Chapter 22

After that dinner at Mama's house, I started working on making a real plan for organizing my future. I knew that I'd been approaching the problem from the wrong direction entirely. The decision as to whether I would manage the company, after Dad, had already been made for me by the circumstances of me being their son. There really wasn't any other alternative that wouldn't result in me letting both my parents down. I owed it to them to go forward with protecting the commitments they felt for their employees.

That being said, there was no reason why I couldn't set things up in a way where this got done, and I still ended up being able to lead the kind of life I wanted to lead.

After reading Uncle Bunny's journals, ones that he'd started writing from about the eighth grade on, I knew he had wanted to lead a different kind of lifestyle than his father had lived. My Dad had been his first acquisition, the first step towards Uncle Bunny's attempt at implementing his own management plan.

In Uncle Bunny's plan, he was going to gather to himself a group of seven or eight good minds, and then convert them into people capable of helping him run the company when the time came.

He was hoping to be the part time manager of a brain trust of business talent. His recruits would be the people who were actually doing all the day to day work, thus freeing up Uncle Bunny's time for him to pursue his many other interests.

I remember reading about it, and about how excited Uncle Bunny had been, when he approached, and then befriended, my Dad. His plan might have worked too, if Mama hadn't interfered, and thrown a big monkey wrench into them.

She fell in love immediately with my Dad. A further complication to this was that Uncle Bunny loved Mama at the time. I'm not talking about him loving her the way a brother loves a sister either. They had been lovers. In fact, Mama and Georgia had both shared Uncle Bunny's attentions, right up until she abruptly decided that she now was in love with my father.

It was Mama who had ended up changing all of Uncle Bunny's plans, finally pushing him to go off to law school, thus leaving the way open for Dad to become the heir presumptive to replacing Senior Chalmers.

I had read the part in the journals that had detailed the pain and the emotional upheaval that Mama's decision had caused in Uncle Bunny. He had lost Georgia first, then Mama, and at the same time that happened, he was losing what he believed was his birthright, to be taking over for his father by running the family company someday.

Uncle Bunny had always tried to please people, to do what they wanted, so that they'd like and accept him. Mama wasn't like that. If she wanted something, she went after it relentlessly, not stopping until after she had obtained it.

Mama's version of what happened in the years before she got my Dad to marry her, and Uncle Bunny's version of it, were very dissimilar. In Uncle Bunny's version, getting my Dad to marry her, in return for the promise of him being the next one to run the company, was all Mama's idea. According to Uncle Bunny, Dad had resisted the idea from the very beginning, claiming that Mama wasn't really the kind of woman he would choose to marry.

It had taken all of Uncle Bunny's persuasive skills, and also, some serious coaxing on the part of Senior Chalmers, before Dad had even agreed to consider their offer. Three times, before the marriage had finally taken place, Dad had gone to Uncle Bunny and tried to back out of their agreement.

One of those times was when Dad had quit his job at the company, and had gone to work for a competitor. Senior simply bought up the competitor, and then made my father a much improved offer, by naming him as the senior vice president. My father was so ambitious, so anxious to make his mark in life, to overcome his humble beginnings, that he finally agreed to marry Mama.

Of course, as soon as Dad did finally agree, Mama started playing hard to get. According to Uncle Bunny, it was Mama's sudden coyness that had enraged my Dad, and caused him to get stubborn as well. Some of Uncle Bunny's comments in his journal, during this period, gave me a much better insight into the minds of my parents.

Here I was, thirty years later, hoping to follow the blueprint Uncle Bunny had outlined for himself in his own journals. He and I shared the same belief, that the business could run just as well with a lot of different people managing their own independent departments, all reporting to a single, coordinating authority. Uncle Bunny had planned on Dad being that reporting authority, with himself as the controlling authority over Dad.

I wanted to make Joyce that reporting authority, leaving me free to pursue my other interests, but still retaining the power to step in and modify Joyce's direction for the company, if I thought it was necessary. I would be the chairman, but one with unquestioned voting control. I had already seen the advantage Dad got from having full voting authority over all the company shares. We might own the stock, but, if he could vote it, we were at his mercy, as far as where he took the company.

Like Uncle Bunny, I was going to start looking for men who had tons of intelligence and ambition, but very little in the way of money or connections. Unlike Uncle Bunny, I'd be looking for women also. We would help each other, and everyone would end up benefiting from our relationship. I already had Joyce, so I'd explain everything to her, and then she and I would start recruiting at the university.

I liked Don personally, but he wasn't intelligent or ambitious enough for what I was looking for. His brother in law, Clark, was what I was looking for however. The only problems I could see, were his lack of a formal education, and the fact that he might be unwilling to relocate to Bolling. I knew that Mama had been impressed with Clark, back when the three of us had played golf. She seemed surprised when I told her that Clark was only an assistant in his Uncle's hardware store.

When I finally got around to discussing my ideas with Joyce, she added several refinements to them, right from the beginning. This showed me that she too had been thinking about this, probably since that night we had the dinner at Mama's. Joyce's idea was to set up a talent pool, then find out where each person's strengths best fit our company's needs.

According to her, a number of people would fall by the wayside, because some people performed much poorer than you would expect, just from talking with them, after forming a good first impression. She said the opposite was also true, and the most important thing would be to have some structured way to put these recruited individuals to the test, before we got too committed to having them be part of our upper management team.

She told me that she thought Emily and Shirley both had plenty of talent, intelligence, and ambition, enough to qualify them to be recruited. She said Brenda didn't have enough ambition for business, and that she would always prefer to stay at home, providing the comfortable nest for the rest of us to come back to.

I thought Joyce might resent my insistence on maintaining real control by having power over all the stock, but she said that was a good idea, because it would make her be always aware that she wasn't the final authority. I thought it was funny that Joyce would be worried about herself being corrupted because of having too much power.

Back in Lawrence, we were all having to adjust to managing our new living conditions. Eight children, all still in diapers, required around the clock supervision. Joyce was beginning to campaign for us to add a giant play room behind the house, insisting that we would need it for later, when the children were able to get around by themselves, and be more active. She told me I wouldn't be able to hear myself think, much less concentrate, with all the children running around down stairs when I was trying to get some work done.

In Ridgeline, Mama's and Joyce's plans for the remodeling of the downstairs area called for a large, well insulated (for sound) playroom, which would open out into a securely fenced off side yard. A side yard where she was having a whole playground setup put in for the children. Joyce was a real planner. Upstairs, she and Mama had borrowed liberally, from the group home housing plans, hoping to eliminate, and to make unnecessary, a lot of stair climbing, including installing a small laundry, upstairs, as well as the larger one downstairs.

Because of the construction that would be taking place, in our house in Ridgeline, we were going to limit our visits home on weekends. Mama had rented us a large house, where all of our possessions from Uncle Bunny's house were being stored. It wasn't large enough to house all of us though, and we didn't want to split up our family.

It was Hans who came up with the idea of all of us staying at Mama's. He put in two more king size beds in my bedroom, and added two new cribs, and a double bed to the nursery. He said Phil, Claire, and Thelma could sleep in Bea's old room, and Irma, Helen, and Connie were put in with the babies. I had four women sharing my bedroom, and having them all there together, in close proximity with each other, seemed to spur them on to some outrageous acts of wanton behavior. I was the main beneficiary.

Things were pretty much under control though, until the night Joyce came out of the bathroom, with her strap on dildo harness in place, and announced that she was ready for some fun. Shirley hid her face in the pillows, but Brenda jumped out of the bed she was sharing with Emily, and insisted that Joyce had to loan it to her some night when she wasn't using it.

I got up, as soon as I saw how Joyce was dressed, and went to throw the deadbolt on our bedroom door. I was looking at Shirley, who I thought was Joyce's intended victim, but instead, Joyce headed over to Brenda and Emily's bed. Brenda moved away from both of us, but not so far away that she wouldn't be able to watch us with Emily.

Emily's face was flushed scarlet by the time Joyce and I got in bed, one on each side of her. When I made a move to reach over for her, she started right in, resisting me fiercely. Surprisingly, for all her seeming resistance and reluctance, it was no trouble for me, grabbing both her arms, and restraining her hands up over her head. I had rolled over on one of her legs and was hoping that Joyce had the other. When I didn't get kneed in my kidney, I started feeling more confident about things. I knew that Emily would have put up a much better fight if she really didn't want us doing this.

It took only a few minutes before Emily gave up her resistance. She waited only long enough so that the other X's would understand that she wasn't strong enough to resist me. After she began to relax, she seemed to really welcome my attentions. I didn't know what Joyce was doing. I couldn't feel her doing anything. When I climbed on top of Emily, and mounted her, my dick slipped inside quite easily, making a loud squishing sound that caused Brenda to laugh.

At some point, Joyce started to join in, and by then, Emily had shed most, if not all, of her earlier inhibitions.

I noticed that Shirley had come up by the bed, and was watching, fascinated, as Joyce moved up behind Emily when I'd rolled us over, so that she was now on top. Emily came as soon as Joyce entered her from behind. I was really glad that I had held both her wrists tightly behind her back. While all this was going on with us, I watched as Brenda began stalking Shirley.

Brenda moved over closer to Shirley and started in by asking her questions, and making little comments to her, as they both watched what Joyce and I were doing to Emily. After that, I was kind of busy myself, and I more or less lost all track of what Shirley and Brenda were doing.

Fifteen minutes later, when Emily rolled off and away from me, I saw Shirley and Brenda on Shirley's bed, with Shirley busy eating out Brenda. This was the first time in a long time that those two had done anything like that together. Of all the girls, Shirley was the one least interested in doing solo girl things with the others.

Joyce had gone into the bathroom before Emily and I had stopped, right after Emily told her the dildo was starting to hurt her. When she came out again, I was watching Shirley going to town on Brenda's pussy. Joyce moved in behind Shirley and put her recently cleaned dildo, straight up inside Shirley's pussy, and began a slow, steady, in and out motion.

Shirley didn't bother to turn around to look at who was doing that to her. I watched for another minute before getting up and heading for a quick shower. I intended to join the other three on Shirley's bed.

Emily joined me, after a minute or two, and told me that she thought Joyce was starting to get very weird about sex. I told her that she probably just got carried away by all five us being together in the same room. Emily seemed very responsive to me when I applied soap to her body, and I spent a long time shampooing and massaging her hair and scalp.

Sometimes, after an intensely physical session, Emily would become very mellow. It was my favorite time to be with her. This was one of those times. She asked to go back to bed with me, and just be cuddled. I was happy to oblige her.

That's what we did, passing by Shirley's bed where Joyce was busy eating out Shirley, and Brenda was trying to figure out how to readjust the straps on Joyce's dildo harness. Later that night, when Brenda tried to come to bed with us, I told her that Emily and I wanted to be alone. She didn't like it, but she did turn away and go back to the other bed, where Shirley and Joyce had reversed their positions.

After that night, Joyce didn't bring the strap on into play again. I knew a large part of the reason for this restraint was the fact that she didn't like me wanting to spend the whole night alone with Emily like I had.

I hadn't tried to stop her from using the strap on, but I didn't want to encourage her to be using it indiscriminately either. The next morning, we were all quieter with each other, and after breakfast, we all went our separate ways. I think some were worried that we might have taken things beyond some of the other's comfort zones. I didn't believe that, but I did think having the audience might have inhibited all the girls, except for Joyce.

On Sunday, Mama, Shirley, Dad and I played a round of golf together. I suggested to the ladies that we play from the white tees, and they play from the red. Mostly, I did that so that Dad and I could ride together in the same cart.

I spent most of the time we had between shots, explaining how I planned to manage the business after I took over for him. Her asked me quite a few questions, and seemed satisfied with the answers I was able to give him. Dad had always believed it was people who made a business successful. If he had a weakness in business, it was that he found it difficult to let others handle things by themselves. He had a need to oversee everything.

"This sounds a lot like Bunny's old mentoring idea, Kenny. It was an idea he had from when we first got to be friends. This was before he suddenly decided he didn't want to take over the company for Senior any more. His sudden decision to not do that always puzzled me. I asked him about it a hundred times, over the years, but he would just say he didn't want to end up like Senior. They were fighting at the time, mostly about Bunny wanting to be with Georgia."

"Mama asked him to step aside, so you could take over the business for her father."

"No, this was Bunny's decision. He made it long before the time I first began courting Bertie."

"No it wasn't. You and Uncle Bunny were still freshmen when she asked him to let you take his place. She knew then that she wanted you as her husband. Bunny wrote about that. It's in his journals."