Chapter 26

I felt a little bad as I drove out of town later, since I went right by the propane place. There was a local owner and I knew him. I would rather give him the trade, but I knew he couldn't keep his mouth shut. I didn't want everybody in the whole damned county to know I'd bought twenty-four five-hundred-gallon propane tanks.

"Not needed. One tank for each fuel will be sufficient," came in via the direct line someone had into my head.

It nearly made me run off the road, but all I could think of to do was say, "What?"

"We will furnish the fuel. You only need one tank for each type," came back to me.

That was going to be a pretty good trick, but when I thought about it a little more it didn't seem like such a much. If they could install an artesian spring overnight, and move me back and forth in time, I guess a little propane, diesel, and gasoline wouldn't present a problem. Too bad they hadn't mentioned this little detail when I was buying the damned plastic gasoline tanks.

I stopped at the Pargas place out in the middle of nowhere, Hwy 77 Texas, between Douglassville and Naples on my way back to Lone Star and went inside. The dried up old gal there was happy to sell me five five-hundred-gallon tanks and seemed even happier that I'd be sending a truck. She promised they could load them.

I headed on back to Longview toward John and Scotty's place. I was happy to see my red Silverado and my beige seventy-six both sitting outside with aluminum wheels on them all around. I parked the new ride near the front doors and walked toward John's service desk.

"I guess we got done just in time," he said.

"You ain't really done, John. I just came by to switch trucks," I said.

"Need this one out today? I can stay late if you do," he said.

"Naw, and I want the whole deal on it too, just like the red one, air compressor, air shocks, wheels and Monster Mudders. And I don't want Carrol mad at me for keeping you working late."

"They must not have been able to track you down. She called and said they wouldn't be back until around nine tonight. I guess the shopping got heavy," he said, grinning.

"Hell, that's good news. I need to go over around the lake and find a place I bought today," I said.

He asked what address and when I told him I could tell that it took him a little hard. I wondered about it and then the light shined.

"Were you and Carroll thinking about that house?" I asked.

"Yeh, more like we were wanting to think about it. We'd already decided it would be better if Scotty and me got the new place going before we took on the house. We figured it would get away from us, but there'll be others," he said.

"There don't have to be no others cause I don't want the house for myself. I only found out about it because I bought the entertainment center. It was on a separate note and my nosey nature let me find out about what a steal the house was. I haven't even been out there yet.

"Why don't we go inside and do the paperwork," I said, grinning.

"You mean you'd sell us that house on the same kind of note you loaned us the money with?" he asked.

"Well hell yeh, in the first place the house is less money. You can even have the entertainment center and the furniture and dishes back if you want. The videotapes and cassettes are all I wanted anyway. You can even make copies of them first if you'd like," I said.

"Naw, I don't think Carrol wanted any of that stuff. We saw the house before they took it out," he said.

"You don't have to make up your mind right now anyway, I haven't even been out there yet. You got time to run out to it with me?"

"I'll make time. Give me a minute to tell Scotty I'm leaving."

He was back in a flash and away we went. Thirty minutes later we drove up to the place and it was a damned nice one, and in a lot better shape than I'd expected it to be. All the furniture that was already paid for was still in it too.

We went into the house first, but only because I wanted to at least see what I'd bought. It was a nice one with two baths, three bedrooms, a big den, and a large kitchen. There was wall-to-wall carpet everywhere except the kitchen and the baths and everything was in a hell of a lot better shape than you'd expect, considering the circumstances.

It didn't take me long to see what I wanted to and John had already been here. We walked through the garage to get out and I headed back for my pickup.

"You don't want to take a look in the shop?" John asked.

"Is there anything in there worth seeing? I figured it was just an empty shop building," I said.

"I think you might want to at least take a glance," he said.

So I followed John over to the shop and he opened up the big roll up door, so we could have some light inside I guess. Man, was I surprised.

It was full of tools and equipment. Nothing exotic you understand, just a small machine, welding, and blacksmith shop rolled into one. There was even a complete farrier's setup in one corner and a nice woodworking place in another. Though it was pretty obvious he'd done the horse shoeing outside.

"What the hell was he doing with all this?" I asked.

"He was a handyman deluxe. He hated working at the mill but kept at it because of the money. When we got laid off, the other mill hand his wife had been slipping around with left town and Shoals' wife went with him.

"It pissed Shoals off so bad he just abandoned the place. Said he was going back to Pennsylvania, where he come from," John said.

That cut just a little too close to the bone for me, that talk of a man's wife running around with a steelworker while her husband was off to the mill. I figured that bringing something else up right away would be a pretty good idea.

"Damned if you ain't bought a place to work," I said, teasing John.

"No. Hell no. I ain't. I knew this stuff was here all right, but I told Carrol when we looked at it that every damned bit of that was leaving if we bought the place. I work hard while I'm at work, but when I'm off; I try my best to rest hard. I don't want a second job waiting for me at home," he said, and damned if he wasn't getting a head of steam built up about it.

"Don't worry, I can use all of that sooner or later so I'll send a truck out here for it. Got any idea where I can get some decent labor?" I asked, and he was back to his normal good mood already.

"Sure. There's a hell of a lot of good labor sitting around on their asses in this part of Texas about now.

"I'll call a couple of the millwrights that worked with me. At least they'll know how to move this stuff without fucking it up. If they need some other labor I'll let them find it," he said.

"Great. Pay 'em good and tell 'em not to break anything. I guess we should rent some kind of fork or something to lift that heavy stuff though."

"All we got to do is make sure the one that came with this still starts, it did last time I was out here," he said.

"There's a damned forklift here too?" I asked.

"Well sure. How in the hell do you think he lifted anything heavy? He was too damned ornery to have friends that would come help him," John said, and then laughed.

I started toward the truck again and John just laughed at me some more.

"What?" I asked.

"What are you in such a damned hurry for? You ain't even seen your boat yet," he said.

"My boat? What damned boat?"

"The one Shoals was so mad he left here too. It's down in the boathouse, and before you ask, I don't give the first shit about fishing, so you might as well haul it off too."

Following John to the little boathouse was next, but as we got close I could see it wasn't so little. Really, it looked kinda funny since it was twice as long as it needed to be for one boat. Everything made sense when we went in.

Whoever Shoals was, he must really have been a crackerjack handyman. His boathouse had a concrete ramp into the lake. The thing covered the boat if you left it in the water, furnished a ramp for the trailer so he could launch or load the boat, and was a garage to park the trailer in, with or without the boat loaded. Fucker must have been a jam up fisherman too, because there was tackle everywhere.