Chapter 71

The next morning at work, I called Cindy into my office, supposedly to discuss a small project I was asking her to handle for me. It involved looking into an access problem we were having with one of the small railway storage yards over in South Carolina.

The real reason I'd asked her to come see me was to let her know that Joyce had mentioned that she might want to fly up with me on my next visit home to Ridgeline.

I spent the first ten minutes with her outlining several possible temporary solutions she might decide to implement in order to get us increased access to the rail cars containing our Quick Snacks products. They were being stored on a back rail spur inside the rail yard, in a place where access was narrow and extremely limited. The product distribution procedure was just too cumbersome in the way it had been set up.

As things now stood, there were too many route drivers coming into an area too small to allow them to handle the task of loading up their trucks with all their daily product requirements. Our superintendent at the rail yard was now having to take care of handling the daily distribution of product from an unused lot just outside the gates of the rail facility. The lot's owner had made a complaint to the railroad about his property being used without his consent. When contacted by our man at the rail head, the lot's owner had refused to negotiate with us for our continued use of his property.

It was a question of the railroad not having enough space inside the yard to accommodate the growing number of route drivers needing their Quick Snacks product each day. When I felt confident that she had enough information to take care of this problem, I changed the topic to what I'd really wanted to see her about.

"I'm going up to Ridgeline Thursday morning. Joyce mentioned to me that you told her you might like to fly up for a short visit with me. If it isn't too late for you to change your current plans, you're welcome to fly up with me this weekend. We'd be flying back here early Sunday afternoon."

She tried to act surprised, but I could tell she'd been expecting my invitation. I had realized, almost from the very beginning, that Cindy knew she could get almost anything she wanted from me by appealing directly to Joyce. Back before I got sick, Cindy had often used Joyce as a kind of an advocate to get whatever she wanted from me when she was hesitant about asking me for it directly.

"Do you think I'll be able to be back here from South Carolina by Thursday morning? I know you wanted me to try to get this product flow problem handled immediately." From her smile, I felt confident she already knew it wouldn't take her more than a day to find a workable solution for that kind of problem.

The product superintendent himself had already suggested what I thought was a fine solution; us paying for cutting in a new entrance gate to the back of the spur area where our rail cars were stored on space leased from the railroad. All it would take was her contacting someone with the authority to authorize us to contract for the work, with the clear understanding that we would be underwriting all the costs of installing the gate. Cindy's only real task would be getting the manager of the rail facility to secure permission from the railway's home office. I could have handled it myself with a few phone calls, rather easily.

"Colin said there was enough room in the area behind where our rail cars are being stored to handle all the necessary loading. He says our problems would be solved if we could just get the railroad to let us put in a new gate behind there. We'd also have to clear and pave most of the area behind the spur where they've got our rail cars sitting. You might try calling the manager of the rail yard there and offering to pay all the expenses to put in the new entry gate. Tell him we'd also handle any costs involved in putting in a paved lot, one big enough so all the route drivers can drive up in the mornings and load up with their own individual daily product needs. If it comes down to a problem with us getting permission from the home office, have Joyce call over there and speak with whoever she knows has enough authority to give permission for us to do it. You might not even have to make a trip there at all."

"I'll get right on it this morning. What time are we leaving on Thursday?"

"I'd like to leave early. I'm going to be spending all of Thursday over at Shirley's house, with her and the kids. Depending on how that goes, we might all come over to the big house sometime Friday morning."

"Did Joyce tell you that I had asked to talk to the two of you together?"

"She mentioned something like that, but she said you didn't tell her why." I left it there for Cindy to either begin to explain what she wanted to talk to us about, or else to wait until the three of us all had a chance to sit down together. Cindy seemed undecided at first. She finally decided to wait to tell me.

"I better get to work making those phone calls. Is it okay if I come over to your house a little early so I can leave my car there while we're on our trip?" I told her that would be fine, and she got up and left. I went back to my trading.

I had scheduled a working lunch with Gene, Phil, and Larry later in the day. I was getting into the habit of going out regularly with my department heads, whenever I was at the plant, and having these working lunches. All of us seemed able to speak less guardedly when we were outside the office.

I had to eat anyway, and it seemed to me that the discussions we had during these lunches were always more relaxed and informal. We also tended to be able to get more accomplished without the constant distractions from our being available to be told of some minor disaster that was occurring. There were always things people thought required our immediate attention. I had found, if none of us were there when they occurred, they still managed to get handled just as well as they would have with our presence and input. I was trying to create a more independent work force anyway. This was something the Macklinson family hadn't particularly tended to encourage.

I was also aware that someone being invited to these working lunches was considered a sign of the invitee being currently in favor with me. I did nothing to disabuse anyone from having that notion.

We were having a discussion about the need for increased baking capacity for the Quick Snacks program during this particular lunch, and Phil came up with what I considered a novel solution, suggesting that we farm out some of our current production requirements to other bakeries who were operating below their full production capacity.

Phil was the first to admit not knowing how we could go about finding out who might be interested in adding our product runs to their own production schedules, but he did tell me he'd heard of this being done for smaller, private bakers, ones who had greater demand than their own small baking capacity could fulfill. He wasn't sure if it would be something that was economically feasible for us to try doing.

I remembered my father talking about how difficult the current economy was for our company, and for a lot of those other bakers we were providing grain to. Their problem was one of trying to stay afloat in markets that were too crowded with competition. It was difficult for any of them to maintain good profit margins when engaged in the cut throat pricing that was necessitated by the bitter competition facing them as they attempted to maintain their existing market share.

With our Quick Snacks program, we had the opposite problem. We needed more product, and we needed it quickly. It didn't appear to any of us sitting there in the restaurant that any of our new plants would start to come on line for us quickly enough for us to justify continuing to push for new convenience store accounts. We were already beginning to outsell our current maximum production capacity. It was causing us slight problems already, and it would soon become a critical problem, especially if we continued growing at our current pace.

I wondered if any of my father's friends would be interested in handling some of our overflow baking needs, just until we managed to increase production capacity enough to handle all of our own demand. It was certainly worth our while to investigate a little, to try to find out if something like that would be possible. The only other alternative would be to cut back on our current sales efforts. We could then slow down until we were able to produce enough new product to meet the increased demand our successful sales program was providing for us. I hated to do that. This was a time for us to expand our markets, not a time to even think about pulling back from the pace of our current growth.

Five minutes after I returned from lunch and had gotten back to my office, I had my father on the telephone. I mentioned Phil's idea to him, and he was immediately enthusiastic. He was extremely happy to have been given an idea for a possible solution to one of the problems he was most worried about. He was also pleased that the solution to his problem entailed him doing something that could help out several of his other business associates who were finding it almost impossible to operate in the black under such difficult business conditions. Being able to do a favor for friends, when doing it also helps you, is a fortunate circumstance. My father thought this situation rare enough that he wanted to savor it with me. My father discussed all the mutual benefits this could bring at some length with me. I finally managed to get him off the telephone long enough for him to make some phone calls of his own to determine whether Phil's idea was going to be feasible or not.

My Dad called me back a little before four o'clock to tell me that he had made arrangements to handle all of our excess product needs until our own production capacity was increased enough to allow us to once again take up all of our own baking functions. He mentioned that our costs for jobbing out this extra product would, of necessity, be somewhat higher than our own regular internal costs. He also mentioned this extra cost was nothing we couldn't easily absorb, while still managing to stay comfortably profitable. He said we could do this while continuing to maintain all our existing pricing formulas.

He also wanted me to thank Phil for his idea, and to reward him with some tangible expression of our gratitude and appreciation. He said he was going to express me down a check for ten thousand dollars, made out in favor of Phil, asking only that I make the presentation at some appropriate public ceremony. He hoped to encourage some of our other workers to volunteer solutions to these kinds of problems.

Just before I got ready to go home for the day, Cindy showed up in my office, telling me that everything had already been accepted by the railroad, and that Colin Dilgon, our product distribution superintendent at the rail yard, was already putting out bid requests for the gate construction, and for all the grading and paving work that would be needed. Preliminary cost estimates he'd given her indicated the whole thing was going to end up costing us a little more than sixty five thousand dollars. The work would probably be completed in less than a month. I did a quick bit of figuring that told me we'd recoup our costs in a matter of months. The new access would allow us to double the number of route people serviced at that railhead, letting us consolidate our presence in that area.

I congratulated her on a good day's work, asking her if she had enough left to do, either in the current mix of what she was working on, or with any pending projects. I wanted to keep her close by, but busy, until we finally left for Ridgeline on Thursday morning.

"I've been working on something, mostly on my own time, Kenny. It's an idea I had that Aunt Patricia and I have both been working on together. It's a sales idea for the Quick Snacks program. Can I tell you about it?"

As soon as I agreed to hear her idea, she went somewhere for a few minutes before returning with a box filled with notebooks and larger boards made up of some pie charts I recognized, and some other visual aids I hadn't ever seen before.

She was prepared, and I began to see at least part of the reason why she hadn't brought her idea to me any sooner. She had taken the time to put together some professional looking graphs and charts. This wasn't just a little idea she claimed to have been working on, this was a full blown presentation that she had crafted together and now planned to perform.

I had already known quite a bit about this program of hers. Billy Ray had accidentally come across several files someone had stored on the company computer. His curiosity aroused, he ended up copying them over to his own computer. He later printed them out and brought them over for me to look at.

Cindy had done a lot of general research into the demographic make up of all the small business owners of convenience markets within our general geographic area. I still didn't know why she had taken on such a task, but I felt certain I'd eventually find this out.

In the process of looking over some of the findings of her research, she had discovered that many of these small independent business owners were women. From this initial discovery, she had then conveniently developed a major new premise designed to exploit her findings. Not coincidently, this was a premise that would provide her with an opportunity to apply for a major career advancement. The premise, which I'm simplifying here, was that women trained for the specific purpose of selling to other women could produce sales results superior to what men had been able to produce. This was supposedly because they would be able to relate to other women a lot better than a male salesman could.

I didn't necessarily buy into her conclusions about that, but I couldn't argue with some of the figures her research was showing me. These were figures taken from her actual research data. She even had the raw data in the folders to prove she hadn't fudged on any of the numbers she'd come up with.

This research suggested very strongly that our company's marketing success with women owners was lagging well behind what it had been for stores in the same geographical area that were owned either by individual men, or by male dominated corporations. There could be no doubt about this conclusion. I'd rechecked some of her raw data myself. We were definitely doing poorly in marketing to convenience outlets owned and operated by women.

Her plan was to put together sales teams made up exclusively of women, all specially trained to pitch our product lines to these women owners. Naturally, she wanted to be the person in charge of this program. Initially, she wanted us to hire and train a sales force of one hundred women to perform this specialized function.

The thing that had immediately caught my eye was the amount of information Cindy had been able to glean from private databases that contained only public record information. To me, it was simply amazing the amount of information that was now available to anyone who was willing to pay a very reasonable fee to secure it.

I knew, immediately, that the information Cindy had already shown she had at her disposal, before any single sales call had been made, was much more comprehensive than what was then being developed by any of our other sales teams. They were all essentially cold calling on the stores as the primary method of their normal sales routine. Cindy's people would have a distinct advantage, just by knowing each store owner's name, age, sex, address, and phone contact information.

I let Cindy tell me all about her program idea, pretending to not have any previous knowledge of the work she'd already put into it. She made a strong presentation, right up until the point where I asked her how much she thought it would cost us to hire, train and provide vehicles for this army of women she said she wanted to set loose around the country.

"I thought we could set it up and have them all out in the field for about two hundred thousand."

"How much do you think one hundred fully equipped delivery vans are going to cost us? What about insurance and travel expenses? We'd be fortunate if we could lease everything we needed, and still be able to put these women out on the road for anything less than a million dollars, Cindy."

She seemed taken aback by the amount of money it would take, but had none of her own data available that would contradict the estimate I'd just quoted her.

I had already gotten some preliminary fleet lease figures for another hundred vehicles, and had given our fleet specialist orders to go ahead and let this additional contract. The vehicles were already being painted and reconfigured to meet our standard Quick Snacks company specifications.

Our insurance people had already assured me that, given reasonable prior driving record histories, adding another hundred drivers to our existing vehicle insurance policy wouldn't be any problem. From a logistical support standpoint, Cindy's program would have pretty smooth sailing. I had already transferred funds from my own personal grain trading account into a separate account I was opening just for this program.

All I was really worried about, after calling and talking to Ron Jones, was whether we'd be able to find one hundred women who were available, and willing to begin training for this program. We needed women who wanted to travel by van, all across the country, and who were also willing to sign on for a career that in the past had been almost totally dominated by men. The idea of traveling saleswomen hadn't yet reached our portion of the food services industry. It would be a radical departure for us. I liked the whole concept, a lot.

"We could scale the program back, maybe start out with only twenty five women. Could we do that for two hundred and fifty thousand?" Cindy appeared overwhelmed by the cost estimate I'd quoted her. Her first reaction was to try to scale her idea down to a size she thought might seem more reasonable to me. In business, this usually isn't a good idea. There is something called 'the economy's of scale', which generally means the more of something you buy, the less expensive it costs for each unit bought. Even starting with a hundred women, our scale savings would only be slight. At twenty five, they would be non-existent.

This wasn't what I had wanted, or expected, to hear from her. She should have been more willing to fight for her original idea. She'd already put in enough work to be able to justify why she needed to start out with a big enough sales force to make an immediate and significant sales impact. If she were to be given this sales division to run, she would need to produce large enough sales numbers to justify going to all the trouble and expense of creating it. Twenty five sales people wouldn't have enough impact on sales to justify the women having their own sales division, or the salary Cindy hoped to be given for running it. Fifty women wouldn't have been enough for that.

"Why bother creating something separate that was going to be so small? With only twenty five new saleswomen, we'd be much further ahead simply integrating them into our other sales teams. Someone could still feed them all the leads available on stores having women owners. I do like seeing all this information you were able to develop on these convenience store owners. That was good thinking, Cindy. We could use more information like this for all our people out in the field. Just knowing the owner's name and contact information would give our people in the field a huge competitive advantage."

"Thank you, Kenny. That was Aunt Pat's idea. She has a friend who got us all the data we've used to work with. I really think this idea would pay off for us in the long run. Sooner or later, someone else is going to have the same idea, and then we'll have to compete with them."

"Was this what you were coming up to Ridgeline to talk to Joyce and me about? This is something she might be more interested in then I would. She's always telling me we need to start hiring more women."

"No, I wanted to talk to you guys about something more personal. About all of us, and what I could do to help us all get back to like we were before you got sick. I've seen you changing, Kenny, and I wanted to see if both of you would give me another chance to come back?"

"You know that Joyce and I still haven't settled a lot of our differences? I've been putting most of my energy into trying to get back with her. It isn't as easy as she and I had hoped it would be."

"You told me you were going to spend time with Shirley on this trip too. That must mean you've decided to do more than just try to get back with Joyce. I'm not talking about us getting everything settled right away anyway. I mostly wanted to find out if there was anything I could do to help get it started for me and the other wives to come back."

This was probably the first time since I'd been released from the clinic that Cindy had referred to herself as one of my wives.

"Shirley and I have children together. She also stayed with the family during the whole time while I was sick. She deserves some special consideration."

"She does, but I don't? Is that what you mean? I guess that's fair. I'm not saying you have to give me this special treatment. All I'm asking for is for the two of you to consider me when it does get to be the right time."

"I wasn't making that particular comparison, but now that you bring it up yourself, I guess that's fair for you to say about Shirley. I wasn't looking at it that way. I know Joyce has really missed you, because she's made that very clear to me. She might be willing to put you ahead of others, but that would be because she's thinking about this tremendous attraction she has for you. Let's face it too, her great love for you."

"Are you saying that you don't love me too?" Cindy made her little girl's pouting face. She was expert in knowing how to appeal to people in certain kinds of situations. She was beginning to pull out all the stops now, and ramping herself up, into what, for her, was a high gear.

"I guess I still do, but I can't say I love you more than any of my other wives. I also look at things like loyalty or commitment differently than Joyce does. Joyce already told me that she never blamed you for staying down in Birmingham to be close to your family. She didn't see it as you abandoning all of us."

"I don't see it like that either, Kenny. I care for Joyce, and for Shirley, probably more than I care for any of the other wives, but it was always you that meant the most to me. It was you that first attracted me to your family. I'm not saying that all those other wives weren't important for me when I was deciding how I felt about the overall package. For me though, you were always the main attraction. This was because of how you were with all your other wives. You were so secure in your relationships with them, and all of them were so filled with their love for you. I can't explain it, but this definitely added to the attraction I immediately felt for you. When I first saw how all the other wives acted around you, it drew me to you, almost irresistibly so."

"We haven't had a history of being able to stay together too well ever since I first came back down here, Cindy. I'm not saying that any of that was necessarily your fault. Like I said to you earlier though, my main focus right now has to be on repairing my relationship with Joyce. If she hadn't insisted that I try to work things out this soon with Shirley, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be going to see her over at her house on Thursday. I hope things will work out well, and that, eventually, all of us will get back together again. I think Joyce will be the one who primarily decides how this is going to work. Once she's satisfied that she and I are safely back together, and that I've gotten back with Shirley, she'll probably tell me what she believes I should do next."

"Joyce still loves me, Kenny, and you tell me you love me also. Since I still love both of you too, I've begun to wonder why none of us ever seem to talk or do anything else together outside of work? I'm not saying we all have to go back to living together right away, but is there any reason why the three of us can't be closer while all these other things are in the process of being worked on?"

"Are you talking about something besides you flying up with me for this visit we're talking about now? What exactly is it you're saying?"

"I'm saying that things have changed for me ever since you started becoming more relaxed again. Now, you seem more like you used to be before you got sick. Before, whenever we tried to get back together, you seemed nervous to me, anxious and too intense. It was too easy for you to get angry or upset. Now, whenever I'm around you, I keep seeing how you're changing. Because of seeing this change in you, I've really been wanting all of us to try to get back together again. I'm starting to miss the other wives too, especially Joyce and Shirley."

"Are you sure you aren't just saying all this because you're hoping to get Joyce and me to approve this idea of yours? I think it's a very good idea, I'll be honest with you, about that. Still, a million dollars is a lot of money to invest in something that isn't really a proven concept. There are also a lot of other ideas and programs ahead of yours, programs that have already been proven, that are just waiting for a time when money isn't so hard for us to come by. Joyce and I wouldn't want you doing anything with us if it was just because you were hoping that we'd approve your program afterwards. You shouldn't believe that you could jump ahead of any of those others, just because you were someone who'd slept with us."

"I wouldn't do it for that, Kenny. Give me some credit. I'm not trying to sleep my way into getting a promotion. How many times have I tried to get you to take me out since Christmas? Ten or so? I can't help it that we also happen to work together. My being around you now makes me think about what else I wish we could be doing again. We wouldn't even have to talk any business this weekend. It can just be a little relaxation holiday for the four of us."

"I think I should warn you before you get on my plane, that Joyce and I were talking about both of us being in bed with you for at least one of the nights you were visiting. When we do that, we sometimes get a little carried away with whoever it is we're ravishing together. I remember you were sometimes a little skittish about any sudden movements around you, especially in sexual situations. Joyce and I, when we get together like that, we tend to usually overpower our other partner, and then we simply take whatever we want from them."

"I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Do you think it would be more overpowering than the time I spent in bed with Eddie and Joyce together? They both had those contraptions they like to tie around themselves. It was different, but it didn't worry me or anything. I'm not as fragile as I used to be before I met all of you."

"Strap on dildos? Was that what you meant by contraptions?"

"I think that's what you call them. Anyway, whatever it is, I don't think I'd be worried about anything we did, if it was only us doing it. I think we could all have a good time. I could use some time away from here right now, too. Daddy and Uncle Larry are both being so childish about this competition thing they now have with each other. You need to do something to stop them before it breaks out into a real feud of some kind. Uncle Larry is really pushing things with Daddy."

"It isn't really a competition. I told Larry I'd look at how he does compared to how Gene does. They've both been going great though. I'm not sure I want to do anything to change whatever they've been doing. My job is made a lot easier by the work they've performed."

"Daddy's going to be furious if you end up giving Uncle Larry more money than you're giving him. They're both still upset about Kyle and Billy Ray. They probably don't even know how much you're paying Aunt Pat."

I had an urge to mention that I was considering giving her a nice raise soon too, but I held off. I didn't want to bring something like that up so soon after we'd been talking about our having sex together.

"Let's call Joyce and tell her that you're definitely coming up on Thursday. I know she was worried that you might not be able to make it on such short notice."

"I talked to her earlier, Kenny, about that loading space problem at the South Carolina rail yard. We talked about me coming up on Thursday. Shouldn't I have mentioned it to her?"

"Sure, no problem. I'll bet she was excited." Cindy just smiled. She was right, I didn't need to concern myself about exceeding her limits. Cindy had a firm grasp on what she wanted, and on what she was willing to do to get it. She was like her mother, ambitious to a fault.

When I got home from work, late in the afternoon on Wednesday, Cindy's car was sitting parked in front of my garage. I was surprised to see it there, and my first thought was that something had come up to change her plans about coming to Ridgeline with me. I remember thinking that Joyce was going to blame me for that. I found her sitting in my living room, watching some TV program. Apparently, Joyce had given her a house key that time she came down to Birmingham with me. The time she and Cindy had spent the one night together.