Chapter 19

Wonder what is up? Dinner isn’t for half an hour.

When someone knocked I found April and Juniper at the door.

“Ma said that April has done really well today and so she could come get you to do what the Pope boys were too scared to do. Sally Mae has been a bitch all day so Ma has her scrubbing the shower,” Juniper said. “Don’t be late to dinner April or you aren’t going to eat. You have fifteen minutes before you have to run flat out for the house to be able to rinse off and be dressed for dinner or you will go hungry again tonight.”

April was naked before Juniper had walked three steps. Knowing she was still on the rag, even though she said it was pretty much done after what all came out over the last two days, we still headed into the shower. We were at the farmhouse ten minutes before dinner without having to run at all. April was in a much better mood.

Dinner was beef stew and cornbread. Mabel said the stew had been cooking in a large stew pot since April turned it on when she started the other kid’s chores at four in the morning.

Damn that is the best beef stew I have ever eaten. The cornbread is good, but the stew melts in my mouth. I almost didn’t have to chew.

After dinner Wilbur asked me to come talk with him outside for a bit.

“Joe I know people around here don’t see you as one of us because you aren’t. That isn’t much of a bad thing as you might think. There comes a lot of stuff everyone expects their neighbors to do without needing anyone to ask,” he told me. “Now tomorrow night is New Years and if you don’t have any plans, a lot of the town folk are going to be down at the co-op. Since we can get real fireworks now the co-op managed some sort of deal that got us a great price for the crops as well as a couple of them containers full of fireworks from China. Junior, Juniper and the kids have been really helping everyone here with all the farm equipment you got with this place. Many of them would never have been able to get their hay cut, bailed in the barn before the days got too short for it to dry out properly. I know a lot of folks got crops planted, harvested and sold that they couldn’t have afforded to do with what equipment the co-op had for rent the last few years. I know there are a lot of them that would be proud to shake your hand and have you join us as we ring in the New Year.”

I didn’t have anything planned and told him I would be happy to join them.

This is probably the one place I can hang out where there will be women and men that would get me pushed up to first class if we were both on the same flight. They can’t help it any more than I can, but it is still nice to know I’m not the only one that people outside of the rural areas will try to shun and get away from.

When we got back inside I had Helen Jane and Carrie Anne get clothes for tomorrow and PJs for tonight. Mabel told them they were going to get a bath tonight if I had to wash them myself. Both were already running toward the basement to get their clothes.

I think they are expecting me to have to bathe them. It’s not like I haven’t seen them as naked as a jay bird enough times.

When we got to my house I ran the tub about halfway full, stripped and got in to start soaping up a wash cloth. Both girls were in the tub with their butts up in the air getting their hair wet. Two extra-large towels took care of the big puddle of water the girls had splashed out of the tub as they did all they could to keep me from washing them from head to toe twice. By the time I got them, and myself, dried off the two of them were already fading fast. I managed to get them each to use the throne and then slip on a pair of panties.

Good thing it is cold enough that they won’t insist they’re too hot even wear panties.

Even though they were both sound asleep on their respective sides of the bed, they cuddled up to me when I finally came to bed around one in the morning. They were still there and sound asleep when one of the older girls slid into my bed to suck me off before slipping back out of the bottom of the bed. It was noon when I woke up again. Carrie Anne and Helen Jane were still dead to the world.

“If I didn’t know any better I would have some bad ideas about what you could have gotten up to with my girls last night that has them still sleeping like babies, wearing panties no less,” Mabel said from my bedroom door. “Unfortunately for my imagination of what I would do to you if you had, I know it is who you are Joe. Those two adore you. If not for their big sister waking them up, they would sleep in your bed all day long. How about we nudge those too sleeping beauties up so they can have some chance of getting something to eat before they have to go do what chores April didn’t say she would do in exchange for them helping get her scrubbed clean.”

Both girls refused to wake up until I got one of my industrial feathers, the ones I had ordered when exploring bondage and domination, to tickle them all over until they had to each run for a bathroom or wet my bed. Of course, I still had to dress them even though they could be dressed with their boots tied in under a minute. Mabel had gotten Sally Mae to come put breakfast for us in the oven around eight. Since the two younger girls didn’t show up to do their chores she came over to check on us.

So that is who slipped into bed to give me a little surprise treat.

I puttered around the house doing what little hadn’t been done by April or Mabel’s kids. Mostly it was pulling out all my tech gear from the trip, cleaning up the rat’s nest of cables and making sure there wasn’t anything else stuck anywhere that could tie me back to those religious crazies. It was good that I did because I found four one-ounce bars of gold. Luckily those weren’t going to be hard to deal with now that I was home. The plastic cases went into my multi-stage industrial, high security pulping shredder. You know the one that can turn a DVD into fine to very fine glitter in about three seconds.

I probably should put the gold bars in there too, but I have other ideas for those.

In the basement I found just what I needed in one of the boxes I hadn’t opened since I moved in here.

Back when I was still in high school I got into making custom shaped fishing sinkers from the old car weights and lead in the batteries where I had drained out the sulfuric acid for science projects. When I had made a hundred bucks I moved from a tin can on a hot plate to one of the electric ten-pound lead melting units. The one I had looked at the hardware store was sixty-five bucks. Dad said for a hundred I could get a full propane kit that would let me also melt copper, silver, gold as well as some scrap metals. I was skeptical until he reminded me of the boxes of copper wire scraps I had collected from construction sites and the bags and bags of aluminum cans in the garage. At the time I was getting around a quarter per pound for the cans. With the eight-ounce crucibles and molds for one, two, four, eight ounces and one pound, I could melt those cans down myself. He was sure the scrap place I normally took them would really be happy to have already smelted aluminum blocks and pay more for them since they were purer than just the cans. Plus they were more compact. I could do the same with the copper wire, but would have to strip any insulation off first because of the hazardous fumes.

The box still had eight full propane bottles. In a few minutes I found my custom vent hood that I connected to the old one that had vented the old, inefficient furnace.

I don’t think I will ever get why they had a vent pipe meant to handle two furnaces and seventy-five gallon water heater and then vented the furnace out right beside the garage.

It took me longer to get it all setup than it took to melt down the four ounces of gold. While I let it heat a bit past the melting point, I dug around until I found my old two-ounce sinker molds. Completely by accident I had found an earring closure that was guaranteed to lock securely in place to keep really heavy gold, silver and platinum earrings with gems in them from falling out. The way I happened to find them was that the jeweler that had gotten them custom made didn’t guarantee that the same heavy earrings wouldn’t stretch the wearer’s earlobes way out. Sure they could hold an eight-ounce earring find, but after a day of wearing them you could put a dime in the piercing hole. He had thousands of them that he sold me for fifty bucks. If they hadn’t been electroplated in silver or gold, he would have given them to me outright. What made them great for sinkers was when I found some tiny steel figure eights at the hardware store that were perfect to tie onto the line and then the sinkers could be clipped into the other side of the figure eight so they could change out the weight without having to cut their line or trash a crimp on one.

I got two of them out, slipped on the tiny rods that would keep them in place and then I poured the melted gold into the two-ounce sinker molds before suspending the locking closures into the top of the still molten gold. Once it was cool enough to open I got them out and inspected them. Not wanting them to look exactly like sinkers, I put them on my work table and used a curved file to roughen them up. Once I had them the way I wanted I took a chunk of an old mountain bike tire, put it over one of them and smacked it with a five-pound sledge hammer. I did the same to the other one with a different tread pattern. To top it off I got an old beaten up earring box that I had no idea why I even had it in the junk pile. I took that over to where the security camera company had drilled a hole about two feet above the concrete floor. There was enough dirt, sand and dust for me to rubbed into the jewelry box. Then I put the earrings in it, got a piece of the mountain bike tread and then dropped a fifty-pound weight on top of it. By the time I was done it looked like someone had lost a box with a pair of gold earrings on the ground outside the co-op and it had been run over a few times at least.

Perfect. The gold letters on the dirty felt box will show up great in the lights when dropped in the right spot. Will whoever found it even say a word to anyone about it?

With the furnace already cooled down enough to box back up I got everything put away so that the boxes were even fitting exactly in the spot where there were piles of dust on all sides. Anyone looking would have to really work to see if the boxes had been moved or it was just that dust have been disturbed by the new security camera installation.

Like it is going to matter anyway. The security system will already have the cops on the way. Probably the whole Lester family coming over with guns as well.

“We all talked about and decided that your car is too fancy to take down to co-op. Sure don’t want some drunk to run his tractor over it. Since April isn’t from around here she might need to head on back early. What we think will be a good choice is to take the Gator on down there. Junior came over to help get all the doors on it so you will be good and warm inside. If things get a bit much or someone is being a right old ass, you can head back toward home and pull off in a field to watch the fireworks,” Wilbur told me.

Sounds good to me. The Gator rocks! I haven’t been to a New Year’s Eve party where people wanted me to come down just because I was me. Then again, I haven’t been to many parties.

About eleven we all packed up to head down to the co-op. April thought she was riding with me, but Juniper got the other seat.

“April got to have some of your peter and I got some too, but I still owe you from the other day, so I’m going to take care of you while we drive. Pull that nice dick out so I can suck on it. If I can’t get you to go off then we can take a detour so you can make us both feel nice,” Juniper told me. “We won’t be the only ones getting it on tonight. A lot will do it during the fireworks. If you want I know a lot of girls from school that want someone other than their brothers, cousins or neighbors to be the first dick inside them.”

Yeah, I’m so not going to screw high school girls out here with the whole town ready to walk up and catch us even if some wouldn’t mind as long as I had a ring ready to go on their daughter’s finger.

Even with the Gator floored the drive was more than long enough for her to suck me off. When we got there, I couldn’t decide if the Gator was a step up from some of the cars and trucks or not.

I bet their tractors cost more than all the cars and trucks they own.

Once we found a spot to park I saw why Wilbur said it was better for me to bring the Gator instead of my car. There must have been two dozen ancient, rusting, beat up old muscle cars from the seventies and eighties. It was obvious they often made the choice to spend money on working on the engines instead of making them look good. It was hard not to stare and laugh at all the high school, and maybe middle school, girls looking all hot for the guys as they revved their engines. I doubt any of them would give the GT-R a real challenge. Sure they may have a chance to beat me off the line and for a quarter to half a mile, but they usually top out around a hundred at best. A big engine in a big old heavy beast can only get up to so fast. Thing is, I knew if I beat them they would take it personally.

Juniper led me over to where Wilbur and Mabel were in line to get some of the pull fire crackers, snap-n-pops, some smoke balls and sparklers. There was a lot of people getting their share of the stuff for their kids too. The line was a lot longer than I would have expected, but when we got to a spot in the gravel parking lot with lots of ruts, I dropped the box down along inside my leg and batted it around with my foot as we moved along. When I felt the box get stuck in a deep rut I left it there and kept shuffling forward.

About twenty feet behind us I heard a woman saying to her small child, “No Lynn, don’t pick that up, it’s nasty.”

“What have you got there? Let me have it ... Now,” another woman said about five to ten minutes later. “Oh my goodness. Clyde, look at this that Lynn gone and picked up off the ground. They sure look right like real gold earrings, but they sure are beaten all up. Can’t be real gold though. Not heard of no one saying they lost any and these got to be real expensive ones if they aren’t just ones with cheap gold zapped on them like that necklace Sissy had that turned her neck green. Bet we can get Rupert to see if he can do something with them to make them all round and shiny again even if they are just some fakes.”

I couldn’t hear any more of what they said because Mabel and Wilbur’s younger four kids were making a ton of noise with the boxes of pull firecrackers and really loud snap-n-pops. They had given April a couple boxes of each of the fireworks, but she was only making a token effort to have fun until Sally Mae pulled one of the pull firecrackers right in her ear. I saw her look at me and then Mabel. When she got a nod from Mabel she was off trying to catch Sally Mae to hit her with the snap-n-pops. While I saw Wilbur flicking the really loud red-paper tube snap-n-pops, I declined to use any.

I can’t let myself get back into fireworks, not after leaving a fifty-five foot wide crater two days after getting my ATF explosives license and my pyrotechnician certification.

That had been a hell of a time. Something about being legally licensed to have dynamite, flash powder, and all sorts of high explosives was just too tempting for a young geek. The paperwork hadn’t been a big deal, especially when I went to the ATF office to take in the application. I know I heard at least three people say they should just give it to me right there so they could bet on how quickly I would take myself out of the gene pool. The first thing on the docket to blow up was an old hickory stump from a hundred and fifteen year old tree that had been hit by lightning. The loudmouth construction foreman had been bragging that two sticks of dynamite had taken a chunk out of it, but that was all. He was making a real ass out of himself when he said there was no way I could get it out with a bunch of fireworks.