Depression by cmsix

Chapter 42

Luckily we finished with our visitor shortly before lunch and I made it down to eat just in time. After I was seated and had enough time to stuff in a few bites, Jaycee spoke up.

"Is everything settled now? Are we leaving tonight?" she asked.

"I believe so."

"Then you'd better spend some time with Geron, Percy, and Damien to let them know what you expect them to do while you're away. Probably better let Harriette in on your departure too," Jaycee said.

"Hold on a second, I'm not taking care of all that. Fawne can deal with choosing a new cook and such. Harriette is going with us. I am not leaving without my favorite cook. Choose about half of the serving staff to come along too please," I said, remembering that I liked the French Maid service, quite a lot in fact.

"I don't see why we should leave half of them here. With you gone there will be no one for them to serve anyway. It would be cruel to leave those dedicated young ladies here with nothing to spend their days doing. And surely you need to bring some of Harriette's helpers along too," Fawne said.

"Well, of course we should. You see, that's why I have to leave the details to you; I'm not qualified to make those kinds of decisions. And be sure you bring Francine along," I said, and Jaycee just laughed in my face while Fawne smiled at me as if I were a much younger man, eleven-year-old is the vibe I was getting from her.

With that settled, Meka, Tutsie, and I finished our meal and went outside to play. We didn't get to play long though, because I remembered that I wanted to take a few of the warhorses back too. I was sure that George would be impressed.

We made our way to the barn from home, rousted out the grooms there, and discussed their marital status. Both were married men and had children. I gave them the news that they should bring all their immediate family and all their things and I even showed them how to get into the basement for storage.

It turned out to be a busy afternoon after all. What with moving the very best two stallions and the eight largest and best mares, we ended up filling all vacant stalls in my barn.

I had the grooms and their families assemble temporary bedding near their things and promised them better accommodations when we arrived. They seemed a little confused but I could tell that Big Boy had fogged them when he figured out what I was doing. I decided to have a word with him.

"I'm afraid we're going to need more space for our traveling show," I said.

"Yes, I can tell already. I will prepare two residences for the grooms and their families and I think we should probably double the size of your horse barn, at least," he said.

"That should do nicely for now," I said, agreeing, and actually surprised that I didn't encounter any resistance. Thinking about it I figured that something else annoying might be coming up soon and that this generosity could be a down payment. No sense worrying about it now.

No matter what the new women had learned, they stamped their little feet and demanded to be allowed to bring a few dozen dresses and such each. I didn't care but I made them draft their own help to move things. I did ask Jaycee if they were bringing along any clothes that could possibly do them for their shopping trip.

"Of course not, they don't have a thing they can wear. It doesn't matter. We can put them in sweat pants and T-shirts long enough to get them to Wal-Mart for tight jeans, trashy blouses, and Cowboy boots, and then we can work our way up from there. Hell, let Ethel deal with it, she'll be happy to.

Jaycee was right; Ethel and Wanda would be shickled titless with a shopping trip of these proportions. Then it hit me and I lost it laughing, thinking about six or eight ranch hands pushing buggies around behind Ethel and crew while they sailed through Wal-Mart buying everything in sight.

My happy mood dimmed a little near sunset, when the thunderclouds started rolling in. Meka and I gave Tutsie an extended walking near the front door and then it was bedtime.

Meka slept with us tonight, since we were traveling. Tutsie decided that exactly in the middle of my chest was the best place for his rest, and damned if he didn't give me a little growl when I wiggled after he'd settled in. Then, the lights went out.

I don't know how I could tell when I woke, but I knew something was different. Meka and Tutsie were awake too but the rest were still snoozing. Tutsie let us know that he wanted to take a trot outside. We got out of bed to walk him and I was surprised that it didn't wake anyone else.

That was nothing compared to the surprise we got when we opened the bedroom door to go outside. I had assumed we had already arrived and that it was probably near morning. We hadn't and it wasn't. And, we weren't inside the house. My bedroom door hadn't opened into the hall; it had opened to the outside. The outside of where was my next question.

"Daddy! Look," Meka said, waving her arm around in an all-encompassing gesture.

Look indeed. We could see that we were still on our basic traveling plot of a hundred acres or so. We hadn't left my bedroom and gone into the hall because my bedroom was no longer in the house. That was easy to see because the house was largely disassembled, as if it were some bunch of giant Lego blocks that normally fit together perfectly but currently were scattered around the playroom floor.

A look in the sky, at the three moons overhead, let us know that we were not on earth either. A glance toward the swimming pond showed me that all the horses and mules were out grazing peacefully. Not far from them the grooms and their families were sleeping peacefully near the stacks of their possessions.

At first I wondered what the hell was going on and then realized that we were allowed to wake and come take a look at what went on when things happened to our residences during the night. Hell, it wasn't magic as it seemed, someone had to build and rebuild and remodel and on and on. It had to be done, but we just didn't have to be conscious while it went on.

Probably I should have been more curious about what we'd end up with, but it didn't really matter. If I didn't like it, changes could be made the next time we went somewhere.

A casual look around did show me we had a much larger house in progress, a much larger barn, and some interesting outbuildings. They were probably the new houses for the grooms and their families. I knew they'd be happy.

Meka had been pretty quiet, and while I'd looked around she'd gawked.

"Everything changing, Daddy?" she asked.

"Looks that way. It will all probably be better," I said, and then she picked up Tutsie and we went back inside and back to bed.

Of course I had no way of knowing how much actual time we spent wherever we were while the changes were being made. It was obvious from seeing the process that it wasn't done in the normal amount of hours we would have slept during a single night.

This fact made me wonder why we'd been allowed to wake up and see what was actually going on. Tutsie needing to take a leak was an acceptable cursory explanation, but it wouldn't hold water, so to speak.

They absolutely had to have some other method of taking care of our bodily functions during the time we were on hold while they were changing things around like they did.

Now that I knew they had to actually do construction and couldn't wave some type of magic wand and have things just change, I realized that some of the things they'd done overnight must have taken at least weeks of real time, if not months.

Giving it a little casual thought was all I wanted to do though. I had no desire to peak behind the curtain and try to figure out what the wizard was really up to. I didn't mind knowing that the overnight changes that appeared to be happening weren't really overnight changes, but I didn't want to get into the details.

I knew about construction, I'd even worked on big construction jobs before. I could make a reasonable estimate of how long it took to do the type of things they were doing, even at the increased speed they seemed to be moving during the short time Meka and I had watched. I was pretty sure that Rip Van Winkle didn't have a damned leg up on me at all.

Fuck it. I was going back to sleep.

When we woke the next morning I was one of the last to make it out of bed. Meka and Tutsie waited patiently while I dragged on some clothes, strapped on my web belt, and pulled on my boots. We headed out of the bedroom and the door opened onto a hall again. Things were looking good so far.

Familiarity ended not far from there though. Down the hall was not the way to the kitchen and the front door any longer. It was the way to a big study like I'd had back in old France. Just before we entered the study we spied an elevator and we took it down a floor.

It let us out into a large living type room and I could see the back part of an entry hall from where we were. After heading that way we found that it led to double doors now and that the double doors led outside.

Tutsie was more than ready to be put down when we'd made good our exit, and he didn't waste any time looking around before getting down to the business of taking a piss and then, after seeming to think about it for a few seconds, he went ahead and dumped a small load.

Just as Tutsie was finishing his morning duty the welcoming committee came rumbling up the driveway. It was George, in his fifty-six Chevy pickup, and he was right on time.

Meka and I went over to the new parking area to greet him. He seemed shaken as he got out of his truck.

"Don't look so startled, George, it's still just us. Well, we did increase our numbers a little while we were gone," I said.

"Well, you damned sure came back with a bigger house than you left in," he said.

"Need more room. More mommies, more cooks, more maids, more horses too," Meka said, giving George a smile that surely made up for any misunderstanding.

"More horses?" George asked.

"Just ten more, but you need to see them. Two stallions and eight mares," I said, purposely leaving out any details.

"Where did you run across any horses?" George asked.

"In France. Our trip was to France this time. There were a few Noblemen that needed a talking to."

"Well I'll be. That's gonna be a surprise to Ethel," George said.

"That part won't make a pimple on the ass of the surprise Ethel's got coming, George. Maybe you'd better come on into the house for some coffee," I said.

"But what about breakfast? Ethel's expecting you all down there for breakfast," George said.

"Stall her, so you can get a handle on things before we go. Believe me, you're going to need the time. Tell her to hang on for about half an hour. Say you woke us up or something like that," I said.

"Ok, I can handle that. Hell, she ain't that close to ready anyway. Carolyn, Geneva, and Ethel were barely up and to the kitchen by the time I left anyways," he said, opening his cell phone and calling home.

"Ethel. Y'all don't need to be in such a hurry, I had to wake 'em up when I got down here.

"I know, but not this time. It ain't no wonder either. I'm going in to have a cup a coffee while everyone else is gettin' ready. It might take ten minutes to hike to the kitchen to get it.

"Cause the house is so damned big now. I ain't got inside yet, I don't even know if the kitchen is on the ground floor anymore.

"Didn't I tell ya? It's a two story house now, and damned if I don't think his barn is bigger than two of ours put together.

"Of course I looked at the barns first. You do remember who you sent down here don'tcha?

"All right, all right. I'll get us up there quick as I can, but don't you all get in no rush," George said at last, and then folded up his phone.

Of course we'd only heard one side of the conversation, but it'd been plain that Ethel was not amused. Meka was having a hard time keeping from laughing and Tutsie just had to give George a good short barking at.

"Is she going to be able to stand it while she's waitin' on us?" I asked.

"She'll have to. Now, where do we find coffee in there?"

"We don't know yet. No matter what goes on, Tutsie gets the first attention in the morning. We don't want him deciding to piss on the carpet. Come on, let's go in," I said.

Once we were inside George's jaw dropped to the end of its travel and he gawked.

"Damn, how're we even gonna find the kitchen?" he asked.

"Tutsie find," Meka said, and let the little fur ball down, giving him his head.

He took off for a door across the big living room, but after a few steps noticed that we weren't with him yet. He turned around and gave us a few barks to chivvy us along.

Tutsie led us right into a nearly identical rendition of our last dining room in the damned-near-hotel Big Boy had built us in France. Francine was waiting just inside the door.

She asked me if we were ready for some coffee and a few pastries, but she asked in French. I could hear her speaking fine, but I had to get hold of myself to keep from letting on that I was so surprised to be able to understand her. Big Boy was up to his old tricks again.

Just the thought of him must have been his cue.

"We grew tired of the whole translation run around so we taught you the language overnight," he said, as if I'd buy that any longer.

"Overnight my ass. I'd had my suspicions before but your little show and tell with Tutsie's piss break during the night let me know we spent a hell of a lot more than one night in that bed," I thought back to him.

"It's even more complicated than it looked but that is close enough for now," he thought back, and then he butted out.

George had not been taught any French during the night and he was just staring at Francine, in her revealing maid get up and with his mouth still hanging open.

"She asked if we were ready for some coffee and a few pastries, George, and you'd better reel in your jaw before you get back to where Ethel can see you," I said.

While he was trying to gather his wits I told Francine that coffee and pastries would be fine and she went into the kitchen, returning with four more maids carrying trays.

We finally found our places and the serving got started in earnest. George hadn't been able to get any more words out but he was at least able to drink a sip of his coffee and pop a small treat into his mouth. Tutsie was on his high-stool, wagging hell our of his tail and waiting patiently for his personal server to deliver the goods.

"We have pretty girls bring food now, George," Meka said.

"I see you do, and they are pretty. Was that French that one was usin'?" he asked.

"They don't know much English, and I'm not sure I don't like it better that way. French sure sounds nice when they speak it," I said.