Chapter 24

As with every adversity he’d encountered since leaving the hospital, Tommy learned from his trip to Houston. He had answered the question he had about dealing with strangers, and he’d met some wonderful new friends. Sure, he’d had the misfortune to run into Roger Taylor, but his not being smart with people had nothing to do with what Taylor did. Heck, Taylor had even fooled Paloma, and his slender friend had known him for longer than a year. Ruth said that in bigger cities, more people got away with being bad like that because they were constantly meeting strangers to take advantage of. In Brantley, where everyone knew everyone else, that didn’t happen so much.

Connie learned some things from the trip too, and sat down with Ruth and Rita to discuss them Tuesday at lunch at the Bluebonnet Diner. Once they ordered, Connie spoke her piece.

“This past week made me realize how much Tommy means to me. I mean. I knew I loved him before, but I didn’t know exactly how empty my life would be without him.”

Connie paused and took a sip of her sweet tea. Rita nodded her understanding, so Connie pressed on.

“And you know I’m not the only one who feels that way. We women who love Tommy need to band together to protect him. But we need to do it in a way that we don’t smother him. And we also need to decide how our relationships with each other are going to work.”

Connie had expected Rita to figure something out, but it was Ruth Silverman, the quiet librarian, who spoke up first.

“We’ll make it work, I’ll see to that,” she said forcefully. “Next weekend, Tommy is going up to Dallas with Regina and Melody, so why don’t all of us women meet up in Lafayette and work this out?”

And that’s exactly what happened...

On the last Saturday in April of 1971, while Tommy was up in Dallas helping rid Regina and Melody of their pesky technical virginities, seven women met up at the Hotel Arcenaux dining room. The women were all wildly different from each other, yet all connected by their bond to Tommy.

Conchita Delgado, the beautiful and sultry actress, was one of the women, as was Ruth Silverman, the petite librarian. Becky Dierdorf, Tommy’s former tutor and now a nursing student in Dallas, had also made the trip from Brantley. Paloma (Susan Compton), the hippie American Indian, had driven in from Houston. Marie Arcenaux, the owner of the hotel and her cousin Desiree, a student at the University of Southwest Louisiana, were numbers five and six. The seventh woman was Rita Maude Fricke, Tommy’s adopted mother, and the only one at the table not in a sexual relationship with Tommy.

Ruth had suggested the meeting, so it seemed only natural for her to take charge of it.

Next to Becky Dierdorf, Tommy’s presence in her life had changed Ruth the most. His calm and unwavering support of her gave her the self-confidence to become more assertive. At work, the new attitude had bulldozed right through the bureaucrats of the state library board’s objections to her expansion plans. The result was not one, but two new bookmobiles and a five thousand square foot addition to the Brantley library building. At home, she’d shed her inhibitions and discovered that she had a kinky side when it came to being the dominant partner when with another woman.

Introductions were made all around, then Ruth took the floor.

“Ladies, most people would say that Thomas Bledsoe was about the luckiest guy on earth. How could he not be, with six of the finest women on the planet in love with him, and a mother as great as Rita?”

Ruth waited for the laughter to die down, then continued.

“But I think we are the really lucky ones, because we have him and we know that he loves and respects each of us completely, without reservations or expectations.

“With a couple of exceptions, we all don’t know each other very well yet, and an outsider looking at us would see six really different women. Yet from knowing Tommy as well as I do, I know we all have much in common. For one thing, I know we are all strong minded and independent women. For another, we aren’t that concerned how society views us. We are who we are instead of whom society wants us to be. Having said that, society is changing and more and more people are moving away from antiquated ideas, so what we have might become the norm in a few years. Whatever happens though, a relationship based on love and respect can’t be a bad thing.”

With so many exceptionally bright women working on it, they quickly came up with an agreement. Tommy was best off being right where he was, they decided. They would revolve around him in Brantley. The only major change to what was going on in Tommy’s life now, would be an expansion of his house to accommodate the women not living there, so they could move in. Ruth and Paloma’s trust funds would pay for the expansion.

Ruth had guessed that the women had so much in common, they would all become better than good friends, and she was absolutely correct. It was amazing how quickly they bonded. And given all that commonality, it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise that there were groups of them that related to each other separate from the group. Desi and Becky hit it off immediately, because they were the same age and because they both had thought themselves unattractive until they met Tommy. Rita and Marie as the oldest and mothers of grown children, had much to talk about, too.

Connie, Ruth and Paloma also had much in common, although they weren’t ready to talk about it in a public forum. Connie was tickled that Paloma was practically swooning over Ruth. Ruth saw the looks, and made a point of making plenty of eye contact and casually touched the tall woman every chance she got.

That night, the seven of them dressed up and met at Boudreau and Charlene’s Bar and Grill to continue their bonding in a strictly social setting. Charlene and Desiree pushed two tables together and the women sat around and talked. As they became comfortable with each other, each of them told the group what they wanted in a relationship with Tommy. There were some surprises.

For instance, Paloma was moving permanently to Brantley to be with them as soon as she finished the two courses she was attending. She was going to help Connie with her dude ranch idea.

Becky Dierdorf planned on moving to the ranch also. She was scheduled to complete the hospital registered nurse program and take the licensing exam at the end of June. Becky was crazy in love with Tommy, and was giddy with the idea that all these other women thought it wonderful that she felt that way. Her big problem was finding a job near Brantley. Connie told her not to worry about it, because she would need a person with medical training at her dude ranch. Becky would be perfect for the job, because she was an excellent horse woman, and could do double duty as a riding instructor.

Desiree planned on visiting for a month, and both she and Marie hoped Tommy could come spend a week or two in Lafayette with them.

The group split up at eleven. Marie and Rita headed out together in Marie’s Bonneville, towards Marie’s house on the Bayou Laveau. Marie had some things to tell Rita in private; chief among them, the fact that Rita was going to be a grandmother in about six months. Becky and Desiree stayed at the roadhouse, yakking. They were amazed at how similar their experiences with men had been. They were also thrilled to have found a best friend.

Connie, Ruth and Paloma headed back to the hotel, but they weren’t leaving just so they could talk. Ruth made that clear when she pushed Paloma into the backseat of Connie’s Caddy and slid in behind her. As Connie pulled out of the parking lot, Ruth crawled into Paloma’s lap, grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her mouth down for a blistering kiss. Paloma moaned in lust when Ruth broke the kiss by jerking the tall woman’s head back until they were eye to eye.

“I think I’m going to keep you,” Ruthie growled.

Paloma’s eye lids fluttered and she shivered.

“I’d like that ... a lot,” she whispered huskily.

When Connie spent that wild Friday night with Paloma, she’d fantasized about Ruth, Paloma and her being together, but the reality was ten times better. Ruth seemed to know exactly which buttons of Paloma’s to push, and Paloma eagerly did whatever the small librarian demanded. Hell, for that matter, so did Connie.

When the women parted ways Sunday morning, they were a family. As they said their tearful goodbyes in front of the hotel, they vowed that they would all get together at least twice a year.

Tommy returned from his long weekend in Dallas on Monday night. He’d had a great time with Mel and Gina, but he was happy to be home. Melody and Regina were his friends, and he was more than glad to help them experience sex with a man before they started college; but because he did not have that special connection with them, it wasn’t as satisfying for him. Tommy and both girls knew it was a one time thing.

After all the excitement in April, Tommy’s life settled down into a routine that suited him just fine. He worked, tended his goats, took care of his women, and on Sundays, he hosted the special needs kids from his Sunday school class. That was enough for him.

While Tommy basked in his simple life, the people around him seemed to explode into a frenzy of activity.

Connie moved her dude ranch forward quickly during the month of May. The road between her spread and Tommy’s was completed and the new gates installed. Pablo Luna had refurbished the bunk house into four, two man rooms, and a single room for the ranch foreman. He also subcontracted a plumber to install two modern bathrooms. Connie had furnished and decorated the four guest rooms in the bunk house and reconfigured the main ranch house so that she had an additional three guestrooms and a nice suite. Then she turned her attention to upgrading the stables and sprucing up the corrals that flanked it.

In town, Brantley Farm and Ranch Center was doing better than Harold’s wildest expectations. Business was so brisk, he had eight full-time employees now, plus Bucky Grimes and another part time high school student. Harold was in the process of expanding the business yet again by building a rental center so farmers and ranchers could rent equipment they couldn’t afford to buy. Harold’s vision of providing farmers and ranchers a one stop place that met all their needs was coming to fruition.

Ruth was also busy that month as she hired an architect to design a new house around Tommy’s existing one. Tommy went along with her expansion plans, because she let him think he was financing the new digs with a home improvement loan from Brantley Savings and Loan. Even though Ruth secretly backed the loan, Tommy could have afforded it anyway, what with the money his one-third interest in the expanded feed store was generating.

The remodel was centered on a huge master suite with a cavernous walk-in closet, a large bathroom with three sinks, and a separate shower big enough for six people. The bedroom would be twenty-five feet by twenty feet, so it could house the double king-sized bed Connie had ordered from a custom furniture builder in San Angelo. The living room was growing by fifty percent, and the kitchen was doubling in size with all the latest modern conveniences installed. The outside of the house was receiving a brick façade and all new windows. Ruth was also having central air-conditioning and heat installed. French doors leading out to a new patio and pool were going into the expanded living room and the new master suite.

Paloma arrived with bag and baggage during the second week of June, and moved right into Tommy’s house and bed. She had been spending most weekends at the ranch anyway. Paloma’s two classes at Baylor were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she drove up Thursday night and went home Monday afternoon. Paloma had been working with Connie on the dude ranch during those visits, so when Connie took off for an acting gig in the middle of June, the conversion of the Happy Endings Ranch didn’t miss a beat.

Desiree arrived a week after Paloma. She would be staying with them for a couple of months before classes started in late August. Desiree moved into one of the spare bedrooms instead of Tommy’s room. She did that because she wasn’t yet comfortable about making love with an audience, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about sex with another woman. She wasn’t inherently against the idea, it was just something beyond her experience. She had to admit though, that when tiny self-assured Ruthie flirted with her, it made her heart beat a little faster.

Desiree turned out to have an affinity for dealing with Tommy’s goats, so she helped him tend them. She went with Tommy in July when he purchased another thirty nannies from the same breeder down in Edwards County. Including the kids birthed by the pregnant nannies he bought in February, Tommy’s herd now numbered sixty-one. Tommy was surprised that it didn’t take much more effort to raise sixty goats than it did for twenty.

The plans for the remodeling of Tommy’s house were ready by the time Paloma and Desiree moved in, and Ruth had hired the contractor her architect recommended. Construction began on the first of July. It was inconvenient living in the house while construction was going on all around them, but they managed.

The construction crews were the first people to glimpse the communal lifestyle Tommy lived, and his relationship with the women was a constant source of speculation to the workmen. Tommy and the women were careful to moderate displays of affection around the workers, but still, he lived with four attractive women and that was worth talking about.

Connie returned from Hollywood in mid July. She wouldn’t be needed at the studio lot again until it was time to do voiceovers and to film any rewritten scenes. Connie was excited about her role as a major supporting character in the Warner Brother’s film, because it was her first serious role for a major studio. That she received her biggest paycheck ever was icing on the cake. She won the role because of her strong performance in the Hammer Studio’s Dracula movie she filmed in England. The film opened in American theaters in May, and had been an instant success at the box office.