Chapter 13

Sunday morning, I was up at eight. I guess I was the weird one. I didn’t like to sleep in. Sleep was like a necessary evil that I tolerated, except that I knew it was good for me and I needed it. I went out to the gym and worked legs a little, then worked on the heavy bag. I might have put on some weight, gained strength, and endurance over the summer but I hadn’t done my punching power any favors. My mechanics were off.

After five hard rounds, I needed a break. Sitting on the bench, I took a few deep breaths and realized just how good the honeysuckle smelled. Definitely a nice addition. I took inventory of my gym equipment. The gym at the hotel next to us in San Juan had some different equipment. My lifting revolved around five compound exercises and I had what I needed for those. Everything else was complementary and I had a lot of possibilities there. Still, there were a couple of exercises I could add with a few cable attachments. I thought a leg press would be really nice. I tried to figure out how much that would cost and realized that before I spent another penny, I wanted to know how much a landscape architect would cost. Maybe Mom would help. I had to work for the ring. I didn’t have to work for a bunch of other stuff.

“Jack, are you out there?” Mom hollered from the front door.

I was done working out. I stepped around the corner and started for the door. “What’s up?”

“Sally’s on the line. She really, really, really wants to talk to you. Her words.”

“Does she sound okay?”

“She sounds fine. Good, in fact. I didn’t even ask. I guess she found you yesterday.”

“Yeah. Long story. I guess after I talk with her, I’ll know how it went.” Mom gave me the puzzled look that deserved.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, yourself,” Sally answered.

“Mom said you really, really, really, really, really, really want to talk to me.”

“Yeah, but only three or four reallys. Dad and I talked the whole way home. Do you want the short version or the long version?”

“Well, since the drive probably took eight hours or so, I should probably go with the short version.”

“You’re not as funny as you think, you know. Dad apologized. He said he’d agreed when I’d put my foot down a couple of weeks ago but that he hadn’t really dropped it in his mind. I told him I wasn’t six anymore. He said he gets it.”

“Good. How’s he going to keep from doing that again? He blew it for probably a lot longer than you even realize. Saying it doesn’t make it so.” I thought about that one. For me, it pretty much did. What was the difference? I’d have to work on that one.

“Anyway, we talked for hours and this is what we came up with. If I continue to get good grades, and you know I always do, then he’ll stay out of my face. If my grades drop, he’ll jump in.”

“How low? You always get A’s and B’s and mostly A’s. If you got a C, would he make you change schools?”

“No. I don’t think so. I won’t, anyway.”

“It would be nice to know what the standard is, though, right? And what about experimenting? Mr. Trent, you know, science teacher, says if we insist on success, we’ll stifle risk and the ability to try new things. What if you want to take a class in banjo and you really sucked?”

“Mr. Trent said that? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Science experiments and all. That’s a really good point. If I had to get all A’s, I wouldn’t enroll in honors classes, just so I could keep my grades up. Yeah, I’ll ask him about that. Jack, I’m so happy. We stopped for dinner and he hugged me. I can’t remember the last time he did that.”

“I’m really happy for you, Sally.”

“I’m pretty happy for me too. I don’t know what you said to Dad but it must have been good.”

“I think he wants to do the right thing. Maybe he just doesn’t know what that is, or how. Ronnie wanted to do the right thing and we ended up with a bunch of money. A bunch. We get to enjoy it but he doesn’t, so maybe your dad can enjoy you, you know?”

“Yeah. School starts in a week, so he said we need to do something this week. I think we might go out to dinner with Jeff. He never really knew you; you know? It’s like you’re some kid that tried to turn his daughter against him or something. I think he gets it now. I don’t know. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you. Oh, yeah, how did yesterday go?”

“I’m engaged. No one was surprised. Everyone keeps telling me everything is going to be different now but I don’t get it.”

“It will, I bet. I have to go. I love you. Glad I got to see you yesterday, even if it was just for an hour. I missed your hugs.”

“I love you, too. I hope this time, it really is different.”

“Me too. Banjo? You’re crazy. Bye,” she said and hung up. Good. Was it real? I guess if she got to start school at McGavock it would be real enough.

“Breakfast?” Mom called out.

I walked into the kitchen. She looked like she was cooking for the party we’d had the night before. “Yes, but I’m not sure I can eat all that.”

“You’d better not. Franklin and Karen will be here shortly. I thought you might want to talk with him a bit before the two of them, Dane, and I went fishing.”

“What about? The four of you are going fishing?”

“He’s got some ideas about Fort Johnson. He didn’t get a chance last night. Here. Pancakes and eggs to start. Grits are almost done.”

I ate and was on my second helping of pancakes when Franklin and Karen showed up. Mom served them breakfast as well. When Franklin sat down, he pushed a sheet of paper to me.

“What’s this?”

“Rough sketch of one possibility for the Fort Johnson Road property.” I didn’t see anything rough about it. It looked like a professional had spent hours on it.

“Wow. What are all these faint lines?”

“Contour lines. It’s from a survey Dad had done when he bought it. I made some overlays so we could work on it. This is just Fletcher and me piddling around in our spare time.”

I looked at the sketch. He had a house, a stable, pasture, a few trails, and a workshop with a covered parking space for a boat next to it. There was a legend and it was color coded.

“Fletcher? Fletcher from yesterday? Fletcher who can’t believe Veronica is forty? This looks pretty sweet. Why is everything where it is, though? It doesn’t seem arbitrary but I can’t figure out what’s organized about it,” I said.

“This might help,” he said, pushing another paper to me. He had a folder full of papers. “This is a soil map. The green areas are Coosaw loamy fine, and the orange are Argent loam. They pretty much coincide with high ground and low. The sketch takes advantage of the high ground. The Argent loam is the low ground and it’s only about an acre. It seemed best to leave it as is, but with trails cut through it. When it floods, it won’t matter.”

“What do you mean, when it floods?” I asked.

“The entire property is above the hundred-year flood line but that doesn’t mean it won’t get soaked when it rains hard. Remember when it rained hard for four days straight a couple of years ago?”

“Yeah. I was in fourth grade or something.”

“That’s the time. After that rain, it dried out pretty quickly here. That orange acre of lowland would have been underwater for another week or two. You definitely don’t want to build anything on it.”

“And the house and stable are both on the highest ground, it looks like.”

“Exactly. They’re both higher and they have decent drainage but I’d still build them up some. The elevation change from the house location to the creek is fifteen feet and that’s just about ideal for that distance. This is just the two of us tinkering around for a couple of hours. It’s just something to think about,” Franklin said.

“Eat, honey. Lots of talking,” Karen said and Franklin ate while I looked at the sketch.

“If we decided this was a good plan, what would I need to do next?”

“You need to talk to a builder and get a more detailed soil test. He’s going to talk to you about your foundation. He’ll probably recommend slab on grade rather than a crawlspace. I would. He’ll let you know about prep. You know, how deep they’d have to dig for footers, how much fill dirt and all that.”

“I think I get it. Is there anything I could do before that? I don’t want to do something and have a builder tell me I shouldn’t have,” I said.

“No. That would suck. I wouldn’t go moving a bunch of dirt around. There’s already an access path and it’s not far from where the house would be if you followed this. You said gum trees are a nuisance, right?”

“They could stay or go, but they don’t do any good.”

“Then, you could cut down as many of them as you wanted to. You remember the deal about what trees to cut down, right?”

“Yeah. You cut down trees competing with the trees you want. A super nice magnolia might have to go if it’s competing with a live oak or ash we wanted to keep.”

“Exactly. Anyway, this sketch doesn’t take into account where trees you might want to keep are. We could have put the house right on top of the prettiest live oak on the property and you don’t want to cut it down if you can move the house twenty feet west or something. Make sense?”

“Yeah. This is awesome, Franklin. I need to make copies of this so I can write on it.” Franklin pulled an envelope out of the bag he had with him.

“Copies of the sketch, soil maps, contour map, and survey. Knock yourself out,” he said taking another big bite of pancakes.

“This looks like a ton of work. You guys are awesome.”

“I won’t argue with that. But it didn’t take long at all, really. Mom already had some of this stuff on file. I just made copies, took a look at the contour lines and soil map, and sketched out the main features I thought you’d want. I turned some of them into overlays but that was easy. I called Lorraine and asked her a couple of questions. That’s it. Total time, maybe three or four hours. Easy.”

“Easy for you but I wouldn’t have known where to start,” I said. “What would you do next if you were me?”

He thought about that for a couple of minutes while he finished eating. “Without spending a lot of money, I’d place markers on the property. Measure in from one of the pins and put markers where you might want structures. Then, I’d take a camera and photograph the trees I wanted to keep. You’ve got two years and a summer before you go off to college. I can have this blown up on thirty-six by forty-eight-inch overlays, which would be a nice working size. We have an architectural printer at work so it can produce oversized drawings like that. Let me know if you need something else.””

“I don’t know what that means. Pins?”

“The property was surveyed when Ronnie bought it and there are metal pins denoting property boundaries. They shouldn’t be too hard to find. The property isn’t exactly rectangular so there are pins here, here, and here,” he said, pointing out property corners on the map. “You can use a semi-transparent overlay of the property with contour lines, and another one with soil if you wanted. Annotate trees you want to keep.” I got it.

“Like my anatomy book. Skeleton, then organs, then muscles, and so on.”

“Exactly.”

“This is so cool. This is engineering stuff,” I said.

“This is engineering-type stuff,” he said, happy that I was pleased with what he’d brought.

He finished, and together with Karen, Dane, and Mom, they set out to go fishing. I couldn’t remember the last time Mom and Franklin had set out to do something where I wasn’t involved. Good. She was his mom, too. I put away the food and washed the dishes. Ahhh. Time to relax. Except I couldn’t. I had these awesome plans in front of me and land that needed to be explored. I called Kim.

“Hey,” I said when she picked up.

“Is this my fiancé?” she asked.

“Why, yes, it is. Ha-ha. I guess I have to get used to that. What are you doing today?”

“Shopping. We were gone for two weeks and I still need some stuff for school. Want to keep me company?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Because it’s shopping and you’ll be bored to tears.”

“I’d rather be bored to tears with you than...” I ran out of steam.

“Yes? Then what?”

“Than bored by myself.”

“You sound so enthusiastic. I’ll see you in twenty.”

I was just finishing Topaz when Kim came in. Mom had given her a key weeks ago. “Ready?” she asked.

“I’d like you to see something first,” I said and took her into the kitchen where I had left the property sketches. I showed her the sketches and explained what Franklin told me. She listened without saying a word. I finished and she was quiet so I waited.

She was thinking it through and I was in no hurry to go to the mall. “Want my thoughts?” she asked.

“Absolutely. Every step of the way. You know what? That’s a question you never have to ask me again.”

“Same. Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. First, this is beyond super cool and I need to remember to thank Franklin. He didn’t have to do this. I think we should get sizes. We should go to a realtor’s office and look at some of their listings and see what the dimensions are. It doesn’t have to be exact. Then we should call Mrs. Denton and see how much room we need for a stable. We can figure pasture out later but we’ll want to walk off sizes for an outdoor arena and some run-ins, just in case. Then we should do what Franklin said and mark out the spots for those buildings so we don’t have to cut down any of those beautiful oak trees.” She took a breath. “That’s what I think. They have little marker flags at Home Depot.”

“Wow. Okay, first, what’s a run-in?”

“It’s a little shelter for horses. You can have stables for eight horses but you can also board more horses outside. You just build a little three-sided shelter so they can...”

“Run in when the weather sucks.”

“Or they want to get out of the heat. It’s a good place to put hay and a water trough, too.”

“I’ve seen a couple of them at the stable but didn’t know what you called them. But that’s inside a pasture so it doesn’t take any extra room, right? How would you know Home Depot has marker flags?”

“They did in Kentucky. Uncle TJ used them. I didn’t go this year but last year, he marked out a new pasture and a shed using them. Little poles with colored ribbons. I think it’s like a hundred of them for five dollars or something.”

“You’re into this, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Of course. This is like a dream we get to make happen. I have to buy school stuff but I want to do this, too.”

“School starts tomorrow so we should probably take care of that first,” I said.

“You don’t need to do any shopping?” she asked.

“I got a new hat. Ta da.” She gave me a squeeze and called me a dufus and we took off for Citadel Mall.

After a quick trip into two stores and a purchase in the third store, I declared we were “manly shopping.” Kim gave me a look but didn’t say anything. She was on a mission. I know she didn’t get everything she wanted but she got everything she needed. She called home from a payphone, got her dad on the line, and asked him about realtors. He gave her a couple of names he knew. She said the addresses out loud and I stuck them in my head.

“It’s Sunday afternoon,” she said. “If you were a realtor, would you be in the office?”

“I think that’s when they show homes or maybe do open houses. I don’t think I’d be sitting around in an office.”

“You’re probably right. Want to check, anyway?” I said I did, so she drove up Sam Rittenberg Boulevard and turned right on Ashley River Road. I spotted the sign and Kim pulled in. They were open and there was a receptionist up front so that was a good sign.

We walked in. “Hi,” Kim said. “Is Diane Desthers in?”

“I’m sorry. She’s out this weekend. Is there something I can help you with?” The name on her desk said she was Wendy.

Kim looked at me and we both shrugged. “Maybe,” Kim explained that we weren’t really shopping to buy but to get information. The receptionist was bored to tears and was happy to help. Wendy pulled out a book of listings. Each page had a listing on it.

“How many bedrooms?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We need one. Probably one for each kid and a guest room. Eight,” I said, and Kim elbowed me.

“How about four? Eight!” she huffed.

“We can always add on.”

“Single story or two stories,” Wendy asked.

“I don’t know that, either. If you were going to build a house and had plenty of land and money wasn’t an issue, what would you build?” I asked.

“Sounds like a tough problem. That’s easy. One story. Do you like going up and down stairs?” She asked.

“One story it is,” Kim said.

“And all you really want is a good size estimate, right?” We nodded. “Okay, this might get you in the ballpark. It’s just over twenty-eight hundred square feet. That’s pretty big. It looks like it’s ninety-five by thirty.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Oh, how big is a garage?”

“Twenty-two by eighteen would be a pretty standard two-car garage. You want me to write these down for you?”

“That would be awesome, thank you,” Kim said. “Are we forgetting anything?”

“Well, I just gave you the covered area. You will want to leave room for a patio or porch. Maybe a nice wrap around porch. They’re expensive but they’re so pretty. If I was loaded, I’d have one. But all of that is as big or small as you want.” She handed me a note paper, ‘From the desk of Wendy Desthers’ with the dimensions on it. “The phone number is on top. You can call if you need something else.”

“Thank you so much. This is exactly what we need,” Kim said.

“I should thank you for rescuing me from boredom. Now I’m going to look at dream homes I can’t afford.”

“What now?” I said when we were back in the truck.

“That was an amazing start. We can’t do all of this today. And we don’t have a camera with us. Let’s go to the Denton Ranch and see if Mrs. Denton has some time. I don’t think it’s too late. They have Sunday supper around six.”

We drove out to the ranch, talking about what we’d learned. We had probably come up with as many new questions as we had answered. Kim said, ‘eight bedrooms’ under her breath about four times. I thought it was funny. We pulled up the drive and walked to the house. Mrs. Denton answered with an apron on and flour in her hair. She blew up at her hair to get it out of the way but it didn’t work.