Chapter 10

Deena’s turn:

So we’re on a little excursion.

“Looking at some land,” Bill said.

“Land?” Haley asked. “We’ve talked about building a house, but really? Land?”

“It used to be a crop service.”

“Like crop-DUSTING?” I asked.

“Yep. Old guy shut the business down when he and the equally old guys got overtaken by technology.”

“Technology? What technology?” I asked.

“His dad started the business after World War II with a bunch of war surplus Stearman biplanes. Guys bought complete, flying examples for a couple of hundred bucks apiece. His dad bought dozens, broke ‘em down, put ‘em in storage. Had a lifetime supply of planes and he had mechanics who could take care of ‘em. When they started being less economical, other operators switched to more modern aircraft. He didn’t. He and his buddies just took the money out of the business and retired.”

“And he kept the airfield.”

“He did. Middle of a couple hundred acres or so, so room for the airfield plus several decent house lots.”

“Let’s go see it,” Haley said excitedly. I squealed concurrence.

We walked the place out.

“Y’all turn your heads,” Bill said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Gotta mark my territory,” he said.

“What’s THAT mean?” Haley questioned.

“Gotta mark it. Alpha male marks his territory,” Bill said.

Then it dawned on me. “You’re gonna pee on it!”

“Yep. All four corners,” he laughed.

“Ain’t turning my head, Dad,” I giggled.

“Me neither. Matter of fact,” Haley said, starting to work her jeans down, “I’m joining you.”

I can’t let those two get something on me. That last corner only got a couple of drops – a dribble – but we marked it. It’s ours.

Two weeks later, paperwork was shooting back and forth to back up our gesture. Not ‘ours’ exactly – it belongs to 3Sigma, but you get the idea.

Our part is going to be a long-term lease. We already took the plat for the land, showing the existing runway and buildings, and tentatively penciled in the location for the new roadway and the lots for houses. I hope we can get Carlita to move her bunch here.

Bill’s turn:

I went in one direction, Dave went in another, his trip being a bit deeper into Texas than mine, meaning I get back into town just before three. Go by the office, not that Maddie’s not entirely capable of handling things in my absence.

Driving up the street to our office, I noted a big pickup truck rumbling in the opposite direction, thinking to myself that he’d spent a lot of money for that ‘he-man’ look – big tires, big fender flares, big bumpers. It’s not an uncommon look, but honestly, the worst wilderness most of those trucks see is the Wal-Mart parking lot.

I walked through the front door.

“You just missed ‘im,” Maddie said.

“Who?”

“Guy who dropped off this resume’,” she said, handing it to me. “Grady Denson.” Her nose wrinkled. “Don’t hire ‘im. He stinks. Smoker.”

“Uh, if he’s a competent technician, that’s not gonna disqualify him. We need good techs.”

“Sorry, revered engineer, but the signs ... You could hear his truck when he started it. Romped the throttle a coupla times...”

“Still ... good tech ... Scan it and forward it to Jason. Then we’ll decide if the guy gets a call-back.”

A few minutes later Maddie dropped it on my desk. “Just sent it to Jason. Dunno if he’s in the office today. I didn’t look at his calendar.”

Apparently he was in the office. My phone rang. Direct line.

“Hey, Jase! What’s up?”

“Not ‘no’, but ‘hell, no’.”

“Huh?”

“Grady Denson. I know him by reputation. Dan 2.0’s worked with ‘im. You could send Deena out on a job and get better results...”

“Good to know. I’m just looking over it right now...”

“Yeah, okay ... Says he worked for the company Dan used to work for. Doesn’t say that he was fired, does it?”

“No. Says ‘left for more amenable work environment’. Next employer ... Oh, yeah, they’re amenable to hiring anything with a pulse and a claim to knowledge of Ohm’s Law. And he didn’t stay there too long...”

“Okay. I see that...”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “3Sigma‘s a new name in the game down there. He figured he could fake his way in...”

“So you’re saying he’s not worth putting on the payroll at all.”

“Nope. You know how we work – put one tech on a project during the construction phase, kinda as a technical representative to fill in what our construction manager might not know...”

“Yeah.”

“He can’t do that. Not where we could trust him. And as a number two or three guy, you gotta watch ‘im like hawk. He’s got a rep for pencil-whipping reports. Might be able to get away with that crap in a maintenance environment, but we don’t do maintenance environments. We need a guy who’ll scratch and check to an infinitesimal degree if something doesn’t look right. And I don’t think he even knows what looks right in the stuff we do.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Look, I got an East Texas guy on a project in North Carolina. He claims the barbecue there is poisoning him. When that job’s over, you get ‘im. And we’ll scrape up a #2 for him for that job outside Marshall.”

“Yeah, that one’s on my mind. Too far. Gonna have to put a couple of techs there.”

“I know. Bill’s got a construction superintendent already there. They’re in civil work now.”

“Okay. So this guy’s not even on the table.”

“Yeah. Dan thought they were gonna have a fist-fight at the old company. Guy’s a serious issue.”

“Good enough,” I said. “So when are you ‘n’ Blondie coming down?”

“Oh, Mom’s pushing hard. Maybe vicinity of Easter.”

“Come down here and we’ll feed you crawfish. They’re in season.”

“You just wanna see Susan freak out,” he laughed.

The story of Susan at her first crawfish boil – “You break ‘em in half an’ suck the heads?!?” – was part of the company record.

“And we’ll get up there and let your Dad barbecue for us...”

“If I can get a couple of clients to show up, 3Sigma gets the bill,” he laughed.

“DO it, bud!” Jason’s good people, as are his folks, and Susan is a complete hoot. She plays that ‘innocent’ angle to a T, for laughs. I personally think she’s as much of a rock as my Haley. Or Deena, who can effect her mom’s prissiness quite well. But I’ve seen THOSE two at a crawfish boil, and I KNOW better.

“I will,” he said.

So I believe Jason. That’s part of the charm of this strange bunch – they’re all what Dad used to term ‘good people’ – not necessarily as spiffy and refined as you’d find in the upper strata of society, but honest, fair, intelligent, moral...

Moral. Like the guy with TWO wives, one of whom had HIS name on her birth certificate. I still think about that sometimes, especially on long drives, but honestly, what can I do, even if I wanted to do something, which I really don’t.

Which one would I give up? Haley? Deena?

Haley was first. So innocent, so inevitable. There was just something RIGHT about Haley.

Or Deena. Love from the day I saw her exiting her mom’s birth canal. All those nights of ‘Bill, your turn to feed ‘er.’ The skinned knees. The holding onto her when her mom was moving her away, and the surprise when she wanted to come live with me and her best friend. And the announcement that if I wasn’t her natural father, then there was a special place she wanted to occupy.

Nope. I couldn’t choose. Didn’t have to, right now. And if situations put us in that particular corner, I’m thinking a group immolation might be on the table. Forever. So YOU tell me what’s ‘moral’. I am. WE are.

The cutie at the front desk, Maddie, I don’t think she has a clue. Two or three days a week, one or the other or both my loves are in the office. Usually it’s for study. The office is a shorter drive than going home. And sometimes we have a technician or two there doing something interesting, which means...

“Boss, I would’ve finished but Haley and Deena...”

“As long as you don’t short the client...”

“I have plenty of time...”

“Do they cause you to do a poor job?”

“That’s just it, dammit. They ask questions. Make me think about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Helps ME.”

“You can run ‘em off.”

“Like my little sisters. Just can’t. But if you ever wanted to put one in the field...”

“Can’t,” I said. “Both under eighteen. Federal law.”

“Yeah, I know ... but they’d be great helpers until they passed me up.”

“When they turn eighteen,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Those two. Already in college. When they’re eighteen, they’ll be engineers. That means they’ll be essentially useless,” he snickered.

“There goes your bonus,” I laughed.

“Serious, dude,” he laughed. “I enjoy the questions, you know. Kinda nice, being treated like somebody with special knowledge.”

“Seriously. ‘I’m busy. Ask later’.”

“Maybe one day. Not yet. Let ‘em ask. Besides, if I decide to go back for my degree, I’m gonna ask THOSE two...”

“Be careful. They have a friend with a doctorate in physics who just turned nineteen...”

“No shit?!?”

“Look ‘er up. Cindy Richards, on the company website.”

“I’ll have to pay attention.”

“Need to get you over to Alabama to see what you bought into, buddy.”

He looked at me with a wry eye. “Jason said the same thing. I signed on based on Jason’s rep. You tell me there’s MORE like that?”

“I can’t begin to tell you.”

“Whole place is strange,” he laughed. “I’ve been leaving my door open on the jobsite, hoping I could snag one like Dave did.”

“While you’re wishing, you just as well get yourself a lottery ticket.”

“You need – this place needs interns. Scott picked up Maddie when she was an intern.”

“I HEARD that, Carl Primeaux,” came Maddie’s voice from up the hall. “There’s discussion as to who selected whom, and ‘picked up’ is hardly the term for a delicate and stately courtship.”

“Make that a DUMB intern,” Carl laughed. “Don’t want one smarter’n me.”

Maddie laughed. “If that’s your criteria, you might wanna troll a kindergarten.”

“Bill, Maddie’s making me feel uncomfortable,” he laughed.