D I V O R C E by cmsix

Chapter 28

The next morning, after another ride to IHOP in the limo, Carroll and the girls took me back to the camper and they were off again. I just had time to put Mr Coffee to work before the phone started ringing, and the motherfucker didn't stop all morning. The details were overwhelming me and they didn't let up. I was reduced to asking Randy, John, Marilyn, and Carroll to do the buying for me, with Scotty roped into placing orders, but I had to admit it was more efficient.

I warmed a can of Ranch Style Beans for lunch and kept on going, making list of list to dole out whenever someone called in. I marked down what they reported buying and scratched it off the lists. Often something they said would remind me of something else we could possibly use.

With subtle clues, whoever was furnishing the money let me know what they would be taking care of. When I considered buying five transport loads of cement for the batch plant I suddenly understood that I needn't bother. Same thing with more remesh and rebar, and even a an intended five loads of wall studs changed itself to one load and no worries, just before I told Elton I needed five.

And it just kept going. I was trapped in my camper/office and barely got time to go outside. When Randy made a trip down to the drop lot/parking lot I'd rented, I wanted to go with him so bad I could taste it, but no luck. He and Marilyn went, and damned if he didn't call when he was down there to let me know I needed to order a few trucks of fencing panels, and plenty of electric fence charger, batteries to keep them going for a month or so, electric fence wire, and probably half a truck of insulators.

He was right and I knew it. Marilyn had already done a bang up job buying horses, cows, and even pigs. We would need to put up some serious temporary fencing right off the bat. They even suggested that we buy two single unit mobile homes to live in until we could get the multi-units assembled, and they were right.

But it was the details that kept me in the camper, thousands of them. So many that Milton turned me over to a secretary so he could try to keep the bank operating instead of acting as my paymaster. I considered that one of the best things that happened.

Marilyn turned out to be a real Jewel of an addition too. I hadn't had any idea about it, but Marilyn was a closet bow hunter. When she mentioned getting a few compound bows and some arrows, it hit me hard. The Caddos already knew how to use bows, kinda. I had her try her best to get two thousand compound bows and all the arrows she could get hold of, and she did a bang up job.

I didn't have the slightest idea why the urge to buy them hit me so hard when she named them, but it did. In fact it was even stronger than the urge to buy every type of medicine and equipment that I could get the local vet to order for me. This caused another weird feeling though, even though it was one I was glad of. I could tell that one example of any of that stuff would be enough.

By the time we were only two days from leaving the girls were all worried about me. Hell, I was worried about myself. I knew I was obsessing over whether we had everything we needed but I couldn't seem to stop.

I checked my now mountainous list over and over until I nearly wore the paper out from handling it. I know I'd lost weight but it wasn't that much, I could regain it in no time when we were back where I now considered we belonged. Then all of a sudden it shut off. Whoever or whatever was running the show just switched off the worry.

Carroll insisted we all go to Johnny Cace's Seafood and Steak House in Longview and have a going away party. I actually enjoyed it and I made my best effort to start gaining my weight back with two New York Strips and four lobster tails. The girls had us delivered right back to the camper after the mini-party was over and they put me right to bed. Hell, they'd cut me off a week ago when they started worrying about my health.

The next morning I felt one hell of a lot better and I was happy again when the limo showed up with Randy, Marilyn, John, and Carroll already in it, ready to take us to breakfast.

Afterwards, when we got back to the camper we had some misty-eyed goodbyes with John and Carroll and they left to go back to their normal lives, mostly. Carroll had a job now though.

I left her in charge of my assets and she had an office to furnish and keep up with. She was set up to handle the bank account completely now and I felt sorry to be leaving her the task of paying for everything that was about to go missing.

I'd been a little worried about her having enough money to take care of it, until just yesterday, when JoRita, the secretary at the bank that Milton had moved me to, called and said that we'd received another ten million dollar deposit. It was more than twice what it would take to pay for everything we were going to leave with, even at the brand new price. A lot of the trailers and things weren't even new.

Randy helped me hook the camper to my truck and then I gave he and Marilyn a ride to their house. They would stay until tomorrow to get all our stock loaded and then follow the last truck down the assigned route to make sure nothing happened to cause a delay.

They were staying in their camping trailer now. I'd bought them one so they could go ahead and send everything else down and so they'd have a place to stay until we could get the single-wide homes set up for our temporary residences.

Nancy, Helen, Louise, and I took off for Woodville then and drove straight through, not stopping until we pulled up in the former parking lot that was now a drop yard; a drop yard that was full to near bursting too. The yard mule I'd bought had already been put into service, mostly re-parking trailers.

The first drivers that had dropped hadn't been careful to park the trailers close enough together, and we'd nearly run out of room before the mule was pressed into service. The last trailers to arrive had just been dropped in an open spot to let the mule place them as closely together as possible.

I got out and introduced myself to my security team and then the girls and I headed inside to the cafe. The owner met us at the door.

"Mister, am I glad to see you. I can't believe how many trucks and how much stuff you got out on that parking lot. It looks to me like you're gonna run a little long on the two weeks though," she said.

"Actually, I don't think I will, but why don't we make sure about it," I said.

"I'm not sure I can. The bank is pressuring me to get my note caught up, and I don't think I'm going to be able to. The money you paid me helped out, but it ain't enough, unless you plan on keeping the lot full time," she said.

"Damn a bank, how much is your whole note?" I asked.

"It's nearly thirty-six thousand, and they're gonna accelerate it pretty quick if I don't get it caught up," she said, and damned if it didn't look like she was about to cry.

"Can I borrow your phone a minute?" I asked, and she let me.

I called Carroll, asked her to take care of the note, and then put the woman on to give her the details. The old gal was shocked but she got it done. Her tears were dry by the time she and Carroll hung up, then her face seemed to nearly turn into a question mark.

"Why would you do that for me?" she asked.

"I like to eat here and I want to make sure you're open when I come by. Oh, by the way, I told Carroll to keep the rent paid on the parking lot from now on," I said.

We got away from her then and made it into the cafe. When our eggs, bacon, sausage, and biscuits came I realized that I'd told her the truth. I did like eating here. Of course since the madness was mostly over I liked eating anywhere again. Sure, it was a second breakfast, but what the hell.

After the meal we took a walk out among all our things. The girls were very surprised at what it amounted to. They had realized that we were buying a lot of stuff, but hadn't really made the connection about how much space it would take up. Most of their buying had been with Carroll, and while she'd no doubt told them about everything, they hadn't realized how much space it would occupy since they usually only saw a limo load at a time.

No matter how much stuff was parked on that lot, we still saw all we wanted to look at in less than an hour, so I loaded us back into the truck and drove to Lumberton, and back to the old man and his son in the sporting good store. They were happy to see me, and the old man nearly fainted when he realized that the girls were Caddo Indians.

It was odd though, they were dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and western Rodeo shirts and didn't look all that much like Indians to me. He made the leap from hearing them speak Caddoan to each other a time or two.

Nice as he was to them, I decided to spend a little more cash in his place. When the girls found out what I wanted, they showed me that Carroll hadn't wasted any time showing them how to shop; she'd showed them how to buy. They tried on a few things and after only a little urging they cleaned him out of everything he had that they could wear. No matter what it was, if it fit them they bought it.

What the hell, I button holed the son and asked him if he still held the firearms laws in the same regard.

"It's like I told you the first time. I don't let those damned communist laws keep me from making a sale," he said.

I decided to see if he meant it.

"I'll pull back around to the loading dock then."

"Oh yeh, what you got in mind this time?" he asked.

"Everything in the place that you want to sell, every firearm, every bit of ammunition, throw all the archery stuff and fishing stuff in there too if you want to move it. And don't forget the knives, I'll buy every knife you have," I said, and damned if he hadn't meant it.

It was a good thing we hadn't dropped the camper at the lot, because before we had it all loaded, that was full too. The girls didn't let me off easy either. If they were buying clothes and since they had me along this time, they made me try some on and were about to clean them out of my size too. Hell, I was tired of loading stuff.

"We're running short of space," I told the old guy, "you know anyone with a good sized truck that can haul some of this for us?"

"Sure, want me to call him?" he asked.

"Yes."

He did, and I made a deal with the guy, and then asked the old man for a total. He was getting wound up to give me a discount but I didn't want to let him. Finally his wife said that she could settle his hash, and I gave her Carroll's number. The place was damned near empty before we left, but I told him a friend of mine might be down there tomorrow afternoon for clothes he and his wife could wear.

Damned if I hadn't gotten carried away and bought myself a job. I dreaded it all the way back to the lot, and I think the girls had caught on and were trying to only laugh at me a little by the time we made it. The solution came to me as we pulled back into the lot.

I asked the head security guy if they had any trailers with space left, and they just happened to. At one point they'd worried about running out of space and they had combined four loads of the PVC pipe into one trailer by shoving the different sized pipe lengths up inside each other. He said that it had been a job, but there wasn't that much for the laborers to do anyway and they'd felt better about doing something to earn their money at least.

"Well that's good, cause I got a little more they can do for it," I said.

I pulled the truck and trailer over by an empty he pointed out and he put the laborers to work. They had it all stored in the empty in an hour and a half, and they didn't make one comment about all the guns and ammunition.

I don't really know why I'd even bought them, and I think it was probably just me wanting to show off. Hell, Randy had already finagled around and bought more guns than we'd probably ever need. He had a buddy named Malvin that was trying to eek out a living selling guns and ammunition.

Malvin had been laid off from the mill too, and his part time gun shop was suddenly his only means to feed his family. Randy had bought him out and then put him onto buying every used firearm that was still even in half assed shape, along with all the ammunition for them he could gather up. Hell, all we needed were soldiers to have a mini-war.

After the unloading was done, I parked the camper, unhooked from it, and leveled it up. Sundown was coming so the girls and I went back to the cafe, had a good supper and then headed for bed. It seemed the closer to time for leaving came, the better I felt. I had one more night in this time and the next time I went to sleep I'd wake up way back when.

I felt great the next morning and apparently the girls did too. We took our turns in the bathroom, got dressed and went to breakfast. This morning we didn't have to order, both waitresses in the place started bringing breakfast and coffee as soon as we sat down and they didn't seem like they intended to quit.

"Just eat whatever looks good and there'll be more out in a second."

It was a little odd, sorta like a buffet delivered to your table, except it came on separate plates. I guess the owner was trying to show her gratitude the best way she knew how. The thing is, it worked. I tried my best to keep the food disappearing. We left after we all decided that we couldn't hold another bite.

Basically, we had fuck all to do until Randy and Marilyn arrived, but when they got here, following the last truck, things were exciting for a few minutes, for the girls at least.

In the can til can't shopping of the last two weeks, I hadn't bothered to show the girls about horses, cows or pigs. Sure, they'd seen bear and buffalo but our new livestock was some they didn't have a clue about. I was wondering how in the hell I'd be able to show them any examples before tomorrow when a truck I didn't recognize pulled in almost right behind Randy and Marilyn, and pulling what must have been the biggest horse trailer his pickup could manage.

It was a Mystery until Boyd Bell hopped out of the truck, telling me hello and walking over to meet the girls.

"Damn, Bill, this is a hell of a lot of stuff ya got gathered up here," he said, being his usual quiet reserved self. NOT.

"Lemme tell ya Boyd, I'll never feel like women have it easy doing the shopping after this. I lost ten damned pounds frettin' and worryin' over all this crap, and I barely had to even get out of my camper the last week or so, Randy, Marilyn, John, and Carroll did most of it."

"Randy told me you'd been lookin' like you'd been shit at and hit lately. I don't see it myself, you look fine to me now," he said.

"That's cause I got to quit worryin' about it tother night, and besides, I just got through eatin' all I could hold a couple of hours ago."

"That's too damned bad, cause ya still gotta buy my dinner. Randy didn't tell me you was so damned rich all of a sudden but I can still see," he said, waving his arm out and gesturing to everything around us, "I can see that there's a cafe over there too and I'm for you buying lunch."

"Don't mind if I do, I'm feeling a little peckish myself."

"Let's go then, we can unhook the horse trailer after we're fed," Boyd said, and we headed for the cafe.

"What the hell you doing off down here anyway, Boyd?" I asked, as we walked toward food.

"Marilyn wanted me to bring that trailer," he said, and then Marilyn spoke up.

"It's too much of a pain in the ass to unload horses out of those high trailers right off the bat, and the ones in 'em need to stay in 'em over night. They'll be too tired to do any work tomorrow and we'll need some to help us get things sorted out. Boyd brought some cuttin' trained mounts for us to use. We can hobble them tonight and they at least get some water, some grass, and a little time to stretch the kinks out before we need 'em."

"That was damned good thinking," I said, and then we went in and did more damage to the cafe's food supply.