't want you getting sick again, Kenny. You don't have to change from whoever you are now for me. You can't allow yourself to be mean around the children, but, whenever you're around me, when we're alone, you can act however you really are." "It doesn't work like that. It isn't like I'm ever pretending. More than anything, I'm just controlling some things better than I used to. Like when I used to get angry, before I got sick, I didn't usually show it so much. After I started getting better again, sometimes I'd show all that anger I was feeling too quickly. It ended up scaring people away from me. I'm learning how to get that anger more under control again. I try not to act right away when I'm angry. I think that's better for me anyway. The anger was always there, Joyce. I just deal with it differently now. I like to think there is someplace in the middle for handling my anger. Not to hide it completely, but not to lash out at people right away either. I'm trying to find some middle ground that is healthy for me, but isn't too scary for other people." "You've been pretending with me, Kenny. I can always feel it when you are." "Controlling my emotions and pretending are two separate things. You have to understand that they are. I'm learning to control myself again. I'm too old to be having so many tantrums, or to be getting all upset because some things aren't happening the way I'd like them to be. Dr. Fellows thinks I've been pretending too. I know how I want to be, how I want to act when I'm around people. I've been trying to behave that way more often, but it isn't always something that seems natural for me yet. That doesn't mean I've been pretending. I need to grow up and start acting more mature. I don't want to end up losing every one I love while I'm attempting to do that. I have a behavior blueprint. I know what I want, and what I expect from myself. In that sense, I really am changing." "Don't change so you're like that other Kenny, the one who made love to me over at Mama's house that other time. He wasn't what any of us would ever want you to become." "You like it rougher than that?" "I liked our last time, with Brenda. That was the best for us ever since you got sick. The time with Cindy was very good too." "Both of those times I was just being myself, Joyce. I wasn't doing any pretending or controlling myself at all during either of those two times. The same thing goes for when I'm playing with the children. I've always liked kids. I mostly need to watch out for times when I'm mad, or when someone suddenly disagrees with me. I think the doctor deliberately went out and made me mad today. Maybe she was just testing me?" "Something is different when we are together now, Kenny. I've listened to what you've just told me, but it doesn't sound right to me. You don't act natural most of the time. I thought you were trying to pretend that you'd changed. You talk about controlling your temper, but it's more than that. You don't act like you care that much for any of us anymore. I don't feel the love I used to feel whenever you were around me. I don't feel it from you at all anymore." "Maybe that is what's natural for me now? I'm not as sure about things around you as I once was. I think it has more to do with how we act around each other than with any changes in me. Before, we always gave each other the benefit of any doubt. We weren't always looking for bad things from each other. There was a much wider trust. If you don't feel my love anymore, maybe that's because you don't want to feel it. I swear it's still there for you to feel." "I didn't have to worry about you all the time before, Kenny. I didn't know before that you had all these mental problems." There it was, it was finally out in the open between us. I had mental problems now as far as Joyce was concerned. It would have been a lot funnier if the two of us could have at least agreed on which Kenny was the one who was crazy. I believed I was healthier mentally at that time than I had been before. Joyce saw me as someone who was still struggling with some mental problems. It was interesting, but only because of our differing perspectives and opposite conclusions. I couldn't say, not with any real certainty, that she was mistaken in her beliefs. I suddenly knew that my real task wasn't to convince her that I was really changed. I now had to convince her that I was mentally well, and had enough good qualities left to make her still want to love me. Joyce had loved the old Kenny. The one she didn't think of as sick. She might never be able to learn to love who I now was. Did I love her enough to let myself get sick again, just to make sure she would go back to loving me? I tried to stop myself from thinking those kinds of thoughts. I couldn't go back to being that Kenny again anyway. We left things the way they were. I wasn't ready to give her any new assurances. I didn't have any to give her. I was becoming convinced we'd all be better off if I started acting in ways that were more consistent with my own current beliefs and values. Of course, I would still need to try to exercise better control over my quick temper. I'd do this for myself though, and not for anyone else. Maybe Dr. Fellows had been right. In the past, I'd always believed that I was coming back to the clinic for Joyce's sake, or for my family's benefit. I knew what I'd really wanted, and it wasn't something for my family. I had wanted to make myself better. To become someone who could get back to enjoying his life again. To accomplish this, I'd known that I had to make some basic changes in my personality. I wondered if Dr. Fellows had done what she had, said what she did, in order to get me to realize this? Was it healthier for me to be able to admit I had only wanted to make these changes for purely selfish reasons? When I went back to bed that night, I didn't share these concerns with Shirley either. Instead, I spent several hours taking out my growing frustrations on her body. The rougher I used her, the more she seemed to be getting into it. Several times I had to quiet her down. In spite of my rough treatment, or maybe, at least in part, because of it, Shirley seemed very attentive and loving with me through the remaining days we stayed at the clinic. When we left, to fly back to Birmingham, and then to Ridgeline, Shirley seemed sad that we were going back. I hadn't been very nice to her for the last few days. We had engaged in very little actual conversation. I went to my sessions with the doctor, traded my grains and financials, and then spent most of the rest of my time fucking her as hard and as often as I could manage. I was working through some of my own demons. I had no idea what she was thinking about during most of this time. If I were being honest, I'd admit that my thoughts were limited to what I was feeling. What I did know was that she always seemed to welcome my embraces, and had done so with much more than her usual enthusiasm. She objected to nothing that we did together, seeming to enjoy any attention I wanted to give her. Each night, after we were together, I slept deeply, and without any dreams. By Friday, when it was time for us to leave, I was feeling more optimistic about everything. I couldn't ever remember a time when Shirley and I had spent so much time together and yet had spoken so little to each other. Not once did Shirley complain. In fact, I got the distinct impression that she really liked the way I'd been with her during the week. I reminded myself to ask Joyce about this when she'd had some time to talk to Shirley about what she'd thought of her trip. We flew back to Birmingham on Friday morning, and I took Shirley over to the house before I went into the office. We were scheduled to leave again at six that evening, to fly back to Ridgeline with Cindy. There were no unusual problems with the plant. Larry was already beginning to assume his new role with the Quick Snacks division. Gene was taking over Larry's old duties as well. In fact, it didn't really look like anyone had missed my presence while I'd been gone. I spent an hour with Billy Ray, describing the reasons why I'd had such a profitable week and had completed so many good trades. He showed me all of the actual numbers for the trading I'd done. We made a few adjustments in the allocations for these profits, moving the money from one account to another. I tended to take a very optimistic view when it came to awarding profits to Brenda's account. I couldn't resist the temptation to make some quick inroads in erasing some of those losses she had accumulated in her securities account while living out in California. By the time Billy Ray and I had finished with all the revised allocations, Brenda had recouped over six hundred thousand dollars of the money she'd previously lost. I told Billy Ray to make sure all future allocations were in similar proportion, and to keep doing so until her trading account was once again hovering around the twenty seven million dollar mark. It was ten o'clock before the three of us arrived back at the house in Ridgeline. I sent Shirley and Cindy off together to find some place to sleep, and went up to go to bed in my own room. I found Joyce asleep in my bed. Seeing her sleeping like that stirred something I had buried deep inside myself. An angry something. Normally, I'd had tried to ease myself into bed without waking her. I didn't do that this time. Instead, I woke her up by first attacking her pussy with my tongue. When I was certain that she was fully awake, I took her without any conversation or ceremony. I did her just like I wanted to do her. In the middle of things, I turned her over and then did her from behind. During all this time, all we shared in the way of conversation were some grunts and growls. After I came, I grabbed her hair and moved her face down to my rapidly shrivelling cock. She was cleaning me with her tongue when I fell asleep. I woke up when she jabbed me sharply in my ribs. "Fuck me some more, Kenny." My dick was hard again, and so I complied with her request. This time, after I came, I rolled off of her and drew her tiny body close to me before going back to sleep again. I knew, if I had put her face in my crotch again, she'd have found some way to get me hard again before waking me once more to take care of her needs. It was after nine on Saturday morning before I woke up again. Joyce was gone when I did. I went to my bathroom and got cleaned up. When I went downstairs, forty five minutes after waking up, I really expected to have a fight with Joyce over the way I'd treated her the night before. Nothing like that happened. Saturday night, Dale and I slept with Joyce. We had sex, but not like Joyce and I, or Shirley and I had experienced on those previous nights. Dale seemed to enjoy what we did with her. Her response was strong and very loving. I savored the difference. ------- Chapter 78 On Sunday, Brenda came over with the children. She was only there for about five minutes before she and Joyce started moving me away from the living room, where I had been enjoying talking to the children, and started hurrying me up to my bedroom. It wasn't difficult to tell it was a well planned assault. I don't know exactly what it was that triggered the angry reaction I ended up directing at Brenda. Perhaps, it was me resenting them for taking me away from the chance to visit with Dwightee and April. Maybe, it was all my accumulated frustration over the problems I'd been having with Joyce and my mother over the concerns I was having with taking Brenda back. For all I know it was all of those things, or, maybe, it was because of something else entirely. What I do know is that what happened on the bed between the three of us didn't go at all like the two of them had been expecting it would. I ended up forcing my cock into Brenda's ass long before she had even had a chance to take all her clothes off. I was getting tired of her and Joyce constantly manipulating me into doing whatever they both had agreed on beforehand. Brenda had been trying to tell me something about Emily for more than a week. Whatever it was, she and Joyce both believed they should soften me up first with some sex, before telling me about it. Her screams were loud enough to bring both Shirley and Cindy running up the stairs to see for themselves what was happening. When they burst into the room, Joyce was standing near me. She seemed fascinated by what I was doing to Brenda. Her eyes were bright with both fear and excitement. I thought she might even be getting ready to urge me on to increasing the ferocity of my assault on Brenda. I continued to take plunge after plunge, burrowing deeply into Brenda's ass. Brenda had stopped all her yelling and protesting. Apparently, she had concluded, on her own, that further protests from her wouldn't help dissuade me, and that they probably would only encourage further depredations. I lasted for a long time, but when I finally came, I really exploded, deeply in her bowels. As soon as I pulled out of her, Brenda crawled as far away from me as she could manage and still be on the bed. I stood where I was, beside the bed, looking at her. Joyce had moved over, closer to Shirley and Cindy. I think she was starting to get worried that her turn was coming up. "Don't keep trying to use sex to control me, Brenda. If you do, it isn't going to turn out the way you want it to. You can move back into the house now if you want to. I believe we're pretty close to even now. You hurt me by several things you did, and now I've done something to hurt you back. You can tell Emily that I'm going to do the same thing to her if she ever willingly comes into my bedroom like you just did. This is especially true if she acts like you did and tries to get me to give her what she wants by using her body. I think I can forgive you for what you did before. When you can forgive me for what I just did to you, I'd like for us to discuss trying to be together again." After I said that to her, I left the bedroom. I ended up taking both Dwightee and April outside with me when I found them still waiting for me downstairs. I told several of my other children to let the mothers know that I was heading over to see my parents, and that I'd be bringing Dwightee and April back within a few hours. We then got into Joyce's Lincoln and drove over to Mama's house. Gerta and Mama were both waiting for the three of us by the time we'd gotten over there. Joyce had phoned ahead to warn them that I was in a very weird mood. She didn't tell them what I'd done to Brenda, or about how I'd treated her the night before either. I spent a few hours there, playing with my two children, and talking with Mama and Gerta about the advice I had been getting from both Dr. Fellows and Joyce. I left my mother's house at around three that afternoon. My Dad and I had agreed on the next step we'd need to take for expanding the Quick Snacks business. He assured me that any necessary financing would be forthcoming whenever it was needed. When I got back to the house, all of the women were in the kitchen, having some kind of a meeting together. I wasn't invited to join them, so I contented myself with playing with all the children outside in the playground area we'd had built. Bunny and Derek both had been given a small set of cut down golf clubs by Mama, and they had begun hitting golf balls. They played a little game they'd set up just for the two of them. It was a contest where each of them tried to hit a golf ball as close as they could get it to one of the big rubber balls they had set out in the middle of the lawn. They gave extra points for either one actually hitting the target on the fly. While I watched them, their results were not very good. I tried to help each of them with their grips and their stances. Derek seemed able to pick up on the physical challenges of the game faster than Bunny did, but Bunny definitely looked like he had more competitive drive. He certainly didn't like Derek beating him. He didn't say anything, but you could see, by his body language, that he really wanted to prevail. I could see that Derek would be winning most of their initial competitions in the near term, but I would have been willing to bet some serious money that it was Bunny who would eventually turn into the better golfer between the two. I sat and watched the two of them playing together for more than an hour after I had showed them how to hold a club and a better stance. During this time I was watching, I kept noticing how Bunny was paying very close attention to how Derek had been doing things. As he watched, he started making some small, extremely subtle adjustments in his own ball striking technique. By the time they were both ready to quit the game, Bunny had considerably narrowed the skill edge that Derek now held over him. I made a note to myself to get them both started with some golf lessons in the very near future. Sunday night, after all the children were in bed, Joyce and the other wives came to get me for one of their family meetings. I knew what the subject of the meeting would be. I was surprised to find that Brenda was still in the house. For something like this, Brenda usually preferred to be absent, allowing others to advocate on her behalf. "Kenny, Brenda has something she wants to say to you." Joyce was gently pushing Brenda forward as she spoke to me. Both Dale and Cindy were behind Joyce and Brenda, showing their support. Shirley was there as well, hanging a little ways back from the others. "I forgive you for what you did today, Kenny. I really do love you, and I'm sorry if what I did I hurt you before. I really don't think what you did to me was fair though. You made my ass bleed when you did that to me." I saw Joyce's hand slap at the back of Brenda's arm when she said that last part. "Ouch! I already said I forgave him. He should know that it really hurt my butt though." Brenda reached back and pushed Joyce's hand away from her as she said this. "Was this all you guys wanted to talk to me about?" I was a little worried that all of them were willing to just leave it the way it now stood. We were all obviously a little uncomfortable with what had happened earlier in the day. I would have preferred to get things out in the open, and to have us discuss some of the recent changes in my behavior towards them. "I just wanted to tell you that I really liked what we did when we were at the clinic all this past week, Kenny. And, also, that all of us want you to know that we want you to be happy. We want everything to get back to as close to being how they used to be as you think you can make them." Shirley had come forward to be able to speak over Joyce's head. Dale reached her tiny body around Brenda to smile at me, and then she too told me that she was happy with the way our relationship was going. I could see, in spite of what she was saying, that Dale was worried because of what she'd been hearing from Shirley, Joyce, and Brenda about the unusual activities that had taken place upstairs in my room earlier. "Kenny, you can't keep on doing things like you did with Brenda today. That isn't what Dale and Shirley meant I'm sure. Brenda and I had a nice day all planned for you today, and you ruined everything. You ruined it for all of us. You could have at least waited until the two of you were alone before doing something like that to her. It was embarrassing for her to have all of us seeing you do that to her." "You can't have it both ways, Joyce. Aren't you the one who was just telling me I shouldn't try to pretend about anything with anyone anymore? I've told you several times that I was getting tired of Brenda using sex as a way to try to manipulate me. I've been mad at her for going out and fucking some other guy while I was sick, and for then pretending for a long time afterwards that she hadn't done anything like that. That really hurt me when I found out about it so long after I should have been told. I wanted to let her know how much it had hurt me. I thought what I did to her would give her some idea of how badly I felt about what she'd done." "What I did didn't end up making your ass bleed, Kenny." Brenda sensed she had enough support now to attack me for what I'd done to her. She thought she could afford to question my choice of punishments. Under different circumstances, I'd have allowed her to do that. Of course, under different circumstances, I'd wouldn't have retaliated against her in the way I had chosen to either. I hadn't planned what happened, it had been an angry reaction, and one that had surprised me as much as it had surprised all the women. This meeting we were having wasn't the right time for Brenda to be trying to win any pity or an apology from me though. I was upset, angry, very frustrated, and tired of people trying to manipulate me. I wanted people to stop trying to force me into doing whatever they decided they wanted me to do. "You'd be better off if you quit complaining about what's already happened, and let what happened earlier be forgotten, Brenda. If you don't want to do that, then you would probably be better off leaving here and going back to Mama's house. It doesn't sound much like you've learned anything from what took place upstairs in my bedroom today. You obviously didn't understand me when I said I needed to do what I did so I could feel like we were back to being even again. You want me to feel bad about what I did to you? You want me to feel guilty about what I did, so I'll end up doing whatever it is you and Joyce have got cooked up for me now? Well, I don't feel guilty now, and I'm probably not going to feel guilty later either." When I finished telling her that, I was fully expecting that Joyce would jump in and take Brenda's side. I knew she would do her best to talk me out of ordering Brenda away. "This is our home too, Kenny. You can't just go around kicking people out of it. We have some say so in who's welcome here and who isn't." "This wouldn't have happened like it did this morning if the two of you hadn't been getting up to your old tricks again. If Brenda can't understand that me shoving my dick up her ass didn't hurt her nearly as much as her letting another man fuck her has hurt me, then I don't want her being anywhere around me while I'm visiting here. If you ever do something like that to me again, Brenda, you'll have a lot more to worry about than just a little blood coming out of your ass hole. You're old enough now that you can exercise a little self control. If you don't have it, or you don't choose to use what you do have, you had better be ready to suffer the consequences. If you ever do it again, and if we're back together when you do it, what you'll be getting will make me poking you in the ass seem like it was nothing. You better just get out of here now, before I turn you over and do the same thing to you again." All of us watched silently as Brenda went to get Dwightee and April before quickly leaving by the front door. I could see, by the expressions on all the remaining wives faces, that none of the other women were happy with what I'd said to either Brenda or Joyce. After Brenda had left the house, crying those big crocodile tears of hers, the other four women just ignored me until it was time for us to go to bed. I got up from my seat on the sofa and started to climb the stairs. I hadn't been planning on returning to Birmingham at any time during the week, but I would do so, rather than sitting around in this house, having everyone else here being mad at me. I could go back to the office and then take care of some things I'd been neglecting in order to be in Ridgeline for this. Those thoughts of leaving early only lasted until Cindy came into my bedroom to speak with me. "Is it okay if I come in here and sleep with you tonight, Kenny?" "Sure. I'll need to take a shower first though. Care to join me?" "First I need to go out and tell the others that you're letting me sleep with you tonight. I should also go get some of my things. You aren't going to be mad at me for anything tonight, are you?" "No, baby. I'm not going to be mad at you. Is that what all the girls are thinking now? That I'm mad at them and wanting to do something to get even?" "I don't know what some of them might be thinking. Mostly, we've all been worried about you all day today. This thing with Brenda, all of us think you overreacted to what she was saying downstairs when she was complaining about what you did to her. She really only wanted to have you reassuring her that her punishment was really over just like you had said it was. You know how she is. She wanted you to say something nice to her; for you to be comforting to her. That's all any of us think she meant by what she was saying to you." "All she had to do was just let it drop. There was no good reason for her to say anything else about it to me. It was over when I told her that we were even. It was over right then as far as I was concerned. I'm tired of having Brenda doing things, and then deciding that nothing should happen to her because of it. She isn't some special case with me. If she didn't want me to punish her, then she shouldn't have asked me to take her back. I wanted it to be all over with after this morning. She was the one who obviously didn't want that." "Go take your shower, sweetie. I'll be back in a few minutes." Cindy turned and left through the open doorway. I watched her go before I remembered that I really did need to get myself into the shower. I wondered if Joyce, Shirley, and Dale were going to be as skittish as Cindy appeared to be. I made a decision to be especially gentle with Cindy in bed later. I didn't want any of my wives to end up being afraid of me. The thing I'd done to Brenda was probably the mildest thing I'd consider to be sufficient punishment for what she'd done to me. It wasn't the first time I'd taken her anally, just the angriest time, and the only time without lubrication. It was punishment for having concealed her guilt, for having made me believe that she had stayed faithful to me. I had wanted to make a serious impression on her, and yet have it be something she wouldn't believe was too severe. In spite of what she'd said, I still believed I'd let her off lightly, especially if you considered what the provocation had been, and that she was a repeat offender. She'd hurt me by using sex, several times over the years. What I'd done was to hurt her back with sex too. Well, maybe some people wouldn't consider what I'd done sex, but it was certainly punishment that had been administered in a sexual context. When I came out of the bathroom, Cindy was already in bed, waiting for me. We did a lot of kissing and hugging, but we didn't have sex together. I had thought I'd feel better after punishing Brenda, but I didn't. It was hard for me to fall asleep. If Cindy hadn't been there with me, I'm pretty sure I would have felt a lot worse than I did. It was late by the time I finally did slip off into a restless and troubled sleep. On Monday night, I slept with Dale. We held each other, and we ended up talking about many things, but we didn't have any sex either. I was beginning to worry that I was going to need to get things settled with Brenda before I would want to have sex with anyone else. On Tuesday night, I told Shirley and Joyce that I wanted to sleep alone. I'd been cooped up in my home office all that day, trading, and was brooding about several things that were troubling me. I had spoken with Mama on the phone, but, after several angry exchanges, we had both concluded that any further conversation right then wasn't going to help either of us with anything. Wednesday night, it was Shirley who once again asked me if she could come into my bedroom and spend the night with me. We didn't do any fooling around either. I knew that she really wanted me to make love with her, but I didn't offer to do so, and she didn't come right out and ask me to. I wasn't missing the sex, but I was beginning to feel bad about disappointing all the women. Thursday, when it was time for me to go to bed, Joyce came into my bedroom pulling a very reluctant Brenda into the bedroom with her. I had more than half expected to see Joyce, but having Brenda there as well, that took me by surprise. "Tonight is our turn again, Kenny. Whatever you feel like you need to do to either of us, you can just go ahead with it. You won't hear any more complaints from anyone this time." "Did you go out and fuck some guy too, Joyce? Is that why you're including yourself in this punishment speech of yours?" "No. I haven't ever cheated on you with any other guy, Kenny. And, you already know about all the women I've ever had sex with. If I ever did decide to cheat on you though, I'd come right in and tell you about it, first chance I had after it happened. So now you know you don't ever have to ask me that question again. I don't want you hurting Brenda tonight though. She didn't come here tonight to complain about what you did to her. You said the last time that it's all even now, so there's no reason for you to hurt her again." It bothered me to see the fearful looks that both Joyce and Brenda had on their faces. It was readily apparent that they were both afraid of me doing something to hurt them. I held my hands out to both of them, welcoming them back into my bed. Just like I'd done with the other wives on the previous nights though, all I did was give them each a few kisses and a quick hug. I really wasn't in the mood for doing anything more than that with either of them. "We didn't come here just to snuggle in the bed with you, Kenny. Aren't you ready to fuck either of us yet?" Joyce was propped up on her elbow, her palm supporting her head. Brenda was propped up on my other side, waiting for me to answer Joyce's question. "Is your ass still sore, Brenda?" "Yes, it is, but it's only a little bit sore, not a whole lot. If you used some petroleum jelly it would probably be all right. I wanted to just do it the regular way though, if that's all right?" "How about if I take it real slowly this time? I have some K-Y gel." I watched Brenda's face as she started trying to come up with a way to say no that wouldn't make me angry. "I don't want it to start bleeding again. Why can't we just do it the regular way?" "My ass isn't sore, Kenny. Why don't you do Brenda the other way, and then give it to me in the ass?" I ignored Joyce's comment, acting like I hadn't heard her. I knew that would annoy her. I didn't mind annoying her. "Have you been good since the last time you were in here, Brenda?" "I've been over at your mom's, Kenny. Besides, I won't ever do anything like that again. I don't want you to ever get hurt again. I've learned my lesson this time. Really." "I haven't learned any lesson, Kenny, and I don't need to be taught one. Besides, I'm really horny tonight. Can we quit talking and get down to business?" I had to smile over at Joyce. She wasn't going to allow anything I might say to intimidate her at all. She wasn't like Brenda. She wouldn't take whatever she needed to in order to restore the peace and our domestic tranquility. She knew she didn't have to. Not with me. That told me a lot about what she really thought about who I was to her now. She wasn't as afraid of me, and she'd only pretended to be earlier, for Brenda's sake. I finally ended up making love to both of them. I did so gently with Brenda, but later on, I was much rougher when I did it with Joyce. I'd started out being gentle with her too, but then I really let myself go after she began demanding that I do her harder. By the time I finally shot off in Joyce, both of us had slaked whatever angers we had each built up. After half an hour's rest, I finished up with Brenda, having her on top, so I could let her do all the work while I just laid there, drinking in her loveliness. All the time she was riding me, she was doing something to Joyce's pussy, using her free left hand while she used her right to maintain her balance on top of me. The ending came suddenly for me, and with it, I felt a desperate urge to pull Brenda's face down close so I could kiss her lips. When we were done, I shifted Brenda down off of me, expecting that we would all be going to sleep then. "Tell him what Emily said, Brenda." Joyce was sitting up again. "I told Emily what you did to me, and then I told her about what you told me after I had complained about it. She told me that she thought you were being very fair about punishing me for what I'd done. She wants to know if you meant what you said about forgiving her for everything too. If you did mean it, she said she'd come here and let you do that to her too." "I don't know whether I meant it about forgiving everything or not. I probably don't even know what everything is yet. I won't know until after I have her all alone here in my bedroom, and she tells me herself what everything is. I'm not going to commit to forgiving something I might not already know about. If there are other things she's done, maybe it would be better to wait until after I find out what her "everything" is. I'm still feeling pretty angry about some of the things I already know she did. If there are many more things on top of those things, then I don't know how I'll feel when I find out about them." "It's too late for us to wait, Kenny. Emily is going to be here tomorrow afternoon. She's bringing all her things with her too. She says she needs to get away from her parents before they end up borrowing all the rest of her money. When she gets here, please don't punish her for anything right away. You can punish me instead." In all the years I'd known her, this was the first time I'd ever heard Brenda offering to assume someone else's suffering. It shocked me that she'd even make such an offer. I looked over at Joyce, to see if she too would be pleading with me. I knew how much it meant to her that Emily was returning. I already knew I couldn't do to Emily what I had done to Brenda. I had known that Brenda would eventually accept what I did to her. Emily might be willing to submit to it. She almost certainly would, according to what Joyce and Brenda were telling me. But later, after she'd had a chance to let it fester inside her, she'd talk herself into needing to do something worse back to me. I also knew she'd end up coming up with something she thought was terrible enough to make up for anything I'd done to her. Emily always had to make things come out right according to her way of keeping score. "I don't want her coming back here to cause trouble between us, Brenda. We've having enough problems as it is. I think, in the beginning, she should keep herself over at your new house. On those days when she feels particularly sweet and loving, maybe she can come over here and do some visiting with us. On all those other days, she should go live by herself. Brenda, you can either stay here with us while this is going on, or else you can go be with her during her mean times. We won't be mad at you if you decide to spend part of your time over at the other house with Emily." "Do you really think it's a good idea to say it like that to her, Kenny? If you give Brenda these kinds of choices, she might end up deciding to stay away from here forever. We'll never get all of us settled back together like we need to be." Joyce sounded a lot less than enthusiastic about the statement I'd just made to Brenda. I had already known she'd be upset with what I was proposing. I thought I had several good reasons for telling Brenda what I had. I didn't necessarily think Joyce would agree with any of my reasons. She knew what she wanted too, and we wanted different things in the near term. "Things are going to be a little different than what you had hoped for, Joyce. All I'm doing is giving Emily another option. When she gets mad about something, she really isn't the best company to be around anyway. Maybe, if she had a chance to be by herself, she'd get over her little tantrums quicker. Right now, I'm only willing to try letting the sweet Emily back into my life. The other one, she really needs to stay away from me until after I've built up some new tolerances for those over the top eruptions of hers. I don't believe it would be a good idea if she and I were to have a big argument any time too soon after she gets here. We need to set it up so that each of us has somewhere we can go to if we need to get away from those kinds of damaging confrontations we sometimes get into." "If she comes over here, and she's being sweet, would you be willing to sleep with her again?" Brenda had something quite definite on her mind. Her questions were becoming too pointed for her not to have something she needed to find out, or something she needed to tell me. I wondered how thoroughly Emily had briefed her about what she was supposed to say to me. "What did Emily say she wanted to have happen, Brenda?" "She said she wanted you to forgive her, and to take both of them back. She said she'd let you do almost anything you wanted to do to her, but only if you promised to forgive her completely, and would agree to take her back after she let you punish her." Joyce spoke before Brenda had any chance to answer me. "What did Emily tell you, Brenda?" I saw the warning look that Joyce was aiming at Brenda. "Tell me, Brenda." "She wants you being mad to be over with, Kenny. She wants us to be together again." "When you say us, who exactly do you mean?" "You, me, and her. And our four children." "It can't be like that, Brenda. You and her, if you want to be alone together somewhere, that would be okay with me. I'm not going to be part of something like that though. This is where I live, right here, with all my wives and with any of my children who want to live here with me. I'm not going to be changing that for you, and not for Emily either. I wouldn't be willing to change it for anyone else either." "We all know that, Kenny. Emily probably knows it as well as we do. You could go over to their house though, to spend some nights with them if you wanted to. The same way they would always be welcome to come here to be with all of us." Joyce didn't want me stepping on her dreams any more than I already had. In her mind, all she needed was some time, and a chance for her to work on getting us all back together again. She believed, that with enough time for her to work out all the little nagging details, she could put everything back to just how it used to be. She wanted Emily and Brenda somewhere nearby, so she would have a real opportunity to do so. "Emily is an adult. She can make her own choices, but only for herself. I'll decide what I'm willing to do. I'm not letting any of you push me into doing something I don't want to be a part of. I don't want to set up separate households where I'm splitting my time between the various wives." "You do that now, with the house in Birmingham, and all those visits you've been making to that clinic of yours. Going over to spend time with Brenda and Emily would be the same thing. When she gets here, promise me you'll at least give her a chance to tell you what she wants." "This is a free country, Joyce. Emily can say whatever she wants to say. All of you can. That doesn't mean I'm going to be able to go along with any of want you've been talking about. If Emily comes over here to talk with me, then the two of us will talk alone, up in my bedroom. I'll decide, after that, what I'm going to do to her, or with her." "Tell him the rest of it, Joyce." I saw Brenda's pleading look at Joyce. I'd known there had to be something else. Brenda had tried over the past week or so to bring it up to me. Whatever it was, it had to be something big. Brenda was extremely nervous about something. "Emily thinks she might be pregnant, Kenny. She's been getting sick for the past few mornings." Joyce looked at me. I knew she was expecting me to explode as soon as I heard the news. I didn't feel too upset. I was surprised, but not too upset. In my mind, I'd already pretty much divorced myself from both Emily and Brenda after they left for California. "This is that other part of the forgiveness that she wants from you now." I almost had to laugh at Joyce when she said that. She didn't want much from me, did she? The funny part was, this new development wasn't having much of an emotional impact on me. It was a big deal, but for Emily, not for me. It would definitely make a difference in how I'd feel about taking her back. Having someone else's baby, that was more than just being separated after some bad arguments. "I'll need to sleep on that kind of news, Joyce. It might take me awhile to figure out how this new information is going to affect things. How long have you two been trying to break this news to me?" "Kenny, does it matter how long? Emily needs us now. We're her real family. She's worried about what will happen if she is pregnant. We need to think about what's best for all of us." "Speaking about what's best for all of us, am I supposed to set up a million dollar trust account for this baby too?" Brenda knew right away that I was joking. She started giggling. Joyce waited, wanting to hear what else I might have to say. "Let's all go to sleep now. We'll talk some more about all of this tomorrow. Brenda, until I decide what I'm going to do, you might want to have Emily stay over at your new house. Does Mama know that Emily might be pregnant?" "She knows as much as the rest of us do. It isn't for sure, but it's possible. Are you very upset about Emily having been with someone else?" "I'm not sure yet, Joyce. I always knew something like this might happen, with Brenda, Emily, Eddie or Dale. I didn't think it had much chance of happening with Cindy. I'm not that surprised that she slept with someone else again. I expected that she probably would. What about you, Brenda? Are you sure there isn't anything you need to tell me about what you did in California?" "Not this time, Kenny. I never even looked at another guy while I was gone. When Emily met this guy, I told her I would leave if she ever ended up doing anything with him. They broke up right after I left. That's how she is. She blamed everything on him. I warned her that you might not take either of us back if we did anything else with guys. She said she didn't care." "There's a lot of that going around. I'm starting to get some of that myself. I'm glad you didn't do something again and not tell me about it, Brenda. You've pretty much run out of all your new chances with me. I really don't see myself forgiving you again, not if you were out there screwing someone else again." "Emily has been better than I was when we were kids. You should give her another chance too." "We should all go to sleep. I don't want to think about any of this right now. I love both of you, but good night." "You love Emily too, Kenny." Joyce wasn't going to rest until I gave her something she could feel better about. She needed something from me. I decided I could do that much for her. I really wanted all of us to stop talking and try to get some sleep if we could. "I know I do, Joyce. If I didn't love her, there wouldn't be anything for me to think about. You can tell her I'm not very mad about the baby, or about what she's been doing out there in California. That doesn't mean I'm not going to still be upset about all the other things that already happened before that. I'm also not too thrilled with you two for trying to slip this one right by me. When you do these kinds of things, don't you realize it usually ends up making things worse, not better?" I watched as Joyce got up to turn off the lights. When she got back into bed, she found my hand and brought it to her mouth. While she kissed my palm, I felt the tears on her cheek. Somehow, I knew that I'd just passed a big test with Joyce. She wanted to believe I was changing too. She was desperate to believe it. I slept without dreaming. In the morning, when I woke up, Brenda and Joyce had already left to go to work in Bolling. I guess part of their deciding to go was that they both thought they'd already missed too much work by having stayed home with me all week. Maybe they went back to work because they had gotten what they were after from me. It was noon before I realized that the reason they'd gone off to Bolling was so they could see Emily, and talk to her about what they were hoping to do before I had a chance to see her by myself. ------- After I was up and dressed, I walked over to Mama's house. I needed some advice, and I really couldn't trust anyone else to answer me honestly. As soon as I got to Mama's house, I went looking for Hans. I found him out in the garage, working on putting some new plastic string on one of the lawn edger's. I ended up spending almost half the day with Hans, first telling him about all the problems I was having with trying to get a personality sorted out that I could live with, and one that others would be willing to embrace also. Hans looked at problems more realistically than most other people I knew. He also understood the real motives that most men had in their dealings with women. I knew there was nothing I could tell him about women that would either shock or scandalize him. I tried to tell him everything, going back to the early days when I had first started fooling around with Brenda and Emily. I told him about what I'd felt as a boy, and what I was feeling now. I was a man beset by a whole host of problems with what Hans always had thought of as my harem. I wanted his understanding, and to get the benefit of his years of experience with both me and with my late Uncle Bunny. I expected he'd give me the same kind of advice he would have given to Uncle Bunny, if he'd ever come to him with this same kind of situation. After I had finished explaining everything, I stopped speaking, and stood there beside him, waiting for him to say something to ease my pain, to help sooth my troubled and tortured heart. "What is it you were expecting from me, Kenny? Pity? I don't think so. This is a good life you've been having, and you seem to keep forgetting that. Who else do you know that has it as good as you do? You've got seven women, mostly good looking women too. All of them are usually willing to do whatever you ask them to do. Seven women! Compare this to anyone else you know. Even Phil. Look what he has, and then look at what you've got. Look at me. Look at Mr. Parsons, or any of the other men you know. Who else has what you have? Nobody! Instead of coming over here to cry and complain, you should be in a big church somewhere, thanking God for what he's given you. You think Hans hasn't heard all of this you've been telling me? I heard it before, from Gerta, long before you ever decided to come over here to talk to me. You want to know what she thinks, you should have gone and asked her. She worries about you, but not me. I wish I was you, that's what I wish! How many times have you been upset about what that Brenda has done? Fifty times at least. Look at her. A woman that looks like she does, she doesn't need to act like everyone else. You get mad because she finds someone else, but she always comes back to you, doesn't she? A woman who looks like her, you should celebrate her return when it happens, not cry to me just because she has one little weakness and has spent some time with someone else." I think it was the longest string of consecutive words I'd ever heard coming from his mouth. I hated almost every single word he spoke. By the time he had finished speaking, I was really pissed off at him. If it hadn't been for everything he'd done for me before, I just don't know what I'd have said to him. I didn't trust myself to say anything more to him. I hurried back out of the garage before I said something to him that was unforgivable. He was part of my family, and even though I hated him right then, I didn't want to end our long relationship with words I'd be speaking in anger. So I turned away from him and left. "Sure, you go right ahead and run away, Kenny. That's going to make everything all better. That's a good solution for you." I walked back home taking the long way instead of crossing through the open fields. I wanted to give myself an opportunity to get my temper back under control before I walked in my front door I didn't want any of my children to see me like that. I hadn't expected Hans to say any of those things like that to me. I wondered if he had always thought of me that way, as someone who'd been blessed, but who was still ungrateful, even with all that I'd been given? If he did think of me that way, he'd never once hinted about it before then. Maybe he didn't like the changes I'd recently gone through. I hated to think that Hans had turned against me too. I'd gone over to talk to him because I expected honesty from him. Maybe he really felt that way. If so, I'd gotten what I'd come for. I felt terrible. I couldn't have felt worse if my own father had said those things to me. I knew that Hans had been right about one thing he'd said. I had been whining and complaining to him. I remembered that my own experience with whiner's had been that they usually had deserved whatever it was they were complaining about getting. I'd had a lot worse things happening to me when I lived in the orphanage. I had kept silent through most of it. I'd understood something important then, that it didn't help to always be crying or complaining. Often, doing that would only make things worse. Was Hans trying to get me to see that? Was my "poor me" attitude hurting rather than helping? What about that crack he'd made when I walked away from him? Did he really believe I ran away from my problems? Did I? Not all the time. With some problems, running away was a reasonable response to make. When I got back to the house, I wished that Joyce had been there for me to talk with. I realized something I immediately recognized as being funny. Hans had gotten me so flustered and upset that I had stopped worrying about the problems I was having with Emily and Brenda. What Hans thought about me really mattered. I was sure he and Gerta both loved me. Instead of just reacting to his words, and to the dismissive tone he'd taken when he'd spoken them, I might have done better to think about what those words of his had meant. Was I really ungrateful for all I'd been given? I'd never thought I was. I'd made an effort to give back to others in gratitude for what I'd been given. Did Hans think me giving some of my time and money wasn't enough for all that I'd been given? I wished then that I hadn't been so quick to leave the garage. I was curious to find out what he thought I should be doing. I sat in the house, drinking a glass of iced lemonade, thinking about all the questions I'd like to ask Hans concerning what he'd meant. When I finished my drink, I got up and walked right back over to Mama's house. I found Hans out in the back yard, operating that weed whacker. "I wasn't crying, and I wasn't running away. I wasn't saying that I have it so terrible either, just that this whole thing with the girls is very complicated and very troubling too. I wanted your advice, not your criticism. It isn't that easy, knowing the right thing I should be doing." "You over complicate things, Kenny. Whatever you decide to do, that's the right thing. You have to believe that. Make a decision, and then live with it. Make a list of which ones of those women you want to keep with you, and which ones you can just as easily do without. For months now, you've been running all around, like a chicken with its head cut off. You can't keep running around in circles, and accomplishing nothing. It's time for you to stop and decide. I can't take anymore of putting up with all the comings and goings of these women. Every day, there's something new that they're all worrying about. This is your fault, because you won't make any decisions about any of this. Gerta doesn't have time for doing anything else, all she has time for is talking to your mama about these problems you've been having. Your mama, she's the same way. All the time now, they are in the kitchen, plotting and planning about what they can do to help you, Kenny. Who do you think they get to make up for whatever they have to do that doesn't get done? Me! Make a decision, Kenny. Nobody really cares what any of your decisions turn out to be, they just want you to start making them again." "It isn't that simple. If it was, I'd have done it already. It isn't just what I might decide either. I can make all the decisions I want to, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to pay any attention to what I've decided. You wouldn't think it was so simple if you had to deal with all of this yourself." "You keep making this such a big deal, Kenny. If you decide to take them all back and later they all go off and sleep with an army of other men, how have you lost anything? Men can't control what their women do, and most men only have one woman to worry about. With seven, I wouldn't even start to worry until there were only two or three of them still left. How many of those seven do you have left now, five? Even if all of them left you, with your money, and the way you look, you could find another seven in a month or two." "If something happened to Gerta, that's what you'd do, go out and find a replacement?" "No, because I'm only Hans, the old gardener. For me, there aren't so many choices. You're the one who has many choices, not Hans. You can afford to take a chance, not me. Make a decision, Kenny. If it turns out later you were wrong, then you can go to plan "B". If plan "B" doesn't work, you can go back to them, on your knees, and beg them to give you another chance." "This is my whole life, Hans. You're treating this like it was all some big joke to you." "For you, it is a big joke, Kenny. You keep forgetting what you'd still have, even if all of those women decided to leave you. You take that Brenda. I know what I would decide with her, and it would be easy for me to decide it too. Even if I knew she was going to break my heart in another week, I'd take her back. You can't worry about the future so much that you don't enjoy the present. After she breaks your heart again, then it's time to be worried. Enjoy the good times, and learn to accept it when bad things happen to you." "I should keep taking Brenda back because she's so beautiful?" "There are worse reasons. In my whole lifetime, I've never been with any woman that looks even half as good as she does. I'm not alone in that either. Few men will ever sleep with such a woman." "Quite a few already have. It looks to me like that number is destined to keep on growing too." "What have you really lost because of that? It is only some pride that you have lost. How many women have you shared yourself with? Did it hurt anyone else when you did that?" "I didn't cheat, Hans. I didn't try to hide what I was doing." "When you sleep with Joyce, did the time you spent with any of the other women keep Joyce from enjoying what you two do together?" "You'll have to ask Joyce that question. It isn't the same thing anyway. Those women I sleep with are all my wives. I'm supposed to be sleeping with all of them." "Were you sleeping with them when they went out and found someone else?" "With Brenda I was." "After you took her back, did you sleep with her again?" "Of course I did." "Was it different because of these other men? Did it take away from your pleasure with her?" "That isn't the point. It hurt me that she had betrayed me, that she had betrayed my trust in her." "You sound like a child, upset that someone else has played with some of his toys. Punish her, and then move on, Kenny. Life is too short to miss out on such happiness just because something you love might also give you some pain." "What about Emily?" "She isn't as beautiful, but still, most men can only dream of bedding such a woman. I would take her back too, if only for the opportunity to see her and that Brenda doing those things to each other in your bed." "You are a very sick man, Hans. You're talking about two of my wives, you know that, don't you? I'm not sure your heart is strong enough to be able to stand what you'd see when those two get together. Too bad you were so mean to me today. I could punish Emily by making her do things with Brenda while you watched them. She'd hate that." "Don't tease an old man, Kenny. Especially an old man who loves you, and who has only your best interests in his heart." "Have you ever watched three or four woman going at it together, Hans? They work themselves into a frenzy. After awhile, they just don't care what people are doing to them. The only thing they care about is being stimulated more than they already are. You wouldn't believe some of the things I've watched. Sometimes, I forget that I'm even supposed to be participating, because I get lost in appreciating the feast of naked ladies that my eyes are viewing. A man should experience seeing this sometime during his lifetime." "I've watched the blue movies, Kenny. You have seen this with your own eyes?" "All the time. Once, there were six of them, all on one big bed. The smell of sex was so strong. The sounds they made too, I'll never forget those sounds, especially Shirley." "This is what I meant about no one feeling sorry for you. To have experienced this with all those women. How can you be complaining about so little?" "It isn't so little if you love the other person. I always loved Brenda when she cheated on me. If I didn't care, it wouldn't have mattered so much to me." "So, don't care. Or else, only care enough so that if she does it again, it won't make you so sad this time." "You can't limit how much you love someone, Hans. You should know that by now." "Seven different women, Kenny. You can't love all of them the same. Pick the ones you are most sure of and love them completely. For the others, just love them as much as is healthy, given their potential for hurting you." "Teach me how to do that." "You managed it with Bea. Why couldn't you do the same with any of these other women?" It was certainly something for me to think about. I'd loved Bea, but only as a friend, not like I loved Brenda, Emily, and all the other wives. I didn't hold Bea to any of the same standards that I held my own wives to. What she did with others hadn't bothered me. I didn't think I could ever think of Brenda or Emily that same way I'd thought of Bea. Maybe it was possible to put them in another category though, one different from where I put Joyce and Shirley. I'd done that same thing with Cindy, Eddie, and Dale. Wives I'd had children with, and ones I hadn't. That was a big difference too. Maybe I could make an adjustment, one where I could privately stop thinking of Emily and Brenda as being exclusively mine. Maybe I could even set up a new, flexible, relationship, one where I thought of them in different ways, depending on their recent actions. I liked where my thoughts were taking me. I thought it was something to give some further thought to. What I definitely needed to do was to eliminate those sharp, life altering reactions I'd had in the past. I needed to control any response I'd make too, if either of them decided to leave me, or if they happened to stray again. Could I condition my mind to allow for certain possibilities like that in advance? If I did that, would it lessen my pain in any way, if it turned out my worst fears were again realized? I was thinking about this when I realized that I'd already done something similar to this with Emily. I had prepared and conditioned myself to finding out that she had again been with another man. When my fears had been validated, my reaction was much more subdued that it had been the first time. Could I manage the same thing with Brenda? If I had to, could I do that with all of them? By the time I left Hans again, I was feeling better. Hans wasn't feeling so good though. I'd gotten his hopes sky high, without having committed myself to allowing him anything. I was sure his own dirty mind would provide lots of entertainment for him while he was driving or doing the gardening. I'd keep saying just enough to keep his hopes alive. I was anxious to talk to Joyce about this new line of thought that Hans had directed my attention to. I wasn't sure that my having a new mind set would really improve any future reaction I might have to any infidelities the wives might get involved in. Maybe it was enough that I had a hope that it would improve the reaction I'd have. On second thought though, it might be a big mistake to share having these new kinds of thoughts with Joyce. She had already made it clear that she was only remaining faithful because she didn't want to hurt me. I couldn't talk to Shirley about this either, for much the same reason. I could ask Dr. Fellows, but I didn't want her to think I was willingly preparing myself for accepting the possibility of being made a cuckold once again. It wasn't that I was sure either of them would ever cheat on me again. I was simply making a risk/reward decision. Just like Hans had presented it to me. The reward for having Brenda and Emily with us again was well worth the risk that something bad might happen in the future. Knowing that I would be able to handle it, that just lessened the severity of the risk I'd be assuming. It didn't lessen my reward though, so that was another benefit I'd have. It did lessen my satisfaction though, when I thought about the reality of possibly finding out, sometime in the future, that one or both of them had gone out and cheated on me again. Hans was right about something else too. I needed to just make a decision, and then try to live with it. For a horny old pervert, Hans was a pretty intelligent guy. He was very right about Bea too. I was almost ready to make some kind of decision. What took my decision from the borderline positive category into the clearly extremely positive category was when I stopped and realized that my deciding to bring them both back was also ensuring that I'd have the opportunity to be around those four children of mine again. That, all by itself, was worth at least as much to me as the prospect of having Emily and Brenda back living with all of us again. I knew I could never mention all the factors I'd looked at before making my decision. I also realized that it was only now, after the personality changes brought on by my illness, that I could make a decision such as this one. I would never have been able to make such a cold and calculated decision before. It was a near certainty that I couldn't have done so any time prior to my having been ill. The old Kenny wouldn't have been capable of putting aside his own emotions for long enough to admit the advantages of preparing himself for the kinds of possibilities I was thinking about. I now felt quite capable of preparing myself for the worst while still maintaining some hope for the best to actually happen. I was learning what the word "compromise" really meant. Another layer of my innocence was being forced away from me. I was well on my way to making sure I'd be capable of dealing with some of life's harshest realities. I didn't mourn this loss of innocence. Instead, I embraced the flexibility of this new found practicality of mine. I immediately knew that it was going to make me a much more resilient individual. I had been looking for greater resilience, and now, because of my conversation with Hans, I truly believed I was starting to find some. There is a confidence that comes from knowing you might soon be strong enough to weather some of the most devastating fears you've experienced in your past, or even ones that you've only imagined. I'd failed before to withstand some of these emotional firestorm's. I'd had times in my life when I'd simply been overwhelmed by some occurrences that might not have even fazed another, less emotionally vulnerable person. I was determined that I wouldn't allow myself to succumb to that sort of thing again. It had been a glaring weakness in the old Kenny. For once, I was beginning to appreciate the advantages that I might lay claim to by no longer being him. I could control, to some degree at least, how much of my heart I could afford to put at risk with any one individual. For some, like Joyce, Shirley, or for any of my children, I'd willingly risk much more of myself. With others though, I'd limit what I was willing to risk. With Emily and Brenda, I'd be risking much less than I would be for Shirley, Joyce, and some of the other wives. Eddie too would have less of my faith than what I'd be placing in either Cindy or Dale. In my mind, Eddie would be in the same trust category as either Emily or Brenda. I knew something about limiting risk, from my trading in grains, metals, and currencies. Trading risk could be managed, and it could often be accomplished without giving up too much of the potential rewards. I wanted to bring my risk down to the point where it was something I would be able to tolerate. I hadn't managed this too well in the past, but I was determined that this would soon change. I felt more free than I had at any time since I'd gotten ill. Not only was I convinced that I was now sane, and in full possession of all my senses. I really was starting to believe I'd picked up the missing tools I'd need to successfully put everything back close to how it needed to be for all of us to go forward with the remainder of our lives. Now, for the first time in a long time, I believed I finally had my life completely back under my own personal control. I could still be reasoned with, even convinced of some things, by certain people, if they actually believed strongly enough that my thoughts was somehow in error. Convinced, but definitely not compelled. I felt like I could now afford to take some risks, even though taking them might mean I'd ultimately be making some mistakes in doing so. Even if these risks did turn out to lead to problems for me though, there was now good reason for me to hope that the damage done wouldn't be greater than what I'd be able to confidently absorb. It occurred to me that I'd been collecting the skills that I would be needing for getting my family back all during the time when I felt like I was failing at everything I tried to do. I'd made so many false starts, and been down so many dead end roads. All during this unhappiest period of my adult existence, I was preparing my mind to accept the changes I needed to make. I could see how some of these changes, in my attitude, and with my beliefs, were now going to help me be successful in getting my life back on track. I'd needed the pain and the fear of failing to push me into letting go of some of my fears. Now I would be able to embrace the idea of adjusting myself to tolerating less rigid standards. I'd been afraid, and that fear had undermined my confidence. I had become convinced that I was incapable of correctly assessing whether I was making any progress with any of my goals. It had been a mistake to rely so much on other people's assessments of the progress I was making. I'd tried to satisfy too many different people, and, having tried that, had ended up satisfying no one, including myself. I was grateful to Hans for waking me up to the fact that, ultimately, I was the one who needed to make the decisions that would guide my life. I had to make them, and then be responsible for how these decisions turned out. I certainly needed to learn how to anticipate potential pitfalls better, but most of all, I needed to learn to live with the results of these decisions, regardless of how they might end up turning out. I did this easily, when it came to business, especially with my grain trading. So many things I'd learned by doing those things. It was gratifying to find out that the same skills I'd acquired doing these business dealings were now translating well in helping me to make some risk/reward decisions in my own personal life. This was where my new found confidence had come from. It had taken Hans to point me in the right direction, but, once I accepted that he was right, and all that was lacking was for me to be willing to make decisions, I knew that I could do that. I'd been doing it nearly every day, and meeting with significant and frequent success whenever I'd done it. He'd also helped me to redefine the risks involved in reconciling with the three remaining wives of mine who hadn't yet rejoined our family. I'd been looking at this as an all or nothing proposition. It didn't have to be that. I didn't need to be one hundred percent sure of a trade before I initiated it. Quite often, I'd move my way into a trading position by putting it on in increments, increasing my position, and thus, my risk, as the price movements confirmed the correctness of my original trading opinion. If I decided to take back Emily and Brenda, I wouldn't necessarily have to be one hundred percent certain that everything would work out perfectly with either of them. The same held true for Eddie, should she ever decide she wanted to return. I'd need to be realistic in my expectations, allowing for the very real possibility that it might not last forever. While I'd never tried it before, the idea of hedging some of my potential emotional exposure had definite appeal for me. I didn't know if it was practical, but I was willing to give it a try. Hans was also right when he said I'd done something similar with Bea. I wasn't kidding myself about that though. I'd never been anywhere near as close with Bea as I was with Emily and Brenda. I had four children to help bring that point into the sharpest possible focus for me. I had no plan to modify my feelings for either woman, only my expectations about the future course of our relationship together. In my own mind, I'd already made most of the emotional adjustments that would be necessary. My expectations from any of these three women weren't very high. I hoped to be pleasantly surprised, but I wasn't willing to place too large of an emotional wager on these hopes. All that remained to be done was for me to get an opportunity to put my new plan into operation. As anxious as Joyce was to get Emily and Brenda back under our roof again, I was confident that all I needed to do was sit back and wait for the girls to approach me with whatever plan they had settled on. I was in a strong position. In spite of all Joyce's comments about my not having changed, the response I was now getting from all the other wives I was in frequent contact with was telling me that I was once again someone they wished to be close with. I had no doubts at all that Joyce would change her tune about me being changed, once I had demonstrated to her that I again had the ability to attract all those other wives back to me. I was comfortable with knowing that Joyce would be stronger and more confident when all the members of our family were back living with us again. Living in the same home with us, right where she felt she needed all of them to be. Like Joyce, Eddie had already indicated that she much preferred a house filled with all seven of the wives again. Those two women both had a strong preference for frequent and varied sexual opportunities. When we had all been together, before my illness, Eddie and Joyce were quite clearly the two happiest women in our household. Sexual predators, both of them, nothing made them happier than a whole house full of women to prey upon. I wasn't discounting the pleasure I helped provide for both of them too. Once the environment was recreated, I was expecting them to once again be the happiest of women. ------- Chapter 79 Dale, Cindy, and I left to go back to Birmingham that next Sunday. I hadn't seen Emily at all since she had returned to Kansas. I could have seen her and my children, but only if I'd been willing to meet with all of them over at Brenda's house. Joyce had tried everything to convince me to go there and work things out with Emily. From things she had let drop in her conversations with me about the whole Emily situation, I knew it was really Emily who was dictating the terms of any future meetings we might have. In spite of what Brenda and Joyce had said to me about Emily being willing to do almost anything in order to be forgiven and allowed to rejoin the family, actual events hadn't worked out in quite that way. As soon as Emily and the children were picked up at the airport by Brenda and Joyce, Emily's sole interest had been centered around Brenda. When Joyce had proposed that all of them drive back to our house, Emily suggested that she was too keyed up to be able to have a face to face meeting with me right away. She was the one who suggested that it would be better if she had a day or two to recuperate from all the stress from her sudden decision to leave California. It had then been decided that her going to stay for awhile in Brenda's new house would be the best option for her. After that was all agreed to, Emily then announced that she had expected that Brenda would stay there with her too. Brenda said she didn't want to take Dwightee and April away from the other children at my house. This had led to a new argument breaking out between Emily and Brenda. By the time all of them got to Brenda's house, Joyce had convinced Brenda to stay at her own house and help get Emily and the children settled in. She promised Brenda that she'd drive back and pick her up again later that evening. When Joyce came into my home office afterwards, it was easy for me to see that she was troubled by something. She tried to make Emily's reluctance to come see me seem like it was because she had wanted an opportunity to rest up so that she would look her best when she and I got together to try to work things out. I hadn't been anticipating that Emily would want to postpone our getting together to clear the way for her to be forgiven and then welcomed back to our family. I had already told both Brenda and Joyce to let Emily know I wasn't too upset with what had happened out in California this time. Joyce assured me that Emily had been repeatedly informed of this fact. In spite of that, Emily was hesitating to meet with me again. Joyce attributed it to her being tired, and, perhaps, being worried about all the changes she was making in her life by picking up and moving back to Kansas so suddenly like she had. I tried to reassure Joyce by telling her that I wasn't troubled by the fact that Emily hadn't hurried right over to get things straightened out with me. We talked about how Tony and Sissy had looked. I was most disappointed in not seeing either of them. I knew that Emily and I would work out some kind of understanding eventually. I suspected that her primary interest and focus was on Brenda, and on resolving their situation. I began hoping that they could get that done soon, so that Emily and I would be able to work something out for ourselves. When Brenda called Joyce at eight o'clock to say she was going to spend the night over at her house, I don't think any of us were surprised. When she came over to the house the next morning to get Dwightee and April, to take them back to her house, all she said to Joyce was that Emily still needed some more time. Nothing else changed before it was time for the three of us to fly back to Birmingham. I could see the frustration that Joyce was having to deal with. I tried to reassure her that I was in no hurry, and that a few days, weeks, or even months wouldn't be a problem for me. All the children were back living in Ridgeline now. Brenda had spoken to Joyce on Saturday, telling her that Emily wanted me to go over there to see the kids, and so I could have a first meeting with her. Joyce was really upset when I declined to go. I tried to explain to her that it wasn't my place to act like the supplicant. To me, what was going to happen at this first meeting with Emily was the beginning of a long negotiation process. I didn't want to get it started with her dictating any of the terms. By the time I left on Sunday, Joyce and I were barely on speaking terms. She still thought I should do whatever I could to make this as easy on Emily as possible. I knew, from years of dealing with Emily, that this was the exact opposite of the negotiation posture that was needed. Emily didn't respect any kind of weakness. What was needed was for her to see that she wasn't in any position to start dictating any terms to me. It was Tuesday before I heard directly from Emily. She called me from Brenda's house to find out if I had received the wire transfer of her money from the bank in California. "Kenny, did you get that money I sent to you?" "Hello, Emily. Yes, I had Frank deposit it back into a new trading account I had him set up. As soon as I get things set up with some of my brokers, I'll start trading your account again." "I need to get one hundred thousand out of it. My mother called, and she said they're going to need to borrow that much from me. My father doesn't have anything he's working on right now, and they still need to keep up their lifestyle so that the people who give out the writing jobs don't think my father is desperate. If they thought that, they'd get him working on their scripts for a lot less money. That's how they do things in Hollywood." "It's your money, Emily. Go see Frank this afternoon. He'll give you a check." "Brenda and I are back together now. Would you be mad if we stay living where we are?" I knew she was feeling me out. I really doubted Brenda had agreed to doing that. I thought it much more likely that Emily wanted me to tell her I didn't mind, so that she could use that to strengthen her case in trying to talk Brenda into living there with her. "I wouldn't care, no. Joyce would care though. As far as I'm concerned, you can live at Brenda's for as long as you want. The same goes for Brenda. I do want all the children at my house whenever I'm back in town though." "You can come over and get them anytime, Kenny. I never said you couldn't see the children." "I'll send Joyce to get them on Friday then. She'll bring them back on Sunday night, after I leave. Tell Brenda I want Dwightee and April at the house too." "Don't you even want to see me, Kenny?" "Not particularly, Emily. I've been willing to try to get something worked out, for Joyce's sake, but I can't really say that I've missed having you around. I do miss Brenda though. Tell her to come over on Saturday morning. Tell her to plan on spending the night." I laughed when Emily hung up on me. I felt better now that the battle lines had been drawn. Each of us now knew, if anything was ever going to be worked out, it wasn't because either of us had any particular burning need to be back with the other. She might need to reconcile with me to have continued access to Brenda, while I might need to take her back in order to fulfill Joyce's hopes. I was approaching this like it was a reluctant merger or a hostile takeover in business. Everything I'd ever experienced with Emily was telling me that I needed to force her to accept my terms, to surrender herself to my will. Emily hated any weakness, so I was determined to show her none in me. I had been thinking about this situation ever since my meeting with Hans the week before. I knew that Emily would take my forgiveness of her as another sign of weakness. I had worked out a different strategy, one I really had hopes for. I wouldn't forgive her. Instead, I'd pretend I didn't care that much about anything she did, in the past, present, or future. I hoped, the less important she believed she was to me, the harder she'd try to change that. I'd seen her in the beginning with Brenda, and also those times when I tried to stay away from her when we both were young. It was only when I chased after her that she caused me any problems. I'd been thinking too about the fact that Emily had behaved much better through both of her pregnancies. At first, I thought it might be a body chemistry reaction she'd had. Later, after thinking about some of the things Emily had said while she was pregnant, I had realized what it really had been. She'd gotten very insecure about her looks while she was pregnant. That insecurity had led to her acting sweeter and less unreasonable around all of us. It was only a theory, but one I was starting to place a lot of faith in. I was going to see if I could bring Emily back by playing on her insecurities. One of her main insecurities had been in believing she could never successfully compete with Brenda for my affections. I was going to take advantage of that. I called Joyce that afternoon, telling her a little about what I had said to Emily. I told her that it was important that she go along with what I was planning. I was going to have a talk with Brenda too, but I would be doing it when Emily wasn't anywhere close by. As I'd anticipated, Joyce did her best to try to get me to reverse my course, to help her implement the plan she'd come up with. Her plan mostly was to keep giving Emily whatever she asked for, in order to make her feel good and decide, on her own, to come back to the family. We'd been using this same type of tactic with her from the very beginning. Joyce believed it had worked well enough. For many years, Emily and Brenda had been with us. All of us had been together. This was all Joyce had cared about. I couldn't explain to Joyce how Emily and Brenda's actions had impacted on me. Joyce only felt the impact of them leaving, not the part about them having sex with other men. She had nothing she needed to forgive them for. All she wanted was a return to happier days, and a family totally reunited. Those women hadn't betrayed and then left Joyce. They had left me, betrayed me. In some ways, Joyce and the two other women were more like sisters than lovers. Joyce was missing that part of it too. She wanted her family reunited. She wasn't interested in how it happened, just that it did. "Joyce, you need to listen to me on this. I know what I'm doing. You can be as friendly with Brenda and Emily as you want to be. If you can manage it, you're welcome to sleep with either or both of them, any time you want to. This last part has to be between Emily and me. I'm really trying to get her back in our family, but I need to do this my way. You haven't listened to me about the way I needed to do this. All you want is to get it done, and as soon as possible. I'm not worried about Brenda. I'm certain she'll end up doing what I tell her to do. This last part is about Emily. I can't just give into her to give you what you want. I can't do it. It wouldn't last, even if I did do it." "You always have a reason for doing whatever you want, Kenny. Why don't you do what I want this time and just get them back here? After they're both back here, then you can try whatever you want to try. Once they're back here again, they probably won't leave if you don't deliberately go out of your way to make Emily mad." "You just refuse to learn any lessons from these things, Joyce. If I bring her back the way you want me to, I'll end up giving Emily just what she wants. She'll have gotten away with everything she's done. I wouldn't mind that so much, not if that was all it was, but it would be bad for Emily, and it would almost certainly lead to a future incident that would mean her leaving us again. She'd be the same way she always was, and I don't want to keep needing to go through that with her. My way may not work, but we'd still end up with Brenda. I don't want Emily back if it has to be like it was before. If I end up forgiving her, she'll just find another way to try to take Brenda away from us again. I need to force her to give up on the idea of ever being able to keep Brenda for herself. I almost did it once, but I took pity on her, because I didn't want her suffering. If I'd stuck with my guns, a lot of this wouldn't have happened. Emily wants me to not forgive her. She thinks I'll end up letting her have Brenda like I've always done before." "Maybe you will this time too, Kenny. That's how it looks to me. This was all your idea, telling Brenda it was all right for her to stay at her house with Emily. If you hadn't said that, Emily would have had to come stay here with us." "Stop trying to use me to get what you want, Joyce. I'm really sick of you doing that. You weren't able to keep them together or to get them to come back. I'm almost there. As soon as I get Brenda and Emily back, I'll make one phone call and Eddie will come back home too. The way I look at this, you're pretty much dependent on me when it comes to getting our family back together. It only makes sense, if this is true, for you to let me do it my way." "We end up getting things done better when we both work on them together, Kenny. My way got Brenda and Emily to come back to Ridgeline. I had Mama's help, but a lot of things that happened, they were mostly my ideas." "You always needed me if you wanted to get them back in the family, Joyce. Don't try to fool me about that. I was always the most critical part of your plan. I've gone along with you for a lot of this, but I'm not doing that with Emily. If you won't let me do it my way, I'm not going to help you with Brenda, Eddie, or Emily." "I don't need your help with Eddie. She already wants to come back." "Okay, Joyce. Do it your way. I won't be coming home for a few weeks. Let's try to keep in touch though, because I'll be real curious to see how this all turns out. Feel free to get in touch with Cindy and Dale and invite them to come stay with you without me too." "I didn't mean with everything, Kenny. I just meant Eddie. She was already planning on coming back. That's all I meant when I said that." "You can't have it both ways, Joyce. I know you really believe your plan is the best, but you're wrong. I know that, because I know I couldn't live with it. The only reason for me doing anything to get Brenda and Emily back is because I know how much it would mean to you. Even when they do come back, it will be more for you, and for having all the children back together again. Things won't ever be the same between Emily, Brenda, Eddie, and me. I'm sorry for that, but it's true. I plan on trying to make them be as good as they can be, but they won't be the same. I've changed. I hope I'm growing up, but whether that's it or not, I've changed." "You never planned on forgiving them, did you?" "It isn't about forgiveness. It never was. It's always been about what was best for this family. You believe all of us being back together is what's best. Some of the other wives just want to go back to living the happy lifestyle we had before. Eddie and Cindy are the ones who care more for the lifestyle than they do about all of us being together. All of us want to be happy again, even Emily. We just have different things we need to make us happy." "You're doing this your way just so you'll be happy?" "Of course. I'll only be happy when all the children are back together, and you're happy, Shirley's happy, and all the other wives are happy too. Even Emily. Emily doesn't need me forgiving her to be happy. Brenda probably does though. Plus, Brenda needs Emily, and Emily needs Brenda, for either of them to be happy." "That doesn't answer my question, Kenny. Is that why you're doing this your way?" "What answer do you expect me to give? This isn't just me being selfish. You think Emily will come back to us just to be with Brenda. I can almost guarantee you that, if I didn't interfere, Emily would do her best to make sure that none of the other wives got to have sex with Brenda again. The only way she won't try to make it that way is if she's convinced she might be the one left out and not having any contact with Brenda. Every single time Emily wins one fight, she immediately picks another. She wants what she wants, just like you do. What she wants doesn't include you, Joyce. It doesn't include any of the other wives except Brenda. She put up with that before, because I'd convinced her that she had to. She got Brenda back all to herself the other times she convinced Brenda to leave. She isn't going to be easy to convince that it shouldn't be like that now too. She'll keep trying to make it like that if you do what you were planning." "I don't agree." "Well, I'm not going to do what you want, just to prove that you're wrong. I'll stick with my own plan, because I know I'm right. I'm not telling you that you can't try to get them to come live at the house. The only thing I'm saying is that you need to let me deal with Emily my own way." "You promised me we'd all be together." "I know what I promised, Joyce. I didn't say we'd all be together the way you wanted it to happen, just that it would happen. Emily might take awhile, but if you really want me to do it, I'll tell Brenda she needs to move back to our house, and bring our children with her." "If you do that, Emily might go back to California." "You know something, Joyce? For being so smart, you sure do think stupid when it comes to Emily. She came here because Brenda was here. Why would she leave again without her? She wants Brenda. Like anyone else, she wants to make the best deal she possibly can. Some people, you can let them have any deal they want, but not Emily. The better the deal is that you give her, the more she wants it improved. What you want to do just plays into her hands. Right now, she thinks she can get you to let her live alone with Brenda, and have me come over a few nights a month to have sex with her and Brenda. She thinks she's going to get this deal too, as long as she can negotiate it through you." "I wouldn't agree to us doing it like that on any long term basis." "Emily doesn't know that. She probably thinks doing it once is enough to establish the precedent for doing it forever. She doesn't want you and Shirley. She doesn't want Eddie and Dale. She doesn't want Cindy. I know she wants Brenda, because she always has wanted her. I think she wants me. Maybe this is because she loves me, but maybe it's only because Brenda wants me, and she needs me there to keep Brenda happy. I'm not sure how much Brenda wants some of the other wives, but I know she wants you, and I know she has always wanted me. She needs Emily too though. Because of what you want, and because of what Brenda needs, we need Emily too." "Emily knows we all love her." "No, she thinks we all do. She thinks we need her. My job is going to be to convince her I'm serious about taking Brenda away from her and then letting Emily go wherever she wants to. If she really believes that, she'll start wanting to please me. She'll start loving me again, and will end up being as reasonable as Emily ever gets. She first needs to see that she has no other way to get any of what she wants and needs." "My old Kenny wouldn't even think of doing that to her." "Well, that just shows how little you know. I did do it to her before, when we were kids. It worked too, until I stopped doing it, and let her off the hook. I made a mistake by relenting, and I've been paying for that mistake ever since. We've all been paying, because, if I hadn't relented, Emily would have stayed sweet, and tried her best to get all of us to love her." "Was this when Emily told you about Brenda sleeping with her brother?" "That was when I started being mean to her, but it was later, when I forgave her, that all my troubles with her started. Later it became the whole family's troubles. She was very sweet to me, until I forgave her." "You were what, fifteen years old? That was a long time ago, Kenny. We've all changed since then." "Call over to Brenda's house and tell Brenda I want her and the children back living at our house. Tell her if she has any questions, she needs to call me here." "I don't want you using me to hurt Emily, Kenny. That's how she'll see things if I went and did what you want." "If you don't do it, I might have to make my own deal with Emily. I could tell her that she and Brenda can stay monogamous with each other if they move back in with us. I wouldn't really mind if two of my wives didn't want to have to sleep with any of the rest." "If that would bring them both back, Kenny, I could live with our doing that." I knew she was bluffing. I could tell she didn't believe those words, even as she spoke them. She was reacting to what she saw as me threatening her. In our past, she had been the main one doing most of the threatening. Whenever I'd made threats to her, I usually didn't end up following through with them. I wanted Joyce to know that the way she'd chosen to bring Emily and Brenda back would give Emily all the choices. I wanted her to see and understand that without me needing to threaten her. "Even without my making it part of any deal, Joyce, with the way you seem determined to give Emily all that she asks for, that's how it will end up being. Emily only shared Brenda with the other wives before because she had to. If no one else objects to what Emily will start demanding, Brenda will probably go along with whatever Emily asks for. She isn't into doing things with girls as much as you are. I know Shirley wouldn't object either. If you could really live with it, why don't we just go ahead and do that then?" "You're forgetting about Eddie and Dale. You're forgetting about Cindy too." "I'm not worried about Eddie. I don't really care about what she'd think. Cindy won't care, and Dale probably wouldn't either, not as long as none of the other wives were sleeping with Emily and Brenda. You're the only one I'm worried about as far as being upset if you aren't able to sleep with either Brenda or Emily. You say you could live with it, so I say why not let Emily have what she wants?" "Brenda wouldn't go along with Emily telling her not to sleep with me." "Suit yourself. Remember later who it was that said you were making a big mistake." "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to tell Emily that she can move back in, and that it will just be her and me that get to fuck Brenda. That's what she wants. She won't mind living with all of us as long as you girls stay away from her woman." "Tell me again about this other plan you have. How long do you think it would take?" "It wouldn't take that long if you would call Brenda and tell her what I said to tell her. The reason Emily dropped everything and rushed back to Ridgeline was because Brenda was telling her about all the things she was doing with us. With Brenda back at our house, she'll know it will be continuing. She'll know then that she needs to try to get things settled so she gets to spend her share of time with Brenda too." "Are you sure Brenda will come back to the house if I tell her you said she should?" "No, I'm not sure. That's why I told you to have her call me if she has any questions. I'm sure I can talk her into doing it if I talk to her about it." "The only reason I'm going to do it is because I know things wouldn't work the other way you said. There is only one of you, Kenny. That isn't enough for all of us." "Maybe I could bring in another guy to help me with Eddie, Dale, Emily, Brenda and Cindy. I know I wouldn't ever be able to share you and Shirley. Maybe just Eddie, Brenda and Emily. I think I could take care of all the rest of you if you were doing things with each other." "Would you really let another man fuck the three of them?" "I might. I told you things have changed, Joyce. If it wasn't for you, I'm pretty sure I could live without all three of them. I know I could if I could get custody of those children." I heard a sharp intake of breath over the phone line. When Joyce spoke again, she kind of sounded like she might be crying. "Don't say that. Never say that around any of them, Kenny. God, don't even think that way. You can't just write them off like that." "You're doing it again, Joyce. You keep contradicting what I'm saying. I just told you I thought I could do that. The situation has changed since I first got sick. I couldn't have done it before that, and I didn't have any reason why I'd want to. Now I have some reasons." "You can't tear our family apart just because you're mad at those girls. You promised me you'd bring us all back together again." "I was willing to do that, but it needs to be done my way. You aren't in charge of negotiating with them, I am. What you want to happen will only come about when I'm ready for it to do so." "You're taking away one of the most important things we had together, Kenny. You never stopped me from helping make decisions that concerned me before you got sick." "That isn't really true, Joyce. What you really mean was, when I tried to do that, you always found a way to get around me and have it your way. It isn't going to be like that with us anymore. I'm not going to live with making myself unhappy just so you can get what you want. If I can give you what you want, without making myself too upset and unhappy, I will. I know doing it your way with Emily and Brenda will upset me. I'm not going to do that." "Suppose I can make a deal with them, one where they come back to us and we all still get to sleep together? Just like we did before." "Make your deal for you, Joyce. Leave me out of it. I'll make my own deal with them. Eddie too. If you can make a deal with them that doesn't include me, then go right ahead." "I wouldn't make that kind of deal. Why would I?" "I have no idea why you would. I don't have any idea why you would believe you can negotiate with Emily better than I can. You have absolutely nothing she wants or needs. Why would she make any concessions for you? She wants to negotiate with me through you. She knows you want her back more than I do." We spent another hour going back and forth. Nothing got changed. She still believed her way of doing things was the best, and had the highest probability of getting Emily and Brenda to move back in with us. She wouldn't believe me when I told her it would only be temporary. After we ended the call, my own mind was still made up. I'd meant what I told her. It was my decision, and I'd make it in a way that satisfied me. I wasn't afraid of losing Emily or Brenda. Even if they both took off and moved thousands of miles away, it wouldn't have been that hard of a blow for me to absorb. I was still dealing with the fact that we were already separated. I had grown used to it, had accepted the fact of it. If I was going to lose them, I wanted it to be over something worthwhile I was trying to get from them both. I knew they both wanted more from me. I wanted more from them too, but on my terms, not theirs. If it couldn't be on my terms, then I knew it would never be on Emily's. The stumbling block for me was with the problems me compromising with her would create. I couldn't do that, compromise directly with Emily, but I might be able to grant concessions to Joyce, or to some of my other wives. It just couldn't be me giving in to Emily. I flew to Bolling on Friday afternoon. Joyce and I had talked more, but neither of us brought up Emily or Brenda. When I got to the house at seven thirty, the first person we saw was Eddie. She was standing in the doorway with a big happy smile on her face. Dale saw her before I did, and was out of the limo in a hurry, running over to greet her sister as quickly as she could manage to do so. Cindy and I got out of the back, then I went around to the front to tell Hans that we'd need another ride on Sunday, at around three in the afternoon. When he drove off, I went over and greeted Eddie too. Joyce and Shirley had joined all of us out on the front porch, and everybody was excited, trying to talk over the other conversations taking place. I got tired of carrying my suitcase and went inside to drop it off. Everyone followed me into the house. We were all in the living room as Joyce told us the story of how Eddie had decided to come for a surprise visit. I was glad to see her, but I didn't believe it had been a spontaneous decision on her part. I knew Joyce was worried about what I'd said about being willing to do without Eddie, Emily, and Brenda. We were all still talking at about ten o'clock when I announced I was tired and was going to turn in. I think they were all surprised when I failed to invite any of them to join me. I was halfway to the staircase before Joyce spoke up. "Who do you want to sleep with you tonight, Kenny?" "No one tonight, Joyce. I've got some thinking to do, and I'd prefer to do it alone." I saw her frowning as I said that, but I turned and resumed heading over to the staircase. I knew they'd all sit around talking to each other, trying to find out why I was acting like I was. I knew that Eddie being there was a sure sign that Joyce hadn't given up on trying to put the family back together her way. I would have bet that she had been talking quite a bit to Brenda and Emily. Brenda wasn't in evidence in the house, and she hadn't called me in Birmingham either. I knew I'd find out soon enough what Joyce had planned for me. It had been easy enough for Hans to tell me to make my own decisions. The problem I had was in having those decisions respected and acted upon. It was never easy deciding something that affected so many other people. I didn't think Hans realized that. I'd created a big problem by my past actions, usually allowing Joyce to override my wishes about family things. Of course, she had liked being able to do that. She had grown so used to doing it that she didn't usually think about how I might react to her having done so. It wasn't something she was likely to give up doing anytime soon, just because I told her she must. I'd have to demonstrate to her that I really meant it this time. I wasn't sure how she'd react to it. Upstairs in my bedroom, I locked the door, got undressed, and went to bed. I heard someone trying to open the door at about one thirty, but they didn't say anything, just jiggled the door handle a few times before leaving. I smiled to myself in the dark and went back to sleep. So far, so good. In the morning, I went into the playroom and found all twelve of my children waiting for me. With them were all my wives as well, including Emily and Brenda. I understood immediately that this was Joyce's second move to make things go the way she had set them up. In a way, I had to admire her cleverness. By doing this now, it wasn't going to be a first meeting between Emily and me that was on either my terms, or Emily's. It was the first time in longer than I wanted to think about that all my wives and all my children were together with me in the same room. Joyce had been correct in her thinking. I could say whatever I wanted to, but seeing all of them together like that had already affected me emotionally. She'd been counting on that. I knew Joyce. She already had planned out exactly what she thought would take place from this point forward. I had to hand it to her. I was quite a bit more emotional at seeing all of them together than I ever thought I'd be. Her problem was that she was laying emotional traps designed to work on her old Kenny. I wasn't that person any longer. Had I still been him, I would have gone along with whatever she had planned. I wouldn't have stood a chance. As it was, it still ended up taking me a few moments to get my emotions back under control again. The first thing I did was move over to my children, giving a big hug and warm greeting to both Tony and Sissy. As it had been with Dwightee and April, I was surprised by the amount of change in my children's appearance since I'd last seen them. Emily looked different too. She'd cut her hair shorter and had gotten it permed or something. It looked to me like her hair was just a shade or two darker than I remembered it being too. I'd always loved Emily's straight hair, thinking it was one of her most attractive features. Now it was in tight curls like her brother's again. "I was expecting to see you here last night, Brenda. Didn't you get my message from Joyce? I didn't try to keep the resentment of my question out of the way I spoke the words to her. I wanted all of them to know I wasn't happy, and that this little surprise Joyce had cooked up wasn't going to deflect that fact. Most of all, I wanted Joyce to know she'd be getting absolutely no cooperation out of me in putting forward this plan of hers. None at all. I knew then that I needed to send her a strong message about her continuing refusal to handle things the way I told her I wanted them to be handled. "We thought you'd be too tired anyway last night, Kenny. Besides, we're all here now. Doesn't Emily look good?" Brenda could already see that Joyce's idea wasn't having the desired effect on me. The room was quiet after Brenda's question, except for the children. I looked over at Emily again, but made no comment, ignoring the question Brenda had asked. I went over to Derek and Bunny and asked them if they'd been practicing their golf. Disappointed, and having many other emotions of their own, the wives stood around talking softly with each other as I ignored them by limiting my attention to the children. After a few minutes, all the wives had drifted out of the playroom, except for Joyce. "We could have had everything settled by this morning if you hadn't decided to act like this, Kenny. Nobody wanted any more fighting with you. We're all tired of fighting and worrying. Why can't you just let everything be over with so we can get back to how it used to be?" "I'm not fighting, and I'm not worrying, Joyce. I can see that you've decided to keep on with this plan of yours, and you aren't going to be satisfied until you've seen for yourself that it ends up not working. Well, go right ahead. Don't listen to me, just do whatever you feel like doing, in spite of what I told you I needed from you. So far, from where I'm sitting, all I see is you've managed to get everybody here at the same time. None of the problems are solved or resolved in any way, but we're all here. Why do you think that's enough?" "We can get it all resolved, Kenny. All you have to do is act happy to see everyone and stop making people feel so unwelcome. Why can't you be the one who decides to end the hurting? It would be the easiest if you just acted nice and told everyone you were glad to have them all back here again." "I could do that, Joyce, it wouldn't even be hard for me to do it. I would do it too, if I thought that was all it would take for us to resolve things and go back to our old lives. I'm thinking that Emily would really like it if we did that. It would send her a clear message, one that said to her that there are absolutely never any risks or consequences for any behavior she might decide she wanted to do. I don't believe that's true. I'm already pretty sure what she already has done is going to end up changing our relationship more than it can survive being changed. I don't mean I think it will end things between us forever, but it will certainly change them, and some of those changes might end up being permanent. I need Emily worried enough to be willing to accept the changed nature of any future relationship we might have together. The last straw for me was her coming back here, and still trying to get her way with deciding how things are going to be. Well, she might have some chance of deciding that with you, but she won't get that from me. This thing you're doing now, it's all right with me as long as you weren't expecting any help with it from me. If you did expect my help, or if you're going to need it for your plan to work, then you've gone ahead and done something I told you I wasn't going to let you do." "It's all solved right now, Kenny. Emily and Brenda are both ready to move back in. I've talked to both of them, and they said nothing else needs to change. It will be just like it was before you got sick. Everyone is already here. Shirley says that Emily and Brenda can even have their old rooms back. It will be just like it was before." It really angered me that Joyce had gotten Shirley to agree to give up her new rooms. I was sure it was a concession that Emily had asked for. I was getting very angry. It was becoming obvious that Emily now believed she had gotten the upper hand somehow. Her belief would make negotiating anything with her that much more difficult. I was going to have to shock her more than I had planned on. In spite of what she believed, Joyce had made Emily's rejoining our family much more problematical. I knew, if I told her that, she'd have a whole host of reasons why I was mistaken in thinking so. "All solved except for one little thing, Joyce. I won't be here. I don't know what I needed to do to convince you that I was serious about not letting you do this to me anymore. Either I was going to negotiate with them, or no one was. Right now, all I'm going to do is spend some time with all my children. You women can do whatever you decide you want to do together, but none of it involves me for the rest of my visit here. I'll be the one who decides what involves me, not you." I watched her back as she marched off out of the playroom to go seek out the others. Her first plan had just gone up in smoke. I knew Joyce though, and she'd have other plans for a contingency such as this occurring. I was beginning to think my main battle was going to be with Joyce, not Emily. I spent the rest of the morning out in the backyard with my children. Bertie, Bunny and Derek all played together, Dwightee and April seemed more comfortable associating with Tony and Sissy than with any of the other children. The younger twins and their sister, Gwen, Joyce's and my youngest child, were staying close to Leah and Becky, in effect forming a third little social clique, a closed off little social unit all their own. It looked to me as if my children were letting themselves get fragmented off from each other too. It was another price we were paying for all the discord that had been created since my illness. I really did want to get things settled, but I was already starting to be afraid that things had gone too far to get put back to how they had been. Children don't unlearn certain biases they've picked up. I didn't think the children would ever revert to the previous closeness they'd had with each other. Several times while I was out in the back yard with them, I'd heard one of the children tell another that "your" mom wants you to do this. In the past, they had always referred to "Mama Joyce", "Mama Shirley" or "Mama Brenda". It was as if all the mothers were interchangeable with each other to them. That was now changed, and probably forever. Our children had lost something precious and irreplaceable. It was depressing to me. After lunch, I stayed in my home office, pretending to be absorbed with all the trading summaries I hadn't had a chance to look over closely, not for the past few months of trading activity. At three o'clock, Emily quietly let herself into my office, carefully shutting the door again behind her. We spoke together for about twenty minutes. The gist of what she was telling me was that she had let herself be talked into coming over like she had by both Brenda and Joyce. She had only done so because she hoped they were right, that her coming over here would help end the situation we now found ourselves in. "Well, it worked, Em. It's ended things as far as I'm concerned. All I can think of that's left is for Brenda to decide which of us she wants to be with from now on. I've decided I don't want you living back here with us. You're too much trouble, and I don't think we could ever make it work with the two of us trying to share Brenda. I don't want to share her with you." "I already knew you were going to be like this, Kenny. I don't know why I even tried. I knew you were going to make this a fight over Brenda too. You never really loved me." "I can tell you why you tried, if you really want to keep pretending that you don't know. You tried because you knew that trying was the only way you were ever going to have any chance to get back to being with Brenda. I've given you a week to be with her already. You can have one more week, but that's really it. You can use this remaining time to try to convince her she should choose to stay with you. After that, she can either come back here, without you, or else she can stay with you. If she decides to stay with you, she can never be a part of my life again." "You're not doing what you promised you would. You said you'd forgive me. You told Brenda you'd let me tell you all that happened, and then you'd punish me and forgive me." "I do forgive you for what you did before. I don't even want to know all of it. I don't want to punish you for it either. What I can't forgive you for though is what you're trying to do now, and for what I know you'll keep doing later if I let you back in our family. You wanted me to forgive you? I do. I just don't want you with me any more. I'm speaking for myself, not for Joyce or any of the other wives. You can work out any deal with them you want to, except for Brenda. With her, it has to be either you or me, not both. You can either stay here in Ridgeline, or else you can go anywhere you want to. I don't care where you go." "Would it make any difference to you if I got rid of the baby? I could get an abortion. There's still plenty of time to do that safely." "No. I don't have anything against you having another baby. It's you that I have the problem with. You've decided you want to be able to act a certain way. That's fine, but I don't want to be around someone who acts that way. I've concluded that you aren't going to change. I don't care to be associated with anyone who thinks like you do. I've given this a lot of thought, Emily. My decision is final. When you leave, please ask Brenda to come join me in here. I'm going to tell her what I've decided too." Emily left right after that. Of course, she was crying. Instead of Brenda coming in, all the wives came into my office. It was about ten minutes after Emily had gone off to tell Brenda I wanted to see her. All of them were crying or angry when they came in. Naturally, they all wanted to take a turn yelling at me. All I tried to do to stop them was have them all shut up so that each one could have their turn, one at a time. Joyce went first. I answered her questions and listened to her thoughts on what I'd decided, and on what I'd said to Emily. She became frustrated when she couldn't think of any other names to use to describe my unreasonable behavior towards Emily and the rest of our family. She gave up on finding any new names to call me, after a minute or two of searching through her rather extensive vocabulary. Next, it was Brenda's turn. In effect, she was telling me that I wasn't being fair to Emily, and, because of that, I was going to end up forcing her away from the family too. I told her I was leaving the choice up to her, but, I also told her whatever she ended up choosing would need to be a permanent decision. I told her to take another week before telling me her final decision. Eddie was the next one to speak. I had been right that Joyce had discussed what I'd said about the relationship between us being changed. I told her that she was welcome to rejoin the family whenever she chose to. I also told her that our relationship had been changed by her actions, and by her response to the family's situation afterwards. I told her I didn't know whether those changes would end up causing any permanent changes or not. Joyce had thought of more things she wanted to say to me. One of these things was that she wasn't sure she wanted to stay married to a man who would destroy a whole family because his feelings had gotten hurt. I told her that I was sorry she felt that way, but it was her decision to make, just like what I had decided to do with Emily and Brenda had been my decision to make. "People can't decide these kinds of things for other people, not when the other people are adults, Joyce. I'm not telling you what you should do about Emily, only what I'm going to be doing about her. I am telling Brenda she needs to make a choice between us, but I'm not telling her which one of us she has to choose." Shirley was next. She'd been crying as much as any of the others. I hadn't thought she'd be too upset with my decision, but she obviously was. Her main point was that I was only thinking of myself. I told her she was right about that, but I had been advised by each of them to do just that. I was simply following their advice. Cindy told me that she wasn't trying to tell me what to do, but, she didn't think I'd be very happy making so many other people unhappy. I told her that I thought Emily would only be unhappy if Brenda decided to stay with me. I admitted that I knew some of the other wives would be unhappy because we were losing Emily, and maybe Brenda too, but, I thought it was time to admit that there were too many deep rooted problems between Emily and me. Problems I no longer believed could be either fixed or further tolerated. Joyce thought of some new names she wanted to call me, and then told everyone how I'd promised her we'd have all of our family back together. Shirley broke in on Joyce's statement to say that she'd heard me make that same promise. Dale didn't want to say anything. "We might have been able to work something out, but none of the people involved listened to what any of the others were saying. I've been saying for a long time that I really believed we needed to do this the right way. The right way, in this case, is whichever way I decide it has to be. I'm the one who was treated badly by wives who broke their promises to me. A week or so ago, I had no problems with any of the wives except Emily. Eddie had decided she wanted to wait and see how things turned out before coming back. I had no problem with her doing that. I was getting along just fine with Dale and Cindy, and Shirley and I were getting along very nicely as well. Joyce and I were talking everyday, and we were getting along better than we had been. Brenda had come back, and she and I were working our things out too. The only hitch came when Emily decided to come back to visit Brenda. Emily wants things to be her way, and it isn't ever going to happen. Joyce wants to give in to Emily's demands, but I won't allow that. Brenda doesn't want to have to make a choice between us, but now she has to." "I didn't ask you for anything, Kenny. I don't know why you keep saying I'm causing problems. I came here to see Brenda, like you said. Brenda and I talked about some things, and Joyce and I talked about what might need to happen if we all wanted to get back together again. If there's a problem here, then I think you have it." Emily was showing her anger. She never liked being told she was a problem, or the cause of any problems. "Why did you come back, Emily? Just for a visit? I don't believe that. I do believe you want Brenda. We all believe that's true. Brenda told us she has already chosen to come back to us. I told you that you can have another week to try to change her mind about that. I never asked her to leave you and come back here. Brenda has always chosen to come back to me herself. I let her go before, when she chose to go with you. I knew she might change her mind and want to come back. You should do the same, now that she's made another choice. If she ever decides she made a mistake, I'm sure she'll go back to you." "I'd rather live with both of you, Kenny. Joyce and all of us want that. If you don't take Emily back, she won't have anyone else. She's my best friend. I don't want her to be all alone." Brenda had stopped crying. She was paying closer attention to what was being said, now that her name was being mentioned. "It isn't going to happen again, Brenda. I won't keep on fighting for you with Emily. You know what we have here, and you know what you have when you're living with Emily. You need to choose between us. I'll tell you something else that might make it easier for you to make that choice. It doesn't matter that much to me anymore which one of us you end up choosing. I do care that you think about what you really want before you go ahead and make your choice. I've had to start making some hard decisions, because no one else was able to get anything I could live with worked out. With the single exception of Emily, the rest of you are still welcome to come live with me, to be my wives again." Most of the women had stopped crying. Some seemed shocked and upset by my words. Some, mostly Emily, Joyce and Eddie were visibly angry about what I'd said. Brenda was now crying again. She didn't seem one of the angry ones though, just upset. The three of us were right back to where we'd been ten years before, with Brenda once again being told that she had to choose between Emily and me. I saw Eddie and Dale, back by the door, arguing about something. Dale opened the door and Eddie walked through it. Dale closed it again, then came back to where all of the remaining wives were standing around me. "Eddie says she's going back home. I told her that I'm staying." I could see that Joyce's first reaction was to go try to talk Eddie out of leaving. Like me though, she too had her own priorities. Eddie was important to her, but Emily and Brenda were well beyond simply being important to her. She had told me many times that she wouldn't be happy without both women being back living with us again. "Eddie is free to do that. You can tell her she's always welcome to come back for visits. Is there anything else somebody wants to say to me? Any other names you thought of that you wanted to call me?" I was looking right at Joyce when I asked this. She knew I was speaking to her. She didn't say anything further. When no one spoke up, I picked up my trading statements and went back to my reading. I hadn't been as calm as I'd tried to make it seem. The meeting had gone pretty much as I thought it would. I'd alienated all of them to some extent I thought. I hoped and expected that they would all decide to band together. I needed all of them to be together about not wanting this announced decision of mine to stand. As they were leaving I gave them one further, final comment to discuss amongst themselves. "I'm feeling kind of horny today. Why don't you guys pick a name out of a hat or something? Winner gets to sleep with me tonight." I savored the looks of loathing that comment had brought out from all six of them. I wouldn't have to work very hard to show them a nicer, more reasonable side, not after this meeting I'd just had with them. I stayed shut up in my office until ten thirty that evening. When I went up to bed, I knew one of two things would happen. Either my bedroom would be empty, and my plan would have totally failed, or else Emily would be in my room, naked, and under the covers, prepared to sacrifice her all to show me she really wanted another chance. Either she'd be in there, prepared to fully submit herself to my will, or else my little plan would have blown up in my face. I was quietly confident that Emily would be in my bed. Once again I was wrong. I looked at Brenda standing naked by my bed. "I wanted to say goodbye, Kenny." She broke down in tears when she told me that, and then ran over to me, throwing her arms around my neck. You had to hand it to Joyce. It would have been simpler to have sent up Emily, or else no one. Sending Brenda, and having her say that to me, that was genius. Once again the stakes had been raised up. I had dealt the cards, and I was planning on playing until the bitter end. What Brenda had told me was terrible news indeed. It was made even more upsetting for me when I realized I had meant what I'd told all the wives. I had made my decision, just like Hans had advised me to do. Now, I was going to have to live with it. I walked Brenda over to my bed and held the covers up for her to slide in first. I had a terrible time trying to achieve and maintain my erection. This was something I'd never been troubled with before. I believed I had Emily to thank for that too. The hole she was digging for herself just kept getting deeper. ------- Chapter 80 All our attempts to produce a usable erection allowing me to have going away sex with Brenda had failed. I'd get some slight rise from her efforts to excite me, but nothing near firm enough to do her any good. I don't believe Brenda had even considered the possibility that any man or boy could be around her for very long and not spring a "woody". I can guarantee you that it had never happened to me before. When she started crying again, this time in frustration over what she considered her personal failure, I made her stop all her attempts at trying to raise the dead. I managed to coax her back up so that I could hold her in my arms. We started talking together. Brenda told me that she had announced her decision to remain with Emily, in front of all the other wives, but it had simply been an impulsive decision on her part, one meant to bolster the flagging spirits of Emily. Brenda told me again that she didn't want Emily to be left all alone, but then she reaffirmed her earlier decision to come live with me and resume being my wife again. "Brenda, you can't keep changing back and forth, depending on who you are with at the time. I'm not going to let you come back again if you decide to leave me and go back with Emily. I'm not Emily, I'd never go to where you are living just to try to get you to come back to me." "I know you wouldn't. I wouldn't expect you to. I know what I need to be doing, what I want to be doing. It's just hard because I also know how Emily is going to be feeling when I tell her I've decided I need to be with you. Kenny, if there's any way you can do it, please reconsider about letting Emily come back to live with all of us. She needs to be here more than all the rest of us do." "She doesn't need to be here. In fact, I doubt that she even wants to be here. What she wants is to be with you. Maybe, if she had a chance to make her ideal choice, she'd want to be with both of us, but not with any of the other wives. The best she's ever managed was to tolerate them doing things with you." "She promised Joyce that she would be good, and not make any fuss about what I did with any of the other wives. She can't help it that she gets jealous. I can't stand the idea of her being all alone, Kenny. I just don't want to do that to her." "You don't have to do it. I never said you had to decide to stay here with us, Brenda. I've always understood that you and Emily have a very special friendship. The problem I'm having is really just with Emily, not with you. I'm sorry you're caught in the middle, but you are, and I need to get things settled with Emily. The way she came back here and then immediately tried to take you back from us, that showed me she really didn't come back to settle anything with our family. I can't keep on letting her return to a situation she's always going to be unhappy being in. It just doesn't work well for any of us." "It wasn't all Emily's fault, Kenny. Joyce and I were both telling her that we'd make things better for her after she came back and got everything worked out with you. We both told her you wanted her back. A lot of what happened was because she was afraid to face you and tell you about that Harold guy, and the possibility that she might be pregnant. She knew you were going to be upset, even after we told her what you told us to tell her. She told me that the only way you wouldn't be upset would be if you had stopped loving her. She didn't want to see you and take a chance that you'd tell her that." "Emily doesn't fit in with this whole multiple wives idea we've worked out. She wants one husband, and you. She isn't going to give up on having that as long as she believes it might happen for her. She probably decided I wasn't ever going to be that husband, so she's been trying to find someone else to fill the role. I've thought about everything that's happened, and, I've decided, as long as she still believes she has any chance at all of getting what she wants, she'll keep going after it. Maybe she should have what she wants. I can afford to let you go off with her, Brenda. Joyce will be real upset it that happens, but I'll go out and find her someone else that she can get excited about." "Don't make me leave too, Kenny. I really promise that I won't ever leave you again. I need to be here with you. I really did come back here because I needed to be here. Dwightee and April need to be here too. There were so many things we all missed. I never felt safe out in California. Some of those people, they'd come up and say things to me, or else they'd put their hands on me like I was just an object, and it was okay for them to touch me. I'm used to people looking at me, that doesn't bother me usually. I don't like people I don't even know coming up and talking to me, or reaching out and touching me. I'm not some children's doll. I'm a real person." "I'm not going to make you leave, Brenda. You have to make your own decision about what you want to do. I only want to tell you one more thing, and it's just something for you to think about. I'm not trying to tell you what you should do. I've known Emily almost as long as you have. I've paid close attention to how she acts at different times. The stronger she feels her position is, the less reasonable and cooperative she becomes. She's always been like that. Whenever things were going really well with the two of us, she'd pick a fight, or demand something I couldn't or wouldn't give her. Whenever I gave up and stopped trying to be with her, she'd turn sweet again and make me want to be with her some more. She does the same thing with you. Remember how you used to treat her when we were kids? You'd let her eat your pussy, but you wouldn't eat hers? She'd come over and clean your room for you, and you know how much she hated housework. She'd always do what she had to do to be with us." "She always loved me though, even when we were fighting, or when I treated her so mean in school and told everyone she was queer for girls." "I'm certain she loves you, Brenda. She wouldn't have come all the way back here if she didn't. It isn't that she doesn't love me either, because I'm sure she does. The thing is, she's got it into her head that she can have you all to herself, without any other women, as long as she lets you have sex with another man too. She doesn't think she can accomplish that now, not if the other man is me. She's right about that. I won't ever do what she wants. As long as you are willing to be with her, she'll keep trying to create the lifestyle she dreams of having." "What happens once I tell her I'm staying with the family? What happens to Emily then?" "I can't be one hundred percent sure what will happen. She might suffer for awhile and then decide to go out and find another man and woman to fulfill her dreams. She might decide that she needs to keep trying to take you away from us again. What I'm hoping will happen is that she will begin to understand that the best she can ever hope for is to share you and me with all the other wives. If she decides she wants to do that, we have to make sure she understands that she will have to leave again if she starts trying to talk you into going off with her again." "You'd let her come back if she promises not to cause problems?" Brenda was all excited again. I could see her face lighting up with the happiness she now felt. "No. That isn't what I said. What I said was Emily has to have some time to decide what she is going to do, after you tell her that you've decided on staying with us. She could decide lots of different things when that happens. If she decides she doesn't want to find substitutes for you and me, and then decides she's willing to accept things the way they will be in our family, then I might be talked into considering everyone else's pleas for letting her come back to be with us. I won't make it fast or easy for her, and it can't be me that decides it's all right and invites her back. It has to seem like I'm still very much against the idea. I can't even be the one who was willing to listen to her come pleading for another chance. It won't work unless all the other wives came to me and actually convince me that I need to give Emily one more last chance to prove that she's learned her lesson and really has changed her ways. Even that wouldn't be enough unless she knows she'd be gone forever if she ever did anything to cause us these same kinds of problems again." "Is it okay with you if I give Emily some of my money, Kenny? The way she's been spending it and loaning it out, she'll be broke soon." "That isn't necessary, Brenda. I'm trading her money now, and I'm pretty sure she won't run out of having plenty of money to live comfortably on. I might have to slow her down some about her constantly lending all that money to her parents though." "What does Emily have to do to convince you she's changed?" "She has to change. I can't tell you what she has to do specifically, because I don't know. I'll know when the time comes, if it ever does. If you say anything to her about what I've said to you, she'll start pretending she's changed, but it won't fool me if she tries that. Remember, giving her hope now just makes it less likely she'll ever really change the way she needs to. The only way Emily will ever really change is after she has lost all hope. That's how she always has been. If she really believes all hope is gone, she might be willing to accept the need to make those changes. It's important that she initiate those changes herself, and that she do it because she finds out she really can't accept the idea of our not being in her life anymore. You'll need to be strong. I know what I'm talking about, Brenda, because I had to do that too in order to have any chance to get my family back together." "I don't know if I can be strong around her, Kenny. I really do love her now. Other than you, and both our children, and my parents too, when I was little, she's the only other person I've ever really loved that much. It isn't because of the sex thing either. She just has loved me so much. She always has. Even when I was being so mean to her. You never loved me after you found out I did those bad things, but she always did. If you think it might work, I'll do my best to not say anything about what you've told me needs to happen." At some point while we were talking, my ability to achieve and sustain an erection returned. We were both on our sides, facing each other, when my dick made contact with Brenda's leg. She moved back at first, a little startled by it, but moved right in close to it again once she realized what it had been that touched her. It didn't take very long for the two of us to wrap up our serious conversation and begin to deal with the stiff problem that had arisen between us. Sex is always good. Make up sex is usually a lot better that regular good sex. Make up sex when you are coming back from the edge of a relationship ending precipice, is incredible. There aren't words to describe the intense feelings. It seems like every nerve ending is awake and on fire. You want it to go on and on, but it feels too exquisite to last beyond the time it takes to make the connection between your head, your heart, and your balls. When you cum though, it all empties out of you. You become incapable of holding anything back. We both ended up sleeping well that night. I'd dozed off with me still on top of her, my partially erect prick still buried semi-deeply inside her. I remember almost waking up again when she pushed her way out from beneath me. It might have been a few seconds after I nodded off, or it might have been an hour or more. I couldn't tell you. I slept better that night than I had for awhile. My plan was still possible. It had gotten sidetracked, and been modified somewhat, but it was still a plan that now had some chance of working. ------- When I came downstairs on Sunday morning, I could tell that everyone was trying to tell by my facial expression and the way I was carrying myself, how things had gone with Brenda. After all these years, we'd grown to know each other pretty well. This level of knowledge was doubly true between Joyce and me. I saw how worried she looked, and she saw what I really believed was a calm and confident appearing man when she darted looks over in my direction. I wasn't sure what she expected to happen when she sent Brenda up to stay in my room. Maybe it was just that she hoped I would be able to convince Brenda not to leave us to be with Emily. Speaking of Emily, she was nowhere in evidence when I came downstairs for breakfast. When I went out to the playroom though, I saw Tony and Sissy playing with some of my other children. I was glad to see that it wasn't just Dwightee and April they were playing with this time. Over breakfast, all the conversation was centered around safe and neutral topics. No one brought up any of the unpleasantness we'd experienced on the day before. Dale, Cindy, and I were leaving at three, with Hans, for the airport. After breakfast was over, I went out to spend more time with my children. Brenda still hadn't made an appearance. When I'd left to come downstairs, she had still been asleep. I was balanced on one knee, talking to Gwen, when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, all the wives sneaking past the playroom doorway and heading straight towards the staircase. I was pretty sure that Brenda would soon be subjected to a real detailed questioning by the remaining co-wives. Even Eddie had gone up the staircase with the others. That reminded me, I really should take some time and have a talk with Eddie. I'd been too hard on her the day before. I wasn't angry or even that disappointed in her. Eddie had never left any doubts about how much she enjoyed having a whole houseful of willing women around to provide her with varied sexual entertainment. I had told her several times that I was okay with her decision to remain away from our family until things had been restored back to how they once had been. While it was true that I didn't feel as much closeness with Eddie as I did with her sister, it wouldn't be fair for me to berate her for what she had been doing. She had asked my permission for almost all of it. I didn't know if she was seeing other men, but if she was, the thought of it wasn't as troubling to me as it would have been with all the others. Eddie was a hedonist. She lived for pleasure. It was a big part of what had drawn me to her, and what had endeared her to all of us. Eddie knew how to have a good time, and how to entertain herself with whoever she happened to be visiting. I felt it was important that she understand our relationship would be different than it was with all the others. I didn't take her quite as seriously as I took all the other wives. In a very real sense, I thought of Eddie as more of an adult playmate than as a real wife. I didn't think she'd mind knowing I felt that way about her. About half an hour after all the wives went upstairs, Joyce came back down alone. She came into the play area and caught my eye. I knew, without a word being spoken, that she wanted to talk to me in my home office, and that she preferred it be a private meeting. In spite of all our recent difficulties, Joyce and I were still well attuned with each other. I waited for a minute after she left the playroom before getting up off the floor where I'd been involved as a spectator while Bertie played Bunny for the World's Championship of checkers. Bertie had won the first two games they'd played, and now both Derek and Bunny were trying to convince her that, because it was for the World's Championship, it had to be the best three out of five, not just two out of three. As soon as I closed the door to my office behind me, Joyce started in grilling me about what had happened between Brenda and me. I let her ask her questions before I answered her with a question of my own. "What did she tell you we had talked about, Joyce?" "She said you had great sex and then went right to sleep. She said she's changed her mind about going back to Emily. She said, after this week, she will be staying with us from then on. Why don't you take her back to Birmingham with you today instead, so we don't have to worry about her changing her mind again?" "No, I'm not going to do that. I told Emily she could have another week to try to get Brenda to stay with her. I don't think Brenda will choose Emily. I don't want Emily to think I'm worried that she can make Brenda change her mind." "You might not be worried, but I sure will be. You were just so terrible yesterday, Kenny. I don't remember when the last time was that I've been so angry with you. You did everything you could think of to drive a wedge between all of us and you. You couldn't have done any worse unless you'd gone around hitting all of us." "I'm saving that for next weekend. I felt like hitting you Friday night and again yesterday, Joyce. You keep acting on your plans and you're going to ruin everything you were trying to accomplish. You need to start listening to me again whenever I tell you something." "You would be better off taking your own advice about listening, Kenny. Emily says she's finished with all of us now. She said some things to Eddie and me that were very hateful. I think Brenda and I are the last two people I know that still wish she could come back and be here with us. She and Eddie really got into a big fight last night. Eddie made a joke about waiting to see which one of you ended up with Brenda before she decided who she wanted to be friends with. Emily almost hit her." "I told you, Joyce. All Emily really cares about is not having other women doing things with Brenda. She wouldn't mind Brenda fucking other guys, just not other women. She sees Brenda doing things with other women being the same as Brenda cheating on her. That's been a big part of her problem ever since we started doing this thing with all the other wives. Every time we added another wife, it just got that much worse for Emily." "She didn't complain about it. She stayed with us for all that time. If it bothered her that much, why did she do it?" "She needed to wait and find a way to get Brenda to agree to leave with her. She wouldn't have ever left without Brenda. If Brenda had just been fucking me when she came back here, Emily wouldn't have been in such a hurry to drop everything and come back here herself. She accepts me as being Brenda's male lover. Some of the things Brenda was telling her about what she was doing with you, Shirley, Dale, and Cindy they must have almost driven poor Emily crazy. It was those stories that got Emily flying back out here so quickly." "I'm still very angry with you about Emily and Eddie. I'm happy that Brenda will be with us, but we could have kept the other girls with us too." "If we do end up losing Emily, Joyce, it will be one hundred percent your fault. You made her feel strong and powerful. I need her feeling helpless and hopeless. You don't have any idea about how you should be acting with Emily and Brenda, but you can't make yourself stay out of things and let me handle them. I don't understand why you refuse to accept that I'm better at knowing what it takes to keep Brenda and Emily with us than you are. Do you still think you have something better to offer them than I do? Something they want more than they want what I can provide for them?" "You think it's your dick they're after?" "Probably it's partly that with Brenda. Emily likes a good hard screwing too, but it isn't sex from me she craves. She knows I'm the key to Brenda. She doesn't like knowing it, but she does. I've proven it to her too many times for her not to know it. She can only have Brenda if I step aside and allow it. I've stopped allowing it. After next week, the only way Emily is going to get another sniff of Brenda's pussy will be if I again decide to allow it. I won't allow it though, not unless Emily agrees to all my terms, and even if she does that, she'll always be on some type of probation with me. I won't make the mistake of letting Emily feel like she has the upper hand with me again. I'll get her back for you, Joyce, but it will cost me a lot more than I was hoping to pay." "You aren't talking about money, are you?" "What do I care about money, Joyce? No, I was talking about love. To do what I need to do now, I can never allow Emily to know that I still love her. That's part of the price I'm going to have to pay because you couldn't keep your God damned nose out of something you had no business meddling with. You just want what you want, and you're always willing to have someone else pay too high a price to get it for you. It's one of the main reasons why I have all these subconscious issues with you. For the past few months you've been busting my balls because you haven't been able to satisfy your urges for other women. You don't even have the integrity to admit what the real issue has been. Instead, you try to pass it off as this great concern you have for our family being back like it was." "That isn't true, Kenny. That's a hateful thing for you to say to me." "It is true, and it is hateful. You better start being real careful that my hatefulness doesn't keep getting bigger. Right now, it isn't any real problem, but you don't want to let it keep growing until it becomes stronger than the love I feel for you. If that day ever comes, you'll end up like Emily is right now, Joyce. I love you with all my heart, but I swear to you that I'll divorce you the very next time you fuck things up like you've done now with Emily. This came about because you were too impatient to get your entire harem back. This whole situation might still blow up on us, and then we'll end up losing both Emily and Brenda for good. You'd better hope it doesn't turn out that way." Once again I watched as Joyce fled from me. I blamed Hans for that one too. That was the thing about going back and making important non-business decisions. In business, all you stood to lose was your money. The decisions I was making now were placing in jeopardy something I valued much more than mere money. I was deciding though, and I was committed to living with what I was deciding. ------- I flew over to the clinic the next Tuesday morning. Things in Ridgeline were still all up in the air. Brenda was staying at her house with Emily. Joyce was becoming certain that Brenda was being turned against all of us by Emily. Shirley was still upset with the entire situation. She had talked to Joyce about possibly wanting to move back to her own house, because it looked like all the rest of the wives were too angry with me to ever return to be with the family. Joyce was worried about what I'd said to her. It hadn't helped any when Mama had told her that she needed to listen to what I was telling her more too. Mama was torn between liking the fact that I was acting decisively, and fearful that, like her own father, I was paying too little attention to how my words and actions were affecting all of those around me. She too was worried about Brenda's ultimate decision. From conversations I had with Joyce and Mama, it didn't look like Brenda was telling anyone what I'd told her. That was a good thing. Dr. Fellows and I had several sessions each day. Usually, one of them would include hypnosis. The other two or three sessions would be shorter ones where we would discuss anything either one of us wanted to bring up and talk about. Dr. Fellows was primarily concerned with only two things, Joyce and Emily. I wanted to ask her if she agreed with any or all of the things that Hans had said to me. I was particularly concerned about what adjustments I needed to make between how I made business decisions and how I made them when it came to dealing with my loved ones. I suspected that the way I had been doing it had been too cold and impersonal. I thought I could improve on how I presented these decisions and ideas of mine. The doctor was very concerned by some of the things I'd said to both Joyce and Emily. More of her concern seemed to be centered around my last conversation with Joyce. She seemed convinced that I had been reacting to more than my anger over Joyce's handling of Emily's visit. I told her that I'd been upset and worried about whether my plan was going to work when I said those things to Joyce. It was frustration over Joyce continuing to treat my decisions as only slight impediments to her proceeding with her own plans. We talked about how Joyce's doing that over the years had affected me. I told her it used to upset me quite a bit, but I had known it was just Joyce's way. I told her how tenacious Joyce was about anything, and how I'd always admired that trait before. "Before, Kenny, you weren't emotionally capable of standing up to this tendency of hers. You believed it was better to steer clear of any substantial disagreements with her. You took pleasure in her growth as a business talent, and her blossoming forth, with you in the role as her mentor. Since your illness, Joyce has attempted to reverse your earliest roles. It is probably true that she is doing this because she is trying to protect you. She has consistently told me how worried she is about you becoming emotionally overwrought once again. She has been through this twice with you in the past, and each time, the problem was much more serious than the one preceding it. Your mother has told her of episodes that occurred when you were a younger boy. She has little faith that the integration of your two identity states has left you fully restored, and in sound mental health." "She thinks I'm liable to just go ape shit on her again?" "I wouldn't have expressed it with quite that colorful of a term, but, for our purposes, you are essentially correct. She is also worried about the role she may have played in any of these past emotional disturbances you've suffered. This might explain part of her frantic attempts to help put things back to how they were prior to your last long period of instability. For her own reasons, she feels in part responsible. At the very least, she believes she should have seen the warning signs, and gotten you some professional help before your collapse." "She made this thing with Emily so much more complicated than it ever should have been. A lot more than it needed to be. It wasn't as if I hadn't given her plenty of warnings about needing to leave it all in my hands." "That may well be, that she had ample warning. The question you need to ask yourself is whether, knowing her tendencies about acting on what she wants, shouldn't you have taken her more into your confidence by discussing the total strategy you were planning to employ? Wouldn't it have been better, in the long run, if you'd explained to her why each of the steps you were planning were necessary for a successful outcome with your plan?" "It should have been enough that I told her I needed to be the one who handled the negotiations with Emily. She should have understood I was in a better position to do that then she was. I was less emotionally involved with Emily returning to us. It needed someone like me to convince Emily that she needed to change her ways if she were going to come back. What Joyce did has made what I wanted to have happen many times more difficult to get accomplished." "In business it might be true that a less emotional negotiator is to be preferred. When negotiating about personal relationships, emotional commitment isn't automatically going to be a bad thing. Sometimes, being told you are important, loved, and valued makes it easier and more probable that the person you are negotiating with will become more open to the change in ideas you are asking them to accept." "You don't know Emily like I do, Doctor. Since I've known her, the less she thinks you like or want her, the harder she will then try to please you. When she finally gets you to admit that you love her or need her, then you need to watch out. She's always been that way around Brenda and me. When she has what she wanted, she no longer appreciates it. Give her what she wants, and she always wants something different, or else more than you can give her." "If all this is true, why do you continue to love her? Why is she so important to you?" "Right now, I'd have to say she's only important to me because of Joyce and Brenda, and because of the children we have together." "You know what you just told me is untrue, Kenny. Why is it so difficult for you to admit that Emily is important to you in her own right, and that you still love her?" "I admit I have some mixed feelings about her. Maybe I do love her. I don't know anymore. I know I've made my decision about her. Whether or not I still love her, she isn't coming back until I'm sure she is willing to live with our rules, and won't try to take Brenda with her the next time she decides to leave." "The confidence it takes to be able to decide things, that's very important to have. For you to really be able to make that work for you, there needs to be some flexibility, some willingness to give and take. I don't see any sign of this ability in your most recent actions. I think you've been reacting on an emotional level and then pretending those reactions are you actually making some very hard decisions. You seem afraid of allowing yourself to be hurt by Emily again." "What are decisions if they aren't people reacting to situations. I thought about what all of us needed before deciding what had to happen with Emily. I don't expect you to understand everything I had to consider before doing that. You would have to know everything Emily and I have experienced with each other. You can't know that like I do." "I know pretty much what you know, Kenny. I have access to more of your memories than you do. I know things you don't allow your conscious self to know. I know you are more concerned for Emily than you are for either Joyce or Brenda. I know you plan to send Brenda back to Emily if your plan doesn't succeed in returning her to your family." "That isn't what I plan at all! I've done that in the past, but I'm not doing it again. I know what my own plans are. Don't let yourself believe that a thought I might have once had is a part of any plan I've made. Emily is either in on my terms, or else she's out of our lives again. In either case, Brenda stays with our family." "We'll come back and discuss that point at a later time. For now, let's agree that you still have more emotional feeling for Emily than you sometimes are willing to indicate having, all right?" "I still have feelings for her. I never said I didn't. What I've also said, in spite of caring for her, was that I no longer can tolerate the divisiveness she is constantly causing. I think I know how to put an end to it, and my plan is designed to accomplish that. If it works, I expect things will be better between Emily and me. I don't think I'll ever feel safe with trusting her again. The same thing holds true for Brenda." "What about Joyce? Do you trust her more than either Brenda or Emily?" I didn't reply to that question right away. I wondered if she knew something about Joyce that would cause me not to trust her. "I have no knowledge of any wrongdoing on Joyce's part, Kenny. I'm asking you this because it is one of several contradictory answers I've found between what you've said to me during our talks like this, and how you've responded when in a hypnotized state." "I've worried about her. She's always told me she never cheated on me. She's also told me she'd want to be with other guys, but only if it wouldn't hurt me. As long as she keeps telling me she didn't cheat, I'll believe her. I want to trust her about that." "Given what happened with some of the other wives while you were here in the clinic for such a long time, do you believe it is consistent with Joyce's normal behavior patterns that she would have remained faithful to you during such a protracted period of time?" "I told you I have worried about that. I asked her about it, but she says she didn't do anything. I've asked her several times. I don't think she would lie when I've asked her a direct question like that." "You tell me that, and yet, under hypnosis, you contradict what you've just told me." "I might be afraid she did. If she tells me she didn't, I believe her. Joyce isn't a coward. If she did something, she'd admit it to me." "Would she admit it if she believed you'd divorce her for having done it?" "Dr. Fellows, don't play this game with me. I know you've talked with Joyce about a lot of things. If you're supposed to tell me something, just go ahead and do it." "Are you ready to believe me when I tell you?" I hesitated. Did I really want her to tell me that Joyce had admitted to her that she had cheated on me? No, I didn't. If I had to hear something like that, I wanted it to come straight from Joyce. Now though, when she was sitting right across from me, it was hard for me to tell the doctor that I didn't want her to tell me. I didn't want to know from her, but, if there was something, I now needed to know it right away. It didn't make sense, but that was how it was with me right then. "Tell me." "Because of the work you and I have done together, I needed to discuss some points with several family members. Mostly, I confined myself to speaking with your mother, Joyce, Shirley, Brenda, and Emily. I was concerned with some of the role playing you've done with your wives. My talks with your mother concerned the emotional difficulties you encountered while living in her home, and while at the school where you were boarding. While discussing some of the role playing you participated in with your wives, I asked each of them questions about where role playing left off and where actual extramarital experiences had taken place. Joyce was very candid with me about some fantasies and ideas she had that excited her. She told me that she never had any relationship with anyone outside of the family, except for that one incident with the young woman in Lawrence. I believe her. I'm quite good at discerning when people are telling the truth." "If that's true, then why did you even bring it up? You had to know it was going to be very disturbing for me." "I wanted you to have something stronger than mere faith to base your belief on. There has been a narrowing of the differences between the beliefs of your conscious self and your subconscious self when it comes to Joyce. This was one of the last remaining major sources of contradictory belief. You have been doing such a splendid job of reconciling those contradictions yourself, I thought a small assist from me might be all you'd need to finish the job." "It's funny that you tell me this when Joyce and I are so close to a major rupture in our relationship over this situation with Emily and Brenda. Between this, and what you said about it being better to negotiate personal problems using some emotion, I'm feeling less confident than I was before I got here." "Perhaps this was what I intended to happen when I saw how fixated you'd become on making resolute decisions. I don't believe your friend had that it mind when he advised you on making decisions and then living with them. I'm nearly certain he was discussing the problems created by you not being able to come to any clear decisions. People close to you have commented on the fact that it appears to them that you keep adding things for yourself to worry about. It is natural to deal with problems and situations as they come up, not accumulate them endlessly, while you wait for some miracle to come along and decide everything for you. He was talking about you overwhelming yourself by the sheer volume of issues you've left unresolved." "He said whatever I decided would be the right decision. Hans is pretty smart about things like that, but I thought it was funny that he'd tell me that, because his wife, Gerta, doesn't let him make any decisions at all. She makes all the decisions for both of them." "Perhaps that fact alone has taught him a lesson about how important it is to make your own decisions. Maybe he had the same problem you did, but failed to handle it himself by making necessary decisions. Or, perhaps the decisions he made somehow turned out poorly." I thought about Hans, and then about what had happened to Dwight Richard Nunes. I wondered if that might have been the last big decision Gerta ever allowed him to make. Gerta had told me that it had changed him a lot. I wasn't like Hans though. I didn't need my wife making my decisions for me. I did all right making my own decisions. I had listened to Joyce, and to Dr. Fellows. I still remained convinced that I was one hundred percent correct about what I needed to do with Emily. With emotions, or without any, my decision about Emily wasn't going to change. I could admit to myself that I still loved her. I could admit it to Brenda and Joyce too. It was Emily herself that wouldn't ever hear me say those words to her again. Well, I had to take that back. She might hear them one more time, but only when I was absolutely convinced there was no longer any hope that she could rejoin our family. It was a real burden to love someone and know you wouldn't ever be able to tell them so. I still blamed Joyce for making it necessary. I had planned on being able to tell the sweet Emily that I still loved her. I was pretty well convinced that there would never be a sweet Emily again, only an Emily who had resigned herself to taking the only option being offered to her that would allow her to remain with the woman she loved above all others. Dr. Fellows and I had talks together all that week. We were developing our own small areas of disagreement. I was surprised that she didn't seem troubled by me not accepting her professional wisdom. She would sometimes smile at me now while we discussed one disputed point or another. When I prepared to leave the clinic on Friday morning, she came to my door as I was finishing up my packing. She was smiling and seemed more relaxed than any other time I could remember. "I think we've pretty much covered all the ground we needed to, Kenny. I can't see anything else you might need my help with. That doesn't mean you shouldn't call me if you ever want to talk about something troubling to you. I'll always take your calls." "Are you giving up, or am I graduating again?" "A little of each, I think. You've reached a point where you want and require less outside input. This is part of the problems you've been experiencing with Joyce. She tries to do too much for you, and you resent her for it. You need to find a way of explaining this to her in terms she can accept. I suggest you couch it in a way that tells her you appreciate the extra help she's been giving you. Tell her you need to start taking back all those areas in your life that she started worrying about when you were ill. Let her know you're well now, and she can return to helping you in some other areas where you still require her help." "What areas do I still need her help in?" "That is up to you to decide, Kenny. Remember that she loves you, and one of the ways she has of showing you that is by helping you. Your job is to find her ways to help you that you will appreciate and profit from. Whatever else she may be, Joyce is devoted to you, Kenny. Devotion is nothing to be despised or taken for granted. Give her some healthy outlets for demonstrating this devotion. The more important she feels in your life, the happier she will be. That same thing could be said for all the young women you've allowed to become a part of your life. I'm confident that you will find a way to return Emily to a place in your life, and in your heart. I would suggest you try to find one that leaves her with her own sense of self worth still somewhat intact. The last thing you want to do to someone you love is to beat them down so badly that they can never see themselves as deserving of that love. I fear you are in danger of doing that with this current plan you have for taming Emily." I got a ride over to the airport with all my stuff. I hadn't planned on this being my last session at the clinic. As a result, I ended up leaving an hour and a half later than I'd been scheduled to. I had called ahead to Mama's and told Hans about the delay. He told me he'd let someone at my house know I'd be arriving later than expected. This was a big day for another reason. It was the day that Brenda needed to make her final decision about whether she'd stay with Emily or return to us. I had deliberately limited my calls back home, and had instructed Joyce to not say anything to me about what Brenda's plans might be. While I flew back home, I tried to prepare myself for all the possibilities that might come up with Brenda's announcing her final choice. I believed I had all the bases covered. Once again, I was mistaken. This time it was Brenda who had developed a plan of her own. She had taken Dwightee and April and moved out of her house. She was now living with Mama, and pledging to have nothing to do with Emily or me, until the two of us had found some way to patch up our differences. Emily was staying at Brenda's house, and no one had any ideas about how the situation could be resolved. Friday night found me engaged in a loud argument with both Joyce and Shirley. Eddie had traveled back to Oklahoma, and Cindy and Dale were back in Birmingham. I didn't know where to turn. I really didn't want to be forced out of my own home, but I was growing weary of trying to answer all of Joyce and Shirley's accusations. I had already admitted to both of them that it looked like my plan wasn't working. I didn't know what else I could say to them other than that. I was a man who'd been totally out maneuvered. I had a good idea that Mama had played a part in helping Brenda devise her diabolical plot. I'd made a decision and announced it. It had been a good decision too, one that made the best of a bad situation, and still offered some hope for a story book ending. It hadn't been my plan that had failed, it was the people my plan had tried to help. Brenda's counter move had been unexpected. It was only a ploy though. She had launched her own plan to try to get an outcome that she felt she needed. She obviously believed she and Emily were far more important to me than I was admitting to. She was also counting on the other wives intervening with me to try to force a quick resolution. At ten o'clock I had a taxi come out to pick me up. It took me out to the airport in Bolling. I was going to leave a note for Joyce and Shirley, letting them know I was flying back to Birmingham, They were both upstairs somewhere, no doubt plotting together about how they could combine forces to make sure I didn't forget that my own plan had backfired on me. I didn't bother telling them when I left. Let them figure out where I was heading. I was sure of only one thing, and that was that I was going to do absolutely nothing to resolve the situation with any of them. I'd made my decision and announced my plans. I'd offered all of them a choice. Each of them had made a choice. Now, I was determined to allow them to try to live with their choices. I wondered what I'd find with Dale and Cindy? Would it be more of the same? If it was, I was certainly prepared to deal with it. I had already been assured, by a competent mental health professional, that I was in excellent mental health. I knew my plan had been a reasonable and restrained response to the situation I was facing. Brenda and some of the other wives had decided to offer up competing plans. So be it. I'd go about my own business, ignoring their attempts to dictate their own terms to me. I wouldn't act vindictively or go around accusing anyone of having unsavory motives. We all seemed to have different goals we were seeking. Some were not compatible with others. I knew I had one very important ingredient in my favor. I was in no hurry to get things resolved, and I was beginning to lose interest in how it all turned out. I would wait until someone put an offer on the table that I could get behind and support. When I arrived at my home in Birmingham, I found two notes. One was from Dale, advising me that she had gone to Ridgeline, to stay with Joyce and Shirley. She further wrote that she was looking forward to everything working out for all of us. Cindy's note was similar, except she was moving back to her own apartment. She hoped our current personal difficulties wouldn't spill over onto our professional lives. I had to laugh. Whoever had masterminded this assault had covered all the bases. I was beginning to smell a rat. This was too well coordinated and too pat. They wanted me to believe there were several different factions at work here. That couldn't be the case. Someone had needed to tell a pretty convincing story to get all seven of them involved in staging a mutiny such as this one. I knew it wouldn't matter which of the different "sides" I tried to align myself with, they'd all end up taking me to the same destination anyway. I was surrounded by my wives. I could either surrender to them now or else hold out to see if they were going to allow me any wiggle room at all. What they couldn't know was that I had planned for something like this to happen. Not this, but at least for all the wives to get together and force me to make peace with Emily. I knew they'd all enjoy it more if I put up some resistance, and allowed them to play with me until I was irrevocably snared in the trap they were springing on me. I put both notes away and went to bed. I congratulated myself on getting what I wanted. I felt much less pressure than I had before I was able to figure out what they were all up to. ------- Chapter 81 It was soon apparent that Mama had either been appointed or had appointed herself as the referee, head mediator, and intermediary of the struggle taking place between my wives and myself. I first became aware of the role she had chosen to play when she called me at my Birmingham home early on the first Monday morning after I had abruptly left Ridgeline. When she first called, she started speaking to me only as a concerned mother and grandmother would. She wanted to know when I was going to return to Ridgeline and try to reach some accommodation with Brenda and Emily. "There is no longer any reason for me to do so, Mama. Brenda has made her choice. I accept her choice." "I hope you aren't serious, Kenny? What Brenda chose was a way to get additional time for all of you to work out a better arrangement than you were offering. Your father and I both thought this was a good solution. We believe you needed a cooling off period, so that all of you could talk things over and explore some less extreme possibilities. I was the one who asked Brenda to come live here during this period. I thought you'd be able to realize she hadn't chosen Emily over you." "Mama, you might as well save your breath. I already figured out what's going on. Everyone thinks they know better than I do exactly how I should be living my life. I'm getting tired of that. I told Joyce, and all the others, that I was going to decide what I could live with. She knew I was trying to find the best way for our family to be together again. I expected Joyce to realize that she needed to go along with me on that. I'm the best judge of what I can and can't live with, not her." "You can't expect these women to allow you to impose your will on them like this, Kenny. Marriage is a partnership, it requires give and take. I'm happy to see you taking a more active role in guiding your family's direction, Kenny, but you can't go around making purely arbitrary decisions without even consulting people." "Actually, I can expect that. In fact, I do expect it. More than that, I'm going to insist on it. I told Brenda she had to make a choice, and, no matter how you try to sugarcoat it, she has made one. Joyce and Shirley both made their own choices too. I have no plans to try to negotiate further with any of them. I respect their rights to make their own choices, but I refuse to allow them to continue trying to impose these choices on me." "You've imposed yours on them, Kenny. All anyone wants is for you to consult with people before you take any actions. All the wives are worried you might decide to do the same thing to them that you're doing to Emily." "I certainly don't look at it like that, Mama. I've only made a decision about Emily and me. After deciding that I wasn't going to take her back, I gave Brenda the opportunity to choose who she wanted to stay with. She, instead, appears to have chosen to continue her life with neither of us. So be it. I need no further discussion with her about her choice. Given her choice, my own choice is to sever our relationship. As for the other wives, their actions have already indicated where they stand, and I've accepted their right to make their own choices as well." "This isn't funny, Kenny. This isn't a situation that lends itself to levity. This is very serious. You can't just refuse to negotiate with your whole family." "I'm not refusing. I've made my best offer and they've all rejected it. I can't live with what they want, and I've explained that to them. In one way or another, each of them have decided they can't accept what I told them I needed. I've thought about this, and worried about it just about all I'm going to. From now on, they can do whatever they choose to. I consider myself to be free of all of them. I'll be seeing a lawyer to arrange for a divorce from Joyce, and to sue her and the other three for shared custody of my children." "Kenny, with your long previous history of emotional difficulties, do you really think any court is going to allow you to be a custodial parent to those children?" "I'm really not sure, Mama. I have undergone several professional and fully detailed clinical evaluations, and all the resulting written reports attest to my present good mental health. None of these evaluations indicate that I am any more at risk for further emotional problems than Joyce or my other wives are. I've never taken a single action that anyone can point at to show that I would present any danger at all to any of my children. I certainly possess more than adequate means to be able to provide for their health, safety, and welfare while they are in my care. In addition to all that, and more importantly, when it comes to answering your question, I also have the means to retain the best attorneys to argue this case on my behalf. I'll have them working on it for as long as I need to. I think I have an excellent chance of prevailing. I'll use the same lawyers that Uncle Bunny used when you and Dad adopted me." "You could end all of this by making the one simple concession they're asking for. Give Emily another chance." "What is happening now just proves how dangerous and disruptive Emily is to our family. She's been back in Kansas for only two weeks, and she already has all the other wives lined up to fight me on this. She even has you arguing on her behalf. I'm sick of always having to deal with the messes she makes. She brings this type of discord wherever she happens to be. I've made my decision, Mama, I no longer want to have anything more to do with Emily. In the future, I will have nothing further to do with anyone who tries to get me to change my mind about this." "You'll end up all by yourself then, Kenny. This attitude of yours doesn't seem rational to me. You know what's the saddest part in all this? You have no possible hope of making your decision stick. It is very wrongheaded of you to even attempt to." "We'll just have to see. Goodbye Mama. I need to get dressed for work. If you need to talk to me about anything else, please communicate that information through Frank Clooney." "I'll do no such thing, Kenny! I hate seeing you be so stubborn, and so wrong as well." I hung up the telephone. I felt like I had just thrown away my last life preserver. I had planned on always keeping Mama as a last, desperate, negotiating tool with Joyce. Now, all I could do was wait and see what the wives planned to do next. At no point did I ever plan on taking this fight to the stage where it now was. I had wanted all the wives to band together, but in support of Emily, not in revolt against what I was doing. They needed a common cause to bring them all together. I had hoped I was providing that cause. I felt bad about how the conversation had gone with Mama, but she had chosen which side she would support already. In some ways, I was okay with the idea she had chosen to be on the side of my wives. There was still a part of me that wished she'd decided that I needed her support in this more than the wives did. I knew I needed to find some way to be completely detached from the emotions of the fight that was now looming. I wasn't really angry with any of them. In many ways, it was unfortunate that I couldn't give in to their demands. I knew it would have to play itself out in order for there to be even the slightest chance for any agreement we made to work. We now needed an agreement that the wives could live with too, if there was going to be any possibility of finding a true long term solution to the problems we'd been having with Emily. Either Emily had to realize and accept all facets of our chosen lifestyle, or else we'd need to alter that lifestyle and make it something she could agree to. I needed Emily to feel like whatever agreement we made was one that she was primarily responsible for crafting together. Looking back on what was happening, I wouldn't have chosen to stir all the other women up to the point where they'd take this mutinous action. As that first full week passed by, I really wasn't expecting to see any movement from the wives. I thought it possible that either Joyce or Brenda might phone me, but expected nothing more than that. At work, I saw Cindy every day. We discussed business topics only. Other than avoiding personal conversations, I treated her just like I'd treat any other valued employee. All the Macklinsons were watching and waiting to see what would happen next. They were probably afraid I would hold Cindy's actions against the entire Macklinson family. Instead of doing that, I continued on as though there were nothing going on outside of my business life. I can't say I lost myself in work though. I continued trading, but I wasn't spending any increased amount of time or putting any additional effort in on it. I kept in touch with all my managers, attending to any matters requiring my personal attention. I was also calling my Dad every work day. Right from the beginning, I'd told him that I didn't want to discuss any of my problems with my wives. I stayed sharp and well focused during our conversations, letting him know by doing this that none of my personal problems were affecting my ability to function, or to perform any of my business responsibilities. As the days passed by, some of the anxiety and the tension people were having about what was going on started receding. They weren't seeing any changes in me that they thought were creating any danger for them, so they began to be less apprehensive about what was going on. Business was stable. In fact, it was better than stable, because the Quick Snacks roll out was at the point where it was really starting to pile up some very impressive sales numbers. We were now training new salespeople at three separate company training locations. Almost all of our newly hired delivery drivers were reporting great repeat sales. The products going on the retailers shelves were attracting new buyers as well as a high percentage of repeat buyers. We had also added four new items to our product line. All four of these new items were being well received, by the store owners themselves, and by their customer base. I had been in the office every week day for the past two consecutive weeks, and, other than the trading I was doing, I really had very little else I needed to do. Both of the operations I was responsible for were doing extremely well. All our plants were now producing either at, or very near, their full capacity, and our sales were still brisk enough that our people were starting to complain of not having enough product to cover their existing demand. A very good situation for us to be in. Billy Ray had taken over all functions dealing with the order processing and the delivery of grains to our grain brokerage customers. I was receiving daily numbers from him showing our current trading positions and the amounts and delivery dates for each grain contract I needed to fill. It had all been set up on a computer program which fed itself on my trading screens and operated in the background for when I needed to call it up. Billy Ray had set up a routine that left nothing to chance. I was getting bored. I didn't feel like taking on any new projects, not with the family situation like it was, but I knew I needed something else to keep me occupied while I waited. Waiting around for something to happen with the women wasn't something I was enjoying. On the Friday ending the second week since Brenda's decision, I told my father, Larry, and Gene that I wouldn't be in the office during the next two weeks. I told them I'd keep in phone contact with them, but I said I was going to Hawaii to play some golf. My father made a comment that let me know he was worried that I was going off like I had done before. I quickly assured him that I was feeling fine, and I simply wanted to get away for awhile to play some golf, and relax. I told him that I believed everything in Birmingham was operating as smoothly as it could be, and that all my people were more than capable of continuing to insure it would remain like that during my absence. I had Billy Ray book me a commercial flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, and from there, directly to Oahu. I would be golfing for two days on Oahu before flying to Maui and spending another two days golfing there. From there I'd be going to the big island of Hawaii for three days of play. I was leaving the whole second week free, so I could either replay the same courses, or go to other ones that people, who were more familiar with the area, might recommend. I was only booking myself into resorts that had their own golf courses. I hadn't been playing much golf, not since before I got sick. I had spent quite a bit of time hitting balls at various country club driving ranges though. I was anxious to resume regular play again. I missed the inner peace that I got when surrounded by the beautiful greenery of a well maintained golf course. I'd seen a program showing some of the lush tropical Hawaiian golf courses on television. I thought it would be wonderful to spend some time alone while playing some of them. It didn't take very long after telling my Dad my plans before I started seeing some activity from the wives. I had anticipated that my father would tell Mama my announced plans, and that she would then get the word spread quickly from there. Friday night I heard from Joyce for the first time since our big fight at the house in Ridgeline. She tried to make it seem like the argument she and Shirley had with me was nothing more than a disagreement, one that she had expected we'd work out during the course of our evening phone calls. "Don't even try it, Joyce. I'm not going for it. You're all in this together, every one of you. I was surprised by Brenda's decision, but not by this little revolt you've got going on. I can tell you this much though, what you're doing isn't going to work. I'm leaving tomorrow for a little golf vacation. When I return, if I haven't had any change in how I feel right now, you'll be hearing from my lawyers about a divorce." "Are you divorcing all of us, or just me?" "I haven't made up my mind yet about that. Legally, you're the only one I need to file a petition against. As far as the way we're all separated right now, I'm not going to do anything on my own to try to change that. You have your plans and I have mine. Mine call for two weeks of playing golf in Hawaii. I'll have plenty of time, while I'm there, to decide what I want to be doing with the rest of my life. By the time I come back here, I'll have decided who I want to be doing it with." "This didn't have to happen, Kenny. You should have listened to what we all tried to tell you." "I listened. I told you all along I understood what you wanted. I tried to tell you why it wouldn't work your way. You want to control how things happen, Joyce. I told you that I'd try to get Brenda and Emily back, but I also said it needed to be on my terms. That wasn't good enough for you. I'm not going to let any of you force me to do anything different than what I've already decided about Emily and Brenda. You probably lost Emily by interfering before, and now it looks like you've lost Brenda too by starting up this little revolt of yours. When I get back from my vacation, you might find out you've lost me too. Right now, if I had to decide, I'd have to say you probably will. This latest stunt of yours might have taken all the other wives down with you also. I hope, after this is over, you understand that people have limits to what they are going to tolerate. You've already exceeded those limits with me." "I didn't do anything except try to help get our family back together. You agreed with me that we needed to do that. I only stepped in after it became obvious that you weren't going to follow through with honoring the promises you made to me." "Joyce, I'm through arguing with you about any of this. I told you before I wasn't going to try to prevent you from doing whatever you wanted to. I told you I wasn't going to let you make my decisions for me though. Right now, you've got everybody siding with you, even Mama. You are forcing all of them to have to make a new choice. Brenda had to choose between Emily and me. Now, all the other wives have to choose between you and me. I'll probably make it easier for you by telling them I don't want them to choose me. You can have them all, but I'm going to get joint custody of all the children. You can bet on that." "Tell me you don't love us anymore. If you can do that, then I'll stop trying to fix this." "It doesn't matter whether I do or I don't love any of you. You can love someone and still refuse to be with them anymore. I won't allow myself to give in on this one, Joyce. I'd prefer to spend the rest of my life alone, rather than allow you to make these kinds of decisions for me. That doesn't mean I'll need to be alone. I'm sure I can find some of the wives who still want to be with me. Look, I really have to go. I need to finish packing for tomorrow. Tell the kids I'll send them some post cards from the islands." When I reached out to the side to replace the phone, my hand started shaking so badly that it took me fifteen minutes to get it back under control. I hoped I wasn't going to be bothered by the tremors while I was trying to play golf. I'd managed to get them pretty much under control, before this episode. What I'd just gotten through had me worried again. Was it a sign that the stress was getting to me again? I had been planning to fly to Atlanta in my own plane the next morning. Now I was thinking, perhaps, just to play it completely safe, I should make other arrangements. I decided to wait to see how I felt in the morning before making a final decision. If there were no reoccurrence of the shaking, I'd fly in the plane by myself. If I had another problem with it, I'd either drive to Atlanta, or go out to the airport, and hire someone to fly me there. It only took me fifteen minutes to pack the two bags I'd be taking to Hawaii. I brought both packed bags out to the garage and placed them in the trunk of my car. I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, when I had another bad tremor. This one was just as violent as the first had been, but I managed to control it much more quickly. Shaken a little by the hand tremors, I went to bed. It took me some minutes to calm myself down enough that I was beginning to drift off to sleep. The phone rang again, just as that was starting to happen. "Hello." "Kenny, this is Cindy. Can I come over? Joyce just called me and she's worried about you." "There isn't anything for her to be worried about. I'm fine. We had another one of our arguments. That's all it is. I'm in bed already, because I'm heading out early in the morning, so I'd rather get some rest tonight. Let's not change the way things are with us, just because Joyce is starting to worry about some things I told her. I think you made the right decision when you elected to side with the other women." "I didn't decide that, Kenny. Joyce said you needed some time alone to think about this thing with Brenda and Emily. She asked me to give you that time alone so you would have a chance to do some thinking. The note I wrote was just to let you know we could still discuss things at work." "Well, I'm not that sure about what you meant with that note, but, I still want to leave it like it's been for the past two weeks. None of whatever happens with us is going to affect your career in any way, Cindy. Keep doing a good job and you'll be just fine." "Joyce said you told her you were planning on divorcing her and didn't want to be with any of us any more." "Cindy, I haven't made any decisions about this yet. Joyce and I were talking about possibilities, about what might need to happen. I'm heading off to take a vacation, and to think about my future. Nothing is going to change before I have a chance to do that. I don't want to start making decisions about specific individuals yet. All you wives got together and decided what you would do. Now, you're just going to have to wait to see what I decide to do about it." "You could take me to Hawaii with you, Kenny. Joyce said I should ask you if you would." "Well, thank Joyce for me, but I'm sure I can manage to do my thinking just fine by myself. Besides, I thought you had plenty to do to keep you busy with the women's division over at the new company?" "I am busy, but, if you want me with you, I think I could postpone some of the things I need to be doing." "I'm not sure I do want you with me, Cindy. That's one of the things I need to think about. Another thing too, I don't think some of the other wives would be very happy if they found out you were consorting with the enemy. Why don't we say good night now, and I'll see you right after I get back?" The phone rang again about twenty minutes later, but I didn't answer it. I set the answering machine to take messages without ringing through, then got back in my bed. I was up before six o'clock, and heading out of my garage before six thirty. I had decided to drive to the Atlanta airport. I was allowing myself four hours to get to the airport, and it was a little more than a two hour drive on an excellent highway. I was worried about the tremors. I didn't think it would bother me too much to have some shaking when I was out on the golf course. I thought it would give me a new chance to practice controlling it whenever it occurred. If holding the club out was going to start my hand shaking, I was going to get a lot of practice with making it stop. My plans called for playing at least eighteen holes of golf a day. On the big island at Mauna Lani Resort, I was scheduled to play both courses on each of the three days I was booked to stay there. I had morning tee times on the more difficult North course, and afternoon tee times on the slightly less challenging South course. If the tremors came back with a vengeance, that would present a real challenge for me, playing both courses on the same day. It was no problem getting to the airport in Atlanta. I was happy to see my flight finally being called, even though it was right on time for when it was scheduled to be boarding. I had been half expecting that something or someone would appear and require me to cancel my trip. The flight to Los Angeles was pretty uneventful. As a pilot, I would have preferred to be at the controls myself, but, the accommodations in first class were pleasant. The layover in Los Angeles was a little more than two hours. I used the down time to make some phone calls to my Dad, and to Larry. "Kenny, I have no idea what you were thinking about when you set those fires on the home front. You have your mother and Gerta practically beside themselves with worry about what Joyce has been telling them. Did you really have to do that right before you leave?" "I thought we agreed not to get into any discussions about my personal situation, Dad?" "When your personal situation starts affecting mine, Kenny, whatever agreement we might have had has ended. This brinkmanship negotiating tactic of yours is certainly going to backfire on you one of these days. People will start to question how well you've recovered from your illness if you continue on in this vein. Are you really considering the possibility of dissolving all of these relationships with these wives of yours?" "No, Dad, of course I'm not. That would be insane. I just refuse to cooperate with these schemes Joyce and Mama keep cooking up. All of them are designed to compel me to do what they want. They refuse to listen to any objections I might have about these things. At first, this started out with me trying to fix this problem I've been having with Emily, but now, because of Mama and Joyce's interference, it has gotten somewhat out of hand. When I tried putting my foot down, to put an end to Joyce's interference, Joyce countered, by organizing this little mutiny of hers. Now, I'm just trying to pull myself back away from the day to day fighting. I do want them to be worried about whether we're going to be able to have any future together. Maybe, if they are worried enough about that, they might be willing to begin to listen to some of the things I've been trying to tell them." "Have you been listening to what they're telling you, Kenny?" "I think I have. There's been a lot of disagreement about it though. I know nothing will get solved if I keep allowing Joyce to go around making her own decisions when they are in direct conflict with the decisions I've already told her I was making. I'm hoping, after she see what's happening to us now, she'll start to understand why she can't continue doing that." "You couldn't sit down together and discuss this, Kenny? I hate to say this to you, but that's what normal couples would do." "It's more complicated than that. First, before we do that, Joyce needs to understand she really needs to change. She won't do that until after she sees a big part of her life about to disappear forever. Joyce and I can't seem to agree on where her authority ends and mine begins. To make it even worse, I can't even begin to try to get what I need from Emily until after I make Joyce understand she isn't able to continue making her own decisions about this over my clearly stated objections." "Before you keep pushing on this decision of yours, you better decide how far you're really willing to go. Are you really prepared to divorce her over this?" "Prepared to? Probably not. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen though. These last few years have taken a big toll on all of us. We haven't had any of the good times together like we used to have. All the good will we had built up for each other has been exhausted by the events that have taken place either during my illness, or in the time immediately after I was first released from the clinic. Some of the problems we have would only require that everyone be willing to look at things more positively than they have been doing. Other things though, they're going to need a lot more than a change in how someone looks at something." "My advice would be to call Joyce before you leave Los Angeles. You can say just enough to her to get her calmed back down again. Don't leave her like she is now, not for another two weeks. You're liable to come back to a bigger mess than you're leaving. One so large that it is no longer fixable." "Dad, I don't want her calmed down. If she calms down, she isn't going to be ready to accept the changes I need her to make. Joyce is very strong. Maybe too strong. I really believe she needs to stop thinking she's the only one who gets to make any decisions in our family. She has been running over what all the others have said to her. Disregarding what I tell her too. She thinks she's the final authority. That has to change." "Change because you think you should be the final authority?" My father didn't laugh when he said that, or give any other indication that he wasn't completely serious. "Dad, think back to all the times you wanted to do something one way and I wanted something differently. Did I ever once try to overrule your decision. Did I try to undermine what you'd decided to do?" "No, Kenny. Joyce has never done that to me either. Joyce is your wife, Kenny. She isn't just some underling you have on your staff." "I think I know that. The fact remains though, we discussed what she needed, and then I agreed to get it for her. I told her at the time that I had to do it my own way. She went ahead after that, and tried to get it done by herself. The whole time she was doing that, she knew she was doing what I'd specifically asked her not to do. Even after we discussed it, and after she promised not to do it anymore, she continued on trying to do things her way. This isn't the only time she's done that to me either. The other times weren't as important as this time, but they still ended up causing me some problems. Just like Emily does, Joyce needs to make some changes in how she does things." "You seem to have some pretty rigid beliefs when it comes to fighting for control with all your wives. I'm not sure that will work well for you." "I started out being willing to sit down and work things out with all of them. Now though, after Emily and Joyce have both done these things, they both need to learn that they can't go around taking actions that end up hurting all of us." "What do you have to learn, Kenny? Aren't you taking those same actions right now, yourself?" "I need to learn how not to get into positions where I'm going to have to push people so hard. I could have handled this whole situation a lot better than I have, especially if I'd taken care of it sooner. I also wish I'd been more honest with Joyce about how I felt about some of the things that were going on in our home. I allowed her way too much leeway in deciding the kind of lifestyle we'd live at home." "There are few people who could successfully live the lifestyles all of you have been experiencing." "I'm not sure we can live it like we have in the past. That's been a big part of the problem. There's some portion of me that believes we shouldn't be imposing some of the lifestyle choices Joyce and I like on all the other wives. I'm guilty of giving Joyce too much freedom and assistance in that regard. After all this time, I'm not certain she'd ever be willing to settle for less than she's always had available with all the wives. Even if she was willing to settle for less, I don't know if Emily would be willing to make all the compromises she'd need to make for all of us to be able to live together again." "Can you tell me how you going off for two weeks of golf is going to help you get any of that accomplished, Kenny?" "Nope, sorry. I was watching a program on the TV, about golf courses in Hawaii. They all seemed so beautiful and peaceful. Since I'm pretty well caught up with things at work, I thought it would be nice to fly over there and see them for myself. I'm staying at the Hawaii Prince at Waikiki tonight, tomorrow, and Monday. Tuesday I'll be at the Kaanapali Beach Hotel on Maui. I'll be there until Thursday morning, when I move to the Mauna Lani Resort on the big Island for three more days of golf. After that, I'll play it by ear, but I plan on playing golf everyday. You could fly out and play a few rounds with me. Have you ever played golf in Hawaii?" "I never have. I heard it was either too windy or it was raining too much to play there on most days. I've watched a couple tournaments on television during the winter though. It must be nice to be able to play in a short sleeved shirt in January, like they were doing." "I played in short sleeves in Florida in January. You can play in California then too. I just wanted to go over to Hawaii and see if all those courses were as pretty as they looked. You should come out for a few days. I'll give you four strokes a side." "I should send Bertie out there to play you. I bet you'd love listening to her while you were playing." "She probably wouldn't say much about the situation, not while we were out on the golf course. It would be before and after that she'd be getting after me to do what she wants. I didn't even think of inviting her. This is what I meant before about how I should have handled this problem a long time ago. Even when this thing gets straightened out, things won't ever be the same. I've waited too long to try to fix things." "Sometimes you can't fix things by pulling them all apart, and then trying to put them back together again. You be careful this isn't one of those times." The flight to Hawaii was over six hours long. I hadn't brought a book or anything, and I didn't want to watch the movie either. Instead, I sat in my seat and thought about how nice it was going to be to get away from everything for awhile. I knew the same problems would still be there when I got back, but I was hoping Emily and Joyce would be focusing on trying to salvage something by then. If not, I would be well rested, and maybe I'd have thought of a better way to handle things by then. I could always hope. ------- Chapter 82 Hawaii was all that I'd hoped it would be, but it didn't help me with any of my personal problems. When it rained out on the golf course, it wasn't a cold rain, and it never lasted too long either. The winds picked up at different times during the day, but they helped some of the time, and the rest of the time, they offered a new challenge for me. I had bought a pretty good set of used golf clubs at the pro shop in Oahu. I hadn't wanted to bring either of the sets I had at the country club, or the spare set I kept in my home in Birmingham. When I was finished with my golfing vacation, I donated the clubs to a junior golf program set up for island children. I hit a full driver once into the wind on a par three hole on the South course at Mauna Lani. I didn't make it on the green, but that was only because I hooked the ball. I didn't score particularly well while I was over in the islands. My best score was a seventy seven, but every course I played was absolutely, breathtakingly, beautiful. I did have several episodes with my hand tremors, both out on the golf courses, and in other places as well. The tremors varied in their intensity. Once, I started getting the tremor when I was bringing my driver forward, towards my ball. I ended up pushing my drive into the second cut of rough, and made myself wait until the tremor had subsided before hitting out from there. The worst of the tremors always seemed to occur when the ball was above my feet on a side hill lie. I usually had my arms extended out from my body more when I was trying to hit a side hill shot like that. I hit my ball into the ocean several times, and out among the lava beds on a couple of other occasions. Once, I hit my drive into an old man's back yard. When I went to see if the ball was playable, we got to talking and he ended up pouring me a nice glass of iced tea, and we stood around and chatted for about ten minutes before I left to resume my play. He had been a merchant sailor when he was younger, and had only moved to Hawaii after he was retired. His wife had left him two years before, after thirty seven years of them being married. He didn't say why she'd left him, only that she had dropped dead from a stroke at her sister's house, on the mainland, less than a month after leaving him. I got the feeling that he felt very bad about not being with her when she died. He seemed very lonely to me. I wondered how often he got visits from errant golfers. He had seemed to really welcome my company. I played a lot of golf, enjoying all the scenery surrounding these great golf courses. While I played, I also gave a lot of thought to what had happened, and what might be going to happen with my life. It shouldn't have been possible for me to feel bad while on vacation in such a beautiful setting. It was possible, and I spent many hours formulating and then discarding ideas. No matter how bad I felt though, I was still just as convinced as ever that many things needed to change before our family could be restored to something like it had been. Joyce had said, from the very beginning, that she wanted everything to be put back to the way it used to be. I no longer believed it would be possible for this to happen. If we all wanted our lives to be stable and comfortable, we had to make changes. I knew this, for a certainty, just like I knew that Joyce didn't want any changes from how it used to be. It kept coming back to one indisputable fact, what Joyce wanted wasn't compatible with what Emily needed. I could probably convince the other wives to forego having any further sex with either Brenda or Emily. I knew Joyce would resent me for doing so. She would complain that I had taken something away from her and the other wives, but hadn't given up anything myself. I would be dealing with her resentment for years, and that was if my best case scenario took place. Worst case scenario, Joyce and the other wives would rebel against me changing the rules on them and try to revert back to their former behavior with Brenda and Emily. I didn't think Shirley would mind if things changed that way, or that Dale would object to it either. Joyce and Eddie definitely would object though, and I wasn't that sure that either Cindy or Brenda would be in favor of changing how things were being done. For all that Brenda might protest about having no interest in having sex with other girls, she would always need to be wanted and admired by all those around her. It wouldn't be that surprising to me if she were to begin teasing and enticing some of the other wives once the rules had been changed. What I was absolutely sure all the wives would object to was Emily receiving any kind of special treatment. They might be united in wanting her allowed back in the family, but not with extra consideration being given to her. Emily couldn't help but see this as a victory for herself. In addition to my other concerns, I was also going to have to consider what this would mean to my special place as the only male within the family. If I wanted to have sex with Emily and Brenda, Joyce was going to want something for herself too. Something that I didn't have. I had a pretty good idea what that something was liable to be. Even if I told her she couldn't have what she'd be asking me for, Joyce's nature wouldn't let her rest until she got what she would consider fair and equal treatment. If I had two extra women, she would say, then she should be allowed to have something extra as well. I could almost hear her making that argument to me. I believed there was a possibility that Joyce would turn on both Emily and Brenda later, if we ever did enact what I was thinking of asking for. No matter how I pictured it, every choice seemed doomed to end in some kind of disaster. Of course, all of these scenarios required some level of agreement from one or more of the wives. I had no assurances at all that I could get any of them to go along with me. All these thoughts were still running loose in my head when I boarded the plane at the airport outside Honolulu for the trip back to Los Angeles. In the two weeks I'd been away, I'd called and spoken with my father on four occasions. I'd spoken with either Larry, Gene, or Billy Ray on another four or five occasions. Each time I called anyone, they all assured me they had everything under control. I hadn't been able to do much grain trading while I was gone. I had my trading program set on automatic trading, but the programmed version had such narrowed parameters controlling its trading criteria, that the number of contracts being traded was well below what I would average when I was sitting in front of my computer monitors trading the markets myself. Still, it had managed to make me some money, and it also had kept us fully hedged against any sudden movements in the spot market prices for the number of contracts we needed to take delivery on. It kept us in position to be able to fulfill our grain brokerage commitments. I wasn't too concerned with the small overall loss I was expecting to take in the grain brokerage accounts while I was gone. I knew I could make it back once I was once again in my office overseeing the grain trading. I was mildly discouraged that all my thinking while on my vacation had led only to me uncovering more potential problems to be concerned about. My best hope was the time I'd been away had produced a change in the wives attitudes, and a newly acquired desire to attempt to be reasonable. The flight back to Atlanta went well, and my car started right up at the long term airport parking lot. I drove back to Birmingham with no better plan than the one I'd had when I left. In spite of my inability to solve any of the problems I was having with the wives, I returned feeling the time away had been beneficial to me. I hadn't felt like I was running away to avoid anything. On the contrary, I still believed my absence would force the wives to reconsider their position. I was anticipating that they each had given as much thought to our situation as I had. Back at work, I immediately fell back into my usual routine. Cindy was happy to see me back, and she made several comments about how I looked better with my new tan. Larry and Gene were having some problem with each other, but when I tried to inquire about what it was, they both told me it was personal, not business related. I found out later, from their sister, Pattie, that Larry resented the fact that both Kyle and Cindy seemed to be getting preferential treatment in the new company. Billy Ray was doing as well as either of Gene's children, but, for some reason, Larry chose not to count him. I told them both what my Dad had told me, that their personal problems with each other were going to concern me as soon as it started having an impact on how the companies were doing. While I'd been gone, I'd mailed out plenty of postcards. I'd written to both Mama and Gerta, letting them know that this was simply a vacation for me, and that I planned on returning when I'd said I would. I tried to patch things up with Mama in those notes I'd written on the cards. I had sent at least five cards to each of my children. They had short notes on them, mostly having to do with things I'd seen and done in Hawaii. One of the first things I'd thought of when I arrived in Hawaii, was how much all the children would have enjoyed the beaches and the water. Right before I left to return home, I had written a long letter to Dr. Fellows. In it, I detailed all the happenings since my last visit to the clinic, and shared with her the logic I'd used for each decision I'd made. It helped to write it out in detail. It clarified some of the thinking I'd had to do on the fly when actual events had been unfolding. Time had helped me as well. It gave me a chance to put some things into perspective. I had given myself an opportunity to experience three of the possibilities my recent decisions had brought into play; Life without Joyce, life without Brenda and Emily, and life without any of the wives. By the time I returned to Birmingham, even though I hadn't found any solutions to the problems I'd left with, I now had a better idea of the stakes we were all playing for. The one determination I had made was that I didn't want to end up without at least two of the women who were mothers to my children. I would prefer all four women, but, if that wasn't possible, then I was willing to settle for Joyce and Shirley. Cindy, Dale, and Eddie were all somewhat important to me, and I wanted them too, but Joyce and Shirley were my first choices. I had been surprised to find that Emily and Brenda were my second choices. None of the other combinations of two women came close, not even Joyce and Brenda or Shirley and Brenda. I knew that Emily would require Brenda, if she and I were to make any future arrangement. I was still convinced that I needed to wait to see how the wives worked things out among themselves. I knew they would have all been playing with their own personal list of names too. Joyce had steadfastly said that she needed all six of the other wives in order to be happy again. I was certain all the other wives were ready to accept a lesser number than all the wives being back together. I had only been back for about a week by the time Shirley contacted me. She told me that she had moved back to her own house, with the children, and invited me to come see them on the following weekend. I told her I would give her invitation some thought, but I didn't think it would be an appropriate way for me to restart any negotiations with her, or with any of the other wives. "We don't have to negotiate anything, Kenny. Come up here and spend some time with the children. We don't even have to speak to each other, not if you don't want to. They miss seeing you. All the children are missing their daddy, Kenny. They shouldn't have to be worried about you again." "Why would they be worried? They wouldn't be worried if you guys hadn't said anything to them about any of this." "We didn't have to say anything, Kenny. They knew something was wrong the last time you were up here. They all go to school together, and they share what they know with each other. I'm telling you it would be a good thing if you came up here and spent some time, so they could see you for themselves again." "Is Brenda still living with my mother?" "She still sleeps there. She goes to work with Joyce, and then she goes over to her house to cook for Emily and the kids after work. Emily takes care of her own kids, and Brenda's, after school, during the day. Phil and Hans do all the driving back and forth from school. Did you decide anything while you were gone, Kenny?" "I decided before I left. I thought about a lot of things while I was gone, but I didn't come up with anything new to make me change what I had already decided." "Joyce told us that you would change your mind if we all stuck together. I think I was already pretty sure you wouldn't change your mind. What I can't figure out is why all of us being mad at you was supposed to make you want to take Emily back. Joyce says it will happen, but only if we all stick together. Is Joyce right, Kenny?" "I really don't know whether she is or she isn't. I hope she isn't right. I don't want her to be right about that. Joyce really wants all the wives back together again. I told her it won't work if we go back to exactly how things were before. It didn't work before, and it's even less likely to work now. For something like we had to work, everyone needs to want to live like we were living. Emily didn't like it, and if we go back to living like we did before, she's going to like it even less now. Joyce and Eddie wouldn't like it if we changed the rules so that Emily would like how we'd be living." "Changed them so that you and her were the only ones sleeping with Brenda?" "It might come down to that. If it did, I don't think that would work either." "Joyce might be willing to give up Emily now, but not Brenda too. If she told you she was willing to let Emily go, would that be enough for you to let things get back like before?" "It would have been before, but it might not be enough anymore. You saw how hard it was for Brenda to choose before. When she made her choice and moved over to my mother's house, she did that because it was too hard for her to choose. Brenda doesn't want to give up Emily, and Emily doesn't want to share Brenda with any other women." "None of us like to share, but we accept that we have to. Emily and Brenda can't just decide they want things to change. That isn't fair." "I'm afraid it never has been fair. Not for Emily. She always hated to share Brenda with the other wives. We shouldn't have brought her into this group of ours. I should have made Brenda make her choice years ago. It isn't fair to force her to do it now." "It sounds like Joyce was right, Kenny. You've decided to give Brenda to Emily." "Not give her to Emily, Shirley. I can't make Brenda's decision for her. What I've said is I won't take Emily back unless she makes some changes. I don't believe she can make those changes. I'm not going to punish her for not being able to do something. If I tell Brenda she can't be a part of the family, that would be punishing Brenda." "All these choices are going to hurt Joyce." "I told Joyce I'm only deciding for me, not for any of the wives. Brenda can do whatever she decides she wants to do. All of you can. Joyce will have to accept my decision about what I'm going to do." "If you leave it like that, none of us are going to be together again." "I've thought about that. It might be like that in the beginning. A lot of what we used to have was very good. I miss having that too. I think people will end up wanting to get some of that back again. In the end, I'm hoping everyone will see things were better when we were together. I'm not going to use Brenda to get Emily to come back. If she wants to come back, she'll have to find some way to accept whatever lifestyle we all agree on. She'll have to make the offer, because I'm not going to ask her to do anything." By the time we finally got off the phone, Shirley knew as much as I'd been able to figure out myself. I didn't agree to come visit her and the children on the following Friday like she had requested. I told her I wanted to wait for awhile to find out how things would change without me attempting to impose my will on anything. I had turned Cindy down before, and now I was doing the same with Shirley. I wondered what my reaction would be if Joyce called me and invited me to come visit with her and the children? I really didn't know. Nothing had changed as far as my believing that Joyce was the key. There was a time, earlier, when Emily was the key to solving our problem. Now, I needed to get things worked out with Joyce before I could make any new decisions about Emily. After another week had gone by, Dale called me. She wanted to know if I thought anything was going to get settled any time soon. I told her that it really wasn't up to me any more. I'd already decided what I could live with, and now it was up to all of them to decide for themselves. Dale told me she would either come stay with me, or else she was going back to Chickasaw to stay with Eddie and her mother. She wanted to know if she were welcome to come stay with me or not. "I'd like you to be here, but this isn't a good time for that. I don't see any big problems you and I are having, but I don't want to do anything to make things worse for Joyce right now either. I told Cindy and Shirley pretty much the same thing I'm telling you now." "Will you call me and let me know how things are doing, Kenny? I'm hoping we can get everything worked out again. We were getting really close this last time. If you had let Emily come back, things might have worked out for everyone." "That's what people keep telling me. If I had believed it back then, I'd have let her come back. If I believed it now, and if Joyce and I were getting along better, I'd tell her she's welcome to come back. I wish I could believe it, but I don't. Joyce needs to let me make my own decisions, and she needs to start accepting that I have a right to decide things for myself. Once she does that, then I can start thinking about something that might work for all of us with Emily and Brenda. Until then, getting things straightened out with Joyce is all I'm able to focus my attention on." "How do you think hearing you tell me that makes me feel, Kenny? I feel like I'm not very important to you at all." "I'm sorry you look at it that way, Dale. This whole thing with all the wives is something that first started with Joyce. She wanted the lifestyle we chose to live more than I did. That isn't to say I didn't like it, because I did. I just don't like it enough to keep trying to make it work when I know that's impossible without some changes being made. Joyce and I need to decide some things with each other first. If we do, then the situation with Emily and Brenda will get itself sorted out. If we don't get those things decided, then there won't be a family for all of us to decide to go back to. Joyce is the foundation of our family. Without her, everything will need to be different." "When will you decide about that?" "I won't be the one deciding about that. Joyce will make that decision. She knows what needs to change if we're going to be together again. Right now, she doesn't accept it, but she knows." Two nights later, Joyce called me. She was crying. Dale had gone back to Oklahoma. Shirley had moved out, and Brenda was thinking about moving back to her own house instead of staying over at Mama's. Joyce believed I'd been the one who was operating, behind the scenes, to undermine her position. "Listen to what you're saying, Joyce. How is any of that benefitting me? Don't you think I wanted this to just be as simple as it started out being? Remember, we had everything going pretty well until this situation came up with Emily. All you had to do then was sit back and let me try to get Emily to accept the need for her to change. I can't be sure she would have agreed to it before, but there was no way she was going to agree, not after you, Mama, and Brenda got done promising her things you couldn't deliver." "You want to blame me for what happened? I'm not the one who pushed anyone away, Kenny. You did that all by yourself." "I guess nothing's changed then, Joyce. Like I told you before, you're welcome to make any decision you want for yourself. We only have a problem when you insist on making decisions for me, or when you do things to undermine and undercut my decisions like you've been doing." "Are you still planning on divorcing me?" "I haven't made any decision about that yet. I still hope you'll figure out your way isn't going to get you what you want." "Your way wasn't getting it for me either." "We aren't accomplishing anything by telling each other the same things over and over. I won't let you make my decisions, and I won't support you when you try to countermand my decisions. Right now, I've got three wives who I know would probably be willing to come live with me in Birmingham. You can have Brenda, Emily, and Eddie." "Shirley wouldn't move to Birmingham. She'd never do that." Joyce didn't sound too convinced of the accuracy of her statement though. "You might be right, but I doubt it. One of these days, if we're not both careful, we're going to find out if I'm right or not for sure." "If I had it to do over again, I'd have let you handle things with Emily, Kenny. If I'd done that though, you'd still have sent Brenda back to her." "You've got everyone convinced that's true now, even me. I sure wasn't thinking about doing that before though. The biggest reason why I'd probably do that now is because you showed me how wrong it was to impose what you want on someone who doesn't want the same things you do. Emily never wanted to share Brenda with all the other wives. She never is going to want to do it either." "Do you think Shirley wanted to share you with the other wives? Neither did Emily or Brenda. You worry about what Emily wanted, but you don't seem concerned that none of the other wives got everything they wanted. Why is Emily such a special case with you? She'd live like the rest of us if you told her she had to." "Except you, Joyce. You were the only one who got everything you wanted." "I got exactly as much as you did, Kenny. What did you want that you didn't have?" "Okay. I can buy that. I had it just as good as you did. That doesn't change anything about Emily or Brenda. Emily only joined us because we had Brenda already. As soon as we added Eddie, Dale, and Cindy to our family, Emily was as good as gone. When she tried to fight us on adding the other wives, we went ahead and did what we wanted to do. Emily only went along with it because she knew she wasn't in any position to do anything to stop us." "Emily went along though. You said it yourself. She went along, and she enjoyed it just like the rest of us did. Except for the part where she had to share Brenda with all of us. She wanted to be like you are. She wanted Brenda all for herself, but she also enjoyed doing girl stuff with all of us." "It doesn't matter now. What matters now is us getting a definite understanding about me needing to be able to make my own decisions without worrying about you trying to impose your wishes over mine." "Why is this important to you now? You never minded that much when I did things like that with the family before. I never did it with business." "I did mind before. I just used to let it slide. I'm not letting it slide anymore. You don't get to decide important things for me anymore, Joyce. I'm not going to allow that. To me, this is more important than Emily or Brenda are. More important than staying married to you is." "Are you going to tell Brenda she needs to stay with Emily?" "Brenda has already made that decision." "You just plan on doing nothing then?" "That's right. That's all I can do now. Brenda will change Emily's mind, just like she changed my mind this time. Brenda's almost as stubborn as you are. Emily is the one who doesn't want Brenda being passed around to all the other wives. Brenda doesn't mind it though. When she finds out this means I won't be with her either, she'll do something to make Emily realize she can't have what she really wants. She'd been doing that to Emily for more than ten years. I won't use Brenda to bring Emily over to us again, but I'm not going to try to stop Brenda from doing it herself." "Emily won't let Brenda talk her into accepting that." "We won't know as long as Emily has everything she wants. We both left Brenda no other real choice other than going back to Emily. She won't have any other choice as long as you and I are still fighting with each other." "I never wanted to fight, Kenny." "That's probably true. On the other hand, you wanted to do things your way. I told you I couldn't let you do that. I told you what I was willing to do to prevent you from doing that, but you went ahead and did it anyway. You might not have wanted to fight, Joyce, but your actions produced the situation that has led to the two of us fighting." "Suppose I agree to try things your way from now on? Will you take Brenda back, even if Emily decides she doesn't want to come back to us?" "Probably not. I might have done that before, but now I know more about what Brenda wants and needs. Now it will have to be either both of them, or neither of them." "Can't you just go see them and talk them both into coming back to exactly how it was before?" "I probably could, but I won't. If they come back, I want it to be their own decision. Both of their decisions." While speaking with Joyce, I was trying my hardest not to let myself get off on yet another unproductive tangent with her. Even though she wasn't telling me what to do, she was still attempting to put her own agenda forward. She still hadn't learned that it wasn't going to work. I was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Joyce wasn't going to change the way she always needed to have what she wanted. I'd put up with that before, although it was difficult for me to remember why I'd accepted that. I knew I couldn't put up with it anymore. "Kenny, there has to be a way we can do this. You need to do something to make them both want to come back again." Why couldn't she see that her wheedling tone of voice and her constant need to have her own way wasn't working on me like it used to? I knew Joyce was very intelligent. She had to know I was no longer responding to her in the way she was used to. It began to seem both pathetic and desperate to me. "Joyce, listen to me. If Brenda and Emily are ever going to come back, it will be because they've decided that's the best thing for them, and for the children. I have conditions I'd need satisfied before that happens. They have to find a way to satisfy all my conditions before I'd even consider allowing them to return. The most important condition would be my knowing that Emily could really live with and accept whatever lifestyle we'd agreed to. There just isn't any way that you can get around me on this. They have to deal directly with me. One of my other conditions is waiting for them to come to me. I won't go to them. If I find out that you or Mama talked them into approaching me, I won't meet with them. Do you understand?" "You already said it yourself, Kenny. Emily already has what she wants. As long as she has Brenda, she won't agree to any other solution." "I agree. Brenda needs to decide for herself that living with Emily, without the rest of us, isn't what she wants. If you leave the two of them alone long enough, Brenda will decide that on her own. This isn't something you or Mama interfering in will help. Every time you do interfere, you push back whatever chance there is for having all of us be together again." Joyce was quiet for many seconds after I stopped speaking. When she started speaking herself, her voice sounded as though she were resigned to not having any control over what was going to happen. "You need to come back home, Kenny. I can't keep on trying to make everything work anymore. If you come back, I promise I'll stay out of everything having to do with any of the other wives. All I want is to have our old life back. That's all I ever wanted. You come back home and I'll do whatever you tell me to." "If I do come back, I'm going to hold you to that promise, Joyce. I'm not going to ask any of the other wives to come back, and you can't ask them either. We're going to let each of them decide their futures for themselves." "I can't be happy if it ends up being just you and me, Kenny. I'm sorry, but that's the honest truth. You should know that before you decide about me." "Did you really think I didn't understand that already, Joyce? I've seen what it takes to make you happy. I know what you're going to need, what you've always wanted and needed. I want that for you too, but not the way you were trying to go about making it happen. I'm pretty sure we can have enough to make things good for you again. You need to let me be comfortable with whatever it is we end up with. If it were just for me, I think I could be happy with you and all the children. I know you need more than that. I want you to be happy too. I'm not saying its any sacrifice for me having other women in our marriage, because it isn't. I need to arrange it differently than it was though. I don't want us taking unfair advantage of any of the others. That might mean we have to make some changes in how we do things, or with who we do them with." "What about Shirley? You don't plan on having this same thing with her? You need to tell her you're back home and ask her to come back." "You need to do what you just promised you'd do, Joyce. Let me take care of these things. I already told you that I wasn't going to ask any of the other wives to come back. I didn't ask you to come back. You asked me. Shirley will ask me too. When she does, if you haven't interfered, I'm sure I'll welcome her back home." "You're just going to do nothing? The other wives aren't like me, Kenny. They're going to wait until you ask them. You can't expect them to know you want them to call you." "Joyce, you should listen to yourself some time. You say one thing, then you go right ahead and do something else. You promised to stay out of my dealings with the other wives. That's the only reason I was agreeing to coming back home. If you keep insisting on telling me what to do, I'll just stay here in Birmingham and start working around you. Is that what you want?" "Why can't you make this one exception for Shirley? If you come home, and you don't ask Shirley to be here too, she's going to be crushed." "Joyce, good bye. You can do whatever you want to do, but I'm not going to be a part of it. I'm not calling any of you. I'm staying right where I am until I get something that I want. What I don't want is what you're still trying to do." I hung up the phone and set the answering machine so it would pick up any future calls without ringing through. This thing with Joyce was turning out to be a lot harder for her than I had thought it would be. I asked myself if there might be a way where I didn't have to be so rigid with her. Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer would be "no". Joyce had always been one of those people who looked for any sign of weakness when negotiating. I was like that too, now. She had called me. I knew I had to continue setting a hard line when it came to offering terms for her. Anything less than this, and it wasn't going to work. Joyce had to accept that there wasn't any way around what I'd told her needed to happen. Until she did, none of the plans we might agree on would work. I wasn't so unaware that I didn't know that Joyce would use this time to let all the other wives know what I'd said to her. I had anticipated something along these lines. Once she had communicated my terms to all of them, then she'd call me again and promise once more to stay out of everything and allow me to handle things. I wondered how she would take my news that I'd put her name down at the bottom of my list. Her call had provided me with legitimate reasons for doing so. Making Joyce wait until the end would have other advantages for me too. I was expecting a rush of phone calls from the other wives, just as soon as Joyce put the word out about me not contacting any of them. I would listen to any offers being made, but I wasn't going to commit to anything until I'd heard from all of them about what they were offering. I was doubtful that my initial commitment would involve more than two of my wives. Brenda was the first of the other wives to call me. It was the following morning, the day after Joyce's call. Her stated reason for calling was to tell me that she hadn't been planning to move back to her house. She told me that Joyce had called over to Mama's house and told her that she'd said that to me. As soon as she'd clarified that for me, she wanted to know if it was all right for her to come to Birmingham for a visit. I told her pretty much the same thing I'd been telling all the others, that I first wanted to get things resolved with Joyce. I was putting Brenda off on purpose. I wasn't going to deal with her, not without dealing with Emily too. Later that afternoon, after work was finished, Cindy came into my office to see me. She too had spoken with Joyce it seemed, and she wanted to know if I would please take her back. "If I did, it would only be for around here in Birmingham, Cindy. For right now, I'm not making any permanent decisions. I expect to be talking to some of the other wives too. All I'd be agreeing to with you right now, would be some talking and some sex." "That's okay. Can I get some of my things, and then meet you over at the house in about an hour?" "You can't talk to Joyce about anything we discuss together, Cindy. Not to any of the other wives either. What we talk about is private between the two of us." "Can I let her know that you said I could come stay with you?" "You can tell her anything you want to, except for anything we've said to each other. I want you to respect my wish for privacy about that." Cindy just nodded her head and left my office. I wasn't sure what her nod might have meant. I was thinking about that a minute later when she returned with her purse and put her head inside my office again. "I'll see you at the house in an hour. We can make plans for dinner then." She left without waiting for any reply from me. That night, when we got back from dinner, we went straight to bed. We did a lot more screwing than talking. I'd been missing having sex. This new arrangement with Cindy was taking care of one distracting need I'd been having. I didn't sense any burning need on Cindy's part for us to be doing much talking about the nature of our new relationship. I knew, once the word about where Cindy was living got around to the other wives, that my life was going to get a lot more interesting. Joyce called me at work, late the next morning, wanting to know the details of what Cindy and I had worked out. I told her we hadn't worked out anything, other than agreeing that she could come stay with me at the house. "What about me? Where does this leave you and me?" "Right where it was before Cindy asked me if she could come back. I found out you went ahead and talked to all the wives and Mama about what we'd been talking about. I thought we had agreed that you wouldn't do that?" "That was when you said you'd come back home, Kenny. I had to tell them what you said after you got so mad at me. I didn't want everyone just waiting for you to call them. I'm glad you got this thing started. Who's going to be next?" "I don't know yet. Brenda called me. She told me she wasn't planning to move out of Mama's house. She wanted to come down here for a little visit. I told her no." "Mama told me that Brenda had called you. She didn't tell me that you told Brenda she couldn't come for a visit though. If Emily called you, would you let her come visit you?" "Joyce, I'm not going to let you orchestrate this. You need to stop what you're doing and start worrying about what's happening between you and me. All this you're doing now, it makes it a lot less likely that you and I are ever going to get back together." "You don't really mean that. You need me to help you let the other girls know what you want." Joyce was a very sharp cookie, I'd give her that much. I'd been using her for that. Still, in spite of that, I was now having serious doubts that she would be willing or even able to change herself into a person I could get along with. She didn't really believe I would set up my life without her playing a big role in it. I was determined that our relationship needed to change. I couldn't continue to accept Joyce's need to control how we did things. Before I got sick, I'd been able to let her have her way in how things operated. Now, I could no longer do that. "Look, Joyce, I really don't want to keep on telling you the same things over and over again. You don't run things in my life anymore. I make my own decisions now. If you can't accept that, then we need to go our separate ways. I don't know any other ways to tell you that." "You think I'm going to let you ruin things for me, Kenny? You think I'm supposed to stand by and watch you destroy everything we've had? You want to change our whole way of doing things. I'm not going to be your obedient slave. You can't tell me what I can do or what I can't do. It doesn't work like that, not with me." "Joyce, it has to work like that for me now. Not about me telling you what to do, but about me not allowing you to tell me what I have to do. That won't work with me anymore. I told you to stay out of these problems with the other wives. I need to handle those my way. Don't keep calling me just to tell me you haven't accepted what I told you I needed. If you can't accept it, that's fine. You don't need to keep calling me just to tell me so." "Can you promise me one thing at least? Can you be nice to Shirley when she calls you?" "I don't want you having any part at all in what Shirley and I decide together. You keep wanting to insert yourself where I've told you I didn't want you going. What I decide with Shirley is our business, not yours. All you need to think about is what's happening between us right now. That should be enough to keep you busy." "Don't be mean to her because you're mad at me." "Don't call me anymore, Joyce. It's a waste of both our times, and it's too sad, seeing how little you understand what's happening to us." "Okay, but you remember what I said. We could have worked together and made this a lot easier." That phone call pretty much ruined my whole day at work. Luckily, nothing much came across my desk that needed my immediate attention. More and more, I was realizing that I really didn't need to be in Birmingham at all. Between Larry and Gene, and Billy Ray's help with the trading, I was now somewhat superfluous. Things would continue to run well without me being there. That night, over another restaurant dinner, I told Cindy what I was beginning to think. I mentioned to her that I was seriously considering moving back to Kansas again. Her response surprised me. "We should leave then. I'll need to tell Uncle Larry he'll need to replace me, but he won't have too much trouble doing that. In fact, I sort of agree with you now that the women don't need a separate sales division. We can generate the same leads for them, even if they were in the same sales division as the men. Having more women specially trained to sell to other women, that was the biggest part of my idea anyway." "You want to go with me?" "Certainly. What were you thinking, that I'd just stay here in Birmingham after you left?" "I thought you were more interested in your career than it seems you are." "I'll still have my career as one of your assistants, like Billy Ray. I wasn't planning on changing that when I asked you to make me head of the women's division. I wanted it to get a good start, that's all. I was planning on training a replacement and going back to being your assistant." "Were you planning on taking that big pay cut to go back to being my assistant too?" "Billy Ray makes more than I do. Why do I need to take a pay cut?" "If we move back to Ridgeline, what are you planning on doing as far as Joyce or the other wives are concerned?" "What do you want me to do?" I could see a frown forming on Cindy's face when she asked me that question. "I want you to do whatever you want to with them. You can't try to involve me in any of that though. My deal with the other wives has to be just between each of us. No one has to do anything they don't want to do." "I might want to sleep with some of the other wives then. You wouldn't mind?" "No. Only with the other wives though. I don't want you to go sleeping around outside our group." "What are you going to be doing?" "Other than with the other wives, nothing. If I move back home, I expect things will begin happening a lot quicker. I don't expect that Joyce and I will get back together right away though." "When you do get back together with some of the other wives, will you be doing things like we used to? With more than one of us at the same time?" "Only if everyone wants to do them. If someone tells me they'd rather not be with anyone else, that will be the deciding thing from now on." "I thought it was always like that. I was never forced to do anything with anyone else. I didn't see anyone being forced to do anything. It must be Emily you're thinking about? No one ever forced her either. The only time I ever heard anyone objecting was when Eddie and Joyce would go together to wake someone up." I thought about what Cindy had just told me. Brenda wasn't objecting to what the other wives were doing to her before I got sick. Her objections began while I was in the clinic. Shirley's did as well. Emily had only objected as far as Brenda was concerned, although, when angry herself, she tended to keep herself away from whoever she was angry with. I needed to think of a better way to phrase what I was thinking about. "What I meant to say was there might be different understandings about who we each can have sex with. This is especially true if Emily and Brenda come back to live with us someday." "Do you mean you're going to let Emily decide who else, besides you and her, Brenda can sleep with?" "I wasn't thinking about anything that specific. I think all the other wives already know Emily doesn't like sharing Brenda with them. She really resents having to share her with Eddie, Dale and you." "I don't know about that so much. They both asked me, not the other way around. You remember that first time with Brenda? That was all her doing. Emily too, when we visited your house right after that. I've never asked either one of them to sleep with me." "If they ask you, that's fine. If you ask them and they agree, that's fine. If you ask Brenda, and she says yes, we might have a problem with Emily about it." "Why should Emily get to decide what Brenda and I can do together?" "You've asked a good question. The answer I can give you has more to do with jealousy, and with stronger relationships, than it does with answering your question. I hope you'll admit that Brenda and Emily are connected more strongly than the rest of you wives are with each other?" "I don't think that's true with Dale and Eddie. I'm not sure it's even true between Joyce and any of the other wives. Eddie, Shirley, and me for instance. Emily loves Brenda, and she wants her to only love her back, but Brenda isn't like that. She loves Emily all right, but she also likes having all the other wives pay her attention too. You better not make a deal with Emily about this without first checking to see if Brenda is willing to go along with it." "Okay. Will you agree that Emily has stronger feelings for Brenda than she does for any of the other wives, or for me?" "No. Stronger than for the other wives, yes, I'll agree to that. I'm not sure she feels more for Brenda than she does for you. She doesn't act to me like she does. I know how she acts around Brenda, but she acts just as jealous about you. Even with Brenda. Remember how upset she got when I first met her? That had nothing to do with Brenda. She's always been jealous of what the other wives did with you." My first reaction was to dismiss Cindy's words. I'd known Brenda and Emily much longer than she had. I'd seen the two of them in many different situations. I had a pretty good idea of the true nature of Emily's feelings. She really loved Brenda. She had proven, on many occasions, that she didn't feel like she could get along without Brenda being in her life. She'd shown me, often enough, that she thought she could get along without me in her life. "You might be right about what Brenda would want, if it were left up to her to decide. I haven't been coming at the problem from that point of view though. I feel like it was Emily's unhappiness that was causing the trouble. That was the problem I've been trying to find a solution for." "Kenny, you're just fooling yourself if you think everyone's ever going to be happy at the same time. This is even more true when it comes to you, Joyce, and Emily. None of you are ever happy anymore unless you have everything your own way. You can't all be the boss. It was better before, when you let Joyce decide family things. She was fair, and we all knew where we were with her." "I'm not fair?" "That isn't what I meant. Joyce tried giving everyone as much of what they needed as she could. When there was a conflict though, she could always find some compromise to keep things from getting too out of hand. She didn't put herself first all the time, like you and Emily are doing now." Again, I marvelled at Cindy's confidence in telling me all this. If anything, she had to know that she wasn't telling me what I wanted to be hearing from her. In some ways, her being a relative outsider to our core family group lent her some credibility when making these statements to me. "You think I'm being selfish? Putting myself first?" "You always sound like you're just representing you and your interests. Joyce represents the whole family. You tell us 'I want', and Joyce says 'we need'. That's a big difference. Emily does it just like you do. I think Brenda does that pretty much as well. Joyce and Shirley aren't like that. Dale isn't either, but Eddie is like you and Emily too." "What about you?" Cindy started blushing. "I'm just as selfish as you and the other ones I named. My point was that Joyce did a good job with all of this before you got sick. I don't remember you having anything to complain about before then. We all got along pretty well. It wasn't perfect, but Joyce kept it good for all of us. She managed Emily pretty well too, until you got sick and she couldn't use access to you as a lever to keep Emily in line." It seemed like every time I started coming to a decision about the best way for me to proceed, someone would come along and throw my whole game plan into complete disarray. Was it really only selfishness on my part, wanting to be able to make all the decisions that affected my life? I had started out accepting that our arrangement with me and the first four women was Joyce's idea. I had gone along with it reluctantly. Emily too had been reluctant to go along with it. For a long time though, it really seemed to work out well for all of us. I had been very happy with our family situation, for the most part. There was no denying that I'd never liked having Joyce setting herself up to make decisions in conflict with my own wishes though. Since my illness, I liked it even less. It wasn't ever easy to give in to her before, but, now, giving in to Joyce was many times harder than it had been before. I had just attributed that to the changes I'd undergone in my personality when my two identity states had integrated together. I was no longer as easygoing about these kinds of things as I had been before. "You've given me a whole host of new things to think about, Cindy. You think the old way was better, right?" "It seemed to work for everyone. We were all happy most of the time. Nobody started getting mean with each other until after you got sick. We all thought things would go back to how they were before you got sick. Now, it doesn't look like they will." "What about Emily? You can't really believe she was happy before too?" "I do believe she was. Emily likes to complain and be mad at people. Sometimes, being in fights is what makes someone happy. Emily likes to get people upset. She likes it when we get mad at her too. Of all of us, except for Joyce, it was Emily who missed you being there the most. She needed you to help keep her in line. She told us that." Cindy and I went up to bed right after she told me that. I didn't have any good response for what she'd just said. Between Mama and Joyce, I'd spent most of my life having to deal with people meddling in my life. I'd always resented it, and done what I could to escape from it. Nothing had changed in all that time. They both continued to meddle. I hadn't done too badly with it though. I could admit that much. I knew they both loved me, and that they both were strong willed women. Once they got a notion in their heads, it was there to stay. Nothing I'd ever done with either of them had successfully dislodged an idea they had already gotten fixated on. They might pretend to give in to me, but they were relentless in pursuing their goals. I was fighting a battle I couldn't win. I didn't possess nearly enough resolve to wear either of them down. I knew I only had two choices. I could sever my relationship with Joyce and Mama, or else I could accept the fact that they were more stubborn than I was, and that they would eventually get their way with anything like this anyway. There was a third choice though, one I'd seen my Dad use with Mama. He would go along with her long enough to get himself into a position to do what he'd planned on doing all along. This only worked when his plan resulted in a better outcome than Mama had been expecting. I didn't have his patience or his even temperament though. I wasn't used to slow maneuvering into an unassailable position like he was. I was remembering all those times when he warned me about being too abrupt with implementing my ideas and plans. I'd made my mistake with Joyce this time. Before I fell asleep that night, I'd reached another decision. I was going back to Kansas. I'd move back in with Mama and see what I could salvage by appearing to cooperate with everyone else's plans. While I was doing this, I'd see if I could manuever myself into a position to get what I felt like I needed to have. ------- Chapter 83 It took me two more weeks to get everything arranged for my move back to Ridgeline. At first, both Mama and Joyce tried to object to my plan to live over at Mama's house. Mama objected to me telling her that Brenda and the children needed to go live at their own house, with Emily and her two children. Joyce told me I needed to come back to live at my own house. After I told Joyce that I no longer wanted to live in the same house she lived in, she stopped protesting my decision to stay at Mama's. Mama never did stop objecting until after Brenda made her objections moot by picking up and returning to her house on her own. I had called Brenda after talking with Mama and had explained why I'd prefer her doing that. After Brenda decamped, I called Mama and asked her whether I was welcome to come stay with her at the house, or if she'd prefer that I find my own place to live. Seeing that I was serious about doing things my own way, Mama finally relented, telling me I was always welcome to move back to my old room. I felt a little bad about uprooting Billy Ray and Cindy from the rest of their family, but I knew I needed Billy Ray close by, and Cindy had insisted all along that she now wanted to go wherever I went. I made Billy Ray a senior VP of the grain trading company and installed him, at the company's expense, in a home I'd rented in Ridgeline. Now that he was working directly for me, I felt like it was all right to pay him a lot more money for the work he was doing. A secondary advantage I got from moving Billy Ray away from Macklinson's, and giving him a very hefty raise, was my doing so had taken away some of the animosity Larry was having with Gene over his notion that I was giving preferential treatment to both Cindy and Kyle. Billy Ray was the first of the Macklinson family whose salary now exceeded the one hundred thousand dollars a year threshold. As soon as I was back living at Mama's house, I called Shirley and invited her and our children over for lunch, and a day long visit with me. It took a little persuading for me to convince her that I really wanted her to come visit, and that my invitation didn't include Joyce coming too. Lunch was a little strained at first. I'm sure that Shirley had some doubts about loyalty issues with Joyce. Whenever she raised a question about my future plans, or asked about any of the other wives, I told her that I was only interested in discussing our relationship, and our children right then. After lunch, we packed ourselves and the children into my car and went for a drive. I couldn't seem to relax in Mama's house while Shirley and the children were there. Mama and Gerta were a disturbing presence on my mind. I had sent Cindy over to Billy Ray's new house to help them with getting settled in. I told her I wanted to spend some time with Shirley, and with the kids, to get a better idea of how they were going to react to my having returned. We ended up driving up to Bolling and getting Derek fitted for his first real set of golf clubs. After, we stopped by Gracarie's Cocina and had an early dinner with Grace and Marie. It was fun catching up with everything that was going on with them. Jane and Grace were still going strong, and were in the process of adopting their third child. Marie's husband wasn't doing well, health wise, and she was very worried about him. On the drive back home, Shirley and I really began to discuss our situation. I told her that I hadn't really changed my mind about any of my earlier decisions concerning Emily and Brenda, and I now no longer believed it would be possible to work things out to everyone's satisfaction. I told her my current plan was to see just how much could be salvaged from our earlier situation. "Shirley, I know you feel like this has got you caught in the middle, but it doesn't need to be like that. You don't have to take sides. I'd like to see about getting things back to where we had some kind of a normal relationship again. You, me, and the kids. Not with all of us living together necessarily, but at least seeing each other regularly, and us spending some time together, with the kids." "Are you going to be setting something like this up with the other wives too?" "Right now, I'm not sure. I might try that, just to see if it works out better than what we're doing now." "Better? Right now, none of us see you at all. What about Emily and Brenda? Are you going to offer them the same deal as me?" "It isn't a deal, Shirley. We're not making deals here. We've been apart, and I'm trying to see what we can possibly manage that would be better for all of us. I tried making deals with Joyce, but that didn't work out. I'm through trying to make those kinds of all or nothing deals. I'd like for us to spend some time together, you and me. If we both enjoy it, then we can take it from there. If not, then we'll have to try something else." "Why me now, Kenny? Before you said you wanted to work things out with Joyce first." "I did want that. We tried. It didn't work out for us when we tried it that way. Maybe things will change somewhere down the road, but maybe they won't too. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life waiting for things to change for Joyce and me. You and I don't have to have those kinds of problems, Shirley. We can already start to spend time together, just like we're doing here today." "Maybe we should have tried this first, Kenny. Now though, I can't do that to Joyce. It isn't fair to her for any of the rest of us to make our separate deals with you. I don't mean for this to include the children though. You can come see them whenever you want to. As far as the two of us though, you have to get something settled with the original four of us, before we can go back to there even being an us again." "Do you think Brenda and Emily will feel that way too?" "I don't know what they'll do, Kenny. All I'm talking about is what I believe I need to do. I love you, but I'm not going to do anything to improve my position if it has to be at Joyce's expense." "I don't think you really care that much about most of the things Joyce is holding out for. If you take the position you're talking about taking, I might as well just stop trying to get anything worked out with any of the other wives. Somebody has to start being reasonable first. I hoped that could be you and me." "You and Joyce need to settle this between you first. You're the one who first told me that. You can't just quit talking whenever you don't get your own way, Kenny. Go see Joyce and find a way to work it out." We got back to Mama's house before we spoke again. I understood what she was saying, and even agreed with her about some of it. Joyce and I had reached an impasse though. I had gone as far as I was willing to go with her to break that impasse. I kissed the kids and helped Shirley load them into her car for the short drive back to their house. I told Derek that I'd pick up his new golf clubs when they were ready, and take him out to the country club to spend some time hitting balls with him. I leaned into the car through the open window and gave Shirley a kiss goodbye. It was more of a peck on the cheek than anything else, but I wanted her to know that I wasn't angry or upset with her. I knew she was still a little fearful of the temper I'd shown towards her while I was sick. It was eight o'clock when I went into Mama's house. Cindy was back from Billy Ray's house and Mama said she'd gone up to our bedroom. I excused myself before Mama had a chance to ask me any questions about my meeting with Shirley. I went up to my bedroom and spent an hour discussing what happened with Cindy. Cindy thought I should have expected that reaction at first from Shirley. Her advice was to keep trying. She asked me if I was going to set something up with Joyce next. "I don't think so. I've made a couple moves that way already. I came back to town, and I asked Shirley to come talk with me. I think I'll just wait and see what they do next. I'll have Mama call Brenda and ask her to bring over the kids for a visit. If Emily and Brenda will let me visit with the kids, then I'll ask Mama to have Joyce send over our kids at a later time. If they'll all let me spend time with the kids, I can afford to just wait it out and see what they'll try to do next." It was my father who first approached me with a way to break the impasse I was facing. He had already made all the arrangements without telling me a thing about it. When he had everything set up, he came to me and presented the idea to me. "Kenny, it seems to me, and it has for a long while now, that your main difficulty in getting things resolved with your wives stems from you always having these very inflexible plans for how you need things to be. Life isn't like that. Plans are all well and good to have, but they need to leave plenty of wiggle room to allow for changes that might be needed. You can't go into a complicated and delicate negotiation with this 'take it or leave it' attitude you've been giving to people. From what I've been hearing, everyone feels like you want everything to be your way. If it isn't, then you go ahead and break off the discussion." "I haven't broken off any discussions, Dad. There is a big difference between me not agreeing to something and breaking off discussions. I've told Joyce, and I've told Emily and Brenda both, that I can't go along with what they all say they want. It won't work. I know it won't work, because we've tried it before and it didn't work then. I haven't stopped looking for a way that will work, but I haven't come up with anything that I think might work yet." "I've set it up for all of us to go out to the country club dance on Saturday. Joyce, Shirley, Brenda, Emily and Cindy have all agreed to be there. All we expect from you is for you to show up and be pleasant company again." "You really think going out to a dance with them is going to accomplish anything?" I couldn't believe he was wasting my time with something as hare brained as this. These were real problems we were having. Problems that wouldn't just go away because we were all sitting together, dancing and listening to some music. This was so unlike my father too. I suspected that he'd been put up to it by either Mama or Joyce. "You need to keep an open mind. The best way to solve a problem is to talk it out with whoever's involved. You know that already. In a social situation, there will be less pressure. Maybe all of you can use this lower keyed setting to better define your points of view?" As if all of us didn't already know everyone else's point of view! This was too simplistic. It isn't as if I didn't already know what they all wanted from me. The only thing about it that appealed to me was the idea that my father had already gotten all of them to agree to go there and try it. "What do you mean when you say I have to be 'pleasant company'?" "No fighting, no arguing. Just do your best to stay pleasant. Treat it as strictly a social engagement. I've promised all of them that you'd behave yourself and not engage in fighting or arguing with them." "I could do that, but it wouldn't accomplish anything. None of this happened because I couldn't treat them well. What are we supposed to be talking about while we're all together like this?" "I'm afraid I can't be of much assistance to you there, Kenny. I can tell you that all of them expressed the hope that it would be a pleasant evening. It has seemed to both your mother and to me that all of you want things to be worked out between yourselves, but none of you know how to go about it. The best way to work things out is to first talk to each other. Saturday will give each of you an opportunity to do that. That alone should be enough to convince you that it would be a good move for you to agree to attend." "Sure, I'll be there. I haven't been avoiding any of them anyway. The only problem I have with it is knowing someone is going to violate the agreement about fighting and arguing." "Just make sure it isn't you that does so, Kenny." It was a little unsettling the way my Dad looked at me when he spoke those words. It was one of the first indicators I had seen that he believed I was the one most responsible for the rift in my family situation. When I left him, we had agreed that I would show up at the dance at eight thirty on Saturday evening. He told me the others would be there at eight, and that he and Mama were going to go over all the ground rules with the wives once again, before I showed up at the dance. ------- I tried asking Cindy about the dance, but she told me that she'd been told not to say anything about it to me before hand. What she would do though, was show me the outfit she planned on wearing to the dance. She modeled it for me and I was suitably impressed. What I did learn from her was that she was looking forward to Saturday with great anticipation. I didn't see what the big deal was. I'd been out to those dances many times over the years. Once the band started playing, there would be little chance for any of us to do any talking together anyway. I was beginning to feel settled in by the time Saturday rolled around. Derek and I had spent a couple of hours out at the driving range as he tried out his new golf clubs. His swing was erratic, and he seemed much more concerned with hitting the ball high, rather than with either the distance or the direction the ball traveled. I let him decide what he thought was fun though, and even showed him how to put the ball further forward in his stance so that it would go higher. The main thing was to get him to enjoy hitting golf balls. We could work on other things after he grew to enjoy the complex act of hitting a golf ball. I ended up being a little late to the dance, arriving at ten minutes to nine. It wasn't exactly a case of nerves that delayed me. It was mostly caused by me underestimating the amount of time it would take me to choose the clothes I wanted to wear to the dance. Ordinarily, this wasn't a problem I was used to having. For some reason, one which I didn't understand, I couldn't seem to arrive at a decision on which suit to wear, and when I did, I'd look in the mirror after deciding, and not be satisfied with how I looked in the clothes. In the end, I chose a conservative dark blue business suit. I'd already spent an hour getting ready by the time I finally settled on this suit. When I finally did get to the club, I had no trouble finding our table. Everyone was already there, and they were all already enjoying themselves, if the laughter and the noise coming from the table was any indication at all. Joyce was sitting on Mama's right and Brenda was on her left. Emily was sitting on Brenda's left, then my Dad, then Shirley and then Cindy was wedged in next to her. The only vacant seat was between Joyce and Cindy. Somehow, I was sure this was a planned move on everyone's part. I had been thinking about what my Dad had said to me. I was determined that it wasn't going to be me that raised the first voice in argument. I was perfectly willing to have a good time and let things be purely social and relaxed. When I got to the table, I greeted everyone and apologized about being late. My Dad asked me what I was drinking, and that's when I first noticed that there were three empty champagne bottles at the table. Even Shirley had a champagne flute in front of her, and that was an unusual thing all by itself. I told my father that I'd have a glass of champagne as well. It soon became obvious to me that both my parents were being very attentive to all our empty glasses, mine and the wives, constantly topping them off with more champagne. I had been dancing with all the wives, and whenever we came back from dancing, it was to filled champagne glasses for both me and my current dance partner. The old bottles had been taken away, but there were several new empties in the center of the table again. It looked like my parents thought liquor would be some sort of lubricant for us to help work out our differences. I had been cooperative. I danced, made pleasant small talk and drank from my glass repeatedly. I felt pretty tipsy from the wine and from the closeness of all the strenuous dancing activity. It wasn't the dancing so much as the sexual tension of the dancing. I felt that strongest with Emily and Brenda for some reason. I guess it had to do with it being so unexpected that I'd hold either of them in my arms again. I would only dance a single dance with each of the wives before going back to pick my next partner at the table. When the band announced their final number, it was Cindy's turn to dance with me again. When I held out my hand and asked her though, she said no, and told me I should dance the last dance with Joyce. Right up until that happened, I'd been having a surprisingly good time of it. Like I'd expected, there had been very little chance to do much talking, but we all seemed to be enjoying ourselves. My first reaction to Cindy's refusal of the last dance was to be angry. I didn't like being manipulated like that. I might have said something, or shown my anger normally at the obvious provocation, but this time I was still alert to what my father had told me about making sure I wasn't the first one to start a fight or argue. So, instead of saying anything, I turned away from Cindy and held my hand out to Joyce. She stood up right away, a smile plastered to her face, and off we went for the final three minutes or so of the dance. I didn't try to talk over the music, and Joyce was short enough that I'd have had to speak too loudly in order for her to hear what I wanted to tell her. Instead, I just held her and danced. When the music was over, we walked back to the table. The lights came on again as soon as we neared our table. I could see that Mama and Shirley were both much the worse for wear from the wine we'd all been drinking during the evening. Dad saw the concern on my face and was quick to assure me that Hans would be outside to drive them all back home again. I told him that I'd give Cindy a ride with me, assuring him that I was fit to drive the short distance back home. All of us walked outside together and Cindy and I watched as the rest of them piled into the limo with my parents. After the limo left, Cindy and I walked over to my car. "Are you mad at me, Kenny?" Cindy seemed worried that I was. "About that last dance thing? I guess not. You surprised me though. Did you all have it set up that I'd dance the last dance with Joyce?" "No. It was just an idea I had that it would be nice if you two had the last one together. I thought it went quite well tonight, Kenny, didn't you?" "If you mean that we were all together for more than three hours without any fighting, then, yes, I thought it went well. We didn't get much of anything accomplished other than that though." "I don't agree. We accomplished a lot more than that. We all had fun together again." I didn't say anything back to her after that. She was right in what she said. It had been more pleasant than most of our other meetings since I'd gotten ill. Even if we didn't resolve anything, we'd spent time together without fighting amongst ourselves. Back at Mama's we headed straight up to my room and got ready for bed. I was in bed when Cindy finished up in the bathroom and came to bed. "Kenny, did you mean it when you said you didn't mind if I did things with the other wives?" When she said that, I'd been focusing on the immediate possibilities of her and I doing things together. It surprised me that she'd pick this time to bring something like that up to me. "I meant it. Why did you pick now to ask me about it though?" "Brenda and Emily asked me tonight if I'd like to come over to Brenda's house to spend time with the two of them. I thought I should check with you before I let them know if I would or not." "Did Brenda ask you or did Emily?" I was curious about this. It was something new and unexpected from those two. "Emily was asking me about it first, but Brenda said she'd like me to come too. I think they both want to show you that Emily has changed." This was an interesting development, no matter what the reason for the invitation might be. In a lot of ways it was surprising to me. I would have expected something like this from Joyce, but not from those other two. "Do you think you'd enjoy going?" "If you were okay with it I would. I wasn't expecting them to invite me or anything. I guess I'm curious about why they did." "I am too. This isn't like Emily. Did they make it seem like they both wanted to have sex with you?" I was looking at Cindy when I asked her that. She nodded that they did. "Did they say something that made it obvious, or are you just assuming?" She smiled at me and leaned in closer to whisper to me. "When your father was dancing with your mother, that was when they asked me. Emily slid into your seat and Brenda into you father's so I was kind of bracketed between them. You were dancing with Shirley at the time, so it was just them and Joyce and me at the table. When Emily first brought it up about me coming over to visit them, both she and Brenda were rubbing back and forth on my legs under the table. They were very blatant about doing it. They wanted it to be obvious to me what they were suggesting." "What did Joyce say or do while this was going on?" "Nothing. She was looking at you and Shirley dancing together. I don't think she even noticed us." I didn't say anything at the time to Cindy, but I was willing to bet that Joyce knew all about the offer. Still, it was very interesting. "Well, I meant it about you doing what you want with any of the other wives. Dad and I are going to Omaha next Tuesday for an overnight visit with Rob and Virginia at the Lucas Company. Rob is talking about retiring, and Dad and I want to talk him into staying for another three years. We both think he'd be much better off if he stayed with us until the whole Quick Snacks program is completely rolled out nationally. We're going to offer to give him two points in the new company if he'll stay those extra three years. You could set it up to go visit with them then." "You're giving Rob two points? Why does he get equity when none of the rest of us do?" I could see I'd made a big mistake mentioning our plan to entice Rob Lucas to stay with us for three more years. It was funny, but I'd forgotten, for a moment, how much Cindy was a representative of her whole family's interests. "Cindy, this isn't the first time we've used equity to retain a key employee. We don't do much of that, but it isn't the first time. When you say 'the rest of us', I'm assuming you mean your family?" "Not all of them, but at least Kyle, and my daddy, and my Uncle Larry and Phil." From the look on Cindy's face I knew I'd really stepped into it by opening the idea up to her. "How come you left out your aunt? Or you and Billy Ray?" "You aren't going to be giving us any equity, are you?" "I haven't even considered it. Of everyone you've mentioned so far, the only one I'd consider giving equity to is Billy Ray, and then only if he had another offer from somewhere else and was thinking about leaving here. I've told you we don't like to give away equity in our holdings. We pay people in money, not stock." "Except for Rob Lucas?" "And a very few others. We control less than twenty five percent of the vending machine company stock now. Each decision about giving up ownership like this is only made after considering every other possible way we have to make it work. I don't see what the big deal is. Your family owned all of the stock in Macklinson's at one time and they weren't exactly prospering because of it. Aren't they all better off now than they were before?" "You're making a lot more off of it than we ever did. Is that fair?" "I can't believe you even feel right about asking me that question. Of course it's fair. We've poured something like another thirty million dollars into that company over the past few years. The only thing that's the same is the name of the company. Everything else about it has been changed. You seem to forget how anxious all of you were at the time to take our money and get out from under a failing business." "I don't want to fight with you, Kenny. All I was saying is that it would be nice if you were showing the same kind of appreciation to people in our company as you are with the Lucas's. That's all I meant." We stopped talking then and went to sleep. Neither of us were in any mood to try to rekindle the moment for some bedroom hi-jinks. I remember I had a dream with all the wives in it later that night. In the morning, we made up for our abstinence of the night before. No more was said about equity transfers, or about Cindy going over to Emily and Brenda's for a visit. I was at work on Monday, helping my father put together the numbers for our banking partners. We'd been working for about an hour before he brought up the dance the prior Saturday night. I'd been expecting him to say something before then. "So, was I right about all of you getting together like that?" He looked at me with that 'know it all' expression he sometimes used. It was one of the things I found most annoying about him. "Well, if your idea was to try to help us get closer together, then I guess it worked well enough. At least Cindy picked up a little action because of it." "Spare me the lurid details, please. I meant for all of you getting together for a pleasant interlude. It seemed to me that the evening went well and accomplished its purpose." "I had a good time, Dad. Thank you." "We're repeating it again this Saturday too. Your mother believes you should ask Joyce to be your date for the evening. Pick her up at the house and drive her home afterwards. As a gesture to show your willingness to make things better between all of you." "I don't think I'd be comfortable doing that. Why not just leave it the same way it was?" "Bertie said you'd say that. She suggests a compromise to you. You come stag again, but you offer to give one of the wives a ride home with you. Someone other than Cindy who'll be riding with us back to the house." I could see that, between them, they were going to get me to compromise with them. It wasn't important enough for me to argue with them over. "I get to pick which one of the other wives myself?" "Absolutely. We think it is important that all of you see some small signs that this is working out, and start to feel as though you are beginning to make some progress." "Fine. With that understanding, you can count me in for Saturday." Tuesday and Wednesday, Cindy spent all her time over at Brenda's house. I didn't see her until Thursday morning at work. My father and I had been able to convince Rob to stay with us for another three years, but it had been accomplished without our needing to give him an equity position in the new company. He had already anticipated our wanting him to stay on, and he had initiated a proposal of his own for us to consider. Since he was asking for deferred compensation for a ten year period, immediately after retiring, my father and I agreed to it without hesitation. All we asked was that he make himself available to us as a paid consultant instead of having the formal deferred compensation agreement. Since there were tax advantages for all of us to structure it that way, Rob immediately agreed to it. Thursday night found Cindy and me going up to our room earlier than normal. She filled me in on her visit with Emily and Brenda, including some pretty lurid accounts of what the three of them got up to in bed. I was surprised again with her description of who was the aggressor and who was being preyed upon. If what she told me was true, there had been a big shift to the dynamics of Emily's sexual relationship with Brenda. I could see no reason why Cindy would misrepresent the facts to me. Saturday night we all got together for another dance at the club. It was pretty much a repeat of the week before, with the sole exception of there being less drinking than at the first one. I was sure my parents were convinced that I'd ask either Joyce or Shirley to let me take them home. In fact, I believe that was the unanimous belief of everyone at the table. Shirley and Joyce seemed more keyed up than usual too. When I asked Brenda if I could drive her home, there were some audible gasps, including the loudest one of all, from Brenda herself. I saw her and Emily exchanging puzzled looks right before the limo left to take all the others home. Instead of taking Brenda home, I drove her over to my parent's apartment in Bolling and kept her there for about three hours while I made love to her, and asked her questions about these changes I kept hearing about her and Emily. Brenda was very responsive to my ardor, and quite open when discussing her relationship with Emily, and the changes it had recently undergone. It was after four o'clock on Sunday morning before I brought Brenda back to her house. She walked up to her front door step rather gingerly. I hadn't been too gentle in my lovemaking efforts. That isn't to say that Brenda hadn't been urging me on to even greater effort than I was already making. I was pretty sore and used up as well. It had been a while since I'd put forth so much effort in so short a period of time. I was well satisfied with what we'd done, and with what I'd found out and confirmed with Brenda. It did seem to appear that changes had taken place with Emily. I didn't understand why, but it was enough to know that the changes were real, and that Emily had been the primary one to initiate them. It was beginning to look like she had reached many of the same conclusions that I had. If she was willing to make changes in how she approached some things, then I was willing to make changes of my own as well. Sunday afternoon at three, I showed up unannounced at my house. Joyce was surprised to see me standing in the doorway. I spent most of the afternoon and early evening playing with the kids and talking to Joyce about 'safe' topics. After all the kids were in bed I told her that I could stay the night or else go back to Mama's house. I told her that she should choose whichever she preferred I do. I spent the night in my own bed again, with Joyce. I won't dwell on the sex we had, other than to say it was very compatible and satisfying to us both. We also talked about what I had seen and heard. I told her that this new information made me more hopeful that things could be resolved between Emily and me. Joyce took this news like I'd thought she would, happiness radiating from her smile in waves of positive emotion. After we talked, we fell asleep with her head and chest laying on my chest with her legs and lower body along the side of me. In some ways, it was a feeling of coming back home after a prolonged absence. I felt like I was back where I belonged, where I needed to be. I came back to Mama's house early the next morning, just to change and get cleaned up for work. Mama and Gerta were sitting together in the kitchen when I came in. Both of them had these knowing smiles on their faces. They must have known somehow where I'd spent the last sixteen hours. "Things are starting to look good again, Mama." I felt like I owed her that much for all her efforts and manipulations. While I was in the shower, Cindy stood outside, peppering me with questions about what had happened with Brenda and me and with Joyce and me. She seemed to take all my answers pretty much in stride. I had told her about Rob Lucas settling for a consultancy contract rather than equity in the Quick Snacks company, and she pointed out that it was good news that I still had those points to distribute to some key employees. I had no doubts about which employees she considered 'key'. ------- Chapter 84 My Dad and I were once again trying to put together a new financing package to cover the higher than anticipated financing costs for expanding several areas of our business. We were being hamstrung because of the success we were enjoying in growing our nationwide market share. The vending business was expanding just as rapidly as the Quick Snacks program, and we were in the process of buying up many of the smaller regional bakers that were unable to compete with the proliferation of big national bakeries such as our own. It seemed like all any of us had time for anymore was to search out ways to pay for all the growth we were experiencing. It was a double edged sword, this growth. We couldn't afford to slow down and consolidate what we'd built, because our strategy was to go all out now that we still had a jump on our competition. We knew the window of opportunity wasn't going to be open to us for much longer. We had to keep going if we were going to maximize our overall potential. Sometimes, success doesn't seem very satisfying. Ours was causing us as many problems as it was solving. With my Dad and I spending so much of our time trying to put the financing in place, we were being forced to delegate more and more of the daily operating decisions to our managers. Problems started cropping up that were caused by there being something of a vacuum at the top. There just wasn't a single person available who understood how all the separate components went together to make up the whole. My father was beginning to lose the finger he had on the pulse of the companies. This level of awareness was something that he'd always maintained in the past. We were beginning to show signs of suffering in our productivity and overall efficiency because of that loss of control over the big picture. I had been back in Ridgeline for a little more than a month when my Dad and I got into our first really huge business disagreement with each other. It all started when I suggested that things might be a lot better if he were to concentrate on operating the companies, and delegated the financing to someone we could bring in from the outside. Someone who specialized in finance and bank negotiations. "That's a sure recipe for disaster, Kenny. Once you give up control of the money, you've given up control of the company. I've seen twenty or thirty good companies go under after they made the kind of move you're suggesting I make." "I didn't say you wouldn't be there to check over everything before we sign off on it. You can't do everything, and the company needs you to look at the big picture, to coordinate things and make sure everything is being given its right priority. You're the only one who understands everything we're trying to get accomplished. You know how it all is supposed to come together." We argued for several hours about whether having another bank negotiator and finance specialist was a practical solution. It seemed to me that my Dad felt like I was trying to push him out of being in control of the companies. That wasn't what I wanted. In fact, the opposite was true. I was worried that we'd end up making a critical miscalculation without him being in overall command of the various divisions. Maybe I presented my idea too forcibly to him. I should have broached it from the point of view of creating a department of finance with him in control of it. He would be able to save time by using people to look into some of the most time consuming aspects of putting financial data together. As it was, he and I were the only two working on putting all the future forecasts and current sales numbers into shape for him to make his presentation to the consortium of lenders we were using. In any event, we needed an additional half a billion dollars of credit, and it all needed to be in place sometime within the next few months. Part of the tension we both were feeling was from knowing that the bakery acquisitions we needed to make in order to produce the product to fuel our sales growth were skewing the numbers against making the loan request viable. We were incurring a lot of expense immediately without having the commensurate current earnings from those acquisitions. All of the new bakeries we wanted to acquire were going to require extensive retooling in order to handle what we were planning for them to do. The retooling was another current expense that wasn't going to result in any immediate offsetting income stream. Seventy five percent of the new money we were after would be used to acquire and retool those bakeries. Less than twenty five percent would be going to finance the sales roll out of the vending and the Quick Snack programs. Bankers looked at growth and potential, but they needed underlying collateral to secure the loan until the income started streaming in. We knew the income was going to come, and so did our lenders, but they wouldn't assume the downside risk by themselves, in case something did go wrong. They were right too. As they now stood, those bakeries weren't worth the money they were going to cost us. Their liquidated current value wouldn't justify the loan that we needed. My father and I were both frustrated by knowing this was true. It was in a moment of temper from that frustration when I lit the fuse that sent our argument into the stratosphere. "If we want to keep on growing like we've planned on, we're going to have to take the company public. There's no other way to get the money we need." As soon as I said it, I regretted having spoken the thought out loud. The idea had come up from time to time over the years, and we'd always decided against doing that. My father was very proud of the fact that we were now one of the largest privately held family owned and managed companies in the world. "When I'm dead, you can do that, Kenny, but not before then." "By then, it won't matter. Someone else will have beaten us into all those markets that are open to us right now." "We're family owned and family operated, and we're going to stay that way as long as I'm the one in charge. You popping off and saying things without thinking it through first is starting to have a bad effect on more than just your private life, son." I got up and left his office before I had a chance to say anything else to make matters even worse than they now were. Like I said, I was just frustrated. What I'd said was just me giving vent to some of that frustration. I needed a place to hang out to give enough time for both my Dad and me to cool down again. I knew I was going to have to apologize to him, but I wasn't in the mood to be doing that anytime soon. He and I had different philosophy's about what the business actually was now. All of us had more than enough money to last us forever. To me, growing the business was a competition. I wanted to see how big and successful we could make it. Not for the money alone, but for the satisfaction of creating something. To my Dad, this business was practically his whole life. He was the business, and he wanted it to stay that way. He wasn't in such a hurry. He would take his time and wait until he found a way to do what he wanted to do, on his terms. One thing I already knew was that I was the one intruding on his domain. He didn't deserve having me spouting off and threatening his control like I had done. I needed to talk to someone that would understand what had happened. Someone who would be able to give me some good advice about what I should do to get things back to normal between my Dad and me. I soon found myself outside the door to Joyce's office. I hadn't had the conscious thought that this was where I was heading, not until I turned down the corridor that led to her office door. In the time that I'd been back, I'd only been alone with Joyce that one Sunday after the second dance at the club. We'd gone out with the kids a couple of times since then, and had some good talks together, but neither of us had suggested we do another sleep over like that first time. I knew that Joyce was waiting for me to make some sort of move concerning Emily. She didn't want me getting distracted from doing that. I opened her door and walked into her office. She wasn't there, but I heard voices in the next room, the one we'd set up as a bedroom years before. When I went over and opened the door, I found Joyce, Cindy and Brenda involved in a heated discussion about something. The way all three of them shut right up when they saw me made me think that I might have been what they were arguing about. "What's this? Are you three plotting the overthrow of the government?" "Hi, Kenny. No we were arguing about something more important than that. Brenda wants to throw Emily and the children out of her house." Joyce seemed anxious to be the first to speak. "It's Brenda's house. Emily's only a guest. Why do you want her to leave, Brenda?" "I never said she had to leave, Kenny. What I said was she was driving me crazy and I wished she'd leave. I'm not thinking about asking her to though." Brenda was dividing her time between smiling at me and frowning at Joyce while she said that. "Maybe she and I should start looking for a place together then. My Dad and I just had a big fight, and he'll probably kick me out of the house when I go back there tonight." I was laughing while I said it, letting them all know that it was a joke I was making. I certainly had no intentions of moving in with Emily anywhere. "That's a good idea, Kenny. It would solve a lot of problems we've all been having. Cindy doesn't like living at Mama's house either. She said she'd like you to move out of there and either back to our house, or else get another place of your own." When Joyce said that, I looked over at Cindy, and I knew Joyce was telling me the truth. Cindy hadn't said a word to me about not liking living at Mama's house. I wondered why she hadn't. "How come you didn't tell me that you weren't comfortable, Cindy?" "I didn't want you getting upset with me. I know you like living there, and being with your family. It isn't anything bad, I just don't feel that comfortable with us living with your parents and doing things together. Your mother finds out everything we do, and she has been looking at me funny ever since I went to Brenda's house for that visit. It embarrasses me." Cindy was having a gentle pink flush on her face and neck, obviously uncomfortable with being the subject of our discussion. "I'm not upset. You should have said something to me about it earlier. If you'd be more comfortable, we can move back to our house. You don't have any problem with that, do you, Joyce?" "It's your house too, Kenny. All I'd need to do would be to change the sheets on the big bed. I can move my things out of your room in about fifteen minutes. The kids would be happy to see you back living with them again." "If we did that, I'd have to go back to see my Dad and apologize to him. I wouldn't want him thinking I'm so mad at him that I'd move out of the house because of it." "What are you two fighting about now?" Joyce was used to my Dad and me having our disagreements, but never big ones like this one. "I told him we needed to go public with the company, to raise money for the expansion." "I've heard the two of you talking about that before. You've always decided not to do it. Why is it different now? Why do you think you should do it?" "I'm not sure we should. I was just frustrated because we can't justify increasing our credit facility by enough to afford buying up those new bakeries, retooling them, and still paying for the vending and the Quick Snack sales roll outs." "He's always gotten us the money we needed before. You should let him keep working on it. He'll figure out a way to do it. I still don't see why either of you are mad at each other." "The important thing is to get the financing in place, but Dad is so busy lining up new financing that he isn't running the companies anymore. Each division is operating on its own and no one is coordinating things. We're not as efficient as we once were, and it's starting to be a real drag on our profitability. That's what Dad needs to do, run the company. Hire someone to work on financing. He disagrees. He thinks he'd have to give up control of the company if someone else was handling our finances." "The important thing is for you to continue to show support for your father. What makes you the expert on what the company needs to be doing? He's been running this company since you were in diapers. I think he can manage things just fine without you telling him what he needs to do." Joyce said that last part as an emotion laden attack on me. She was as upset with me as my father had been. She was right, but she was wrong too. I should be supportive of my father, but I also knew I was right that he needed to go back to running the operational side of our companies. I might not know as much about the business as my Dad, but I had eyes, and I had seen for myself that the company was beginning to suffer from not having a single unified vision at the top, leading the company. I didn't just make that up to try to bolster my position or my argument. "We need to get that money, and we need it soon. With all the money we already owe, we're stretching things a lot trying to get another half a billion to do what we want to do. With all the numbers we have now, there won't be enough collateral for that big of a loan. We're a hundred million short just on operating capital for the next six months sales roll out. You can't add assets worth two hundred million and ask for five hundred million in new money." "Let your father handle it. At the very worst, he'll slow things down until sales catch up with expenses. When we have more income, they'll let us have the money." "That's how it used to be, Joyce, but it isn't like that anymore. We used up the forward income increases by spending money to upgrade some of our plants and by converting them over to vending product producers. The increase we're seeing now is all pledged to support the last credit line increase. All our current assets are already pledged to secure that line. At current levels of production capacity, our income is going to top out at just enough to service all our debt and still take care of our other expenses. The only way we're going to grow out of the crunch we've created is to add more production capacity while the market is wide open enough to accept the increase." "Does your father know this? I'm betting he's the one who told you about it. Kenny, you need to let him run things. You always said there has to be one person in overall charge. Your job is to provide him with whatever assistance he needs that you can give to him." "He needs another two hundred million dollars in underlying assets that he can pledge. I don't have anything to assist him with." "Can't you borrow on the grain trading company? It makes a lot of money. Can't you borrow that much on it?" I had never thought of the grain trading company as a real company. It was mostly me and Billy Ray. It had no tangible physical assets to use as collateral. What it did have was a track record of increasing annual earnings. It might be worthwhile to have someone knowledgeable looking at it to see if there was enough value there to justify a loan. One thing I already knew it did have was plenty of current income to service whatever debt amount I could generate for it. I'd definitely have to change the way I had everything set up, including separating the charitable trusts and the private investments I was handling for other family members. With the cash reserves I had in the company, I could still show a little more than forty million dollars a year of earnings and revenue. I called Frank Clooney from Joyce's office phone to ask him about what I'd need to do to get the grain trading business set up so I could borrow against it. As he had in the past, Frank started right in recommending that I secure a loan as a private placement with a group of investors. He'd said the same thing to me, back when we were looking for more financing for the bakeries some years earlier. His contention was that it was easier to secure financing from private investors. They didn't have a long list of lending criteria and fixed asset needs. If they thought a loan would make them a profit, they made it. If not, they didn't. Frank stressed how much more flexible they could be. "I'm going to need at least two hundred million dollars, Frank. I might need it for up to five years and all I want to have to pay is the interest on the loan each year. I can pay up to eight percent out of the income I'm generating. Do you think that's possible?" "I really don't know. I can set up an offering for you and then shop it around. We'd know soon enough if there was any interest. You might need to pledge some of the assets from your other trusts too, like the note you have from your father's company in your main trust, just in case something happens to you. I can get an insurance policy on you to pay off the loan in case you die. At your age, the premium would be very reasonable. Still want me to go ahead with this?" "Go ahead and set it up for people to look at. I'd need this in place fairly soon. We're going to be closing on some bakeries in the next ninety days. I want to use most of the money for that." After I got off the phone with Frank, I went back to my father's office. We talked some after I had apologized to him. He apologized to me too about the comment about my personal life. I didn't mention my phone discussion with Frank, or talk about the idea that Joyce had given me. I had forgotten about the note I had from the company having a value on its own. I was receiving quite a bit of income from that note, and had been for some years now. There was over seventy million in fairly liquid investments in my main trust that my father had purchased, using the annual interest the company had been paying to me. If necessary, these could be converted into cash as well. It took a month before we had a firm offer of financing. As Frank had cautioned me, the lenders wanted a pledge of other assets to secure their position. Once we had worked out an agreement, I received the money. I felt like I was beginning to run out of assets that were mine without any encumbrances. I was now officially in hock up to my eyeballs. That was an expression my Dad liked to use. I'd always thought it a colorful expression. Now though, I felt the full strain of what it meant. When I showed up in my Dad's office with the money, at first he was reluctant to take it. His main objection to taking it was that it wasn't enough to accomplish what we needed. I told him to close the deals on all the bakeries with the money and then work out the numbers for justifying a new three hundred million increase of our existing credit facility. He was then concerned with my not having any protection in case things didn't go as we had planned. "Dad, if this gets you away from hunting for new financing, and back to running the companies, I'm not going to be worried about anything going wrong. We've got to come up with a way to get any future money we need without you having to spend all your time and energy on looking for it." "This one is it as far as I'm concerned, Kenny. This will be enough to get us where we've been aiming for all along. From now on, either we fuel the growth from internally generated income, or else we forego it." "I seem to remember us saying that same thing at least two other times, Dad. I do think we might wait awhile this time though. We're starting to be stretched too tight. If anything bad happens, we'll both be borrowing money from Mama." "It wouldn't be the first time for me, Kenny." "Still, I'd prefer not having to do it." "I agree. You're sure you want us to do this?" "I'm positive. Just promise me we won't be going out looking for money for at least another three years." "I promise. Of course, if something comes along that's just too good to pass up, but I promise I won't go out looking for anything new." I think it was just about six months later that Joyce brought us the idea she'd been working on. There was this internet company that did fund raising's using cookies and candy to help raise money for the public school systems. They had gotten themselves overextended and were now in receivership. Joyce wanted us to invest twelve million dollars to buy up their assets and start them back up to helping schools raise money again. We ended up setting up another trust to do this. All the profits went into funding some of the charities that Mama already lent her support to. Technically, all the money came from Mama, but, somehow my Dad and I had to assume part of the risk, in case Joyce didn't make a go of it. We weren't worried about that happening, so we agreed to do it. ------- I had to fly back down to Birmingham several times to put out the fires that Larry, Phil and Gene always seemed to be starting. Those three just couldn't seem to get along for more than a month or two before something else came up that caused me trouble. Cindy was always happy to get back to Alabama, and since she and I had moved over to my house again, she had been relatively content and happy. I was sleeping back in my own room. I had occasional visitors to the house though. Cindy and Joyce both had their own suites again. On nights when I had my guests over, the two of them stayed out of my bedroom. I had entertained Shirley on many occasions, usually about twice a week. Brenda had been over by herself, and once she and Emily came over together. The three of us had ended up in bed together, and Emily stayed with us for another two nights after Brenda went back home. She ended up in my bed one of those nights, but I'm not sure where she slept the first night that Brenda wasn't with her. It wasn't with me though. After I'd been back at my house for about a month and a half, Eddie and Dale came for a visit. They only stayed for three nights. Dale and I slept together each of these nights, but Eddie and I didn't get together. She didn't ask to, and I didn't go to her and make her any offer either. Surprisingly, no one was bringing up anything about any of us formalizing any kind of reconciliation. I was sure the wives had discussed this, and had then decided that they didn't want to take any chances on spoiling things by trying to talk about it with me. We did talk to each other, but not about any of the specifics of our current or future relationships. Joyce seemed content to let things proceed as they were doing. I think the other wives were taking their orders from her. I was just happy not to be fighting and arguing with any of them for awhile. I didn't want to rock the canoe. When Eddie and Dale were visiting, I enjoyed being with them. When they left together, it didn't bother me. I felt the same way about Brenda and Emily. I was happy to spend time with them, but I wasn't upset when they went back home again. I slept with Cindy more than Joyce. Cindy and Joyce slept together too, but I didn't mention it to either of them. I had even gone over to Brenda's house a time or two, and had even ended up spending the night there on several occasions. I always called over to the house to let Joyce or Cindy know where I was though. At Brenda's house, it was always the three of us in bed together, and it was almost always Emily and I double teaming Brenda. Before, it had always been the other way around. I broke my own rule one night by asking Emily about the changes. "How come you've turned into the aggressive one with Brenda, Em?" "I was always the aggressor with her. She never came on to me." "There's a big difference between being the instigator and being the aggressor. Before you did all the instigating, but you weren't the aggressor. Now you're doing both." "What difference does it make? This is how we like it now." I didn't quite believe her when she said that. I thought it might be how Brenda liked it, but I didn't think it would be Emily's first preference. I was smart enough not to say anything more about it. Part of the reason I went over to Brenda's house so much was to find out, if I could, what it was that had changed. I felt it was important to know if Emily had changed herself, or if change was being forced on her. I had already had a suspicion that Emily staying at our house for those two additional nights, after Brenda left, hadn't been her own idea. Another thing I'd noticed was that Emily's fiery temper seemed to have disappeared. She still got mad, but there was none of the intensity behind it. I'd brought this up for discussion once with Cindy and Joyce, but neither of them had any comments or ideas about what might have changed. I found myself unable to make future plans with the wives without first knowing what was really happening. I didn't know what I needed to do in order to find this information out. Emily was the one big change in our group dynamic. Was she changed, or was she somehow being forced to appear like she'd changed? I decided to take Emily with me to Alabama on one of my trips to intercede in an argument that was brewing between Gene and Larry. When I asked her to come with me, she hesitated before agreeing. Later, Joyce asked me why I'd invited Emily to go with Cindy and me. "I need to talk to Emily when it's just her and me. She's made a lot of changes, and I'm not sure why she did it." "We're all getting along really well, Kenny. Can't you just leave it alone?" "I could, Joyce, but that wouldn't be how I do things, would it? Until I find out what I need to know, nothing's really changed with all of us. Things are definitely better right now, and I don't want to spoil that. On the other hand, it's hard for me to have any faith in those changes continuing unless I first understand what brought them about, and have some opinion about whether they will last or not." "How can you possibly tell if something like that is going to last? With Emily, everything can change in a minute." "I need to know what or who made Emily change, and whether she's happy with the changes." "She did it herself. That's what Brenda told us. She doesn't care anymore that Brenda does things with the rest of us. Emily does things with us now too. She decided to do that on her own, not from what any of us said or did." I thought Joyce was telling me the truth, at least in so far as she knew it. Still, I needed to investigate it myself. I wasn't going to just accept Joyce's word for it. I was mostly concerned with two things. First, I wanted to make sure Emily wasn't being coerced into changing, and second, I wanted to be able to assess for myself how permanent this supposed change was going to be. I needed to talk to Emily alone to accomplish both those things. We got to our house in Birmingham a little before noon on a Tuesday morning. I expected to take one day to get Larry and Gene straightened away, before using the rest of the week, if I needed it, to get to the bottom of what was going on with Emily. She made it simple for me. "Nobody's making me do anything, Kenny. I just got tired of always having to fight for Brenda's love and attention. I already knew she doesn't feel the same way I feel about her. I'd already lost you, and I knew I was going to lose her too. So I decided to make some changes. I decided I'd be more like you and Joyce and Brenda are. I'd do what I wanted to do, and only worry about myself for a change." "Really? How do you like it so far?" "I'm not sure yet. Sometimes I like it fine. Other times, I really miss having that special relationship with Brenda, even if it was all on my part only." "Brenda loves you too, Em. She just loves herself a lot more. I've been worried that someone else was forcing you to make these changes." "You are, and she is too. I told you what I wanted, but you said I couldn't have it. I would have settled for just having Brenda, but I finally realized that wasn't going to work either. I thought about just leaving again and looking for what I want somewhere else. That's the trouble with really loving someone though. As long as they're around, no one else seems good enough to leave them for. When they aren't around, all you can think about is how much you wish they were. I might be able to get over not having you, or even not having Brenda, if I did have you, but I know I can't do without both of you. I just can't." "You never had to, Em. You can't have all of either of us though, and that's been most of the problem. I found out pretty early that I could never have all of Brenda. I hated her for that. It was only later that I admitted that I enjoyed some variety in my life as well. Not necessarily for the same reasons as Brenda, but I do enjoy having more than one woman to make love to. Each of you is different, special to me. I've talked to Joyce about this, and she feels the same way. Most of the problem she and I still have is because she won't let me give up on you and Brenda. In some ways, you two are more important to her than I am." "Joyce likes girls more than I do." "I won't argue the point. I do know she likes girls enough that she's willing to share me with them and to share them with me. It doesn't bother me most of the time. I don't get jealous of her very much. Brenda likes all the attention she can get. She's too used to it to ever change. She'll pay any price in order to get it. She'll let us pay any price too, and that's been a problem in the past. She seems willing now to keep it within our family, which is the very least I can live with. The same with Joyce. There's no sense in any of us being jealous, not as long as things stay within the range of what we can accept and deal with." "I'm always going to be jealous and resentful, but I know now that showing it will only make things worse. I know I can't keep making trouble because of how I feel. I wish things could be different, but I've finally accepted what you've been telling me since I was fourteen years old. I can never have either you or Brenda all to myself." "You can at times, just not all the time. That's how I look at it. Whoever I'm with, that's who I have all to myself for right then. It helps me a lot that I happen to love all my wives. It would help you if you loved all the other wives too." "I do love them. I'm just not in love with them. I'm in love with you and Brenda." "I'm in love with you and Brenda too. That doesn't mean I'm not in love with all the other wives too, because I am. The whole time I was sick that I remember, that was the one thing I never lost sight of. Even before I got my two identity states integrated, I always knew that I was in love with all of you. No matter how mad I got, it didn't stop me from loving all of you. Loving you didn't stop me from wanting to punish some of you though." "Brenda has told me what I need to keep doing. I can do all of that. I never had a problem with doing things with the others. My problem was always with Brenda doing those same things with them. I don't think that will ever change, but I also don't think I can do anything to prevent it from happening." "You have to find a way to put up with all of this and still be happy. If you aren't happy, then it shows, and it causes all of us problems. Do you think you can do that?" "I can be more happy a lot of the time. I've been happier these last few months. I've almost accepted what has to happen with Brenda. It makes it easier for me when its you with her, because I know you love her too. I don't think Joyce or Eddie love her though. They want her, but they don't love her. You've seen them with her, does that look like love to you?" "Let me turn your question around. You've seen how Brenda responds to what they do to her. You've also seen how she responds to you now that you've taken over the aggressor role. It looks to me like you're doing the same thing to her now that Joyce and Eddie do. Because you know that's what she likes, what she needs. Why is it okay for you to treat her that way, and not okay for Eddie and Joyce to do it?" "Because I do it like that because I love her. They do it because it's fun, and because they both want to use her." "It is fun, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't love her. I'm not that certain about Eddie, but I'm positive that Joyce loves Brenda. I'm even more positive that she loves you as much, if not more than Brenda. If she didn't, she and I would have patched things up many months ago. She could have had everybody back but you, but she wouldn't go for that. She wanted you back too, even if it meant that none of the rest of us could be together until it happened. If it wasn't for Joyce loving you, we wouldn't be here now having this conversation." I left soon after that to go to the plant to get Gene and Larry straightened out. I left Cindy at the house with Emily, not wanting her to be left all alone when she was struggling with her emotional turmoil. When I got back home, several hours later, the two of them were in my bed together, completely oblivious to anyone other than themselves. I got undressed quickly and joined them. I wasn't surprised when Emily encouraged the two of us to be dominating with her. I was a little surprised with how turned on Cindy was getting from watching me having my way, so forcibly, with Emily. After I rolled off of Emily, Cindy was right there to kiss away all the supposed wounds I'd inflicted on poor Emily's body. I fell asleep without any dinner, but the two of them were still going at it when I did. We stayed in Birmingham until Friday. Emily and I had more long talks, and Cindy and I had some good conversations as well. I left there pretty well satisfied that Emily was making the changes of her own volition, and that she had decided to spread her sapphic wings a little wider with both Cindy and Joyce at least. In my opinion, this could only be a good thing. Maybe it was past time that Brenda experienced some real competition for Emily's attentions. She had always taken Emily's love and loyalty too much for granted. Friday night, after we returned, I asked Joyce to come up to my bedroom for a private conversation. The gist of it was that I was now ready and willing to see all of our family reunited under one roof again. I told her that I was now satisfied that Emily would be able to make a good life with us now. I guess my news was somewhat anti-climactic to Joyce. She didn't seem as happy or elated as I thought she'd be. When she went back downstairs to check on the children I was left with more than a mild sense of foreboding. If I'd known exactly what was worrying her, I'd have been at least as concerned as she was. I didn't find out for another three days that Emily's brother, Gary, had come by Brenda's house for a surprise visit with his sister. Brenda had told him that Emily was in Alabama with me, and had then invited him to stay at the house with her and his niece and nephew until Emily returned. Joyce had found out about the visit that Friday morning, and was petrified that Brenda had reverted to her old ways. Joyce knew that Gary and Brenda had a past sexual history. Knowing how Brenda's mind worked, she had mostly convinced herself that Brenda wouldn't have let such a good opportunity go by the boards. I have to admit, by the time I found out that he'd been staying there for almost a whole week, I had many of the same concerns myself. ------- Chapter 85 I first learned that Gary had been staying over at Brenda's house on the first Monday after coming back from my Birmingham trip. When I came downstairs to have some breakfast, before going into the office, Brenda was in the kitchen making omelets for Joyce and Cindy. When I asked her what the occasion was, she told me that she was catching a ride into Bolling with us, because she had loaned her car to Gary, so that he could go visit some friends of his. "Gary's visiting?" I hadn't seen Gary in a long time. When I asked the question, I was assuming he'd just arrived in town. I was going to ask Brenda to let him know I'd appreciate a chance to spend some time with him. I'd always liked Gary and we'd gotten along pretty well in the past. I'd never held what had happened with Brenda against him. It hadn't been his fault. "He got here last Tuesday, when you guys were in Birmingham. He hadn't called ahead because he wanted his visit to be a surprise for Emily." Brenda seemed a little nervous as she explained. "Where did he stay while he was waiting for Emily to come back? Why didn't you call down to the house to let us know he was here?" I don't know why I immediately began to think the worst. I think I was finally registering Joyce's subdued behavior since just after when I'd returned from the Alabama trip. "He was at the house with us, Kenny. Where else would he stay? Nothing happened, if that's what you're thinking. It wasn't like that." I felt like I needed to talk to Gary and Emily right away. I wanted to get right to the bottom of this as soon as I possibly could. I knew, right away, that this could completely derail any plans we might have been making for a return to normalcy in all our relationships. This was definitely true if it turned out that Gary and Brenda had engaged in any kind of sexual hi-jinks. I had zero confidence in Brenda's denial. Her prior track record had seen to that. Trust had been an issue with us ever since the earliest beginnings of our relationship. When is Gary returning your car?" I could barely keep my tone of voice civil when I asked her the question. "He'll be back sometime tonight. He's just going to visit with some of his old high school buddies. You don't believe me, do you? About nothing bad happening." I could see Brenda's own body language changing. She was upset and angry that I'd be suspicious of her. That was Brenda's way. No matter how many times she'd been guilty of deceit, she always believed she was deserving of every possible benefit of the doubt. Even when she was guilty, it always upset her that people would question her about these things. She seemed to feel that no one should be upset with her behavior, not if she wasn't upset by it. "The guy has been sleeping over at your house for a week, and I'm just now hearing about it? Did you tell Joyce that Gary was visiting?" "No, why would I? It wasn't any secret though. We went over to your mother's house on Thursday night with the kids. Do you think I'd have taken him over there for a visit if I'd been doing anything wrong with him?" I did think she very well might do that. In fact, I thought it was much more likely she'd take Gary over there if they had been up to something. She'd realize that she needed to try to make things seem more innocent than they were. Brenda had been through a few of these situations with me before. She knew how suspicious I now was of her. "I can understand you not letting me know that Gary was visiting, but what about Emily? Why didn't she let me know he was in town and staying with you?" "What's that supposed to mean? He's Emily's brother. Why shouldn't he come visit? Do you come running to us every time you have someone visiting with you? I didn't do anything wrong, Kenny. Why would I do anything to mess things up when we're just starting to get everything back to being good again?" "I don't know why you would, Brenda. It would have been pretty simple for you to have avoided anyone being suspicious. You could have called Emily to let her know Gary was there for a visit." "He wanted to surprise her, Kenny. He did surprise her. Nothing happened. Don't you think I know what would happen with us if I ever did something stupid like that again?" I left her in the kitchen then, abruptly deciding that I needed to get as far away from her as I could before I said something else to make matters worse. I went out to my car and drove up to Bolling. I was upset, and I was very worried that I'd find out that something had happened between them. Brenda didn't have much of a record when it came to avoiding temptations, The drive into work wasn't pleasant. I didn't enjoy my thoughts as I conjured up some of the possibilities that would tear apart the fragile rebuilding that was taking place inside my family. Nothing against Gary, but I wondered why he couldn't have waited another month or two before springing his surprise visit on us. By then, I'd have gotten all of the wives now in Ridgeline back under one roof. Luckily, there was a lot of work at the plant that I needed to take care of. The day passed very quickly for me, and my immediate attention was diverted away from my personal situation. I stayed away from Joyce and from her office. I knew that Brenda, Cindy and Joyce were over at Joyce's office. Emily was probably over at Mama's, trying to take care of some of the group home needs. Shirley would be back in Ridgeline, either over at Mama's, helping Emily, or else with her own mother helping her with her housekeeping. Shirley's mom now suffered from arthritis, and Shirley tried to help her with some of the heaviest and most taxing cleaning. Even while I was consciously avoiding all of my wives, I was getting upset that none of them were making any effort to come see me. Especially Joyce. She'd know how upset I'd be by all of this. The fact that she wasn't coming by to reassure me that nothing bad had happened probably meant that something did. I left work at five thirty and drove back home. My mood was pessimistic. I had already convinced myself that Brenda had been unfaithful again. I was already planning on seeing how much could be salvaged from this new wreckage. I couldn't see Emily abandoning Brenda and coming to live with the rest of us. Joyce, Shirley and Cindy might still be a possibility though, depending on how Joyce reacted to Brenda's betrayal. By the time I arrived back home, Brenda's car was parked in my driveway. I figured she'd come over to continue our earlier discussion from the morning. I managed to lose my temper before I was even out of the car. If she wanted to force a confrontation, I'd be happy to accommodate her. As soon as I walked inside my door, I saw Gary standing in my living room. I'd forgotten how tall he'd gotten. You don't see that many guys who are six feet eleven inches tall. It is difficult to get used to so much height. You need to adjust your perspective because everyone else seems so small in contrast to him. Joyce was about six feet away from him, and she looked like a little girl compared with him. I saw Emily and Brenda sitting together on the couch. Cindy was over sitting on the other sofa. I didn't see Shirley anywhere though. "Kenny, come say hello to Gary." Joyce looked worried too. Seeing her worried smile, my own apprehensions were heightened. I tried to prepare myself for my worst fears being realized. "Hi Ken." Gary took two steps it seemed and he was standing right in front of me with his hand extended for me to shake. "Brenda told me that you might have gotten the wrong idea about what has been going on during my visit?" He had huge hands now. It seemed like my own hand had been swallowed up in his. I didn't know how I should respond to his question. "Good to see you, Gary. As to whether or not I have the wrong idea, I'm still not sure about what I'm thinking. Some things seemed strange to me, but when I asked Brenda for an explanation, she got all defensive." "I did not! Don't try to make this seem like I'm the one to blame, Kenny. I started off by telling you that nothing bad happened. You're the one who's all suspicious. Gary came to visit Emily, not me. Why would I do anything to get things messed up again?" Brenda had gotten up from her place on the sofa. Emily had gotten up too and looked like she wanted to restrain Brenda, to prevent this from ending up as a full blown fight between us. "I don't know why you would, but I know it wouldn't be the first time, or the second, or even the third or fourth time you did something to mess things up between us. If you did anything this time though, I promise you it will be the last time." Gary had let go of my hand when Brenda had started to speak. He'd also stepped a little ways back from me and seemed nervous and apprehensive. "Nothing happened, Ken. This is my fault for trying to surprise Emily. I didn't think there would be any problem with me staying there until she returned. I promise that I'd never do anything like that to hurt any of you. Brenda didn't try anything either. It has been totally innocent, I swear it." Gary spoke his words all in a rush, obviously wanting to defuse a tense situation before it turned into more than a shouting contest. "That's all anyone had to say, Gary. I asked a question, and you answered me. I believe you." "You believe him, but you wouldn't believe me?" Brenda was walking towards me. Her hands were balled up into small fists. She reminded me of her brother, and of her father, Walt. "I didn't say I didn't believe you, Brenda. I said I wanted to talk to Gary. Now, I have, and now I'm satisfied." "Well, I'm not satisfied. You owe me an apology." Brenda had stopped, about four feet from when I was standing in the entranceway. "Why don't you just go back home and wait for me to come over and give you an apology then?" "When will you do it? Why not apologize now and end this right now?" "I'll apologize as soon as I start thinking I owe you an apology. That will be right after I convince myself that you've never done anything in the past to warrant me having some suspicions about your current behavior." I saw the looks of fear on everyone in the living room other than Brenda. They understood what I'd meant by my last statement. Only Brenda didn't seem to understand. "Don't wait too long, because I'm really mad at you right now." She turned around and looked at Emily. "Are you ready to go now, Emily?" Emily nodded her head that she was, then the three of them gathered up their things and left. Gary didn't offer to shake my hand again as he left. I stood aside to let them get by me and waited until they were gone before heading straight up to my bedroom. Joyce came into my room about three minutes later. She looked very concerned. "Do you think its very smart to leave things like they are right now, Kenny? Brenda is mad at you now, and she might do something she wouldn't have normally done, just to get back at you." "If she does, she does. She's the only one who can control what she does or doesn't do. I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to let her turn things around like this and try to make it seem like I was the one who was wrong to have suspicions. I'm willing to take Gary's word that nothing happened, but I'm sure not going to apologize for having been concerned that something might have happened over there." "I talked to Emily too. She asked Gary about it. He told her what he said to you, nothing happened. Gary has never lied to her, that's what she told me. She said she'd know it if he tried to lie about it." "Things were going so well too. It seems like there's some conspiracy to make sure we can't get everything worked out between us. I really thought we had it this time." Joyce came over and put her arms around my waist. She hugged herself tightly against me. I noticed she was shaking against my waist, so I put both my arms around her too, trying to calm her a little. She was obviously even more upset than I was. That made a kind of sense, because she had always been the one most concerned with all of us getting back together again. I stood there and held her silently for a long time, letting her get calmed back down. "I'm not too worried about Brenda doing anything with Gary while Emily is there with them. I think Emily already knows how serious something like that would be to me. She wants this all to be over with too." "You could drive right over there, apologize to her, and it would be all over already. That's what you would have done before you got sick, Kenny. You did stuff like that all the time, just to keep things from getting worse." "Do you really think she deserves an apology from me for this?" I was feeling myself get angry again. "No, of course I don't, but that isn't the point, is it? Somebody has to do something to keep this from dragging on and on. In the past, that's what we did, you and I. Brenda knows what she's done in the past, but that isn't going to change anything this time. As far as she's concerned, you owe her an apology. You could get everything back to where it was when you came home on Friday just by telling her you're sorry for not believing her this morning. If you're satisfied now that she was telling the truth this morning, where's the harm in telling her you're sorry for not believing her?" There was a flaw in her logic, but I didn't really want to deal with it right then. She was right about the fact that I used to be more concerned with getting things fixed than I was in worrying about what caused them to be broken. It seemed more efficient to get things working smoothly back then. It was only since I'd gotten ill that I concerned myself with who was to blame all the time. Even if I did apologize to Brenda, what difference did it make to anyone else? I wouldn't be betraying anything by telling her I wished I'd believed her when she had first said nothing happened. I did wish I could have believed her. The fact that I hadn't believed her had nothing to do with the absolute truth that I really wished I could have. I tried to talk myself into going over there and giving her my version of an apology. I wasn't successful in doing that. I appreciated what Joyce was saying though. I knew that what she wanted me to do would make our future life together easier, just as it had done in the past. I had to decide whether I cared more about trying to achieve harmony within the complicated framework of our unusual family grouping, or whether I should continue on with my current position. I favored the more rigid position of me holding everyone else accountable for living up to some fairly standard set of values. On the other hand, I already knew Brenda wasn't going to change the way she looked at things. Something like this, if I allowed it to continue, could end up in a life altering tragedy. I could avert this happening, at least this time, by tendering her the meaningless and empty apology she was seeking from me. I had little doubt, if I'd been willing to put it to a vote, that all the other wives would vote for me to give Brenda her apology. In my place, Joyce wouldn't even have to think before doing so. She was more practical than I, and untroubled by having to cater to some of Brenda's special needs. "If I went over there, I'd resent having to do it. I'd feel like I was being dishonest with Brenda, and with myself. I don't think she should always be sheltered from having to face the consequences of her actions. It just makes it easier for her to continue doing wrong." "But, she didn't do anything wrong this time, Kenny. That's what you just got done telling me you believed. You might have been very right to suspect that she had, given her past actions. I know I feared the worst too. Brenda doesn't like to have her past failures brought up to her. As far as she's concerned, she didn't do anything wrong this time, and for you to suspect her of having done so, that demands an apology. She's only dealing with now, not her past." "If she were eight or nine years old, I might apologize to her, but she isn't a child anymore. She needs to accept the fact that it was her past actions that made my current suspicions justified. If she isn't mature enough to understand that, then she isn't mature enough to be a part of our family. I don't go around throwing her past in her face unless something like this comes up. Her past actions justify my recent suspicions. She needs to learn some way to live with that." "This is going to affect all of us, Kenny, not just you. When will the time come when you put our needs in front of what it is you want?" "Probably when what I want is wrong. You want me to keep on feeding Brenda's warped belief about what constitutes normal behavior. She believes she's right. If I give her what she's asking for, I'm just feeding her wrongly held belief. Your way is so very expedient, especially if you overlook the fact that it makes it easier for Brenda to betray me again. I don't have it in me to forgive her for another time, Joyce. She needs to understand that, right in the pit of her stomach. I simply won't tolerate any more of that from her. If I apologize now, she won't really believe that I'm serious when I tell her that. And, I am serious this time, you have to believe me." "Are you telling me that this is more important to you than us all getting back together again would be, Kenny?" "I'm telling you that I want Brenda to understand I have no more room left to forgive her if she does something like that again. If that means what you're afraid of, then it wouldn't have worked for us anyway. I'm not into catering to or appeasing Brenda's quirks anymore. I expect her to behave like an adult from now on, and I will hold her accountable if she doesn't. "You said you were ready for all of us to get together again. We won't be able to if you and Brenda keep on this way." "They can all come back whenever they want to. I'm ready, and they're all welcome. I'm not going to apologize for being suspicious though. She's given me more than enough justification for being like that with her." Joyce stepped back away from me and nodded her understanding. I could tell she was very disappointed that she hadn't been able to convince me to do what she wanted. I watched her walk out of my bedroom, shutting the door softly behind herself. I waited for fifteen minutes before heading back downstairs myself. We had a quiet dinner with the children. The kids seemed to sense there was new trouble, and were all on their best behavior throughout dinner. After we were done, I went into the playroom with them and let each of them read from the storybook we were working on. As I watched the five of them taking turns reading, I remembered believing that I'd have all twelve of them living here by now. After we finished our reading, the kids went back to their living wing to take their showers and baths, and I went up to my room to call Shirley. I wanted to get away from the house for awhile, so I asked her if she felt like having some company. She told me I was very welcome to come over, so I packed a few things for work the next day and got in my car and drove over. Cindy and Joyce were both in the living room watching me as I headed out with my suit in one hand, and my small overnight bag in the other. Neither of them asked me where I was heading. Shirley and I discussed what had been happening. I told her how I'd left things with Brenda and with Joyce. The only comment she made after I finished telling her my version of what had happened was to tell me I should be happier than I was that nothing bad had happened. "If you told Brenda that you were happy that she had justified your faith and confidence in her, she wouldn't have been so mad that you were suspicious in the first place. You needed to be more positive with her." "I don't see it that way, Shirley. I am happy that nothing happened. I'm unhappy that Brenda wasn't aware that, with her past record of transgressions, she had to be more circumspect than someone else, someone with a less checkered past, would have to be. She thinks she keeps getting a whole new start every time, and she doesn't." "You can't blame her for being like she's always been. You know how she is." "I do know how she is, and that's why I was suspicious. I'm not going to tell her I'm sorry for suspecting her of doing something with Gary. She did something with him before." "A dozen years ago? They were young kids back then. What was Gary, about ten or eleven?" "I'm not going to apologize to her." "Don't then. I don't want to fight with you. Let's go to bed." That was what we did. We didn't get to sleep until after Shirley had to get up and settle all the kids back down after she woke them up with her loud and profane shouting. That was around two in the morning. We'd gotten out of bed once before, at about midnight, so Shirley could make me a couple of fried egg sandwiches. I went into the office on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday night I slept with Cindy, and she didn't bring up the situation with Brenda to me. On Wednesday night, Joyce came into my bedroom and we had some pretty good sex without us talking at all. When I woke up on Thursday morning though, Joyce was gone from my bed. It was only five in the morning when I woke up, so I knew she'd gone back to her own rooms, not just gotten up before me. I stayed in my home office on Thursday and Friday, concentrating on my grain trading. It was another of those good times for trading with a lot of profitable opportunities for me to make trades. With all the refinements I'd made to my trading system, and the additional commodities and financials I now traded, the opportunities kept appearing with greater frequency than before. I was trading divergence more than the actual grains or metals. As soon as one commodity got out of line with any other two traded commodities, I set up a trading box and pounded it as hard as I could until the box collapsed back inside itself. With the greater trading volume out there on the exchanges, these boxes I would set up kept on lasting longer and longer. Billy Ray was keeping me updated every thirty minutes or so with a current list of outstanding open positions as well as letting me know where we stood with grains we needed to fulfill all our grain brokerage commitments. He had helped develop a new software program that kept him updated as to where we stood at any given point in a trading day. Each time a trade came across the ticker, the program would update our positions, using the last trade as the basis for revaluing our holdings. I kept watching it, because I could also see where each movement, as it refreshed, was altering our profits. Because of this new program I could tweak positions to control trading volatility. For most of both these trading days, I was trading wide open. I had taken to doing that when the trading boxes I'd established seemed to be holding, despite the much greater volume I was then dealing in. By now, I was comfortable with knowing I could trade profitably just as long as price relationships remained in one of my boxed patterns. I was getting ready to take a pause in my trading on Friday, to go see about getting myself some lunch, when Brenda walked into my home office carrying a tray with a bowl of soup and a big sandwich she'd made for me. I hadn't even been aware that she'd come over to the house. She handed me the tray and went over to sit in one of the chairs I kept in the room for my infrequent visitors. I had a side filing half cabinet that was about thirty inches tall that I sometimes used to put either plates or drinks on while I was trading and either didn't want to or couldn't take a break from it. Where Brenda had chosen to sit, if I put my tray on the filing cabinet, I'd be facing her. I put my tray there, thanking her for what looked like a very nice lunch. "I never even thought about doing anything with Gary, Kenny. I knew we were maybe getting close to having things go back to the way they had been. I wouldn't do anything to stop that from happening." "I'm glad you didn't do anything wrong, and I believe you. The only problem I have is with you believing I was so wrong to have concerns and even a little bit of suspicion. I'm not going to apologize for being worried about it. As far as me just taking your word for it, I've taken your word about stuff like this in the past and then found out I shouldn't have done so." "Gary left to head back to California yesterday. Everyone has been giving me a hard time about how I left things with you the last time I was here. You know, the apology thing?" "I've been getting a hard time about it too. Part of the reason is because everyone is tired of what's been going on, and a lot of us thought things were going to get back to normal again." "That's what I thought too. That's what I've been hoping for. I came over today to tell you I don't need an apology, and to tell you that I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of making things so there wouldn't be any reason for you to have suspicions. It never occurred to me that you'd be worried, because I really never thought anything about Gary being there, or what it might look like with him staying there with me at the house. He's just Emily's brother. I didn't even think about that other thing that happened when he was a kid. It never even occurred to me that anyone else would think anything about what happened way back then either." I was eating my soup and sandwich, listening to her as she spoke. There was something different about how she was speaking. Then, I put my finger on what the difference was. She wasn't looking for ways to make everything seem like it was someone else's fault. She was taking some responsibility for not being more careful about thinking of how things might appear. For Brenda, this was a big difference. "Thank you for coming over here and fixing my lunch, Brenda. It's the best lunch I've had in a long, long time. Thank you too for coming over so we could clear the air about the last of this suspicion thing. I've been hoping we could find some way to put all this behind us. I'm pretty tired of having this whole thing dragging on and on like it has been. Every time we take three steps forward towards solving it, it seems like something comes up to send us all the way backwards again. It can be pretty discouraging sometimes." "It always seems to happen just when its my turn to be with you too. Why is that?" "I never noticed the connection between trouble and it being your turn. Maybe it just seems like that to you?" "Maybe, but I don't think so. If we ever get things settled again, I've got a lot of missed turns you need to make up for. What else do you need to do before we can get things all settled so we can be together again?" "A good question. I was talking to Joyce about that when I got back from my last Birmingham trip. I think Emily and I have worked out what we needed to. Shirley is ready too, I think." "I'm ready too. I think we need to get everybody moved back over here before something else happens. If we were all already living together again, it would be easier to get things settled back down if something bad were to happen." "Something is always happening." "You could thank me for lunch and make me believe everything is back to being okay between us if you were to take me up to your room and give me my next turn now." Brenda's face was already showing that she was aroused. Her body language said it too. If the trading hadn't been so lucrative right then, I'd have succumbed to her suggestion. "I've already made more than four million dollars trading this week, Brenda. With the boxes I've got set up right now, I expect to make another million or so before I stop trading for the day. Plus, I've got plenty of open trades right now that I should unwind before going into the weekend. I'd like to go up there with you too, but it would cost both of us a lot of money if we did." "How much is a lot of money as far as what I'm making from your trades?" "With the new way things are set up now, I'm not sure. Yours is the biggest personal account I'm trading right now though. Just for this afternoon, it might be thirty or forty thousand. Somewhere around there I think." "That's a lot of money, Kenny. Is this on top of the million you're hoping to still make?" "No, its part of the million, but that was just a guess. It could be more than that. I've got a lot of positions on right now. It might be two million. I won't know until I'm finished unwinding all the trades. I'll be all finished at around five thirty or so. You could come back then and we could go upstairs and talk about things. I'll have Billy Ray figure out how much your account is up this week. I'm sure you already made about a quarter million or so for the week though." "Can you come over to my house when you're done? I could have dinner made, and we could have the whole night to discuss things?" Brenda had gotten up from her chair and was reaching over to take my empty tray away. When she bent over and stretched to get the tray, plate and bowl, her dress hem was stretched up to where I could see the beginnings of her butt cheeks. I was sure this was a deliberate ploy on Brenda's part. It certainly wasn't the first time she'd done something like this to help get my interest and whet my appetite. I put my hand on the back of her thigh to help steady her. When I did that, I couldn't resist tracing my way up the inside to where her legs came together. That was when I found out she wasn't wearing any panties, and, from her wetness, knew how aroused she was. I cupped her sex and moved my fingers around a little bit, gently stirring at the honey pot. "I might be able to finish up by four thirty. I don't really need to wait for Billy Ray's final trading summary. Do you think we might talk a little before dinner, then maybe talk some more after we've eaten?" I already was pretty sure we'd have a very quick session right there in my office. When she pulled away from me with the tray and took it over to set it on the chair she'd been sitting in, I had a definite idea that I knew what she was planning. I had my trousers unbuckled and them and my briefs down around my ankles even before she turned back around and lifted up the hemline on her dress. I was ready, and she was just as ready. The whole thing, from start to finish lasted less than five minutes. Both of us needed to take the edge off the sexual tensions we were feeling. It was fast and furious, but excellent for all of that. By the time she had gotten up and adjusted her hemline and picked up the serving tray again, I had my pants back on and was back looking at one of the five screens I now had set up on my desk. All the trading boxes were still holding very well. I looked at my watch and saw I had a little more than two and a half more hours to get everything unwound. I heard her close the door behind her when she went out. I spent all of the time I had available pushing at the trading opportunities that presented themselves. Forty five minutes before the final bell for the grains, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get myself flat for the weekend. I was still adding contracts, certainly not reducing any of my open positions. I got on the telephone and started making calls to all my brokers. I needed to make sure it wasn't going to cause me any problems as far as margin and exposure if I left everything like it was over the weekend. I ended up having to transfer some money from some of my accounts into others, and then made an asset secured loan from my main trust account to two of the clearing companies I was using. I was doing something I never had done before, leaving myself exposed for a value greater than all of my combined personal and company trading accounts. This was a violation of a cardinal rule in my trading philosophy. I had promised myself I'd never go into a weekend with anything like the kind of exposure I was now carrying. There was a justification of sorts for me doing this, and that was that I felt pretty adequately hedged by the fact that all of the trading boxes and wedges I'd created were still holding, even after more than two full trading sessions of high volume trading. Nothing was breaking down, or even starting to show any precursor signs of decay. I'd never felt so well balanced and positioned before. I couldn't think of any possible scenario that would leave me vulnerable to suffering a catastrophic loss. As soon as I was fully committed to leaving everything in place, just as it was, I received a frantic telephone call from Billy Ray, asking me what I was trying to do. He sounded like he was in a near panic, quickly recounting to me just how many millions of dollars of exposure I was still carrying. "I know, Billy Ray. I had planned to unwind, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. There wasn't really any area that I looked at where it would have felt good to be unwinding from. I borrowed some money from my main trust and covered all the open positions with the clearing houses. There won't be any margin calls we need to worry about, and no one is going to be questioning what I've done by having so many open positions. I admit its a ton of exposure, but, I'm thinking it will be justified when the markets open back up on Monday morning. We're really having a hell of a week. Unless something happens to change things, we'll be in a position to immediately exploit any continuing opportunities if these boxes hold up all the way through the coming weekend." "There's a good reason why we never do that, Kenny. I'm not going to get one minute's sleep this whole weekend. We could really take a big hit if something happens and really upsets the markets. We never did something like this before. Why even take such a risk?" "That's just it, Billy Ray, I don't think we're taking that much of a risk. Go back and look at our positions. Not alone, but in the context of the trading boxes I've got them set up in. Show me where we have any great exposure against any possible catastrophe. We're so balanced it's scary. The only possible problem I can see is that the exchanges don't ever reopen. If that happens, we were screwed anyway. Anything else will hurt us in some places and help us in others. This way, no matter how the markets open on Monday, we'll be able to start pounding anything that is still holding. We won't have to waste time getting things set up again. I always hated not being able to get things set up again fast enough to take advantage of the opening machinations of the locals and the big hedgers and institutional guys. On Monday, if they aren't careful, we could find ourselves in a position to take advantage of all their usual screwing around with the little speculators." "How do you know they aren't going to be preparing a little surprise just for you over the weekend? Didn't you tell me that you never jump in front of a moving train?" "Show me the moving train then. I'm willing to jump off the track if you can point one out to me. I know you're concerned, but I'm pretty sure this is almost completely safe. We're big enough traders now that we don't need to go flat when situations like these present themselves. I've thought about this before, but never had such a good opportunity present itself to me. There is enough to be gained by keeping the positions we have to more than justify the additional exposure we might be assuming." "You're the boss. I still don't see why we want to make changes to something that has been working so well for us. We're finishing up the best trading week we've ever had. The best by a long ways, and now you've gone ahead and changed things all around. Are you always going to be deciding things like this and then springing them on me without any warning?" Billy Ray seemed really upset. In some ways I didn't blame him. I knew I'd thrown his whole carefully set up routine completely out of whack. It was hard to reconcile positions that were interdependent on other positions. This was especially true when some of the positions were already closed, and some were still open. All of these without any reference points to how the now closed trades were tied in with the still open ones. I was doing this for the profit potential though, not to sooth Billy Ray's ruffled feathers. If he was out of his comfort zone now, he'd feel better after he finally saw that I had been correct in my decision not to get flat. He had no real reason for being nervous. I knew what I was doing. I wouldn't have violated one of my cardinal trading rules just on a whim. Before I got off the phone with Billy Ray, I ordered him to stop worrying about any of this. I knew I'd be paying more careful attention to all the news and weather reports over the weekend. There was no sense in both of us worrying. At four fifteen that afternoon I was standing on Brenda's front entrance, ringing her door chime. By four twenty I was fully engaged in attempting to ring quite another chime entirely. We sat down to a nice dinner at six. I called Joyce after dinner to let her know that I was over at Brenda's, and that we were in the process of working some things out. After the kids were down for the evening, Emily, Brenda, and I went back to the master bedroom to discuss various things. Try as I might, as I plumbed the depths of possible pitfalls with them, we weren't able to find anything any of us wanted to object to. By three o'clock on Saturday morning, we were all in agreement that Brenda, Emily, and all my children would be returning to our family home. I had gotten Emily to agree to really try hard not to be jealous or resentful of Brenda's forays with some of the other wives. I promised to treat her a certain way when we were together in bed with Brenda, and a wholly different way when she and I were alone together, or when we were with a wife other than Brenda. For her part, Brenda promised to always remember what could happen with our family if she decided to spread her wings again outside the family. As soon as I returned home late Saturday morning, Joyce and Cindy began the interrogation. When I told them that Em and Brenda were going to start moving back in over the balance of the weekend, Joyce could hardly contain her joy. Cindy seemed very pleased too, although she did try to chastise me for what I was doing to upset poor Billy Ray. While Cindy was yammering at me about her poor cousin, Joyce excused herself to go call Shirley and give her the good news. When she returned, she told me that Shirley was going to wait for a couple of days before moving back to the house. That surprised me until Joyce told me that Shirley wanted to leave the choice of which rooms they wanted up to Emily and Brenda. She said she'd be happy to take whichever wing they didn't choose. Joyce told me that Shirley had learned her lesson about having the children sleeping in the same area she slept in. She'd been embarrassed several times by the noises she made while in the throes of a strong orgasm. Saturday night, Joyce and Cindy both slept in with me. Joyce was already planning to set up a schedule for everyone. She also told me to give Dale a call to let her know that we were all back to living together. Strangely, she never mentioned Eddie's name at all, although I didn't pick up right away on her omission. I slept better that Saturday night than I had at any time in the past year or more. It was finally beginning to look like all the pieces were falling into place for us again. I felt like all of us would appreciate what we had a lot more this time. We'd felt the pain of having lost it, so we'd know to safeguard it better now. ------- Chapter 86 By the time Monday morning came around, it was anti-climactic. Prices not only had remained stable in all the metals, financials and grains, but the trading boxes I'd put together earlier in the prior week remained viable after the markets reopened. I managed to resume trading without having to do much of anything to reposition myself. I didn't do as well that week as I'd done the week before, but I felt like I'd taken advantage of everything available to me. By the end of the week most of the best trading opportunities were gone. It had been an interesting and busy cycle of trading, not to mention a highly profitable period, but it was replaced with a new cycle that had other trading opportunities. Trading was like that. I consistently made about half my total profits over a forty five week span, and the other half over seven other weeks, randomly interspersed among the remainder of the year. During this period, the house was coming alive with all the new noises from the wives and children moving back into it. Before, so much noise would have bothered me, probably hampered my concentration. Now though, I kept my office door opened a crack just so I could enjoy the sounds of my family once again coming back together. For the first two weeks that we were back together again, we were all trying to be on our best behavior. No one was convinced yet that there was going to be any more permanence to this attempted reconciliation than any of the previous attempts. When I say we were all back together again, that doesn't include Eddie. As soon as I called Dale and started bringing her up to date about the rapid progress we'd made, she let me know that Eddie might not be ready to come back to our old way of living. Eddie had met someone. At first, I'll admit my feelings were somewhat hurt. That only lasted for as long as it took for Dale to tell me all about Eddie's new "friend". He was the associate pastor at Mrs. Pipkin's church, the Rev. T. Temple Tyler. He was the choirmaster, and the director of youth services. According to Dale, Eddie was in the process of being 'saved' by the good reverend. She also told me that she thought the reverend was in greater danger of falling than Dee Dee was of being saved. Dale told me that Eddie pretty much considered herself to no longer be a part of our family. I felt bad about that, and I knew Joyce would feel even worse about the news. I flew up to Chickasaw the next Saturday morning, with all the wives and children accompanying me on the trip. We rented two twelve passenger vans to drive all of us over to the Pipkin home. Dale knew I was coming for her sometime Saturday, but she had no idea that I was bringing the rest of the family to meet her mother, and to say their hello's to Eddie. I think Joyce believed Eddie might have a change of heart if she were to see all of us happy and together again. Mrs. Pipkin appreciated the opportunity to meet everyone, but Eddie was out visiting sick parishioners with Rev. Tyler, and wasn't expected back before late that evening. I was proud of the way everyone rallied themselves and managed to celebrate Dale's return to us without bemoaning Eddie's decision to not return. Mrs. Pipkin was quite taken with all our children, and the fuss all of them were making at seeing Dale again. It was quite obvious that all the children adored Dale, and she them. We had all been back together again for a few weeks before everyone started to relax again. You could tell right away when it began to happen. It started at the dinner table, with all the wives beginning to tease each other again. It began slowly, but soon gained momentum as the teasing comments were accepted and good natured retorts were made in response. I had started a rotation with my wives, inviting one each night to my room, with the exception of Sunday night, where I preferred to spend that night and evening alone, planning out the new week. I had told each of the wives that they could accept or reject my invitations, and that they could trade off nights with each other too if they chose to do so. Joyce was the first one to invite another wife in to share her night with me. All the other wives knew the next morning that I hadn't raised any objections to that. When it was Emily's turn, she brought Brenda with her. By the end of another couple of weeks, just about everyone knew that Dale, Shirley, and Brenda weren't interested in sharing on their nights with me. Dale accepted invitations from Joyce and Cindy, but never reciprocated with invitations of her own. Brenda came with Emily a few times, but never invited Emily or anyone else on her nights. Shirley only showed up in my bed on her night, even though I knew that Joyce had invited her to come to my bedroom with her on at least one of her nights. It was the trading of nights that first started the teasing at the dinner table. Joyce wanted to trade her night with Emily. There was some recital at the kid's school that evening, and most of the children were involved in the various performances. Joyce knew it would be a hectic evening for her and was hoping to switch with Emily who would have the next night normally. Emily wasn't having any of it, knowing she would be almost as busy as Joyce because of the school activities. "If you'll trade me, Emily, I'll invite you to join us when its my night again next week." "Sure, you'd like that wouldn't you? We'd tire him out so bad he wouldn't be able to do anything the next night, which is my night." I think Emily was only kidding. "Okay, trade with me this time, and I'll invite you the next night?" "Same thing. You'll tire him out. You know Kenny's getting older. He just goes through the motions on Saturday night, knowing he can rest up on Sunday. I'll trade with Shirley for her Monday, if you can get her to trade your Friday for it." Brenda, who had Tuesdays, offered to trade her next Tuesday to Emily for the coming Saturday. When Emily agreed, Brenda promptly traded her new Saturday for Joyce's Friday with the additional promise that Joyce would invite her on Saturday too. When Joyce accepted her offer, Emily asked Brenda if she planned on inviting her to be with me on Friday? "No way! You already said that Kenny is going to be too tired on Saturday to do us much good. I figure if I don't get him too worn out on Friday, he'll be good to go on Saturday too. I'm cooking on Saturday, and I'll make Kenny some nice fresh oysters on the half shell for an appetizer. I figure a dozen fresh oysters and he should be good and ready for Joyce and me. Even if that doesn't work, Joyce never does get too tired, so I'm going to come out ahead either way." We were all laughing, except for the children. They weren't sure what was being talked about. I watched Derek, Bertie, and Bunny's faces to see if they were following things, but they didn't appear to be. I think the kids were mostly paying attention to the tone of the adults voices more than to what was actually being said. As long as all of us were laughing, they didn't care too much about why we were laughing. After such a long time without our all being together, their main interest was in having us all getting along again. Thursday night was Dale's night. She and I talked about the teasing at the dinner table. Dale thought it was getting back to how it had been when things were running well before. "Do you ever think about Dee Dee, Kenny? Miss her I mean?" I knew that Dale missed her sister. The two of them had been almost inseparable for many years. I knew she was always thinking about Eddie and wishing they were closer together again. "I'm happy right now, Dale. You know that Eddie can come visit anytime, right? She doesn't have to stay away just because she went off in a different direction. No one is mad at her. She can come visit you anytime." "She might be getting married soon. My mother told me that she thinks Temple is about to ask her to marry him. I don't think Dee Dee will be happy with being the wife of a minister. She's too wild to live the way he'd need her to live. I don't see them being happy together, not for the long term." "I think you might be right about that, Dale, but Eddie didn't want to stay here either. Eddie is looking for something we couldn't give her here." "She always liked to try new things. The way she is, the last thing she should be doing is getting married and trying to settle down. She knows that herself too. I don't know why she lets things go so far. She doesn't even love him. It's a game with her to see if she can get him to ask her to marry him." "Do you want to go back to see if you can talk her out of it?" I was worried about how this was beginning to affect Dale. I didn't want her conflicted about where her loyalties lay. I knew how close Eddie was to her. "I'd rather have her come here so I could try to talk some sense into her. Is it okay if I invite her?" My first instinct was to tell her it was fine. I decided it wasn't just up to me to make that decision by myself. "Why don't we ask the others? Maybe they have some ideas for you. Like I said earlier, Eddie coming to visit you is fine, but you'd need to check with all the other wives if you're planning on making it anything more than that." "You never answered my earlier question about if you missed her?" "I don't miss her like you do. I've given up on having her be a part of our marriage. I still like her though, and I want her to be happy. I accept though that it won't be with us. She's still welcome to come visit, and we all know she's always going to be a big part of your life." "If she came here to visit, would it be okay with you if I brought her with me on my night?" "No. I'm sorry. Eddie made her choice. She decided she didn't want to be part of our family anymore." "You know Dee Dee wants to have some babies. She knows you can't give her that anymore." This was the first time anyone had given me any plausible reason for Eddie's change of heart about remaining one of my wives. Eddie had certainly never mentioned it to me as a reason for her decision. For the first time since we'd all gotten back together again, Dale and I didn't make love on her night. I knew she was feeling bad about the stand I'd had to take. I also was pretty sure that my answer was going to cause her to start rethinking her own decision about returning to be with us. I couldn't help her with it other than by letting her know that I hoped she'd continue to stay with us. When I talked to Joyce about my conversation with Dale, she quickly confirmed what Dale had told me. Then, she told me that Cindy had felt the same. Even though she didn't believe she could conceive, not after the physical ordeal she'd suffered when she was younger, Cindy still had a burning desire to be a mother. Joyce worried about what would happen as Cindy got older and could see her chances of having a child of her own getting increasingly dimmer. "They can reverse those operations, Kenny. Didn't you tell me your uncle had his reversed?" "That's what I heard, but it didn't do him any good. Brenda wasn't his daughter, we checked into it." "I heard it was a simple procedure. The longer you wait, the less likely it is to work. Maybe you should schedule an appointment with your doctor and ask him about it? Did Dale tell you that she feels just like Eddie does? Most women want babies, Kenny. Dale and Cindy want your babies. Eddie, she just wants to have some babies." I thought about what Dale and Joyce had told me. Part of me was pretty sure they both exaggerated Eddie's desire for children. I knew that Cindy had despaired of ever having children. She'd been convinced that her injuries were too serious to allow for a future pregnancy. It hurt me that Dale hadn't told me that she too wanted to have some children. I already had twelve children by four different wives. Children I hadn't been able to spend as much time with as I wanted to, or even as much as they needed. Did I want more children even if it did prove possible? Moreover, did I want to have children with Eddie? I could actually see myself having children with Dale and Cindy. My life was already too complicated. I might have felt differently if there hadn't been that long period of time during my illness. My first thought was to try to make it up to my children for what we'd all missed out on due to my illness. That night at dinner, Joyce raised the topic at the dinner table. I was shocked when she did it so casually. For once, all of the children paid attention to what the adults were talking about. "Kenny and I talked about him seeing a doctor to find out about reversing his vasectomy." Everyone started talking at once. Shirley, Brenda and Emily all yelled that they wanted a baby too. Dale just stared at me, saying nothing, and Cindy got a far away dreamy expression on her face. "I haven't decided anything. Joyce said I should make an appointment. I never said I would do it." I saw Little Bertie explaining to some of the other kids about what a vasectomy was. I couldn't hear well enough to tell whether or not her explanation was at all accurate. The kids started getting excited too. I heard Derek say he only wanted a brother this time. No one paid any attention to what I said. Joyce started answering all the questions being asked. "When are you going to make a decision, Kenny? I need to tell Dee Dee if you do decide to do it." Dale spoke up for the first time. What she said quieted everyone at the table. They all started looking to me to see my reply and reaction. "If I did decide to get it done, it wouldn't be for Eddie, Dale. There has to be a lot more to it for two people to make a baby together. I don't want to make any babies with Eddie. If I did get it reversed, it would primarily be for you and Cindy. If the other wives wanted to try to get pregnant again too, before I stopped trying with you, that would be all right with me. You asked me if I ever missed Eddie last night? I don't miss having her for a wife. I wouldn't want to have babies with her." "Eddie always loved you, Kenny. It was always this thing about not having babies. If she knew you were making babies again, she'd come back. I know she would." "Eddie made her choice, and I accepted it. There are other reasons why I feel that way too. I'd probably like to try to have babies with you, and with Cindy, because I'm comfortable with the relationships we have together. I don't feel that way about Eddie anymore. I still haven't decided yet, but I'm thinking about it. I'll probably go see a specialist to find out more about the process. Cindy, you should see a specialist too, to find out where you stand as far as being able to get pregnant." Cindy nodded that she would. We had to stop discussing things and finish dinner. There was a lot to get done before the recital at the school at seven o'clock. We didn't get back to the house much before ten. All of the recital programs had been entertaining, as much for the miscues as for the skits themselves. I was seeing most of my children on stage for the very first time. it brought home to me how much I'd missed by being ill and not being a part of their lives for such a long period of time. In bed that night, Brenda was a tigress. She must have asked me a hundred questions about vasectomy reversal. I was surprised that she seemed so anxious to go through all of that again. Before, I had been sure that she wanted my children to solidify her place in my life, knowing that I'd always take care of her if she had my children. After Dwightee was born, Brenda had to work extra hard to regain her figure. Maybe she'd forgotten, or maybe she was just carried away with enthusiasm after seeing how the other wives were reacting to the idea of having children. Whatever it was, it seemed to make her more responsive to me than usual. She wore me out before we went to sleep at around two o'clock, then woke me up at five and made me do her again. I didn't complain. It was nice to see her so unrestrainedly enthusiastic again. Saturday, both Joyce and Brenda were after me to shower them with my loving. It was one of the few times when the three of us were together that it wasn't Joyce and me ganging up on Brenda. I noticed that the two girls didn't seem as active with each other as they usually were. In fact, there was minimal girl on girl action the whole night. By Sunday, I was ready for a good day and night of rest. I spent the whole day dividing my time between the children. I took the three oldest kids to the driving range in the early morning, then Shirley and I went to the park with all five of the middle kids right after lunch. Joyce, Cindy and I took the four youngest to a Disney movie after an early dinner. By day's end, I was beginning to think I was starting to really understand my children's personalities better again. It amazed me how individually different each of them were. I could see myself and their mother's influences in each of them. This was true of Derek as well. More than any of the other children, Derek tried to mimic me. He would watch what I'd do and then imitate it. I decided I'd have to be more careful around him. I didn't want him imitating some of my bad habits. I was learning why I needed to modify some of my worst traits. I was training myself to curb my temper around all of them, not just the children. I tried to keep more to myself during the following week, staying at home to work from there. I was doing some work for my father and trading. I had Cindy staying at home and helping me with the work I was doing for my father. She and I had a chance to talk about how important it would be to her that I was willing to try to have a baby with her. It almost seemed like she was nearly positive that she wouldn't be able to conceive. She was willing to take any steps a Doctor might think were necessary to help her chances for getting pregnant though. "Just thinking that it might happen is so exciting, Kenny. Even if it didn't ever happen, knowing that it might would be enough." "Joyce is afraid you might leave because you want to have a baby so badly." "I wouldn't. It has to be your baby, Kenny. Who else's could it be? You're still the only man that can get me relaxed enough to even want sex with him. I might go to a fertility clinic, but never to another man." "If you can have a baby, Cindy, I'd want it to be our baby." I didn't get as much done working at home that day as I'd thought I would. What I did get was something worth a whole lot more to Cindy and me. I think I was mostly convinced that I'd try for a reversal after that day. The way all the other wives were treating me while I tried to decide had a big part in getting me to agree to having the process done. Every night one of the wives would be in bed with me, and all of them wanted a progress report on whether I'd decided yet or not. The potential for making babies seemed to be a heady aphrodisiac with all the wives. During the whole time I was trying to make a decision, the sex I was getting was more emotionally intense than it had been before. One other thing started happening at this time. There were no more of my wives sharing their evenings with their sister wives. I could tell that all the wives were still sharing information about whatever progress my thoughts were heading towards as far as coming to a decision went. It was a Friday, when I knew I'd be with Joyce later that I finally phoned my physician and discussed what I'd been thinking. He said he knew someone in Los Angeles who was a pioneer in the field of vasectomy reversals. According to him, the success rate for this doctor's patients was very high. He offered to call him for me and arrange an appointment. I told him to go ahead, but told him to only communicate any information about this directly with me. That night, in bed with Joyce, I told her that I'd set up a consultation appointment with a Urologist in California to explore the possibilities for a reversal of my vasectomy. In the years since I'd had my vasectomy, statistically there was a ninety percent chance I could produce live sperm after the reversal. For a complex series of reasons, it was estimated that there was about an even 50% chance that I'd be able to impregnate anyone after the procedure. The doctor I'd been referred to had said I'd need to refrain from ejaculating for about a month after the procedure. When we'd spoken on the phone, he'd recommended several good people much closer to me than he was. I told him that my own physician had recommended him to me highly. It was going to cost ten thousand dollars for the procedure and the follow up care, in addition to the time and expense of traveling to California. I told him that wasn't a problem. He cautioned me that most insurance plans didn't cover vasectomy reversals. I assured him that mine did. The grain trading company only had two employees and it was self insured. One of Frank Clooney's jobs was to decide what was included and not included under the plan. I was confident that the company plan would reimburse me for all expenses associated with having the procedure done. The next morning I was greeted at breakfast by six happy females. Later that morning, Mama called, and she and Gerta both told me I was doing the right thing. Mama was certain that the world would be improved whenever my genetic material was used to procreate. That it was also part of her DNA wasn't lost on her. Mama also loved babies. She was already upset that all of our children were growing up so quickly. I told her I'd be out in California for more than a month. "Take the family, Kenny. You know the children would love a month out there at the beach, and all the amusement parks. You don't need to be right here to do your work. Neither do the girls. Gerta and I will come out there too and help with making all the arrangements. It will be fun." In the end, we pulled the kids out of school and the whole gang went off to California, including Billy Ray and his wife and kids. Right at the end, just before we left, we even managed to convince my father and Hans to come out there with us. We ended up staying at this big dude ranch right outside of Riverside. Mama had found the place for us and had made all of the arrangements for our stay there. The kids learned to ride horses when they weren't going off on adventures to the amusement parks, or visits to the beach or the mountains. It was a big family vacation for all of us. I didn't ride any horses, or go on any rides at the amusement parks. The procedure took less than an hour, although I spent all day at the doctor's office. I was sore for a few days, and then I was horny for the better part of a month. I wasn't having any sex, but, because they were so excited about the possibility of maybe getting pregnant soon, all the wives were more active with each other than usual. It was frustrating for me, especially when my mind let me think about what was happening all around me. After a month, I was back at the doctor's office producing some little swimmer's for his petri dish. I produced quite a bit for him. It felt so good getting off like that, that I offered to provide a back up source if he thought it might be needed. The doctor and his nurse laughed. That was when he told me that very few men really waited for the whole thirty day waiting period. "Usually, they come in after about ten days and want to find out if they can take the test early. I think you're the first one who ever lasted the whole thirty days." "I didn't know there was an option for starting earlier." "This way is better. Today, we'll know for certain if everything is working again. I'm sure it will be. You weren't anywhere near the pessimistic end of the time limitations for good reversal success. After reading your medical history, there's no doubt that you were extremely capable of providing healthy and active live sperm before you had your vasectomy. I told you there was a fifty percent chance, but I'm thinking yours will end up being much higher than that. You pretty much convinced me of that by having four women pregnant at the same time." "Twice. I had all of them pregnant at the same time twice." "I'm glad it isn't me that has to pay all those college tuitions. I've got my two in college now, and it can be quite painful. I don't know how you'll manage with having twelve to educate." "I had socked away ten thousand to help with that, but I had to spend it on this procedure." The doctor just laughed at me. I had a pretty good idea that my family physician had already informed him that I had considerable resources at my disposal. An hour later I went back to the ranch. The report he gave me before I left was verbal, and it consisted of a single four word sentence. "You're good to go." We shook hands, and he told me to come back and see him in six months if I hadn't had any success by then. That night, I slept with Dale. She and Cindy had flipped a coin for the first opportunity. I say slept, but I sure didn't get too much sleep. I wasn't complaining though. The next night was Cindy's turn. While I was waiting around to see if the procedure had worked or not, my Dad and I had purchased some more land out south of the city of Corona, off Interstate 15. There was a lot of building just north of where our new acreage was located. It was obviously an area where future growth was coming. What appealed to both of us was the fact that part of the land fronted on the interstate. It had once been a successful orange grove, but the traffic exhaust fumes hadn't boded well for the trees closest to the highway. From the road, the property didn't look very appealing. At the price we negotiated, and the terms of the note we signed, we didn't see how we could come out without a big eventual profit. If they ever put an off ramp close to our land, the prices would really skyrocket. By the time we went back home, I think everyone was happy to be getting back there. It was very nice in the spring where we'd been staying. We heard it was uncomfortable later, during the summer, often getting up to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit on many days in August and September. There was no air conditioning in any of the cabins at the dude ranch. The place was rustic, and that had been a large part of its appeal when we looked over their brochure. The kids enjoyed it a lot though, and the rest of us managed to endure. Back home we settled back into a comfortable routine. All of us were getting along pretty well. Dale was the first one to turn up pregnant. I had been 'convinced' by the other wives that I should concentrate most of my energies on Cindy and Dale until the two of them turned up pregnant. To this end, I was having each of the girls visiting me every night during the most fertile part of their cycles. After I was done with them, then the other wives took their normal rotations. Brenda became the next one to announce that she was going to have another baby, about a week after Dale confirmed her pregnancy to us. It was only a day or so after Brenda's announcement that Cindy started her period again. By now, Cindy had been to a number of fertility specialists. All of them believed that Cindy should be able to conceive. The damage and scarring inside her body might complicate the delivery somewhat, but her internal reproduction equipment all seemed to be functioning normally. She was producing eggs in both her ovaries. Everyone decided that Cindy just needed more opportunities than she was getting, so she was coming to me every night. We'd go upstairs to my bedroom around seven thirty, and stay there until after nine o'clock. Cindy would rest with her hips elevated by a pillow after I'd done my part in providing the swimmer's. At nine o'clock, Cindy would move across the hall to a bedroom we had set up for her. Most mornings, during what we thought was her most fertile time, if I didn't have anywhere important I needed to be, I'd get up and make a quick trip over to her room to make a morning deposit too. All of the wives were concentrating on giving her every possible chance to get with child. Joyce and Shirley were the next two to turn up pregnant. Cindy was in tears the night they both announced their news. Shirley hadn't even been trying to get pregnant. She wanted to wait until after Cindy was. Cindy had another period soon after Joyce and Shirley announced their news. By the time another month had gone by without Cindy getting pregnant, Emily turned up in a family way too. I was definitely shooting live ammo. I had a whole houseful of pregnant women, and that was killing poor Cindy. People were coming out of the woodwork to give us different sovereign remedies for insuring Cindy's getting pregnant. By the time all the other wives were starting to show their pregnancies, Cindy had given up. Most nights she refused to come up to my bedroom. She was beginning to act depressed. Being around so many pregnant and moody women wasn't helping things either. Not for either of us. I hadn't had sex with Cindy for about three weeks. She was just as moody and irritable as Emily, Joyce and Brenda. Shirley and Dale were both all right, as far as their moods went, but Joyce, Emily and Brenda were real bears, and not just around me either. Everyone caught it from them, including the children. One evening, I was up in my bedroom, hiding from the Grizzly Sisters. This was how I'd taken to referring to Em, Brenda and Joyce in my own mind. Brenda was about seven months pregnant now, and Joyce was at least six herself. Emily was in her fifth month by then, but it didn't take much of a hormone change to put Emily on tilt. Cindy rushed into my room crying her eyes out. She'd been sitting in the living room when she'd been set upon by the evil witches who had claimed they needed both couches all to themselves for some reason. "Kenny, I can't take this anymore. Can you fly me back home for awhile?" I calmed her down enough to get the particulars about what had happened. This incident wasn't so bad by itself, but constantly being reminded of her inability to get pregnant, after all the others had managed it, was bothering Cindy quite a bit. I told her she could spend the night with me, and then I'd fly her back to Birmingham in the morning. I told her I needed to make another visit there soon anyway. This was probably true, because I'd been thinking about doing so. Usually, I waited for a crisis to pop up before visiting, but, for some reason, things had been very quiet down in Birmingham. Cindy agreed to what I'd asked her to do, and came to bed with me. I'm not sure who's turn it was to be with me that night, it might have been Cindy's, I don't know. I started out massaging her back to try to get her to calm down enough to go to sleep. From there, one thing led to another, and before too long we were going at it hard and fast. Like I'd said, it had been about three weeks since the last time Cindy and I had done anything together. We did it only the one time before we both rolled over and went to sleep. The next morning we got a couple bags packed each and went downstairs to let everyone know that we were heading to Alabama. No one tried to stop us. In fact, no one seemed upset in the least that we were going. I told the kids that I'd be gone for about three or four days, and that I'd probably be back by the weekend. We had started taking the whole family over to the country club for dinner on Sundays. We sat in the banquet room and had a good time together. The kids loved eating there. In the summer, we'd go to the pool too, just because it irritated management to have all of us there at once. We'd had recurring disagreements with club management over interpreting the terms of Uncle Bunny's compensation agreement with the country club. Frank Clooney was always giving me information to help me take advantage of what our membership rights consisted of. Don't get me wrong, we didn't misbehave or anything, and I'm certain our family spent far more at the club than the next five families combined. What they objected to was the sheer numbers included in our family membership. With five of my wives now showing signs of pending new members, the club management was pulling out their hair. Sundays were a big day for the kids in our family, and they didn't want to miss a trip out to the club to eat and play. Cindy and I flew out that morning, and were in Birmingham before two that afternoon. We stopped by the house to drop off our bags before getting some lunch and heading to the plant. Cindy stopped at the plant just long enough to say hello to her father and her other relatives before driving off to see her mother. She surprised me by telling me she'd be back at the house later that evening. Apparently, it wasn't me she was trying to get away from, just the Grizzly Sisters. That night, we slept together once again, but we didn't have sex. In the morning, we cuddled and talked, mostly about how nice it was not having to deal with so many other people. We got up and got ready to go to work. I went over to the Quick Snacks buildings, and Cindy went over to the Macklinson's plant. I'd asked her to talk to everyone and find out what was going on, and whether they needed me to do anything for them. I was getting ready to go back home the next day. Everything seemed to be going well with every department. Larry had things running very smoothly, and we were well ahead of the goals we'd set for expansion and sales growth. Profits were up beyond projections as well, mostly due to three new products we'd added to our snack line. I got back to the Birmingham house at a little before six. Cindy was preparing us a Cobb salad. She wasn't much of a cook, but she did make a mean salad. We were sitting at the table eating and talking when I happened to mention that I was returning to Kansas the next morning. "I better call my mother then. She wanted me to go shopping with her tomorrow afternoon." "I'll be heading out pretty early. You shouldn't have any problem if its in the afternoon." "I'm going back with you, Kenny. I'm over what was bothering me before." "Oh. I guess I thought you wanted to stay here for a longer visit. You're coming back with me then?" "I live with you now. Thank you for bringing me back here. It means a lot to me that you'd do that for me." "You're very welcome. I know you've been missing your family. I'm a little surprised that you're ready to go back so soon." "Daddy's got a new girlfriend. It's driving my mother crazy. She doesn't know who it is yet, but she's determined to find out. At least at our house, they aren't worrying about stuff like that. We already know all your girlfriends." "That's the last thing I need is a girlfriend. I think I might want to stay down here for another day. Just thinking about all of them waiting to jump at me for something makes me appreciate what we have right now." Cindy and I laughed. After we cleaned up our dinner mess, we went into the living room and watched some television. It was nice just sitting there quietly with each other, watching the Braves beating the Cubs. We didn't watch the whole game though, just enough to make us tired enough to want to go to bed. In bed, we started fooling around some, but neither of us was that anxious for it, so we kind of wound it down and went to sleep. We both went to work the next morning. I met with Gene and Larry, and Cindy took off in the afternoon to go shopping with her mother. We left Birmingham at seven thirty the next morning. We went to the plant in Bolling and I made a bee line to my Dad's office to fill him in on my report about the Birmingham operations. After, he began telling me that he and Mama had decided that he should start cutting back at work. This really surprised me. I mean, he was past sixty years old already, but I never thought he'd really decide to retire. "Why did you decide that? You aren't sick or anything, are you?" "It's partly your fault. Your mother and I discovered we both like living a more relaxed lifestyle. It was nice out there in California. We're thinking of spending some time in Palm Springs this coming winter. We might buy a house on a golf course out there and start playing golf in the winter." "I can't believe you're going to give this all up." "I'm not, don't have to. You've shown me that. I don't have to be here to keep myself informed about what's happening. If I have a phone and a modem, I might as well be right here in this office. Most days, I'm not really needed. I can think about problems and solutions in California just as easy as I now do here in my office. This is the information age, Kenny. That's what all the news channels are telling us. It's true too. I can be one of those telecommuters." "How much are you planning on cutting back?" "That's the real question, isn't it? How much of the slack can you and Joyce take up for me?" "I don't know. I pretty much have my hands full now. I've got the Alabama operations, the grain trading and the grain brokerage. Added to all of that, I've got a house that's full of kids with five more of them on the way." "Six more. Didn't Joyce tell you? She's carrying twins again. This part worries me, and I'll tell you why. After you got sick, things nearly came apart for all of you. There wasn't anything your mother or I could do that would make any difference. Neither of us wants to put too much added pressure on your shoulders. Your mother thinks it might be better to do this to see how you handle the extra responsibility. I'm not going to last forever, and we both think you're ready for some hands on experience." "Are you talking about this winter? I've got a lot happening this winter. Joyce isn't going to be in much of a position to help me either, not with new twins." "Joyce will have everything she needs right there at your house. You have good people providing care for the children. Babies don't need too much as long as you're there for them. I've been over all of this with your mother. We aren't going to Antarctica. If you end up needing me here, I can be back in less than half a day. I really admire what you did down in Birmingham. Things seem to be running pretty well down there even though you aren't around. I get the same reports you do. What you've set up down there makes a lot more sense than I originally thought. I want you to start doing the same thing everywhere else. Hire people to implement what you decide needs doing." "The truth of it is, I don't think I'm ready, Dad. I've got so many things I'm trying to balance already. Plus, you know I'm too impetuous still. I need you there to stop me from making any big mistakes." "The only way you're going to learn if you can do this or not is to try to do it. The only question is whether you want to get your feet wet, gradually, while I'm still around to advise you, or whether you want to put it off until there isn't anyone here that knows more than you do. I can tell you that it is a lot better if you have someone there if you need him." "Remember that single vision thing you've hammered into me for the last twelve years? What happens to that?" "I've changed my mind about that. Again, thanks to you. You seem to have a knack for finding other ways to get things handled. I never had that knack, so I was usually afraid to commit before exploring every possible outcome. I thought I knew a lot about corporate finance, and I do. You know more about finding ways to get things done, and you aren't afraid to look in places where the rest of us wouldn't even think to look." "I'm going off half cocked half the time, you know that. Sometimes I commit to things without thinking it through." "Kenny, you can save your breath. After Christmas, which we'll spend here with you, your mother and I plan on spending two or three months in Palm Springs. We're two hours ahead of California time. You can call me when it's ten thirty here, and it will only be eight thirty there. We probably won't be scheduling any tee times before eleven or so. It will be after one here before we are out on the course. Figure less than four hours to play eighteen. You can reach me before five on most days. I have email and so do the rest of you. Your mother and I will have cellular phones too. The coverage is a lot better out there in California." "This is too sudden. You need to give me some time to think about it." "Take all the time you need. We aren't leaving until the end of the year. Well, we might go out around Thanksgiving, for less than a week, to look at some properties. We won't be gone more than a few days though, less than a whole week, I'm sure." I could tell my Dad was enjoying himself. What I wouldn't have given to be a fly on the wall when he and Mama were planning all of this. I had known, somewhere in the back of my mind, that this day was approaching. Not so soon though, and not when I had a whole houseful of pregnant women to worry about. This had to be some kind of test they were running. Probably wanted to see how much stress I could take before cracking up again. If that's what they were waiting for, they'd be disappointed. Compared to living in a house with twelve children and five pregnant wives, running this company would hardly be a challenge. I also had a lot more help than my father had when he first started. I had Joyce. I had Cindy. Considering all that, why were both my palms sweating, and how had my heart rate gotten up so high so quickly? I needed to go talk this over with Joyce. She'd know what we should do. Joyce and I had been discussing my father's new determination to ease up on his working life. We'd discussed it for a month. Joyce didn't seem too concerned. According to her, my father only made about twenty real decisions a year, and most of those were done after consulting with both of us. Her position was that he'd probably continue making about fifteen of them a year from now on. We'd only have to make the other five without him. Since Cindy and I had returned from Birmingham, she had kept mostly to herself. We didn't sleep together during this time. We'd only had that one time in the past eight or nine weeks. I just assumed her pain and sorrow about not getting pregnant had turned her away from desiring sex with me. I even asked Joyce and Shirley if Cindy was doing anything with any of the other wives, but they told me they didn't think so. I was beginning to get worried. Maybe she needed to go see someone before she distanced herself too much from the rest of us. I was beginning to regret this whole idea of reversing my vasectomy. I planned to talk to her about it soon. Our not succeeding in having children shouldn't have such a negative impact on the rest of our life together. Whatever happened to what she said before, about being excited just at the thought she might get pregnant? One thing was certain to me, she couldn't get pregnant if we never had sex. I had just gotten home at around six on a Friday night. I was up in my room changing out of the business suit I'd taken to wearing whenever I went into a company plant. I had spent the whole day with my father, talking about how things were going to work while he and Mama were in California. Whenever I raised a possible objection to anything, he already had an answer that solved any possible problem. I could see he'd put his usual amount of thought and study into this. I was running out of reasonable objections. I was beginning to accept it was going to happen. Cindy walked into my room. "Kenny, guess what?" I looked over at her as I was trying to get my suit pants aligned properly on the hanger. From the wide grin on her face and the way it was flushed with her happiness, I already knew before she shouted out the news. "I'm pregnant! Emily and I just came from the doctor. I'm about five weeks along he said, and everything looks fine. I didn't want to tell you until I was sure." I remember every time one of my wives told me they were pregnant. No matter how many times you hear it though, its always special. It is an affirmation. I've never gotten that news and had even one second of doubt about whether it was a happy thing or not. I'd never impregnated anyone I didn't love. I loved Cindy, and given all the disappointments and worry she'd had, I don't think I've ever been happier to hear that news. I'm sure my face reflected that joy. Before I could say anything to her about it, my bedroom was filling up with pregnant women. Dale and Joyce, the two smallest wives were carrying the biggest tummies. Everyone was dancing around hugging each other and celebrating the news. I still hadn't had a chance to say anything, but my joy over Cindy's announcement just couldn't be contained. I stood there, tears of happiness running down my face as I watched all my wives celebrating with each other. We'd all survived so much together, and with Cindy's pregnancy, we'd come full circle. I was so happy, and so proud of all that we'd overcome to even get to this point. A very pregnant Dale choose that extreme vulnerable emotional moment in my life to come over and hug me. Actually, the closest she could come to hugging me was to back herself against me and trust that I'd hug her. Which she did. "Dee Dee has been calling me nearly every day, Kenny. When I told her just now that Cindy was pregnant too, she started crying really hard. Isn't there any way that you could let her have another chance?" I knew this was something that Dale felt strongly about. She was carrying my baby. She'd voluntarily made quite a commitment to our future together. I'd loved Eddie once, and liked her still, because she was fun, and she had this truly amazing capacity for enjoying life, and for making others around her enjoy it more as well. I remember thinking that I'd have agreed to Eddie coming back before my illness changed me. I knew I would have, because that was how I was back then. I also knew that I was a very different person now, that many things had changed with the way I did things now. Eddie hadn't really shown me or the others very much loyalty. She hadn't been as committed to making things work as the rest of us had been. To take her back now wouldn't be fair to me, or to the other wives who'd given up things to try to make our situations better. I was trying to think of a nice way to let Dale know it wasn't going to be possible. I opened my mouth to tell her. "Tell her to come stay with us while you're having our baby. We'll all sit down together and talk about what we can do. I'm not promising that we'll be able to work things out with her, but, because I love you, we'll try our best to find out if there's a way." I could see that Dale had just seen her greatest worry taken off of her shoulders. Her smile was so radiant, and she was literally beaming it right at me. I didn't even know that Joyce was right behind us, or that she'd been listening to every word I'd spoken to Dale. The first I knew she was there was when I felt her arm on the small of my back. "I don't know how you do it, Kenny, but every time I think you've changed as much as you're going to, you do something like this that lets me know you're still changing. That was the most romantic thing you've ever said or done since I've known you." I didn't see this as me changing so much. It was more a case of me not closing any doors in Dale's face. I really didn't know if we'd be able to work anything out with Eddie. There were pretty good arguments to be made for reaching either decision. I didn't feel as strongly about Eddie being with another man. Maybe this was because I'd already let her go in my mind before she started going with this one. Her case was aided by the fact that she and Dale were so close. I'd made an exception for Emily and Brenda, I could probably talk myself into doing the same for Eddie and Dale. It would be up to the wives to decide if they wanted to accept Eddie back too. I wasn't going to agree to her coming back, not if one or more of the wives strongly objected to our doing so. ------- Chapter 87 On December the tenth, 1997, Dale gave birth to Jordan Thomas Parsons. I say she named him for the basketball superstar, but Dale and her mother have always claimed that the name came from the River Jordan. The Thomas was for my Dad though. Eddie had come for a visit on the first of December. All of us had held long talks. Eddie had slept with several of the other wives, but she and I still hadn't arrived at anything close to a working understanding. Eddie wanted to be able to come and go as she saw fit. I told her that this was perfectly fine with me, but not something I could accept from a wife of mine. She could come visit, whenever she chose, but I wouldn't be sleeping with her if she were merely passing through. Brenda delivered our second son on Sunday, the fourteenth of December. We named him Scott Masters Parsons, but, for some reason everyone immediately started calling him "Sparky". It seemed to fit him, but I don't know why. It just did. Eddie left us right before Christmas, saying she needed to get back to spend the Christmas holiday with her mother. After she left, Dale told me that Eddie wanted to finish up some things in Chickasaw before deciding any future plans. I didn't ask Dale to explain what needed to be finished. On January 16th, a Friday, Joyce delivered twin girls. For some reason, she insisted that we name them Emily Grace, and Brenda Jane. I didn't particularly care for either name, but no matter what names I came up with for substitutes, Joyce stuck to her choices. When the babies were born, she went ahead and signed the birth certificates using those two names. Shirley delivered our son, Kenneth Todd Parsons on January 23rd, another Friday birth. It was a difficult labor for Shirley, lasting longer than her combined labor for the previous three children. We were all happy when her long ordeal was over. Other than feeling completely drained, Shirley came through the delivery well. Emily delivered on March 1st, another boy. This one we named Garrett Taylor Parsons. I was happy with all the new children, and anxiously awaiting Cindy's delivery sometime in June. My parents had purchased a nice home in Palm Springs, one situated right on one of the many golf courses in that area. They left right after Christmas, but came back when Joyce and Shirley delivered. They returned home again on the 1st of March, but three hours too late to be there for Emily's delivery. My father being gone, leaving me in his place at the company, turned out to be only a dress rehearsal for his projected lesser involvement in the day to day operations of the company. From the time that he left, until his final return in March, I honestly believe I spent more time on the telephone, communicating with my Dad than I'd ever done in the past. This was also accomplished using computers, along with three or four long phone conversations each day. Still, he did manage to spend quite a bit of each day with Mama. Much more time than either of them were used to spending together. They played golf everyday, and had managed to make quite a few new friends in a very short period of time. Their social life in California was much more active than it had ever been in the past. I learned, early on in the experiment, that I needed to do things quite differently than my father did. While he studied all his options carefully, and did a lot of consulting with others to reach a consensus for taking action, I was far more likely to reach my own decisions and simply announce it to any involved personnel. After I told people what I'd decided, they were free to give me all their input about what they liked and didn't like about my new decision. I listened to their advice and either made changes or not, based upon my own feelings and opinions, but only after first absorbing and considering their thoughts and recommendations. In the beginning, my management style caused some friction, because people were used to how my father ran the business. Joyce liked the new style, preferring it to all the meetings and consultations before taking any action. In addition to just issuing edicts though, I also left department heads and division managers free to implement my decisions in their own way. I figured they knew better than I did which resources they could spare to get the job done. Another consequence of my management style was the elimination of most of the monthly meetings that division managers had to undergo with my father. We kept in touch through emails, and I encouraged them to continue to float their ideas around with any of the other division heads who might benefit from what was being discussed. My father wasn't thrilled that I was instituting these sweeping changes. I told him that I was too busy to be spending all my prime trading and working hours entertaining a bunch of upper management types. I also told him that anyone who felt like he'd missed out on anything by not having these meetings was probably someone who I'd think needed to be replaced anyway. When my father came back to retake the reins in March, the first thing he did was schedule a meeting with all the division managers. When I found out that he'd done this, I told Larry to go in my place, on behalf of the Quick Snacks company and Macklinson's. I also sent Billy Ray to represent the grain brokerage business. On the first day of the division managers meeting I stayed in my home office and spent the entire day trading. That night Joyce filled me in on what had taken place during the first day of the meeting. Just as I'd predicted, the best managers felt like they were not using their time to best advantage by being called back to Bolling to sit around and discuss what they'd all been up to. The ones who expressed pleasure at these meetings were invariably managers who liked the opportunity to politic or else just suck up to the big boss. With all the advances in near instant communication, these types of meetings were too inefficient to be allowed to continue. It just wasn't time or cost effective to have these monthly gatherings. I did show up for the Tuesday meeting, but I only stayed long enough to greet everyone and ask some questions to get some updates I needed answered for a report I was preparing for my father about the two months he'd left me in charge. In all, I hung around for something less than two hours before heading back to my father's office to do some trading and send out some memos to people who weren't at the meeting, people that I needed to contact. In an hour, I'd sent out all the communications I needed to finish up for the day. At five o'clock, my father came back to the office and found me working at my computer console. "You missed out on two very productive meetings, Kenny. This is a good opportunity to get better acquainted with the people who you'll need to rely on to get things done for you. I'm disappointed with the attitude you've been exhibiting of late. This is a team effort, and you need to know the resources you have available to you." I thought over what he'd told me. I wasn't angry. I had known that he and I would clash over our differing styles. He was a lot more patient than I was. He was willing to take the time to shape the pegs he needed to fit into any of the open holes he found. My style was to tell the peg where it needed to fit and then let the peg find some way to accomplish what I needed from it. It had taken my father fifteen years to finally admit our old phone system was no longer able to handle our needs. I knew how he'd been taught things ought to be run. When he'd been schooled though, there were no inexpensive ways to communicate with people who were a long distance away. At least part of the problem he was having with keeping himself on top of everything was that he felt he needed to micro-manage everything. We were both coordinating the things that needed coordination. My way took less of my time and effort. I was positive that there weren't enough hours in a day for me to try to do things my father's way. I didn't process facts the same way he did, and my retention of details wasn't as good as his. I also didn't want to lock myself away from my family every night after dinner in order to prepare myself for the next day's activities. He did it, and, apparently enjoyed doing it. I wasn't prepared to make the same sacrifices he had. "I learned some things while you were gone Dad. I can't be like you when it comes to managing everything. I liked running the company, but I can only do it my way. For me, showing others what I want and letting them get it for me in their own way is how I have to do things. For the money we're paying some of these people, they should be able to deliver what we've asked of them. If they do that, consistently, then we don't have any problems. If they can't do that, or if they won't, then we need to find ourselves someone else who will. I didn't make any personnel changes while you were gone, but my report is going to include the names of two individuals I think we should terminate." "Ralph and Glen?" "Ralph and Dave Stearn. Why did you think I'd want to terminate Glen Farrell?" "Tell me first why you think Dave Stearn should be cut loose? He's been with us ever since we first acquired that company." "Dave doesn't know how to initiate anything. Whenever I told him we needed to change anything, I'd get twenty five emails from people in his division asking me for clarification. He just doesn't seem able to implement anything without needing too much hand holding from the home office. He doesn't ask questions himself, no matter how little he understands what he's been asked to do." "He asks me questions. I've never had any problems with him." "Tell me about what you have against Glen Farrell." "I don't have anything against him. I just assumed you were having problems with him. I know he's sometimes slow with making changes, just like I am, but you also know how I've always felt about you making those quick decisions of yours." "I like Glen. I never had any problems with him doing what I asked. In my opinion, he's one of our best division heads. His people nearly always impress me when I speak with them. It also doesn't hurt that he's always meeting the targets we set for his division. Like you, he delivers everything he's supposed to. Dave doesn't. You didn't say anything about Ralph. Aren't you interested in why I think we need to let him go?" "I've been grooming Ted to take over for him. Ralph gave us a lot of good years. He hasn't been the same man since Connie left him. I think he drinks too much now, and probably spends most of his time and energy brooding." "I like Ted, too. When are you going to make the change?" "I was going to talk to Ralph tomorrow about taking an early retirement. I don't think he'll put up too much of a fight. He knows he hasn't been at his best. I'll leave you to find a replacement for Dave. When you do, I want you to handle his termination. He has over twenty years working for that division. He won't take it well that you're replacing him. He's also fully vested in the pension plan. You should offer him two weeks of termination pay for every year of service he's given to that company." "Why do you think these monthly meetings are necessary?" "Because it gives me an opportunity to look at all these people that are helping us run this company. Circumstances have a way of changing with people. By seeing them, and listening to how they express themselves, I keep a good picture on how they're doing. I'm able to see if they might be heading for trouble, or if the work we're presenting them with is more than they can handle." "Four days every month is too much of a cost in effective man hours for us to just be able to accomplish something as small as that. Most of them flew in on Sunday, and they will only be back to doing any real work on Friday, unless they leave here Wednesday night and take a late flight back home. Can't you just keep in closer phone contact and accomplish pretty much the same thing?" "I'll consider what you're saying. Perhaps you're right. Maybe it is a carryover from a less efficient era. Do you think quarterly meetings would still accomplish as much for us?" "I don't know, Dad. I can't see the need for them myself. I talked to all of them almost everyday while you were in Palm Springs. We exchanged several emailed memos daily. Perhaps you can find a less disruptive way to keep informed about how they're doing? I don't know." "People need to feel appreciated, Kenny. They like recognition and praise. Bringing them here lets them have a chance to brag to each other about how well they've been doing, and it fosters healthy competition among them." "I was sending out weekly sales and production figures to every division head, with a complete breakdown of year to date accumulated figures. I sent you copies every week. Every division head could read those breakdowns and know right away where his division stood compared to all the others." "I noticed those reports when you sent them. I remember thinking that you were spending too much time generating those weekly reports. I was going to talk to you about it, but it slipped my mind." "Accounting takes everything right off the computer on Monday morning. There is a program that compiles everything from the raw data fed in the previous week. It takes like three computer keystrokes to generate the report and then send copies out to all the division heads. We do the same thing with every department now. These go directly to all the department heads. We have the information here already. All we're doing is breaking it out and emailing it." "What happens if some of our competition gains access to this information? Have you considered what might happen if they do?" "Joyce did. We aren't putting out any of our costs or disclosing how much profit these sales or production numbers are generating. We already know we're the most efficient producers, and we also know our sales and transportation costs are the lowest. You have to weigh the benefits of every department knowing where they stand against any possible industrial espionage. I figured the better information our people had, the easier it might be for them and us to identify areas where we could be improving." "Am I supposed to continue what you've been doing, Kenny, or is it okay if I try stumbling along with doing things my own way again?" "This is your company, Dad. By all means, do things whichever way you think is best. I'm not you. I had to do things differently, in order to make the job manageable for me. Now that you're back, we can go back to doing everything your way again." "The biggest problem with doing that is going to be trying to explain to everyone why they need to go back to all the old ways. A lot of our people seem to appreciate some of the new ways. The consensus opinion seems to be that you acquitted yourself well while I was in California. I'm not ready to turn everything over to you yet, but it looks like I can feel free to take more time off than I have in the past." "That should please Mama. I don't know how you managed to do everything you did for so long. I can't see myself ever working as hard as you've done." "Strangely enough, hearing you tell me that pleases me. I don't feel as guilty about taking so much time off. At times this winter, I've been discovering how enjoyable it is to spend less time working and more time pursuing normal pastimes and pleasures. I'm back to playing to a three handicap again. Your mother and I took some Yoga classes out in the desert, and I'm beginning to derive some real benefit from my regained flexibility. I'm hitting the ball longer and straighter too. All I need now is a better short game." "How much did Mama win from you on this trip?" I was laughing at the sheepish look on my Dad's face. "Suffice it to say that she had a profitable winter. Her putting just seems to get better every year. I've stopped wagering money with her though. We played mostly to see who got to choose our evening activities. We went out to one damn fool thing or another almost every night. While we were gone, your mother didn't have any of her depressions. Not even her headaches. Gerta was even remarking on it." "Mama told me she enjoyed taking a real vacation with you. She wants to go back earlier next time and stay later. Did she tell you that she has people looking for a big house out there for us? I know she's been talking to Joyce about us going out there next winter too." "Did she happen to mention who it is she's expecting to run the company while all of this is occurring?" "Joyce already told her we could do everything from there as easily as we can from here in Bolling. I think Mama is going to make sure Joyce and I both have fully equipped offices out there. Not you though. You have to take things easy, just like you did this time." "If you and Joyce have an office, you'll have to be up before seven. Maybe before six, if you want to be able to take East Coast calls. It won't be much of a vacation for either of you." "Mama wants her grand kids close to her. As long as she has them close, she'll probably let the rest of us do whatever we want to do. You though, she'll want you close to her all the time. She says she likes that relaxed California lifestyle." We didn't leave Dad's office until just before eight o'clock. By that time, we both knew better what it was that each of us wanted. My father seemed ready to cut back on his workload, but only in those areas where I was willing to take over for him. It was to be a shared responsibility, but he made it very clear to me who the senior partner would be. He was still feeling his way around this idea of making permanent changes to the way we needed to do things. In some ways, me telling him I was completely unwilling to work as hard as he did seemed to comfort him. He didn't want competition, only someone to help him make a slow transition away from his normal eighty hour work weeks. He considered having only forty hour work weeks about the same as if he were taking vacation time. I had agreed to divide my time between trading and helping my father run the company. His thought was that I could work twenty or thirty hours helping him, plus another twenty to thirty hours handling my trading duties. I'm sure he considered fifty to sixty hour work weeks a piece of cake for someone as young and healthy as I was. I knew I could get by with fifteen hour trading weeks. Billy Ray handled most things other than putting on and taking off the trades themselves. I expected to spend three eight hour days at the plant in Bolling a week, with about three of these hours devoted to my trading activity. On days when I was home doing my trading, I would also work on company related projects having to do with the Quick Snacks program, and with the Macklinson's operations. The way I saw it unfolding for me was having fifteen hours a week of trading related activities, six hours each week for handling all my own duties with Macklinson's and Quick Snacks, and another fifteen hours weekly devoted to helping my father manage the rest of the company. I expected to be all through with any work activities and back home with my family no later than six o'clock on just about every week night. Week ends were reserved exclusively for my family. ------- Eddie came back to visit us for one week in January, then for another week sometime late in February. The two of us talked some more on each of these visits, but neither of us had changed our minds about what we were willing to do to be together again. I didn't want a part time wife. Eddie didn't want to make another commitment she wasn't certain she could keep. In April Eddie wrote me a long letter, explaining what she thought needed to happen for us to be able to agree on getting back together. Mostly, it was a rehash of her earlier position, one that I was already aware of. Basically, she wanted me to give her a couple of children, and unlimited access to the other wives. In return for this, she promised to always love me and to not stray again while she was living with us. I read the letter and showed it to Joyce and Dale. I told both of them that I wasn't even going to bother responding to this letter. After two weeks of silence from me and who knows how many phone conversations with both Joyce and Dale, Eddie again showed up in Ridgeline. This time, she said she'd made up her mind, and was ready to resume our old relationship. "Eddie, I don't think I can go along with that now. I don't look at things the same way you do. I know what you'd like, and I can't agree to it. You are more than welcome to visit, and I wouldn't have problems with you doing anything with any of the wives who want to do things with you, but I'm not going to do anything sexual with you. I just don't feel the same way about you now." "This isn't fair, Kenny. I already did everything you asked me to do. I could have had all those things from you before. If you didn't want to be with me, you should have just said that." "I did say it. I've been saying it. All I'm saying is that I don't want you to be my wife now. Everything else is the same. You can live here, and you can still have the same relationship with Dale and the other wives." "What about other men? Can I still do that too?" "Not while you're living here. You can do that and still come here for visits. We have our own little community here. What one wife gets to do, the others will want to be able to do too. I think you'd really be happier living elsewhere and just coming here for visits." "Maybe all of us should be able to do that then. I never did understand why you get to have seven women, but none of us gets to have even one other man. Why is that, Kenny?" "I don't know why. I guess it's because I couldn't handle it being any other way. I wish you could be happy with what I'm able to offer you. We both know it isn't going to be enough for you. I don't want to do anything to make it hard for you to keep in close touch with Dale or any of the other wives. I hope we don't end up letting this ruin our current relationship. I still like you, Eddie. I just don't love you now, and I don't believe I can trust you to keep any bargain you don't really want to be making." Eddie left that night. Dale was obviously very upset by the things that Eddie had said to her. Joyce seemed upset as well, but not as devastated as Dale seemed to be. At nine that night I went up to my bedroom. It was Dale's night to be with me, but I didn't really expect her to come to be with me. It was another half an hour before she showed up and climbed into bed with me. I hugged her closer to me and didn't say anything to her. I knew she was upset, but I didn't want to just start talking until she said something to let me know how she wanted to treat what had happened. "This is going to be so hard on Dee Dee, Kenny. She was so sure you'd let her come back." "I'm sorry for your sake, Dale. I know how much you were looking forward to having her back with us." "Not as much as you might think. I'm glad you didn't let her come back under her rules. I hoped she'd see that it had to be the same for her as it was for all the rest of us. If you made an exception for Dee Dee, what would that lead to with Emily or Brenda? Still, I am going to miss her a lot. I hope she will really think about this and decide, on her own, to do what she already should have been willing to do. She's so afraid she's going to miss out on something else that might be more fun. She already knows she won't ever meet someone like you again. This whole thing is so stupid." With that, Dale started crying again. I held her and tried to offer her some comfort. I'm not sure when she finally managed to drop off to sleep. When I woke up at three and went looking for her, she was over in the nursery rooms, feeding Jordan. Over the next two days, all the wives came to me individually to say they were happy with my decision about not accepting Eddie's offer. Even Joyce had difficulty believing in Eddie's sincerity when she was making me the offer. Another week went by before Eddie phoned me at home. She told me that she'd like to come for a visit and spend some time with Dale and the other wives. I told her she was welcome to come. When I got home from Bolling the next evening, Eddie was already there. On June 2nd, Cindy went into labor. In spite of what some of her specialists had said might happen to complicate her delivery, our baby's birth turned out to be not much of a problem at all. Her internal scarring didn't prevent her from dilating fully, and our daughter, Lucille Macklinson Parsons was born right on schedule, with very little fuss or bother. I think all of us were extremely relieved that no 'special measures' needed to be taken. Eddie was still visiting us when Cindy went into labor, and after the baby was born. I wasn't treating her that much differently from the other wives, except for never having any close physical contact with her. It never occurred to me that she had overstayed her visit. She was just there, and Dale and Joyce were definitely happy about it. I knew that Cindy had slept with her too. From little things that Joyce had said to me, it looked like Shirley, Brenda and Emily weren't very welcoming when Eddie made her advances. No one had complained to me about Eddie though, so I didn't bother to look any further into it. By September, with Eddie still at the house, 'visiting', Joyce was urging me to have another talk with her. Things had been going exceedingly well with all the wives and children. Work was going well too, and my mother and I were getting along as well. For all these reasons and more, I was hesitant about going out and borrowing some trouble. I wasn't bothered in the least by Eddie's continued presence. "If Eddie comes to me about something, I'll talk with her about it. Right now though, things are going pretty well for all of us. Why should we go looking for trouble? Eddie isn't bothering anyone by staying here. There's plenty of room here for her." "You know what I mean, Kenny. Talk to her about what she wants now." "Joyce, why do you want to do this?" "Because Dale is pregnant again. Dale's afraid that Eddie is going to be upset when she finds out about it." "Is Dale certain? Did she go to a doctor and find out for sure?" "She's certain. Kenny, please, do this for me? Find out what Eddie is thinking before she finds out about Dale." I still didn't want to do anything to force any issues with Eddie. I was very content to leave things just as they were. Eddie seemed okay with how things were too. She hadn't come to me to talk about any of this since she'd come back for this extended visit. I was happy to find out that Dale was pregnant again. Emily, Shirley, Brenda, and Joyce were all taking pills to prevent another pregnancy from occurring. It was too soon to expect Cindy to get pregnant again. I had already decided that I'd get myself snipped again as soon as Cindy and Dale both got pregnant again. "I'll talk to her tomorrow after you guys go to work. All I'm going to do is ask her if she's happy with how things are now. If she wants to talk, I'll listen." "This is the longest visit she's ever made since she first left us, Kenny. There must be a good reason why she's staying here. She mostly just sleeps with Dale. On nights when Dale is in here with you, she comes in to be with me, and she was in with Cindy two nights when I wasn't feeling well." "Why weren't you feeling well." Joyce had never mentioned being sick to me. I started to worry. The last thing I needed was for Joyce to come down with some illness. "My periods, Kenny. That's what I meant by not feeling well. If you do talk to her, make sure she understands that you're ready to talk about her future." I wasn't ready to talk about certain scenarios in her future that Joyce was obviously hoping we'd discuss together. Eddie wasn't showing any signs that she wanted to reopen those discussions anyway. We both had told each other where we stood. For my part, nothing had changed. I was comfortable with the idea of Eddie just visiting. She wasn't being any bother to me, or to any of my wives. I'd talk to her for Joyce's sake. I wondered why Dale didn't tell her own sister about being pregnant. Eddie hadn't seemed too troubled the last time she found out Dale was expecting. I thought Joyce was overreacting. Still, I'd told her I'd speak with Eddie, and I would. ------- Chapter 88 It was the next morning, after everyone else had left the house, when I asked Eddie to join me in my home office. From the way she had already been waiting for me in the living room, I assumed that Joyce and Dale had alerted her to the fact that I was planning on having a talk with her. "Eddie, Joyce and I were talking about some things last night. Joyce thinks that you and I needed to have another talk about what your plans are for the future." Eddie seemed worried about something. Just the fact that she hesitated before saying anything to me should have told me a lot. I already knew that Joyce and Dale had been talking to her, every chance they had, to try to get her to think differently about what she wanted. "I don't really have any plans yet, Kenny. Part of me wants to stay here, just like things are now, but the rest of me knows I can't just hang around here doing nothing for the rest of my life." "Nobody is trying to push you into doing anything. Well, I guess I should say I'm not trying to push you into anything. I'm sure Dale and Joyce have been trying to get you to do whatever they want." "They talk to me about things. Joyce still thinks you'll change your mind about me if I stay here and don't do anything to cause anyone any problems. Dee is worried about what happens if I decide to leave here again. It doesn't seem to me that you want anything to change from how it is now between us. Nothing is changing for us as near as I can tell." "Tell me again what you would like to see happen with us." "I can't really say what I want. When I tell you what I want, we end up having a big fight." "Basically, what you're telling me is you still would like to be a part of our family, but able to go off and pursue other interests when and if you ever decide to?" "I don't see what your problem is with that. We're doing that right now, except for the sex part. I'm here, and nothing else is going on. If I leave here and go somewhere else, I don't think I should need to account to anyone else for what I'm doing when I'm away from all of you. If I did find someone else, I could understand you not wanting to treat me like all the others. What I can't understand is why you want to treat me like you do when I'm not doing anything now with anyone else?" "I don't treat you badly, Eddie. I treat you like a good friend. I haven't tried to interfere with your relationships with Dale or the other wives. I don't treat you like my wife, because we no longer have that same bond that we once had. It wouldn't bother me if you had someone else that you loved, I'd be happy for you. I can't let you do that though, and still remain living here and being the part of all our lives you say you want to be. I'm talking about the sex part, with the wives." "You don't see where that leaves me? Now you're forcing me to decide to give up everything if I choose to go out and have a normal life like anyone else. Why do you get to control what those other wives can do? Why not let each of them decide for themselves how they want to treat me?" "I haven't interfered at all with how any of them are treating you. I did tell you, right from the beginning, that there were certain rules we all had to obey. Some of you broke those rules, but I forgave you. If the circumstances had been different, I wouldn't have forgiven any of you. The rules haven't changed though. We can't be married unless we're committed only to each other. You aren't committed." "I'm as committed as you are, Kenny. You just don't want to be fair. I'm not the only woman here that would like things to be more fair than they are. I'm just the only one who's willing to come right out and tell you what I want." "Eddie, we're back to where we were the last time, and the time before that. I promised Joyce that I'd have another talk with you. Well, we've talked, and we both know nothing has changed from before. I don't want to keep going and end up with the two of us being mad at each other. You're welcome to stay here as our guest, and you're free to leave whenever you're ready to. From now on, you'll always be considered just a guest here though. If you were hoping for more than that, then I'm sorry." "Does that mean what I think it means? Are you going to try to prevent me from being with Dee and all the other wives?" "No. I'm not going to try to prevent you from being with them. I'll let all of them make their own decisions about that. What I should have said was you're going to be just a guest to me." That night there were a lot of meetings going on within the household. After dinner, Joyce sought me out and asked me what had happened when Eddie and I had our talk. I told her my side of it, already knowing that Eddie would have told Joyce and Dale her side. "So, that's it then? You won't change your mind about taking her back?" "Joyce, she doesn't want me to take her back. She wants me to make an exception for her. I won't do that. Eddie thinks you'd all like to be free to run around and do whatever you feel like doing. I don't believe that. I sure hope it isn't true." "I think we need to have a meeting, Kenny. I love Eddie, but I know we have to have rules in order to keep things working. She had to know that we couldn't allow her to just come and go like she said she wanted to. If she hasn't stopped wanting that though, why did she come back and stay here for such a long visit?" "I think she saw how we were able to work things out with Emily and Brenda. Maybe she thought we were so interested in getting things back to how they were before that we'd be willing to modify some of our rules in order to accommodate her. She doesn't really understand how things got put back together. I don't want to be at this meeting you're talking about having. I think it should just be the wives meeting with Eddie." Joyce thought about what I was suggesting before nodding her head to me. When she left me alone in my home office to go back to the living room, I was pretty sure that Eddie would soon be in for a little surprise. I stayed in my office until after ten o'clock. I had been trying to work on an idea I'd had for expanding my trading activities. Frank Clooney had been talking to me about that private placement he'd helped arrange so we could buy up those smaller independent bakeries. He was telling me that the investor's were pleased with the return they were getting, and had been asking him to find another opportunity for them to invest in. There was a lot of capital chasing investment returns, and some yields were really low. Anything that returned a halfway respectable yield, while still having decent underlying assets as security, could be packaged and funded without any problems. Frank had asked me if I could come up with something for him to package. The idea of trading other people's money appealed to me. This was even more true if I could manage to get my hands on this capital without having to give up much in the way of the profits I thought I could generate by having access to it. Over the last couple of years, more and more speculators had entered into the commodities markets. They liked the leverage opportunities available, and, for most, it was pure gambling. There was simply too much money out there, and a lot of gullible people were putting it in places where they had no business even being. Financial instruments, currencies, commodities, and precious metals were just a few of the places where money was flowing unchecked. I'd been making money trading by then for more than ten years. Over that span of time, I'd taken my own natural talent and improved it with my experience, and all that I'd managed to learn by studying the different trading venues. Trading is similar to playing a musical instrument, or a series of different instruments. After awhile, playing becomes easier for you, and you develop a real feel for how to make music. Trading was like that for me. I could detect tradeable patterns now with almost no effort on my part. Just as musical notes have a predictable pattern, trading has repeating signals. I was becoming something of a virtuoso at 'playing' the markets. While I waited for the wives to conclude their meeting with Eddie, I was putting together a proposal for a private placement for Frank Clooney to solicit funds for. I had decided to try to borrow three hundred million dollars for five years, promising an eight percent annual yield, all secured by a second position lien on the long term company note from my main trust, and another second position lien on the grain trading company's assets. I had no idea if these investor's would settle for secondary liens, but Frank had told me that the people he'd spoken with were very hungry for yields greater than what they were getting from other financial institutions. I figured I'd let Frank shop my idea around and deal with whatever counter offers or proposals this might provide me. At ten o'clock, I was finishing up my notes on the loan proposal when Cindy came into my office to get me for bed. We went upstairs, and I was very careful not to ask any questions about what had taken place in the living room earlier. I assumed that Joyce would fill me in the next day at the office. We were in my bedroom before Cindy spoke to me. "Eddie is leaving in the morning, Kenny. We all talked about what she wanted to have happen. When she was finished talking, all of us told her we didn't want the same things she did. Even Dale told her she couldn't want that and still expect to be allowed to be a part of our family. Eddie said we all wanted the same things she did. She said we were too afraid of how you'd react if you ever found out that we wanted it too. No one else wanted what she said. I don't know how she ever got the idea that we did. Even Emily didn't want us to have such a loose connection to each other. Before tonight, most of us just didn't understand what Eddie was asking for. Now that we do understand though, we also realize what you meant before when you told her it couldn't ever be like that. Most of us thought she was just having problems with the way you were treating her." "How did Eddie take it when she found out no one else thought about these things the same way she did?" "She got mad. Mostly at Dale and Joyce. She accused both of them of being hypocrites. Dale told her that she was having another baby, and then she said she was perfectly happy living just like she was. Joyce told her that there was more to living than being able to hop in and out of bed with lots of different people. After that though, everyone wanted to talk about Dale being pregnant again. I need to get pregnant again too. This time I need a boy." "You understand that one more is all you're going to get though, right? Twenty children is enough for any man. Boy or a girl, after this one, there won't be any more." We made love slowly. I was thinking about Eddie afterwards. I blamed myself for a lot of what had happened between us. If I were going to be honest, I'd admit that Eddie and I were more about sexual fun and playing than about real love. Somehow, we'd never made that full emotional connection that I'd had with the other wives. I didn't think Eddie had ever changed her values. If circumstances hadn't changed after I got sick, I still believe we might have had the time to connect better emotionally. I felt as responsible as she was for what had happened to us. Joyce and Dale took Eddie to the airport the next morning before coming into the office. I didn't see either of them until lunch time. Joyce, when she saw me, came over to get herself a hug. She looked very sad, and I comforted her as much as I could. I knew Joyce, and I knew she hadn't really given up on Eddie. It was comforting to me that she now understood why I had made the decisions I did. As long as we both understood things the same way, I was confident that both Joyce and I would insist on Eddie needing to change before we could even entertain any changes to our family situation. At two that afternoon I took a call from Frank Clooney. He had gotten the notes I'd dropped off at his office on my way in to work. He asked a few questions, mostly to clarify what I wanted, as far as interest payments being structured, and whether the funds would be segregated in a separate trading account. It only took two weeks before we were fully subscribed in our offering. The only real substantive change I needed to make was with having the investor's retaining the right to call in their loan in the event the account balance ever fell below the one hundred fifty million dollar mark. If I managed to lose half the money, they could call in the loan. Other than that one concession, I was free to invest the money as soon as all the proper legal paperwork was filed with the State of Kansas. My father was very pleased that I'd increased my trading capital. Business had been improving, and we had need for more grain than ever before. Now that I'd expanded the number and types of products I traded, the grain trading itself was somewhat secondary to my overall trading posture. I now traded whatever happened to show promise of being a profitable trading situation. I still stuck to currencies, metals and grains, but an increasing number of my actual trades didn't include any grains. I did more than enough to insure having sufficient grains to meet my grain delivery commitments, but I was now trading solely for the profitability of the trades. As often as not, one sector would open up for a whole host of trades while one or two others didn't offer too much trading potential. Generally, there was a price relationship between currencies, metals and grains. Because of this, I was able to use each of them when I was creating a trading box. That way, I was able to buy and sell on smaller price movements inside the trading boxes. Over the course of a one cent price movement in corn, I might end up making thirty quarter cent trades in the corn, knowing that corn's price movement was hedged by my positions in the Japanese Yen and platinum futures. If I ended up on the wrong side of corn, I'd make most or all of it back from my offsetting profits in the Yen. I was trading on price relationships, not on smaller price movements in any one particular trading vehicle. The end result of my trading was steady profits. Not every trade was a winner, but the great majority of them were. Week after week, the trading showed excellent profitability. I kept the trading profits from the private placement inside the trading account I'd created with the funds I'd borrowed. The only distribution from it was the quarterly interest I was paying out. Within three months, the three hundred million had grown into four hundred million. In November, all of us traveled out to the Palm Springs area to spend our winter. Joyce and Mama had found us a large property in Palm Desert. It was a compound that included one very large home and five smaller homes, all enclosed within a gated area. It was sold from the estate of a famous industrialist who had died the year before. Joyce and I had the whole downstairs portion of the smallest of the compound houses for our work offices. The upstairs area of the house, we were using for storage. I purchased three family country club memberships, also from the estate. Joyce, Cindy, and I settled into a comfortable routine. I got up at five o'clock and made sure I was available to handle company business from six to eleven. At eight thirty, Cindy came in to handle the phone calls and emails while I concentrated on trading until eleven. At eleven, Joyce would come in to relieve me. Cindy usually stayed with Joyce until around two o'clock. Most days, Brenda would bring all of us a lunch that she'd prepared. On those days, Joyce would come over early in order to eat with all of us. By noon, everyday, I was somewhere out on a golf course. I played with my parents, with Shirley, with Derek and Bunny, or, sometimes, just by myself. At least twice a week, in the late afternoons, or early evening, after I took my two oldest sons out to play nine holes with me, I played tennis, with Brenda, and usually with some of the children, at one of the clubs where we were now members. Monday through Friday, we always joined up with my parents somewhere to have dinner together. During dinner, Joyce, Cindy, my Dad and I would have our own business discussions, where the four of us would fill each other in on what had transpired that day. More often than not, this discussion took no more than an hour. Because of all our outdoors activities, we gradually started eating later and later each evening. It got dark early, and it got chilly too, but the tennis courts were lighted, and all our running around kept us from getting too cold. We were all busy. We had hired private tutors for the children, making sure that none of them neglected any of their studies. The babies each had their own care giver too. In many ways it seemed like an ideal lifestyle. That first winter, we had quite a few visitors. Eddie and her mother flew out for a visit. At first it was supposed to be for one week, but it soon got stretched into three weeks. Grace and Jane flew out with their three children and this necessitated lots of trips to Disneyland, Universal Studios and Hollywood. That first winter also convinced my father that the business didn't need to be the end all and be all of his existence. He paid attention to what Cindy, Joyce, and I were doing. By the time March rolled around again, he already knew some of the changes we'd need to be making to improve on our absentee management styles. By forcing our division managers to be more independent, we were encouraging their growth as leaders. Some prospered in that environment, but others seemed to just wither on the vine. We knew we needed people who could react well to both trouble and opportunity. For those that could, we added responsibility and autonomy. For those who didn't have the ability to adapt to our emerging needs, we effected transfers to divisions where the pace was slower and then brought in people that would eventually replace them. Transition is never a comfortable process. We had casualties. In some ways, my father was a casualty. He found himself being swept along with all these changes. Fortunately, he was able to adapt to the changes. I think this was due, in large measure, to his accepting what I'd told him about me not being able to put as much time and energy into running the business as he had. He began looking, with me, for ways to get everything that needed doing done, with the least expenditure of our time and energy. This became something of a game to him, or, maybe, it was just a different way for him to keep score. Profits were still rising, and, more importantly, the company was still growing, right on the schedule he'd set for it. While we had our tense moments together in November and December, by January, my father had come to a place where he was growing increasingly comfortable with what we were now doing. Mama had really blossomed out in Palm Springs. The first winter with just her and Dad, she had gotten her social bearings. By the second winter she was comfortable in her new element. She started serving on committees and making her presence felt at most of the social events that were looking to raise money for one good cause or another. Brenda and Emily joined her for most of this. In the beginning, Mama was accepted because of her known ability to write large checks, but, after only a short while, she was being appreciated for both her energy and her ability to organize things. Emily and Brenda were big helps to her in this. Both were tireless phone workers. Brenda's looks also helped in soliciting large donations from corporate boardrooms. Hans and Gerta loved the mild California winters too. Hans quickly found a number of expatriate Germans in the area, and was soon involved in an active social life of his own. By now, Hans and Gerta were very wealthy in their own right. When I'd first met them, they were well off, but, through the years, their investments had really paid off for them. I'd been trading for their account for many years, and that account had grown exceedingly large. In the past two years, Gerta had brought in three women to assist her with her housekeeping and cooking duties. Her knees made it difficult for her to climb stairs now. Hans had his own full time helper now too. For the most part, each of them did only as much as they wanted to do. While Grace and Jane were out visiting with us, Grace made a request of both Joyce and I. Grace and Jane both wanted their own children, and they wanted me to be the father. I was very flattered by their request, but, in the end, I had to tell them both no. I didn't want to make children when I wouldn't be allowed to have a direct hand in their raising. With Grace and Jane, I knew they wouldn't want me being a meaningful part of their children's lives. I'd already seen how protective they were of their parenting rights with their three adoptive children. I realized this had been part of the reason why I hadn't wanted to get back together with Eddie. If she ever left and took our children, I knew she probably wouldn't bring them back to me. At least part of Eddie's reasons for wanting more variety had to do with a racial component. Dale didn't seem to share Eddie's sense of racial loyalty. We stayed in California until the middle of March. We were divided in our feelings about going back to Kansas. We were happy to have avoided the worst of the Kansas winter, but, to all of us, except Dale and Cindy, Kansas was our true home. To Dale and Cindy, Kansas and California were equal, Oklahoma and Alabama were their true homes. We had returned to Kansas for less than a month before Cindy announced that she was once again pregnant. She said the baby had been conceived out on a golf course. I remembered that she and I had taken a few walks after dinners at my parent's house. I also remembered this one mild evening, over by one of the greens, about a quarter mile from my parent's house. Cindy and I had been resting and talking about something when she told me she wanted to make love with me outdoors. To be honest, I thought at the time that she was just trying to get in a little extra sex with me. I knew it wasn't her night to sleep with me. This happened once in awhile, mostly with Brenda, Joyce and Cindy. All three of them liked getting me worked up on days when it wasn't their turn. What they didn't know was that I made it up to the girl who's turn it should have been on one of their nights too. I was still young enough that I could take care of whoever's turn it was later that evening. On May 15th, Dale and I had another son. We named him Earvin Edward Parsons. This time I was sure there was no biblical river named Earvin. The only other Earvin I'd ever heard of was Earvin "Magic" Johnson, the basketball player. On November 17th, while we were out in California for our second winter, Cindy and I had our second child. We named him Lawrence Phillip Parsons. I told Dale the Lawrence was for Larry Bird, but Dale already knew the names of Cindy's two uncles. After Larry was born, I knew there would be no more children. I went down and had yet another vasectomy. It had been worthwhile getting the first one reversed, but I could think of no inducement that would convince me to go through another reversal. By year's end in 1999, I had made more than two hundred and fifty million dollars trading for the year. That wasn't even counting the profits from trading all the individual and charitable trust accounts. My gross, before taxes, was greater than the combined gross profits of all our other businesses. I'd made more than four hundred million dollars from trading in the past twenty months. Going into 2000, I could have pretty much named my own ticket as far as raising new capital to trade with. Perversely, I chose to reduce my financial exposure by paying off the three hundred million dollars I'd borrowed to trade with. I really didn't need the capital anymore. Interest rates were undecided about which way they were heading. The prime rate had been as low as 6.00% in 1992. By January of 2000, it was sitting at 8.50%. Many economists were predicting much lower interest rates, but the Federal Reserve didn't seem to be cooperating with these predictions yet. Beginning in March of 2000, all of this was going to change. We were heading into an era where small depositors would be receiving as little as a quarter percent in annual interest return on their savings. It was to be a time of wholesale refinancing of credit. It couldn't have come at a more opportune time for our companies, or for the thousands of other businesses that operated on credit lines. Individual family's would soon be busy restructuring their home mortgages. For millions of others, these low interest mortgage loans made buying a home a real possibility, for the very first time. It was destined to spur another great housing boom in many parts of the country. For my parents and I, the early 2000's signalled a real buying opportunity. We mostly bought cheap money, refinancing whenever it made sense to do so. We sold our products and used those revenues to buy up assets we thought were under priced. I continued making money with my trading. Once all my loans had been paid off, I started buying up real estate assets, primarily vacant land. I spent as much of my time looking for assets to purchase as I did trying to make the money in the first place. I was speculating on the era of low interest rates lasting for at least three years. All our company growth was being fueled by our interest rate savings by refinancing our old debt. By 2003, everything we owned was free and clear. When everyone else was out there in a buying and borrowing frenzy, my father and I decided that we were now in a position to reclaim full ownership and control of all our holdings. We were violating a rule of ours by getting rid of our debt when interest rates were still falling. After more than a decade of heavy debt though, we both felt the time was right to pay everything down. We gave up our leverage to buy ourselves some security and peace of mind. We had the businesses operating just like we wanted them to. We had as much as we wanted to manage, and were doing a lot to thank our long term employees for their dedication and loyalty. Since we were throwing off so much in earnings now, we started taking fullest advantage of the tax laws to create benefits for our employees. In this, the government was our partner. Everything we did for our workers came right off the top of our pre-tax earnings. Our family had many times more money than we would ever need. With this in mind, we began a systematic program of giving away everything we were currently making. Most of it went to our employees, but a lot of it got spread around to worthwhile charities we wanted to encourage and support. Personally though, all of us knew that these were the Good Years. We had gone through so much together. Just as my early formative years had changed me, and changed the way I looked at things, these years, when I was sick, and my family went through all the suffering we endured, it changed all of us. I believe all of us came to realize how precious these things were that we had been taking for granted before. Knowing that you are loved, and that you return that love is such a great gift to have. We managed, sometimes I don't know how, to get through our terrible times, mostly intact. Sometimes, when I think of something, and start to regret what happened, I need to remind myself of where my life is right now. In spite of the hurt, the pain, and all the regrets during some of these times, I wouldn't be where I am, none of us would be where we are right now, if none of this had ever happened to us. We are stronger and more loving with each other, not despite our troubles, but because of them. My main focus, and that of all my great loves, is the raising of all our children to be the best that they can be. This is no easy task, not even with all the help and support that we have. Money can be a two edged sword, and as the children get older, we are finding this out for ourselves, firsthand. Children of unbridled privilege have their own sets of problems and challenges. We try to keep them well grounded, but this isn't always possible. They have been exposed to a wonderful lifestyle, and in the process, have lost something by never having known physical want or need. We try to teach appreciation for all they've been given, but at the same time, we try to expose them to the very real needs that others, less privileged than they, have to cope with every day. In this, we walk a fine line. I fear our efforts are lacking the desired results with some of our offspring. No matter, we do our best and hope for the best result obtainable, knowing, in some cases, we are bound to fall short of our goals. When my thoughts linger on all the fears I have surrounding my responsibilities as a parent, I take solace from something my Uncle Bunny once said to me: "Forget that ball, Kenny. I'm taking a mulligan." In my lifetime, I've already experienced many of life's mulligan's. I've gotten those second chances, opportunities to do things over. Life usually provides us with many opportunities to take a mulligan. My children will need to make their own mistakes, and then, hopefully, learn from them, just like I had to. Just like we all have to. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2006-12-25 Last Modified: 2007-12-05 / 09:55:50 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------