Chapter 5: Home Coming

It took less than a week to prepare for Jason’s return to his home. It was Carlita who came to the valley and who escorted Jason back up the trail out of the valley, across the face of the mountain, and down the hiking trail back to the house. All during their journey, she updated him on the progress they were making, any problems they had encountered, and what remained to be done.

“And finally, we’re going to need a bus.”

Jason stopped dead in his tracks. “A bus?”

“Yes, a bus, and someone is going to have to learn to drive it and get a Commercial Drivers License with a Passenger endorsement. You need that in order to drive a bus that is going to carry more than 15 people including the driver. Right now, the tribe has twenty-seven people. By the time we need it; there will probably be at least fourteen more plus the driver, plus at least three, possibly five, more. That’s forty-five people; we’re going to need a big bus.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“How’d you expect to bring them all from here, all the way across the valley, and to the reservation, walk?”

“See, that’s why I need the both of you. You guys see and think about the things that I miss working on the big picture. You see the trees, while I’m looking at the forest.”

“We didn’t think about it, the girls did.”

It took them less than five minutes to reach the cutoff from the trail that led up to their house. Jason’s level of anticipation was reaching critical mass as he opened the front door. Instead of being swamped by two high school teenagers and a very affectionate wife, the house appeared to be empty. Jason turned Carlita, “Where is everybody?”

“I’m not sure where Maria is, but the girls are spending tonight and tomorrow night with friends from school. It’s homecoming weekend, and there’s a lot happening at school, including a bonfire tonight and the big football game against their archrival tomorrow.”

Jason was momentarily depressed; he had so wanted to hug his two girls that his heart ached.

“Jason, Let’s go upstairs, maybe Maria fell asleep waiting for us.”

Just as they reached the second floor landing, Jason caught a glimpse of Maria running into his bedroom. When they reached the doorway, Jason abruptly stopped. There was Maria, stretched out seductively across the bed, her nakedness not quite concealed by the bedsheet.

“Well, what are you waiting for, strip, get into the shower and wash two months of your latest conquests off that sexy body of yours. You have ten minutes; if you’re not out here and in our bed by then, we are coming in there to drag you out.”

He made it in eight. There was no fooling around, no make believe ceremony, just three loving adults satisfying the hunger in their hearts for one another. Their lovemaking lasted well into the wee hours of the morning and resumed in the early afternoon of the following day after a quick, naked breakfast.

As they lay in bed trying to decide what they wanted to eat for dinner, Jason broke the silence, “who do I have to thank for this glorious welcome home?”

“Actually it was the girls’ idea. They figured something like this might happen and felt it best to give us as much privacy as we felt we needed.” “Yeah,” chimed in Carlita, “but when I told them that maybe two days would not be enough and that they should call ahead so they wouldn’t catch us doing it on the living room floor; they responded, ‘eew TMI, next time just get a room somewhere.’ Then they burst out laughing and said that they would see us early Sunday morning, so we had better have gotten it out of our systems. ‘Besides, at Daddy’s age, after two months of having sex every day, we’d better get back here so that he doesn’t have a heart attack.’”

The following morning, Jason was shocked out of a very pleasant dream by two, barely seventeen year olds, as they jumped onto the bed and smothered him with kisses. In his mind, he thanked Maria and Carlita for suggesting that he wear pajamas to bed when they finally settled in for the night.

By later that afternoon, everything had more or less gotten back to normal, just below the status of organized chaos. Jason had retreated to his office and was reviewing the latest status report on the “Hawke Tribe Village” as the project had become known as. He added the acquisition of a bus and the training of its driver to the ever-growing list of things to be done. The big question was how much time did he have left. If nature ran its usual course, the babies would be born in July and August. Could Anna hold the tribe together there in the valley until after the last of the babies were born? It would be a whole lot easier to bring the babies and their mothers out of the valley after their birth than it would be to bring fourteen very pregnant women up out of the valley and across the mountain trail.

The next day, after the girls had gone to school, the three of them traveled to the other side of the valley to visit the job site.

Jason could not believe the progress that had been made in the three months since his last inspection. Half of the houses were already completed and landscaped. The remaining houses were in various stages of completion, with no more than a month or two of final construction left to do. The community center building was a beehive of activity; tile was being laid; rooms were being painted; the gym equipment had been delivered and was being moved into place. Outside, the pool area was still in the late construction stage, however the plantings that shielded the pool area from the community road behind the building were in place, as was the ornate wall that ran between the plantings and the road. When it was finally completed, Jason was confident that this area would be the most used area in the entire complex.

As they were returning to their car, the construction supervisor assured them,

“We’ll have everything done and approved by early spring; you’ll have your certificate of occupancy no later the May 15th. We’ll clean up any punch list items by the end of June.”

‘I hope we have that long;’ was on the mind of each of them as they traveled back to the house.

“But why do I have to take the driver’s license test, you’re going to actually drive the bus?”

“Maria, it’s only fair, besides you know how bad I am at taking tests. What happens if I flunk the test? I can handle anything on the road that has eighteen wheels or less, but what if I freeze up on the test. Come on, it will be just like when we were in high school. No one will ever know. Besides, Jason said that we are only renting the bus for a couple of months, just long enough for me to take my road test and for the night of the exodus from the valley. He said, at that point we’ll have no need for such a large bus, maybe just a commuter van that holds ten to twelve people at the most.”

The next several months seemed to fly by. Jason received weekly reports as to any problems that the builders encountered, however, he was assured that this was nothing out of the ordinary and that they would meet their targeted completion dates.