Chapter 43

I woke up early in the morning, my hand still nestled in between Cindy's thighs. I needed to get up to use the bathroom, but I hesitated, not wanting to disturb or awaken either of them.

This thought lasted only long enough for my brain to process the urgency my bladder had been broadcasting. Cindy moaned softly, as I slowly removed my hand, but she didn't fully waken.

I was cleaned up and ready to got to work when Shirley walked into the kitchen, as naked as could be, with a mischievous smile on her face. She came straight over to me, and, immediately began trying to lure me back into the bedroom.

I was faced with a difficult choice. Unfortunately, I had arranged an eight o'clock planning meeting with Kyle. He was going to tell me who he wanted as his assistants for the new sales and distribution network he was forming for us.

When I held Shirley, explaining why I couldn't accept her very tempting proposal, she pouted, telling me that I'd disappointed Cindy and her the night before. I told her that neither of them were half as disappointed as I'd been, but promising to try to come home as early as I could manage it. It was difficult to leave her like that, but I did.

Kyle had picked two assistants, telling me that he wanted to reserve adding a third, until after I hired back one of his cousins, Wayne Jennings, his Aunt Patty's oldest boy. I remembered Wayne, a quiet man, with almost no hair on his head. I wasn't sure if he was balding, or if he just liked to shave his head, like some of the athletes did.

"I'm a little surprised that you'd pick Wayne for what is essentially a sales and marketing position. He didn't impress me as someone with much sales potential."

I had tried to voice my misgivings, without coming right out and telling Kyle he was definitely making a mistake. I had previously discussed with him the fact that he was free to choose whomever he wanted, anyone from within the company.

"No, Wayne isn't a salesman, but he's a real organized person. He can keep track of everything for me, and I'm pretty sure that's the part where I'm the weakest right now. We need to get a system set up that lets us know what we're using, who's selling what, and how much of everything we're going to be needing for the future. Wayne can do all that, in his sleep. It just comes easier to him than it does to anyone else."

"We have people and programs that do all that for you. With our computers, all you need to do is bring in the daily sales invoices, and we'll have people that put all the data into the computer. Once it's in there, you'll be able to call up reports about anything you need to. My wife will be able to see what you're selling, so she will start sending new product to replace it, right away."

I made a mental note to ask my father to send down one of our computer people to set all of that up for us in this plant. My trading experience had shown me the value of being computerized. Joyce had changed things around so that all of the people involved with her had their own computer terminals. Having a main frame computer was expensive, but the information it developed for you more than paid for the costs involved. What we saved in the research needed to prepare sales reports each week was a staggering sum. Now, that information was available to us with two or three keystrokes from Joyce's office.

"I'd still like to have Wayne. Someone has to get all of that information, then make sure it gets over to the right people. Wayne will do whatever I tell him to, and I'm sure he isn't one of the ones I'd ever have to fire. I called him last night, and he said he'd like to work with me, whenever you let him get hired back on. I told him it won't be til next month, but he's been busy going hunting and fishing, so he doesn't mind being off none from work. Wayne's not even married."

Kyle had picked one of the independent route drivers to assist him. A man named Henry Shutter, who I didn't know. Kyle told me that Henry was the best salesman, besides himself, that the company had. Kyle wanted Henry to help him open up new convenience store accounts, which would later be sold to new route drivers.

When I questioned him about how this was going to work, he assured me that proceeds from the sale of each route would be used to pay for training and promotions that he'd be running.

When I asked him about Henry's own route, Kyle told me that it was being sold to a friend of Henry's. Henry was buying himself a new delivery truck, one that would hold a lot more product. He would use this to open up the new accounts.

Kyle told me he had picked Sonny Donaldson, one of the night production people to work as his marketing assistant. I didn't know Sonny either, but when Kyle told me he and Sonny had been friends since the first grade, I began to regret my decision to allow Kyle to pick his own support staff.

In the afternoon, I started meeting with some people who were going to be opening bread and cereal accounts in the larger cities for us. They were part of a wholesale account sales team that my father had just ordered moved down to the South.

Previously, the team had been busy working on the west coast. Mostly, they went in and negotiated with the larger grocery retailers. My father was already producing some products using the Macklinson's recipes, mostly just bread and dinner rolls.

His plan was to supply enough baked product, produced in his own plants, to allow us to cover the area, until all the other Consolidated plants were back up operating again. Once that took place, they would be producing sufficient baked goods to take over this function for themselves. My Dad had teams of people at each plant, evaluating what needed to be done, in order to reopen them again.

Early reports indicated that a lot of money would need to be spent to bring these bakery's back up to acceptable standards. Consolidated had been cutting too many corners with their maintenance and upkeep, and they had let the operational status of their plant equipment become more of a liability than an asset.

Mostly, the people I was meeting with, had only stopped by to let me know they had begun working in Florida and Louisiana already, but would be keeping away from selling to anything but the very largest of the chain grocers.

These were the accounts that were structured with complicated inventory financing, and promotional considerations that were designed to move a great amount of product for us. There would be cooperative ad campaigns and shared advertising expenses.

There was a separate team, coming in later, to open accounts with the smaller grocers, grocers with fifteen or fewer retail locations.

Joyce called me at three, wanting to find out why I hadn't had sex with Shirley and Cindy the night before. I told her about spending over two hours on the telephone with my father, letting her know that he and I were now in complete agreement about how to proceed to secure the financing he was seeking.

I thanked her too, for telling me what I needed to do with my father, and for whatever it was she did to convince Cindy to come back to give things some more time.

"She wanted to come back, but she didn't know how to do it. When I told her what you said about wanting her to be part of the family, just to feel safe, without any sex being necessary, she finally admitted to me that only part of her problem is the sharing, but another part of it is with Dale and Eddie coming down to the rental house. She's afraid for what her family and friends will have to put up with because of how other people will react to them staying with you. She says she's worried about what these people's reaction will be."

"Because they're black? I haven't heard anything prejudiced being said by any members of Cindy's family. I haven't seen any of that kind of trouble while I've been down here."

I did remember Gene asking me something about my living with four wives, and two black girls, but that was all he said about it. He had just asked if what he'd heard was true. When I said it was, he'd made no negative comments to me.

"I'm telling you what Cindy told me. Maybe you need to ask her about it yourself. How would you feel if Cindy stayed away next week, when Eddie and Dale both come down?" Joyce asked the question quietly. I sensed something in her voice, something I wasn't able to identify.

"I don't know. Do you think Cindy's prejudiced, or only worried about what others will think?" I didn't want to commit to an answer without knowing what Joyce either already knew, or was thinking.

"I think it's mostly worry because of the time period she grew up in, the geographical area where she was raised. We can't know what she's heard all her life. She said she doesn't really know that many black people. How many black people work at the Alabama plant?"

I hadn't thought about it too much, but after Joyce asked the question, I realized that there really weren't many, and, of those that I'd seen, most of them were female. There were two black men I'd seen working at the plant.

There were about one hundred twenty employees at the Birmingham plant, not counting the route drivers, and about ten of the employees were black. That wasn't too different of a ratio from our own plant in Bolling, but in Bolling, our black community was a lot lower percentage of the total population than Birmingham's black people were. I didn't know if we could make any valid assumptions based on that.

"I'd say about ten percent, maybe a couple people less than that. About the same number as the number of Macklinson family members who worked here, before they all quit. I don't see any racial problems here though. All the people here seem to be working with everyone else okay. There isn't any friction, or any signs of prejudice that I've noticed.

"I guess I'd be troubled, a lot, if Cindy turned out to be prejudiced like that herself. Maybe not so much if it was just her being worried about what people would say and think. Nobody goes out deliberately looking for that kind of trouble."

We had experienced one or two incidents ourselves, where people had seemed to take offense that Dale and Eddie were living with us. So far, it hadn't amounted to so much that we couldn't just ignore it.

"My take on it, Kenny, from when I spoke to her, was that she was more afraid of what outsiders would think, then about any of the members of her immediate family. I think you need to ask her about it, sometime when it's just the two of you talking. If it's going to be a problem, we need to decide ahead of time what to do about it."

After that phone call, I had a difficult time getting back to the things I needed to attend to. I had been trying to do my grain trading over the telephone, without the benefit of having my computer programs, and the real time price data displays I'd grown used to having.

What I was doing in Alabama, with my trading, was more like it had been before I'd begun using all this other information. I didn't have the luxury of knowing the complex, ever changing, price relationships, between the grains, metals, and currencies. As a result, I tended to trade much more cautiously.

My results, while still good, weren't nearly as good. My profits, since coming to Alabama, were way down. I needed to get set up with the data feeds down there, so I could resume my normal method of trading.

I called several of my floor traders, hoping to find the names of people in Birmingham who could come out and set me up with the five different live feeds I was used to having. I already had the necessary computers and programs, taken from my home office in Lawrence. Once I had the feeds, I'd be up and operating in no time.

There were other annoyances and distractions that I needed to deal with too, because I wasn't living back home in Kansas.

There, I had a whole house full of people, all ready and willing to take care of the day to day chores and errands that seemed to continually crop up down where I now was.

Having this group of helpful people had left me free to isolate on specific problems, and concentrate on finding good solutions for them. It was the way I preferred, because it allowed me blocks of time to really think about one thing.

In Alabama, I kept finding myself more distracted, my thinking time interrupted and fragmented. This left me unable to enjoy any long, uninterrupted, periods of time, periods where I could lose myself in thought.

Joyce was the main person who took it upon herself to make sure I wasn't being disturbed. She was able to do that by being there, to take care of things that people would normally be disturbing me about. Without her around to be a buffer for me, I was operating at a much lower level of efficiency.

Perhaps I'd just gotten spoiled, always expecting that I'd have that kind of freedom to work on my problems. All I knew was that I didn't feel like I was getting as much accomplished as I should, and I was starting to resent having to spend so much time away from most of my family.

I managed to find a service that could provide me with four of the data feeds I was used to having. He gave me the name and phone number for someone who he thought might have access to the fifth feed. He also told me he could come out on Wednesday, to set things up for me, but he said I'd need to pay extra for the signal splitters and the switches the four separate feeds would require.

I called the number the first guy had given me, but it turned out he didn't carry that particular price data feed. He gave me the name and number of the man who did. I called this new number and was told I could have it installed and working on Friday.

I left the office, satisfied that I had managed to get at least one problem solved. Driving back to the house, I mentally rehearsed different scenarios. I wanted to be alone with Cindy, and ask her some questions about what the things were that were troubling her about Dale and Eddie.

I had no plans to give up Dale or Eddie, and I didn't think I could accept knowing that Cindy was operating from her own personal convictions of prejudice. I needed to find out what it was she feared.

We didn't end up having any chance to get into a discussion about Dale and Eddie. Instead, we ended up with the three of us deciding to take a nap together, at five thirty in the late afternoon.

I'd been in bed with Cindy and Joyce together, but had heard very little of what they were doing. Most of what I knew came from things Joyce had said. I hadn't tried to get any confirmation of what Joyce was saying for myself, wanting to allow them some semblance of privacy. Cindy had been very skittish at that time, and I was fearful of embarrassing her.

This time, it wasn't going to be like that. Shirley and Cindy must have already worked out what each of them wanted to do, or see, with me there with them. Together, they started treating me just like Joyce and I might treat another of my wives, when we were together in bed with her.

That isn't to say I had anything to complain about. I liked, at times, being the one taking the passive role. I allowed the two of them to do with me as they wished.

It wasn't much of a nap, and I certainly didn't end up being relaxed and refreshed in time for a late dinner, like they had promised I would be. Instead, I ended up feeling very wrung out and exhausted. They used me to satisfy their own pleasures, especially Shirley.

It changed the way I thought about each of them. This was the first time I'd ever seen Shirley acting like that, being so aggressive with another woman. This ended up making her act more demanding and aggressive with me as well.

Cindy seemed to lose all that reticence and shyness I'd associated with her. When we'd made love before, she'd been the one who I'd had to act upon, rather than an actor in her own right.

She allowed Shirley to take the dominant role with her, but, with me, she was definitely acting more aggressive and demanding. Several times she pulled me away from Shirley, wanting me to do to her what I'd been doing to Shirley. Each time she did that, Shirley would come over and sit astride Cindy's face, forcing her to lick her.

I went along with everything, at first, letting them do whatever they would. The effect of being the dominant partner seemed to drive Shirley to a higher state of arousal. When I thought she was becoming too aggressive or demanding, I sprang into action, forcing her off of me, so that she was pinned under me, face down, and then I placed myself inside her again, from on top and behind her.

I knew, from years of past experience, that Shirley loved to feel small and dainty. At nearly six three, dainty wasn't something she could pull off easily. She was already in a high state of arousal, having been manhandled into a submissive posture, so this fed right into her desire to feel somewhat smaller, more vulnerable. In the position I was now in, it didn't take much to cause her to feel real vulnerability. With that feeling came even greater arousal for her.

Cindy had moved off to the side when I had quickly reversed positions on Shirley. She looked concerned about what I was doing, but only for the first two or three minutes.

By then, Shirley's responsivness to what I was doing had become quite vocal, and got increasingly louder. Cindy could hear that I was being encouraged to go ahead with even more of what I was doing, being asked to slam into Shirley with increasing force and power.

It was almost like I was being taunted into putting forth greater effort. When Shirley reached a hand out, and starting pulling on one of Cindy's legs, at first I was concerned. The look Cindy had on her face, seemed to be one of fright.

I was almost going to tell Shirley to take it easy when she pulled her to her with one final hard yank, and dove straight for Cindy's pussy.

That was when it became somewhat surreal for me. Cindy just laid there, eyes open, staring back at my face, as I pumped my cock in and out of Shirley, from behind. While all this was taking place, the two of us staring at each other, Shirley continued her voracious oral attack on Cindy's pussy. She was really going to town with it, using her whole face, not just her lips and tongue.

I took notice of what the girls were doing, but not to the point where I was dwelling on it to any great extent. I'd seen this, many times before, with all my wives. The interesting part, to me, was the way Cindy kept staring at my face, seeming as though she was trying to gauge the level of my reaction to what Shirley was busy doing to her.

During all this time she was watching me, Cindy herself wasn't showing any reaction, at least not facially, to what Shirley was doing to her. That was the surreal part, her holding back from reacting to Shirley eating her out so aggressively. I'd never seen Shirley being so forceful either.

Cindy's lack of reacting to Shirley's tonguing ended abruptly. Shirley stopped her ministrations to Cindy when she lifted her face out of Cindy's pussy, just long enough to shout her instructions to me. She began by telling me I needed to fuck her better, then ended by telling me how sweet and juicy Cindy's pussy tasted.

This change of stimulation provoked an instant reaction from Cindy. She reached her hands over behind Shirley's head, pulling her face back to where she wanted it, arching her hips up, and moving Shirley's face back and forth against the exact location she needed it.

I assisted her in this effort by leaning my hips more forward, thus severely limiting the range of front and back motion that Shirley now had.

It looked to me like Shirley had stolen a page out of Joyce's play book, when she started biting and nipping all around Cindy's thighs and pussy. Not tiny little gentle nips either. I saw reddish marks beginning to appear on Cindy's inner thigh.

Again, I grew concerned, and was about to say something. This was when Cindy started thrashing around and began yelling at Shirley to bite her harder. I felt my load of cum beginning to boil up inside my nuts when she started doing that. I also felt Shirley's pussy beginning to clamp down tight on my dick, signalling that she too was getting ready to have a good orgasm.

Somehow, I managed to hold off for a little while longer, straining my stomach muscles as I used both arms to move Shirley back and forth on my diamond hard dick. Something let loose inside Shirley, and it coincided with Cindy finally closing her eyes, and starting to moan, and make a series of yipping animal noises. Shirley was having the big one, and I could tell.

No amount of arm movement could make my dick move in or out. I was trapped, while her pussy spasmed, clutching wildly against the length of my cock. The heat from the interior walls of her sheath was tremendous, and then, suddenly, my prick was again released from that tremendous pressure holding it in place.

I felt the presence of liquids, and it wasn't from my cum, because I was still holding that in. Shirley was squirting around my cock, and, with three or four quick strokes, the juices were being forced out, with all the noises this entailed. A lot of squishing noises, accompanied by the sound of liquid being moved out under pressure.

That did it for me, and I let go then too. When I got done, my whole body felt weak and exhausted. I rolled off Shirley, plopping down on the mattress on the other side of the bed, away from Cindy's side. It had been intense, but the whole thing had only lasted for a little more than thirty minutes. I was still drained, to the point where I didn't even want to think about moving.

Only my mind was working, the rest of me had shut down.

Things had changed. I knew that much. Shirley had changed, and my previous knowledge and opinions, concerning her sexual comfort level with women, now needed to be reevaluated, and adjusted accordingly.