D I V O R C E by cmsix

Chapter 30

"Have they just been fending for themselves while you were away?" Marilyn asked, when we reached the barn/storage building.

"Yes, kinda, but in this timeline we left last night and got back this morning, so only the night has passed here," I said.

"Man, that is just too weird for me. Can we skip that part?" Randy asked.

"It's fine with me, and it doesn't really mean anything to us anyway. We're here now and you two got here this morning, with a bunch of gifts in fact, and that's that, end of story," I said, and they laughed.

Just then I heard the birdcall that George's tribe usually used to let us know one of them was approaching. Louise gave me a questioning look and I nodded my head for her to return the call.

"That was one of the girl's former tribe mates. Whoever it is will be here in a minute or so," I told Randy and Marilyn, and hoped they didn't drop their jaws again.

It was Sky and he came in smiling at first and then looking around at everything that had come back with us. Louise started explaining before he could get any questions out, but I wondered what she was telling him. Whatever it was, it seemed to satisfy him, even though I knew he had to be wondering what all that stuff was.

"We show Sky horses, cows, pigs. Tell him not for hunting," Louise said, and we headed back to the newly constructed pens.

Louise kept up a running dialog with Sky for the whole trip and Sky just kept listening and looking. I could tell it was confusing to him, since I was sure they had no concept of holding or raising animals. They knew about planting some crops but hadn't made the leap to animal husbandry yet.

Then it hit me that I had never explained these little details to the girls. Like a big dumbass I'd just assumed they'd figure it out for themselves. Well, they had for a fact, because Louise must be explaining it to Sky right now.

The ranching lesson petered out and Sky had some questions for Louise about the pigs. He'd never seen anything like them before and I assume he wondered what they tasted like. Helen volunteered to let him find out, and headed for the camper. Of course Randy, Marilyn, nor I new what was going on.

"Helen make Sky ham sandwich, show what pig taste," Nancy said, explaining.

"Damned if some food doesn't sound good to me too," I said.

"Invite tribe for Bar-B-Que tomorrow," Louise said, and I wanted to but worried about how much work we had to do still, but when I shared my worries with her she gave me such a look.

"Need help, Bill. Invite tribe Bar-B-Que," she said again, and then gave me that I have spoken look.

With Sky munching on his ham sandwich, which also introduced him to mayo and whole wheat bread, we all piled into the new four-door Silverado and headed toward George's camp. We didn't really need to stop and signal since Sky was with us and welcome at his own camp. I usually counted on the noise of the truck to alert them anyway.

George had been alerted ok and he was out to meet us. With the help of Louise, I introduced him to Randy and Marilyn and while we were saying things to each other that we couldn't understand, I saw Louise giving George's woman a sort of signal. Before you know it, Randy, Marilyn, Louise, and I were following George and his mate into his hut.

After we were all sitting on our asses my part was easy. I invited George and the whole tribe down to our place, in English, but it didn't really have to follow any set protocol. Since he couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand him, I just asked him to bring the bunch down for a feed and let Louise take care of the niceties in translation. She must have done a bang up job.

We left after about half an hour, and everything was set up. They would be coming down a little after noon tomorrow and staying until nearly dark. Louise, Helen, and Nancy were going to use one of the new slow cookers and Marilyn promised to show them how it worked exactly if they had any questions.

Alas, tonight was not a night we'd be spending in our campers. Randy and Marilyn would be sleeping outside, near our main base of operations while the girls and I would make a spot on the other side of our new fencing. There was no one I could blame for this, because it was my idea. I wanted to make sure we were close enough to do some good for the first few nights, in case something came around uninvited.

Mainly it was so we'd be outside with Calvin and Dooder. After all, they barely knew us, except Marilyn, and they sure as hell didn't know the area yet. We were going to be relying on them heavily for the next week or so to keep an eye on things, after dark especially. I thought we needed to stay out with them until they had a grip on where they lived now.

Of course the girls thought nothing of sleeping outside, especially since I'd made sure to get us a big airbed mattress for just such occasions. The mattress, along with the zip together sleeping bags was just the thing for a relaxing evening out in the wild. Ok, I know it wasn't actually that damned wild.

Dooder seemed like he already knew what he was supposed to be doing when we got our sleeping set up in place and then built a fire. He sniffed around and peed on things and then seemed almost like he was patrolling for about half an hour. When the first blush was off the fire and it settled down to little more than a nightlight, he scratched out a place for himself not too far from it and lay down for a snooze.

I thought that was a great idea and I copied him right away, even if I didn't pee on as many trees as he did. Before long we were all zipped up in our bag. I'm not sure about the girls, but I was off in dreamland pretty quickly.

It's damned nice to have three wives, especially when they know more about living in primitive times than you do. I didn't have to get up a time to put wood on the fire. I would have of course but they always beat me to it. There was only one snag in our setup and they didn't bring it up until the next morning.

Nancy let me know that we would not be using the airbed any more. She said they'd put up with the sleeping bags a few more times, but were pretty sure they didn't like them. When I asked them what the problem with the airbed was, Louise was fairly blunt.

"Move too much. One get up, mend fire, wake everybody. We make bed tonight," she said, and it didn't leave me a lot of wiggle room, so I agreed of course.

Getting your own way is not one of the advantages of having three wives. Might as well face it, you are going to be outnumbered most of the time. All in all though, I'd settle for the situation and be happy about it. Hell, I wasn't the kind of guy who thought he always knew best anyway.

Breakfast was an excellent example of this. Left to my own devices, I'd have gone back to the camper to cook. This must not have made sense to the girls though. They had the fire perked up, eggs and ham frying in a skillet, and water boiling in the coffee pot before I finished dragging my clothes back on. Damned if it didn't taste better this way too.

After we'd eaten I found out that getting a fire going in one of the cookers was the next thing on the agenda. Louise had already scoped out a hickory deadfall that she wanted me to cut up for this and with Randy's help we had more firewood than she could possibly use today in less than an hour. This was one job that I thoroughly approved of. Hickory smoked beef and ham was right up there at the top of my list.

Marilyn did give them a few tips, such as wrapping the meat in aluminum foil completely after slathering on the Bar-B-Que sauce. Mostly the girls had their own way to do it lined out already though. They had company coming later today and they went busily about making sure there'd be plenty for everyone to eat.

Randy and I decided to saddle up a couple of the horses we'd hobbled for a look around, and Marilyn got busy making a good sized pen so that she could let Margie, Geraldine, and the pups out of the horse trailer. She thought the puppies were old enough now to be let out of the box and she thought the mothers were probably ready for some time away from their charges.

It was a damned good thing that Randy and I took a ride that morning. The first place I showed him was the bigger creek not far from where we were. It's the one the first new road appeared to, back when we ran out of water and we were trying to find a way to get the camper to it to fill the tank, before we woke up and found a new stream for our water supply.

More work had been done out this way too. The grassy road was wider and seemed even smoother than before. When we rode up to the clearing I got a hell of a shock and even Randy was surprised.

This was now where we were going to put the trailers. It had obviously been prepared for them and not only for them. There were places set aside for the single trailers, the two triple-wides, both campers, and even a big place leveled off for our biggest metal building. That wasn't the capper though; the capper was the concrete batch plant that I'd bought in Lone Star.

I'd almost forgotten about it, but someone had remembered because it was on the other side of the now even larger stream. I don't mean part of it either; the whole damned thing was here, including the small mountains of sand and gravel, and the three mixer trucks.

"Damn, Bill, I remember now that you told me you bought this place but I had forgotten about it," Randy said.

"Hell, it had slipped my mind too. I don't guess there's any question where we're supposed to set up our houses," I said.

"Not unless we just want to be stupid. Hell, everything here is already set up for it. No wonder the road looked wider to ya. They must have made some improvements so we could get everything back here," he said.

That was an understatement of the first order. Now that I looked around it was easy to see this clearing was more than ten times the size it had been. Not only that, but the placement of the leveled spots for the different buildings were arranged so the living facilities were in a nice grouping and the storage building was handy, but off out of the way too. I'm glad we found it before we started on leveling trailers.

We did a circumnavigation of the place via horseback and things were even better than they had any right to be. Just south of the main clearing was another larger one. It was easy to see that the horses and cows were supposed to go reside in it. The giant pines had been conveniently removed to leave what must have been over a hundred acres of pasture. There were large oak shade trees scattered around but otherwise it was pasture, there was even a small pond for water and it was obviously fed by underground means.

Some of the giant pines that were gone from the pasture had been used to make hellacious fence posts, but no wire or fence panels would be needed. Thick plantings of Bois d'Arc trees were serving as hedge fences, with blackberry brambles lining both the inner and outer sides. It was obvious that the tough trees had been carefully trimmed to encourage them to grow into hedge-type nearly natural fences. Nothing could fight its way through, unless it learned to use one of the front-end loaders. Whoever was helping me out had a lot of thanks coming for this, especially since I loved blackberries.

I was pretty sure that these hedge fences would even keep the pigs in. The five acres set aside for them with similar natural fencing in place was more than welcome. We could add some of the more modern fencing later if this stuff sprung a leak, but I doubted it would be necessary.

"Damn Bill, whoever's running things is taking care of us big time," Randy said.

"That's a fact, and I appreciate it. Don't you think the pigs' new digs can hold them on its own?" I asked.

"Probably. They might be able to get out if they were determined to, but I'll bet they'll stay in there pretty good if they have food. They've already got water and a good mud hole," Randy said, and he was right, since there was a small pond that just couldn't be natural in nearly the exact center of the pigpen too.

We headed back to the current campsite to spread the word. We'd been gone long enough that something might have come up for us to do. Today was mostly a do nothing day for Randy and I anyway, since the afternoon was going to be spent entertaining.

As we were leaving I turned in the saddle and took a last look at the place for today. Something about the arrangement of things kept pulling my eyes to the center, which was going to be largely unoccupied.

"Randy, take a look back and see if it doesn't look like something belongs right in the middle of things. Something that we don't have," I said.

"Now that you mention it, seems like a place was left for something, maybe we're just making it up."

"Maybe, but it does look like it's begging for something. I hope I didn't forget to buy something that'll turn out important," I said.

When we got back to camp, the cooking was going on for real. The smoke smelled wonderful and the girls must have pressed Marilyn into equipment operating service. Now there were two of the new cookers going. There were also two big plastic garbage cans near them and I wondered what in the hell they'd needed them for. The way Marilyn was trying not to laugh at us as we rode up made me very suspicious.

"See Nancy. I tell. Work over, Bill come back," Louise said, loudly, as we got close.

"You right. We make move trash cans," Nancy said, and then they all laughed at me, including Marilyn.

Randy and I unsaddled the horses and hobbled them again, then went over to check out the trashcans. I could barely believe my eyes. They were completely full, both of them, with empty Ranch Style Bean and Wolf Brand Chili cans. Looking at the cookers I could tell that, sure enough, the big bean-pot holders on the ends had big bean pots in service.

"No worry Bill, work mostly over," Helen said.

"We have been working, we found the spot we'll all be moving to," I said.

"Not live here?" Louise asked, waving her arms around at everything.

"Nope. Someone fixed us up a nice place back at the creek," I said, pointing toward it.

"Good, better there. Not good live too close river. Mosquitoes," Louise said, and I was glad she didn't use the Caddo word for the little bastards, whatever it was.

I guess Nancy had been keeping an eye on the way I was sniffing the air around the cookers. She came over and handed Randy and I both a sandwich of the ham persuasion. It must have been fresh off a cooker, because it was hot, and dripping sauce. Helen showed what a smart little Injun she was then by handing us both a cold longneck.

"It's even better than that. We already have a nice pasture for the horses and cows and a good pigpen back there. They even leveled off pads for all the mobile homes," Randy said.

"How can they have a pasture and pig pen back in the middle of these woods?" Marilyn asked.

"Damned if I know how they did it, but I don't even know how they got us and all this stuff here," Randy said.

"You do have a point there, but ya know, this is even stranger than some of the things that happen doing windowpane," Marilyn said.

"Who you tellin'? I don't care though; I love it here and now already. How about you," he asked.

"Me too, Randy, me too," she said.

The ham sandwich was nice but I was still salivating over the thought of a chance at some of the brisket that was still being smoked. I could almost feel a big bite of beef with a spoonful of beans in my mouth already. I knew there was plenty of cornbread cooking in the camper trailer's oven too.

Carroll had taken care of the biscuit and cornbread lessons. I was pretty sure she had even taught them how to make bread. I knew for a fact that we had more than a ton of self-rising flour in one of those trailers, and even more cornmeal.