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.