Chapter 13

I didn't have long to wait before I was confronted by a very upset Anita. From her wild eyed and angry look, I assumed she'd come to find me straight away, after being told by Tina about the proposal that had been made.

"You're crazy, you know that?" Typical opening, one you would expect from her. I was knee deep in muck, attempting to find the source of an underground water leak. I'd been digging holes and following a damp path towards where the problem might be.

"Don't start up with me while I'm trying to work, Anita. What we have to talk about isn't anything I'd care to discuss out here in the fields. I can see you're upset, so, maybe it would be a good idea for you to go somewhere and try to calm down before you get into this with me."

"You can't possibly think any of us are really going to go along with this insane idea of yours?"

"Either do what I've asked, or else get your ass off my land. I'm sick and tired of you not thinking any of the rules apply to you."

I watched her stomping away, her wanting me to think her only emotion was that anger. I knew that there was fear in there too, fighting to find some way to avoid doing what I was insisting on, while still somehow managing not to have Tina and the rest of them lose everything they had already gotten from Rob and me. I respected Anita, and marvelled at the strong will she had always shown. Tina might not have the will to put up a fight over all this, but Anita surely would. The problem she was going to have would be with shoring up the resolve of her sister and all their cousins.

When I finally located and repaired the water line leak, a broken PVC coupling joint is what it turned out to be, it was almost four o'clock, and I was covered in mud, from head to toe. I went over to the equipment shed and found Raul talking to one of the ag chemical salesmen who were forever stopping by to see if we needed anything they were selling. I stood there for a minute while the two of them finished their business. When Raul was done, I asked him to set up one of the high pressure hoses and spray me, so I could get the worst of the mud off me before I started tracking any of it into the house. Getting sprayed like that, with cold water, was uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as I'd have been if Maria ever caught me coming into the house with all that muck and grime on me.

Inside, I made straight for my bedroom and a nice, relaxing, hot shower. Tina was upstairs when I got there.

"Did you talk to Anita yet, Kyle? She said she was going to go see you and take care of what we talked about."

"Nice try, Tina, but it won't work. I told you to handle getting all the details settled with the rest of them. If Anita tries to take over, the whole deal is off, and we'll go back to plan "B", which none of you will end up liking. This isn't something you can step aside from, or have Anita take over for you. We wouldn't be in this fix, if you and all your cousins didn't always let Anita do all your thinking for you. She thinks she can get me to back off with her usual tactics, but it won't work this time. I'm hurt, and I'm very angry at what I've been able to figure out. You can't just run around making people love you, so they'll end up wanting to give you everything you've always wanted. You can't just take, without ever needing to give anything back."

"Anita says she isn't ever going to let herself be passed around, from one guy to another. She said she'd leave first. I've been thinking that it would be better if I just stopped having sleep over's. I could be here every night. That was what you really wanted anyway, right?"

"What I really wanted, what I thought I had, was a wife who loved me like a normal wife would. Not a woman who only likes other women, one who only pretended to love me in order to get me to marry her, so I would take care of her for the rest of her life. We can't ever go back to how it was, because how it was, never was real. Our whole time together was all fake, a part of this scheming plan you and Anita had come up with to strengthen the hold you two already had over me. Now that I know what you did, there isn't any way I'd ever agree to going back and living with the sham mockery you've made of our marriage."

"Anita told me you wouldn't really go through with punishing everyone just because you've gotten it into your head that I didn't ever love you."

"Try me, Tina. You don't realize how close you are to being thrown off the farm right now. I feel like everyone is laughing at me, all because you couldn't see anything wrong in tricking me into thinking you really loved me so I'd marry you. The only way I'm going to be able to live with what happened is if I do something like I proposed to you before. If I can't have that, I'm going to have to look for other ways to get back at you and Anita for what you've done to me, and for what you were trying to do to Rob with Connie."

Rob and I went ahead with our plans to build the tune up room. It became much easier when Rob found a modular office building at a bankruptcy sale over in Victorville. It had been used by an RV dealership as a sales office before they fell victim to a weak economy and high diesel and gas prices. It was a little bit larger, overall, than we had been thinking about, at twenty four by thirty six, but it was already fitted out with a finished interior, insulated walls, electrical wiring, and had its own plumbing fixtures set up for a full bathroom, and with a small kitchen type sink next to a built in breakfast nook. We needed to connect it in with the septic system from the main house, but I was told that wouldn't present any big problems.

Our "off/off" harvest had come and gone. We'd gotten fifty five thousand pounds of nuts, with very few culls, and a good ratio of tops to premiums. With expenses somewhat reduced, as well as the nut prices themselves, we'd ended up taking a slight loss from farming operations. This small loss was more than made up for by the money we received from the machine shop payment. With an "on/on" year coming, and the first forty acres of the Geary property ready to give us its first yield the following year, I was still feeling comfortable about how things stood.

Rob and I had a meeting and decided to buy up the modular building and do whatever needed to be done to turn it into the tune up room we'd been planning to build. Rob said it should be called tune up shop now, because there would be more than one service bay, because the interior fixtures came with enough walls to put three twelve by twelve rooms on one side of the building while leaving a six by twelve bathroom on the other side and an open area that was twelve by thirty, although the end away from the bathroom contained the sink and the breakfast nook area.

By the time Tina was through furnishing and decorating, we'd ended up spending almost forty five thousand dollars for everything. This was almost five times what we'd originally been thinking about spending. When it was completed, it looked like a regular home with a large living room, but no kitchen. We needed to leave a three foot wide space open, as a hallway for people to have easy access to the different bedrooms. Even so, it looked very nice inside. When it was all finished, I had the two sets of keys, and the entry door, which was one of those sliding glass ones, was closed and locked. Rob and I had completed our part of the proposal, now it was up to the women to decide what they were going to do.

In the month since Tina and I had talked about her not being able to turn things over to Anita, a few things had changed. She was spending every night in my bed, and we were having sex whenever I indicated any interest to her. Anita, having been warned by Tina, had kept her distance from me.

During the decorating stage of the project I often noticed Theresa and Elena stopping by for an hour or two when some of the other cousins were there too, presumably to check on the progress of what they were still calling the recreation room. I was nearly certain that there were tune up's being done in there, especially after all three beds were delivered, set up, with new linen and pillows being used to make them up. I let it go, because I knew it would make it that much more frustrating when I locked the building up, and refused anyone access.

"Kyle, can I get a set of those keys for the recreation room? Connie and I want to measure the window in front of the sink, because she wants to make some curtains to cover up those plastic Venetian blinds we have there now." Tina had come out to find me as I walked around the area where we were having some drainage problems. For some reason, water was collecting in this one small area, instead of getting soaked into the soil like you'd normally expect it to. Even Lupe couldn't figure out why something like this should suddenly become a problem for us. Curious about it, Lupe wanted to borrow a skip loader and dig his way down to find out why it was happening.

"How long do you expect to take with this measuring?"

"I'm not sure. I'll give you back the keys as soon as we're done."

"I'll let you have a set of keys as soon as you've finished getting your part of the proposal set up. That window doesn't need any curtains, if no one is using the building."

"Connie isn't busy with anything else right now, and it would be nice to get those curtains up before people start using it."

"Tina, no one is going to be going in the tune up shop until after you do exactly what I told you. Get it through your head that this is a trade we're making here. It isn't something I'm doing for you because I love you, or because I want you to be happy. If you want me to solve any of your problems, you're going to have to solve mine first."

"Connie doesn't want to have to sleep with you and Rob both. She'll sleep with Rob, but not with you. Anita told me she won't be part of any deal with you or Rob. Alicia is afraid. Emay is mad, because you said you don't want her, and she feels like she's being excluded. This is a big mess, Kyle and I don't know what to do to give you what you tell me you want."

Tina was just beginning to gain some weight. She was three and a half months pregnant now, and looking more beautiful than ever. Sometimes, it was all I could do, to look at her and not start crying. She was so lovely, and it really bothered me that she could never honestly return the love I felt for her. I was doing my best to go back to thinking of her as just an ornament, but I wasn't close to being there yet.

"Tell Emay I said she is welcome to participate if she wants to. Tell Anita she needs to come see me so I can pay her off for this week's work. Tell her she has a week, starting with today, to make arrangements to get her ass off this farm. If you see Lupe on your way back, ask him to come over here so we can talk about this damn drainage problem."

I turned away from her after telling her all this and went back to staring at the ten foot wide, two inch deep puddle. I'd been standing out there for an hour already, and the water hadn't drained away at all. I couldn't figure out any reason why that should be.

Five minutes later, Lupe and Raul stopped by. The three of us stood there, shaking our heads and kicking sand into that damn puddle. None of us could figure out why it should suddenly just appear there, fourteen years after the trees all around it had been planted. Why here, why now?

"Kyle, Maria ask, what you do that new little house you build?"

Lupe asked me this just as he stuck his booted foot right into the puddle. In a few seconds, he was standing out in the middle of the water, jumping up and down. I waited for him to finish with that bit of foolishness, before answering him, although I stepped back away from the splashes his feet were sending out in all directions.

Finally, after seeing that his jumping around wasn't serving much of a purpose, Lupe walked out of the puddle to stand near me. As soon as Lupe came out, Raul went in and started his own jumping around. This time it was jumping around along the edges of the puddle. What he was doing didn't seem to offer up any answers as to why the water was there either.

"I'm probably going to let the girls use it as a place to get together during the day. At night, I was thinking about letting a couple of the girls who share bedrooms over in the trailers sleep in there. I haven't decided for sure yet though. Why did Maria want you to ask me that? Does she have something she wanted to do?"

Lupe shrugged his shoulders. Lupe often did that, usually whenever he wanted you to press him for an answer he was reluctant to volunteer himself. I was used to his ways by then, and I knew he wanted me to press him for an answer.

"Come on Lupe, she must have had a reason for asking you to ask me. What was it?"

"Not for Maria. Theresa ask Maria ask you. Theresa wants go live one room in new house, with Ricardo. She no like be away from other girls on farm."

"I'm sorry, Lupe. I need to keep all my options open, at least until I finally decide what I'm going to do. Instead of digging all this out with a loader, why don't you go get the big post hole driller and see what happens if you bore four or five holes inside that puddle? Let me know what happens when you do it, okay? I'll go see Maria and tell her that I need to hold off on making any decision about Theresa and Ricky moving in until after I decide on the rest."

"Good idea use digger. I no remember it. Maybe work, we see."

An hour later Raul came to me to tell me all the water had drained off, immediately after the second boring hole was made. The digger only went down about four feet, so I knew, whatever the problem might be, it would be found close to the surface. That was good. If it kept happening, I'd bring in a bulldozer and scrape the top four feet away to find out what was causing it.

At four o'clock, Anita finally came to see me. I had wondered if she'd even bother. The fact that she had meant she wasn't happy being fired, or with being told to leave the farm.

"Tina told me what you said. I can't believe you're doing this, Kyle. You can't order me to sleep with you and your brother. That's sexual harassment. I'd get a lawyer and sue you."

"I never said a word to you about you needing to sleep with me, or with anyone else. What I told Tina was she needed to find a replacement for her, if she wanted to keep having her sleep over's. She's been staying home at night, so I guess that solves the problem. I'm letting you go now, because I warned you what would happen if I caught you causing trouble for me. Go see Lupe and tell him I said to pay you for the whole week. I'll give you another week to find a place for yourself somewhere else. You can go over to live at Lupe's or Raul's, if they'll have you, but I want you off my farm, for good, by this time next week. Don't you ever set one foot on my land again after you leave here either."

"You can't stop me from seeing my family."

"Go ahead and keep believing that if you want to. I'll have you arrested if you ever come back. I'll go to court and take out a restraining order if I need to. You just never seem willing to pay the consequences when you get caught doing evil. Keep on fighting me on this and you'll end up causing a lot of grief for a lot of the other members of your family too. If I have to, I'll get rid of everyone. I'll start out all over again, with honest people, this time."

"You're doing this to me because you know none of the others will be willing to fight you about what you're trying to do. You can't bully me into letting you get away with it."

"You are absolutely right about that. All the others think what I'm offering is a fair deal, under the circumstances. They still get to do whatever they want with each other, they just have to add an additional chore or two to what they've already been doing. Get up, have breakfast, help Maria with some light cleaning, have lunch, watch a couple hours of Spanish programming off the satellite, go fuck Rob, do a few loads of wash, go have supper, go to bed, then get tuned up by whichever girl's turn it is to be with them that night. What's so damn hard about that life? People are asked to do a lot more than that just to try to scratch out a bare subsistence living, asked all the time. Living here, they always have plenty of good food, access to hot and cold running water, clean clothes to wear, and a nice bed for them to sleep in at night, under a roof that doesn't leak, and in a place where they are protected from all predators."

"It's wrong to force people to have sex with you."

"It's wrong to pretend to love people, to get them to marry you, when all you really want is to get your hands on their money. You and Tina both did that, and neither of you seemed to have any problems with whether it might be wrong or not. Both ways you wind up fucking people you might not want to. At least with my way, no one is taking unfair advantage of the other, by pretending feelings they don't really have."

"Suppose I changed my mind and decided to try it your way for now?"

"Too late. To be honest, I think my kicking you off the farm is a better punishment than the other way would have been anyway. I'll be interested in how you explain to your uncles, and to all three of your aunts why I fired you and made you leave. If you decide to make me the bad guy, I won't have a bit of trouble telling all of them my side of things. Get away from me now, before I lose the rest of my temper, and do something I don't really want to do."

That night, while I was still very upset about how things were going, Tina really tried her best to get me calmed back down. When she gets like that, I'm putty in her hands. She does know how to be very soothing, whenever she chooses to be.

The next morning a very strange thing happened. Someone came to me and told me she really did love me, and asked me if she could take Tina's place. It was Tina's cousin, Esmerelda, the one everyone called Emay. In all honesty, I couldn't ever remember having spoken to the girl before. She'd been living on the farm for at least three years, and in all that time, we'd never once had a single conversation with each other. Now, suddenly, out of the blue, she comes running up to me and starts telling me that she loves me, and only wants to be with me, forever. To make matters even more strange, her Aunt Maria is standing five feet away from us the whole time this is all taking place. I wish I'd had a camera to take a picture of the expression on Maria's face while all this was happening.

As soon as I could get Emay to stop talking, I told her I needed to go out in the fields to check on that strange drainage problem. I told her she was welcome to walk with me, and we'd continue our conversation in a more private setting. Once outside, I asked her what had brought her to the point where she'd done what she had.

"Tina told me that you thought I was a lesbian, but I don't think I really am. So far, tune up's have been my only experience with sex, but I've always been interested in finding out about what the other would be like. When I dream about sex, or when I'm alone, you're the one I'm usually dreaming or thinking about. I've tried to keep those older girls away from both my sisters, especially Connie. She just goes ahead and does what everyone tells her she should do. They haven't been after Alicia as much as they have Connie. They keep trying to get Connie to go live with Rob, but they don't want her to really be with him, not like how married people should be."

"I'm aware of a lot of this, Emay, but I still don't understand why any of that would cause you to come to me like you just did. If you do love me, like you say, you've been hiding it pretty well. We've never even talked to each other before right now."

"I know."

"Did Tina tell you what I told her about it being okay for you to participate if you wanted to?"

"All the other girls have been talking about all the things you've been telling Tina you want them to do, with you, and with your brother. We're all talking about what just happened to Anita too. Tina isn't telling us why you've started acting so much differently than your usual self. Some of us think you just found out about the tune up's, and you're really mad at all of us."

"That isn't it, Emay. I've known about the tune up's for a lot longer than Tina and I have been married. What I didn't know about, until just recently, is that the tune up's are more important to Tina than I am, and that she only pretended to love me, so that I would marry her."