31: Fireworks

"Roamer," Rhonda said softly after she'd thrown some switches on the console. "Camera three is located over your left shoulder about thirty feet away. I want you to pan to your left and zoom in on the operator." Rhonda had a finger on the monitor for camera two. The roof was being raised by the crane and we could see the other camera on the far side of it. "Camera one, you are live. Follow the crane and pull back to have the roof in full frame." Another switch thrown. "Camera two, directly across from you is camera three. Zoom in on the operator." Suddenly, two monitors were filled with the image of the cameraman on three. He was holding a small 35mm camera to his eye. It was not pointing at the construction. I realized red record lights were on all the cameras. Rhonda threw a switch. "Roamer, continue your pan left until you are pointing in the same direction as cameraman three," she instructed.

I didn't see anything that he could be taking pictures of until the handheld camera completed its swing. It came to rest on the new porch and upper deck. Six of our younger girls were on lawn chairs in bikinis. The bastard!

"Sam, get me Lonnie," Rhonda commanded. "Roamer, continue your pan until you are back on the house. As soon as Rachel can get you inside, get me a picture of the roof locking in place as the crane brings down the second section." Switches thrown. "Camera three, give me a close-up on the guy hand-signaling the crane operator. He is below and just to your left." The handheld camera had completed its circuit and was moving with Rachel to the open doorway. Camera two was still locked on the camera three operator as he dropped his still camera to his side and focused in on the guy using hand signals.

Rhonda stood back and handed her headset to another of the techs watching the monitors. "Bring camera two back into the action, Joyce," Rhonda said. "Let's see you follow getting the interior wall in place." The roaming camera was now inside the house and we could see workers deploying the wall in the loft. It was pretty cool. Lonnie followed Samantha into the room. Rhonda turned to the professor.

"I want Bill Sharp's still camera confiscated and I want him escorted off the grounds. He is in violation of our rules and his contract regarding unauthorized photography. He is taking pictures of underage girls sunbathing. I want him off my lot and eliminated from the program," Rhonda snapped.

"Are you sure, Rhonda?" Lonnie asked. "I know he's been a little too much in awe of the beautiful women out here, but surely he wouldn't be trying to sneak photos."

"We recorded him and identified his subjects," she said. "I don't have any tolerance for this. Sheriff Donaldson is with his daughter over next to the bunkhouse. Brian, please come with us and ask the sheriff to be sure Mr. Sharp leaves the premises without his camera."

"We're going to have hell to pay, Rhonda. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Everyone was warned and agreed," Rhonda said. "We have way too much at stake to have violations. What's he going to do when Heaven gets here? Or the governor? Or the IU cheer squad? He's out. If you don't want to do it, I'll do it myself right now." She snatched the headset again and flipped switches. "Camera two, you are live. Come back to focus on camera three and follow the action there until he is out of sight. I want it all recorded."

Lonnie and I followed her out of the studio and across the lot. I veered off and picked up Sheriff Donaldson and quickly explained what was going on. Rhonda and Lonnie were at the truck where the cameraman perched with a much better angle on the deck than what the handheld had from the ground. He came down.

"The hell I will!" he yelled at Rhonda. "You can't take my personal camera. I'll sue you if you try to kick me out of this class."

"You've violated your contract," Rhonda said angrily. "The terms expressly indicate confiscation of any device used for unauthorized recording. You are terminated."

"You bitch. You aren't even a student."

Then he made his big mistake. He pounded both hands into her shoulders to push her away. Rhonda didn't move. The sheriff and I both started to run toward them but we didn't get there in time to stop Rhonda from landing two solid punches to his stomach and a third to his jaw. The unfortunate cameraman staggered back against the truck and Sheriff Donaldson stepped between them.

"You hit me!"

"A woman being assaulted has the right to protect herself," the sheriff said. "You are under arrest. Turn around and put your hands on the truck bed."

"What? But she..."

"You have the right to remain silent," the sheriff began. We stepped away. There were running footsteps behind us but I turned and held up a hand to keep Whitney, Adam, Warren, and Tim from coming closer. The sheriff had the camera in his hand and led the operator to his patrol car. He didn't put him in it, but made a radio call and one of the deputies who had been out directing traffic around the construction zone at the road pulled in to take charge of the prisoner. As they drove away, Rhonda gripped my hand and led me into Carl's bunkhouse. It was the closest point to where the action had been. She turned and collapsed into my arms, sobbing.

All I could do was hold her and be a little amazed at how she'd responded to the cameraman and his violence.

"I will not have my people violated!" she screamed. She was shaking her right hand and I was worried that she might have broken it with the force of her blow. It was certainly going to be bruised, at the least.

Once she was settled down, I wiped her eyes and we headed back to the barn. From the outside, nothing much was happening now. I could see that the three stationary cameras were dark and their operators were disconnecting. The handheld operator was coming out of the house with her camera held beside her.

When we got to the barn, Lonnie had the headset on and was directing the camera people to come in. It looked like production was over for today. Sheriff Donaldson was waiting for us.

"How did you get the sound?" the sheriff asked as we were reviewing the tapes. The remaining eleven of the production crew had all gathered to find out what was going on.

"I understood what was happening as soon as Rhonda pointed it out," Joyce, her assistant director for the homebuilding show, said. "We have atmosphere mikes on each of the cameras so we aren't shooting in silence and a handheld mike with the roaming camera for the conversations. When Bill left his camera, I turned up the audio from it. The camera was pointed at the house, but the sound is synchronized with the other cameras, so the sound came from there while the pictures came from camera two."

"It's a clear case if the pictures on his camera verify that he was, indeed taking snapshots. If he was just looking around through the lens, you are going to be in trouble, Rhonda. Now tell me about your response when he shoved you."

"Two years ago I was beaten by my boyfriend. No, not Brian. I was in Evansville. You can get the police report from them. I was in the hospital for several days and in recovery and therapy for months. I still talk to my therapist regularly. Part of becoming whole again was to learn self-defense. I responded to discourage my attacker from pursuing the attack," Rhonda said flatly.

"Okay," Sheriff Donaldson said. "You should contact your attorney and brief him about what happened. It will take a couple days to have the film in the camera processed and we need to have it certified by the court as to chain of custody. There will have to be a court-appointed witness observe the processing. I hope none of the young ladies were nude. I have to say that sunbathing on the deck during construction wasn't the smartest thing to do even though there was no reason to assume they could be observed. They were certainly blocked from the construction site for the most part."

"I'll talk to them, Sheriff," Rose said. "They just got here this week and I don't think they've fully grasped the responsibilities of their new freedom."

"And they are all sixteen?"

"No. Only one is sixteen. She's the youngest in our clan and won't be seventeen for another five weeks."

"Brian, as you look at the number of people who will be here at the ranch and the kind of work you will be doing, you should be thinking about security. I'd like to talk to you early in the week about how you are handling that," he said. "And, as an example, Rhonda, you should have waited for me to be with you before you confronted the employee. Even in major corporations, on-the-spot terminations are handled in the company of security. I hope this all blows over and we can negotiate a release with apology from the former employee. You really don't want to get into a long and involved legal battle."

It was a somber conclusion to our week and an exciting day. By the end of the day, Rachel had accepted the certificate of habitability and Lionel, Sugar, Lamar, and Renee were cleared to move in over the weekend. We had a bonfire in the evening and had the official handing over of the keys and welcoming of the casa to El Rancho del Corazón. We all agreed that we would have another bonfire on Saturday night and would be in the mood for more celebration.

After Sam, Rose, and I had carefully showered Rhonda, we had to photograph her upper chest and shoulders. She had two sharp bruises on her upper chest where the guy shoved her. This definitely wasn't a 'get out of my way' shove. He meant to put her on the ground.

"I was a rock," Rhonda whimpered as we applied arnica to her bruises and her hand.

What a day.

We took Rhonda in to the clinic Saturday morning and had her bruises checked and verified. The nurse practitioner also took Polaroid photos to put in her file. Rhonda explained that she had been pushed violently at her job and might need to file either an assault charge or workers' compensation. The nurse was very sympathetic and admonished me to do a better job of protecting my girlfriend. Then we helped Casa del Sol move from their apartment to their new home.

Casa del Arco Iris borrowed Doug's truck to pick up a couple mattresses so they'd have a place to sleep in the lower level. Adam and Warren moved a bed into one of the lower level bedrooms, too. I was just waiting for Monte and Ross to ask, but they seemed to be pretty happy in the dorm and didn't want to split up their group.

Rose took Rhonda to Stall One and called Jennifer's stepmom. They were in there a long time.

Robyn joined me in the kitchen to make her grandmother's fried chicken for our clan picnic as I made deviled eggs. Elaine whipped up potato salad. Rhonda baked cookies. It was just too early to have fresh corn from our garden, but Angela promised it would only be two more weeks. Instead, she brought in a ton of lettuce, carrots, radishes, and scallions. She even had a few nice bell peppers. Mary took charge of the garden food as it was brought in and cleaned it up in the prep kitchen behind the wall.

"You know I'm going to be your prep assistant for your show this summer," she told me. "You'd better teach me how to do all the things you need done." There was a twinkle in her eye when she flirted with me and I nodded.

"I'll teach you some new things I need done as soon as we finish prepping dinner," I said. "We'll start in the shower." We kissed tenderly. She'd told me yesterday that she wasn't sore any longer and was ready for another go. Then all hell broke loose on the production and we weren't able to connect.

"Yum!"

Carl had come in with a few pounds of pork ribs and said he knew a great barbecue sauce recipe. It was fun to watch him prepare his specialty in our kitchen. They'd go on the grill about an hour before we were ready to eat. I got enthused when I found out his secret ingredient was soy sauce and that he used plain tomato paste for his base rather than the popular way of making home barbecue sauce with ketchup. I told him I wanted him on the show with me for a segment on barbecuing.

Ross had brought an ice cream freezer and after Rose made up the cream mix, he and half a dozen others sat outside the side doors and turned the crank. It only made a half gallon of ice cream at a time, so he had to make four batches.

It takes a lot of food to feed forty-six people. But I was amazed at how much we had left over.

"We have another fire tonight," Rose announced to the group in the twilight. "There is no limit to how many campfires we can have in the summer. They don't all have to have a special purpose. But we have some things to celebrate tonight. First, Adam and Warren want to make public to us their relationship. Some of you haven't been with us very much since we adopted Adam last fall. So I'll let him introduce himself and Warren."

"I'm Adam," he said. "I want to introduce my compañera, Warren. Just so you know, we aren't out on campus. I don't think I'd last if word got out to the football team. I'm on varsity, but will probably never be a starter. I've been following a guy who is an incredible running back since I got here a couple years ago. But I get sent in when he gets tired. My compañera, Warren, is a musician. He plays drums and a bunch of other things. But mostly he likes drums."

"I'll try not to keep anyone up at night," Warren laughed.

"And you'll get to hear him a lot this summer," Rhonda added. "Warren leads the trio we've engaged to provide music for Chick Chat." Everyone applauded.