D I V O R C E by cmsix

Chapter 26

I felt a little bad as I drove out of town later, since I went right by the propane place. There was a local owner and I knew him. I would rather give him the trade, but I knew he couldn't keep his mouth shut. I didn't want everybody in the whole damned county to know I'd bought twenty-four five-hundred-gallon propane tanks.

"Not needed. One tank for each fuel will be sufficient," came in via the direct line someone had into my head.

It nearly made me run off the road, but all I could think of to do was say, "What?"

"We will furnish the fuel. You only need one tank for each type," came back to me.

That was going to be a pretty good trick, but when I thought about it a little more it didn't seem like such a much. If they could install an artesian spring overnight, and move me back and forth in time, I guess a little propane, diesel, and gasoline wouldn't present a problem. Too bad they hadn't mentioned this little detail when I was buying the damned plastic gasoline tanks.

I stopped at the Pargas place out in the middle of nowhere, Hwy 77 Texas, between Douglassville and Naples on my way back to Lone Star and went inside. The dried up old gal there was happy to sell me five five-hundred-gallon tanks and seemed even happier that I'd be sending a truck. She promised they could load them.

I headed on back to Longview toward John and Scotty's place. I was happy to see my red Silverado and my beige seventy-six both sitting outside with aluminum wheels on them all around. I parked the new ride near the front doors and walked toward John's service desk.

"I guess we got done just in time," he said.

"You ain't really done, John. I just came by to switch trucks," I said.

"Need this one out today? I can stay late if you do," he said.

"Naw, and I want the whole deal on it too, just like the red one, air compressor, air shocks, wheels and Monster Mudders. And I don't want Carrol mad at me for keeping you working late."

"They must not have been able to track you down. She called and said they wouldn't be back until around nine tonight. I guess the shopping got heavy," he said, grinning.

"Hell, that's good news. I need to go over around the lake and find a place I bought today," I said.

He asked what address and when I told him I could tell that it took him a little hard. I wondered about it and then the light shined.

"Were you and Carroll thinking about that house?" I asked.

"Yeh, more like we were wanting to think about it. We'd already decided it would be better if Scotty and me got the new place going before we took on the house. We figured it would get away from us, but there'll be others," he said.

"There don't have to be no others cause I don't want the house for myself. I only found out about it because I bought the entertainment center. It was on a separate note and my nosey nature let me find out about what a steal the house was. I haven't even been out there yet.

"Why don't we go inside and do the paperwork," I said, grinning.

"You mean you'd sell us that house on the same kind of note you loaned us the money with?" he asked.

"Well hell yeh, in the first place the house is less money. You can even have the entertainment center and the furniture and dishes back if you want. The videotapes and cassettes are all I wanted anyway. You can even make copies of them first if you'd like," I said.

"Naw, I don't think Carrol wanted any of that stuff. We saw the house before they took it out," he said.

"You don't have to make up your mind right now anyway, I haven't even been out there yet. You got time to run out to it with me?"

"I'll make time. Give me a minute to tell Scotty I'm leaving."

He was back in a flash and away we went. Thirty minutes later we drove up to the place and it was a damned nice one, and in a lot better shape than I'd expected it to be. All the furniture that was already paid for was still in it too.

We went into the house first, but only because I wanted to at least see what I'd bought. It was a nice one with two baths, three bedrooms, a big den, and a large kitchen.  There was wall-to-wall carpet everywhere except the kitchen and the baths and everything was in a hell of a lot better shape than you'd expect, considering the circumstances.

It didn't take me long to see what I wanted to and John had already been here. We walked through the garage to get out and I headed back for my pickup.

"You don't want to take a look in the shop?" John asked.

"Is there anything in there worth seeing? I figured it was just an empty shop building," I said.

"I think you might want to at least take a glance," he said.

So I followed John over to the shop and he opened up the big roll up door, so we could have some light inside I guess. Man, was I surprised.

It was full of tools and equipment. Nothing exotic you understand, just a small machine, welding, and blacksmith shop rolled into one. There was even a complete farrier's setup in one corner and a nice woodworking place in another. Though it was pretty obvious he'd done the horse shoeing outside.

"What the hell was he doing with all this?" I asked.

"He was a handyman deluxe. He hated working at the mill but kept at it because of the money. When we got laid off, the other mill hand his wife had been slipping around with left town and Shoals' wife went with him.

"It pissed Shoals off so bad he just abandoned the place. Said he was going back to Pennsylvania, where he come from," John said.

That cut just a little too close to the bone for me, that talk of a man's wife running around with a steelworker while her husband was off to the mill. I figured that bringing something else up right away would be a pretty good idea.

"Damned if you ain't bought a place to work," I said, teasing John.

"No. Hell no. I ain't. I knew this stuff was here all right, but I told Carrol when we looked at it that every damned bit of that was leaving if we bought the place. I work hard while I'm at work, but when I'm off; I try my best to rest hard. I don't want a second job waiting for me at home," he said, and damned if he wasn't getting a head of steam built up about it.

"Don't worry, I can use all of that sooner or later so I'll send a truck out here for it. Got any idea where I can get some decent labor?" I asked, and he was back to his normal good mood already.

"Sure. There's a hell of a lot of good labor sitting around on their asses in this part of Texas about now.

"I'll call a couple of the millwrights that worked with me. At least they'll know how to move this stuff without fucking it up. If they need some other labor I'll let them find it," he said.

"Great. Pay 'em good and tell 'em not to break anything. I guess we should rent some kind of fork or something to lift that heavy stuff though."

"All we got to do is make sure the one that came with this still starts, it did last time I was out here," he said.

"There's a damned forklift here too?" I asked.

"Well sure. How in the hell do you think he lifted anything heavy? He was too damned ornery to have friends that would come help him," John said, and then laughed.

I started toward the truck again and John just laughed at me some more.

"What?" I asked.

"What are you in such a damned hurry for? You ain't even seen your boat yet," he said.

"My boat? What damned boat?"

"The one Shoals was so mad he left here too. It's down in the boathouse, and before you ask, I don't give the first shit about fishing, so you might as well haul it off too."

Following John to the little boathouse was next, but as we got close I could see it wasn't so little. Really, it looked kinda funny since it was twice as long as it needed to be for one boat. Everything made sense when we went in.

Whoever Shoals was, he must really have been a crackerjack  handyman. His boathouse had a concrete ramp into the lake. The thing covered the boat if you left it in the water, furnished a ramp for the trailer so he could launch or load the boat, and was a garage to park the trailer in, with or without the boat loaded. Fucker must have been a jam up fisherman too, because there was tackle everywhere.

"Damn, you sure he wasn't a commercial fisherman?" I asked John, mostly just jawing.

"He had a license for it, but I don't think he got much time to do as much fishing as he wanted. It's just like him though to have every fucking little thing he needed to get it done," he said.

"That's a damned fact. It's a wonder someone hadn't come by and hauled this stuff off," I said.

"Why don't you back up while I open this front door and we can take it with us. The boat's already loaded and tied down and there's plenty of room in your camper shell for all the rest," he said.

"Might as well."

It took us an hour and a half to get everything out of the boathouse and into the boat or my camper shell. A hell of a bunch of it was like the net I'd bought too, not legal anywhere in the United States, commercial fishing license or not. That didn't matter to me though.

In fact, I was pretty happy to see that he had not one, but two setups with telephone generators and all it took to go with 'em. What's the sense in putting out nets, trotlines, or sitting in a boat and casting all afternoon when all you had to do was drop the leads and give the damned fish a long distance call.

We headed back to Longview after we got it all loaded and I let John out at their shop, which was already closed. I went to the camper in Lone Star to wait for the girls, I figured they'd be back sooner or later; meanwhile I was going to start relaxing, like I knew they'd want me to.

Hold that thought. The damned phone was ringing when I got in, so I picked it up and howdied. It was Milton and hell I didn't even mind, until he told me what he called about. He couldn't help sounding excited and so I did my best to act pleased.

I'd had another deposit during the afternoon, ten million more dollars. Milton was nearly gushing over it but all I could do was wonder what in the hell they wanted me to buy with all that fucking money. I'd known almost from the time I heard about the first deposit that I probably couldn't spend up the six million.

Hell, I only had two weeks from the get go. This was worse than the shape Richard Prior found himself in for "Brewster's Millions." I didn't have to use the stuff completely up, but I had to find a fucking place to park it. Presumably it had to be close to the damned parking lot I'd rented.

After I got rid of Milton it was time for a Long Neck, or twelve. Not really. I felt bad about copping an attitude over more money and the extra work it would mean running around buying stuff. After all, there were kids in China that would love to have it. Did your mother ever tell you shit like that when you didn't clean your plate?

I'd just finished my second beer, and decided to stop, when the limo drove up. Carrol, Louise, Helen, Nancy, and even John came in a minute later.

"Well, how was the shopping?" I asked, trying to put my happiest mood in place.

The girls were still way short on English to use but they gave it their best for fifteen minutes or so and you couldn't have wiped the smiles off their faces if you worked all day at it. Even Carrol was nearly giddy when she joined in, or at least that's what I thought.

When John asked me if he could tell her the news, I nodded. When he told her she screamed so loud that it scared the girls. She hopped around grinning and laughing for ten minutes herself.

I made a decision then. I knew damned well I couldn't get even a good fraction of this money spent on my own. The girls had an idea what was going on but they couldn't grasp the concept, or at least I didn't think they could. If I told John and Carrol the story they wouldn't believe it at first, but I figured they'd come around and could be a big help to me. What I didn't know was if it would fuck things up with those that were riding herd on the money supply.

I decided to just take a minute to explain it to myself, in my head, and to make enough mental noise so that they were sure to be paying attention. I got my answer even before I finished making up my mind.

"You may tell them," came into my head.

I asked John and Carrol if they had time for a long story and they said sure. The girls decided that they were being rude for not starting on a meal for our guest so they did. And I layed out my tale.

It didn't take as long to spill as I'd thought it would but supper was ready as I finished up. We tabled the discussion until we'd eaten. After supper was over Nancy, Louise, and Helen insisted I sit in the recliner and have another beer. John borrowed the phone and called Scotty to let him know that he had to take a few days off for an emergency. Scotty didn't like it at first until John told him that it was to help me out.

"Can I help too? If it's important we can shut this money maker down for a few days and we'll all work on it," he told John, and then John asked me.

"I'm sure he could be a big help but I don't want to cause that much trouble. When time gets short, I won't be too proud to ask if we can't get it done by ourselves. I'll probably need him to call around some if he can spare the time though," I said, and we left it at that.

With that settled, I was about to asks John to start going over what I'd already bought with spare parts in mind. If I ended up with something wearing out, whatever did would be useless. I got another little broadcast from afar with that thought and all it amounted to was, "Not needed."

I can't say how much that meant to me. Not just about the parts but it seemed that whoever was in charge of this goat fucking was finally paying enough attention to keep me from doing things that were just useless, like the damned plastic gasoline tanks.

Carrol had decided she and the girls needed to do more shopping tomorrow since she now had a better handle on the situation. I had a hint that more suitable work type clothes were going to be on the agenda, and it was confirmed when she and the girls dug out a tape measure and found out exactly what size I was. I guess a new wardrobe was in my future too.

John and Carrol left not much later and Carrol told the girls she'd be here in time to take us all to breakfast in the morning. They put me to bed not five minutes after the others left.

The limo was back with John and Carrol the next morning, right as we'd finished dressing. We drove over to the cafe and had breakfast, but Carrol said that it was IHOP in Longview for tomorrow morning, and that was a damned good idea.

I had followed the limo in my Silverado and after we left John came with me. We went back to the Credit Union so I could get John to take a look at the yard mule. I wasn't sure that the otherworldly maintenance plan would go for repairing things that I'd bought in bad shape, so I wanted him to check it out. He laughed when he saw it.

"What's funny," I asked.

"We just had that one down in the shop not two weeks before it got repoed. The guy who owned it was trying like hell to sell it before he lost it, and he put it in tiptop shape. They let him keep it and keep trying until they had to do something. Nothing to worry about on that," John said.

What the hell, I showed him the Farmall and he got it to start right up. It's hydraulics worked fine and the tires were all good, but John earned a smile with what he said next.

"That's a nice little tractor, but don't you think you ought to get something just a little bigger too. Might as well face it, you're gonna need to do a little farming along the way," he said.

We headed back to town and I took John to his pickup. He promised he'd go buy me two medium sized tractors and every implement he could think of that I might need. After that he was going to get some seed corn, seed potatoes and seeds for everything else he thought we might want to grow.