Chapter 1

That was interesting, and it would have been well worth a dollar, but I didn't really think it was worth almost everyting I had. It must have been though, the judge said so. I guess it was my own damned fault.

My now offially X wife seemed happy enough with the outcome. She had a right to be. She got the farm - all fifty acres of it, and the house, and her car I'd been stupid enough to pay cash for. I got the pleasure of finding out how a lot of women feel after they help their man through medical school and then he dumps them for a young nurse.

It wasn't really like that, exactly, but it seemed like a good thing to bitch about at the moment. We'd married young and I hadn't really wanted to go to college. Right out of high school I got a job at the steel mill and I encouraged my young bride to get an education. Steelworkers made pretty good money at the time and we could afford it.

She studied hard and I worked a lot of doubles, a lot of them. Lone Star Steel's main product at the time was oil field tubular goods and they were selling hell out of them after the arabs pulled their little cartel stunt.

My sweetie got her degree in three and a half years and was accpeted at a medical school, and even though we'd already paid for the fifty acres we lived on we rented a home about halfway between Lone Star, Texas and Dallas, where she had to continue her education.

We were still in love then, even though my long hours working and hers studying and later interning meant we usually seemed like we were visiting when we had time together. But shit happens while you aren't paying attention and we drifted apart.

There's a good chance we could have made a go of it anyway if it hadn't been for that cute little big tittied blonde who started working in the coupling shed, which happened to be right near the tiny office of the extrusion yard, my usual home at the mill.

She was friendly and my dick still got hard all the time, and soon enough we were calling off work at the same time about once a week and spending the day laid up in a motel and bumping fuzz. Of course my wife found out about it, but she didn't even let on she knew for two years, until all her schooling and internship was finished.

The courrier delivered the papers to me in the mill's parking lot. The ones which said I was soon to be single again, and some more which said I wasn't welcome in my home, the one we'd just moved back into. They also gave me a big thick manilla envelope with copies of some of the photographic evidence.

I looked them over after the courier left and I now understood the blonde's interest in doing it with the lights on and dog fucking these last couple of months. Later I found out that my X had paid her a visit and explained the financial incentives for her to co-operate and the serious disadvantages if she didn't.

A big part of my serious mistreatment during the divorce proceedings was my guilt. Hell, I knew I was in the wrong and at the time I felt like I deserved everything I got, or didn't get. I was so out of it I rented a storage building for my X to send my things to.

She graciously let me keep my pickup, my small camping trailer, and most of my personal things. She even let me come to our place, to the barn, and collect my favorite saddle and bridle and a few other assorted items of tack.

Of course I had to leave it all on her carport, leave while she inspected it to make sure there was nothing she wanted, and then come back and get it after she was done looking it over. The deputy she'd requested from the county shiriff's office was firm about the rules.

I made a deal with a trailer park in Lone Star and set up my camper there. It was a good place to sleep and bathe anyway. I kept going to work and things were just peachy. The blonde had hauled ass with the ten thousand in cash she'd earned, but it wasn't far to Longview and the Rio Palm Isle, and I always could do a mean two step.

After about a year my X must have settled down some from her original mad because she sent me a letter saying I could have one of the old cars I'd stored in the barn. I guess I should have mentioned my car collection to her from the git go instead of having her find them on her own after I'd been banished.

There wasn't even a deputy out to keep an eye on me this time, but I had been instructed not to bother her at the house. I paid Marlin to take me out there in his wrecker and we hooked the black 1966 Ford Fairlane two door hardtop, the one I'd put two fours, a four speed, and a nine inch limited slip rear end in.

He even cut me a break for taking it all the way over to Lone Star and dropping it by my trailer. Back in my old home town, he let me off at my truck and I went directly to Wal-Mart to buy the Fairlane a car cover before heading to my trailer.

Life was wonderful and even though I wasn't trying I made plenty of money. I still doubled anytime I could. That was often, because the race was still on for oil and the pay was even better now.

We'd just signed a new contract and pipe was selling so well the company had nearly pissed their pants at the thought of a strike. My previous hourly rate jumped over five dollars overnight.

All in all I didn't really give a shit. I worked as much as they'd let me and then went to the Rio a time or two a week. I usually ended up fucking the wife of some poor bastard who was at work and then going home in time to make my next shift. I even found out time flies not only while you're having fun, but it hauls ass when you're just treading water too.

Or at least it did until 1992 and a half. In June of that year me and six thousand other steelworkers were invited to a lay off. I never did understand exactly what happened to the oil market or why.

I did understand they didn't need nearly as much of the pipe we'd been making and the company hadn't discovered any other good markets for the amount of steel we could pour.

If our President at the time had started a nice little war we could have kept our jobs. Bomb casing was another staple for our mill, but things just didn't work out this time. Where in the hell are the Viet Cong when you need them?

I wasn't too worried myself. I'd been making money hand over fist for years and I didn't really spend much. I was still driving the same pickup, and while it didn't get great mileage it did all right, not to mention I still had the same farm account from before my divorce. I didn't have a farm anymore, but I still bought my gas as off road fuel and got to skip the forty-eight cent per gallon tax.

My only real concession to this fiction was the two hundred gallon auxilary tank I'd had to put at the front of the pickup's bed. With it, and the two twenty-five gallon tanks which had come on the truck, I could buy enough gas at one time to make the purchases large enough to look legitimate. I even sent the receipts to my X and she deducted them on her income tax as farm expenses.

It cost me a hundred a month to park my trailer and it covered the light and water bill too. I paid the chunky old gal in the trailer next door twenty-five a week to do my laundry, sweep up, and dust a little, and I was squared away as far as housekeeping went.