Chapter 3

It was always busy on the farm. My parents had been unable to keep up with everything that had needed doing. Just the normal wear and tear and normal attrition had taken their toll on equipment and the entire farm infrastructure.

Anita seemed to have a nearly limitless panoply of cousins who lived nearby, and were somehow always free to come out to the farm to provide whatever expertise I needed.

Theresa and Anita had moved into the trailer while Lupe and Maria made their annual pilgrimage back to the old country. The next day I had a full construction crew tearing out walls and handling the work needed to turn my parent's old office into a nice bathroom and walk in closet. There were four of them on this construction crew, all men about my age, but well versed in all the necessary skills to convert my building ideas into reality.

I had ended up depositing forty three thousand dollars into Rob's trust account. That was a little more than half the net profits from the harvest. After the deposit had been taken care of, I felt free to start spending money on farm improvements.

The equipment shed needed quite a lot of work, including an almost total replacement of the back wall, and a complete new roof. I purchased a thirty by fifty foot steel building that was open on all four sides, except for the twelve foot beams supporting the roof. This was going to be used as my new sorting area, so I had my construction crew install a large amount of electric lighting all the way around the building's perimeter.

Between the downstairs remodel and all the other expenses for the equipment shed and the new sorting area, I ended up shelling out a little more than twenty five thousand dollars. It was a lot of money, but I felt comfortable with it, since I knew I was putting the money back in the farm. I was investing in my future.

It turned out that the downstairs bedroom only whetted my appetite for changing the configuration for other parts of the house. I ended up converting the three upstairs bedrooms to one large master suite, with two separate bedrooms, and a smaller sitting room that I'd planned on using for the new office.

I'd made a mistake when I contracted to have this work done without consulting with Anita first. I'd assumed that they would decide to share the new downstairs bedroom now that I'd put in the new large bathroom and the spacious closet. There was more than enough room down there now for two king sized beds placed side by side.

The girls held off moving back to the main house until after all the remodeling was completed. As soon as they completed their inspection, they told me they were taking the upstairs rooms for themselves.

"I thought Theresa was planning on moving into the trailer with her parents, as soon as the two of them get back from their vacation?"

"You thought wrong then. Theresa's been trying to find a way to get out from under Lupe and Maria's thumb for a few years now. This is her first good chance."

"I had my office moved upstairs. I don't want to go barging into your bedroom every time I need to work on the books or write out a check for something."

"You said I could pick where I wanted to stay, and I pick upstairs. I'll need the extra room up there if Tina ever comes to her senses and decides to make some changes in her life."

I decided not to make a bigger issue of it than I already had. I ended up having plenty of extra room in the downstairs bedroom to put in my office desk and chair, and all three of the filing cabinets I had for storing farm related paperwork. I bought one of those four phone systems with three of the handsets being the cordless slave units with their own charging system. We kept the master unit out in the kitchen, where the phone jack was. I had one phone on my office desk, another out in my living room, and the last I gave to Anita to put wherever she wanted it upstairs.

There was a little disturbance when Lupe and Maria got back from Mexico. I gathered that they were none too pleased with Theresa's new living accommodations. I stayed completely out of it, figuring that was strictly a matter for the family to sort out amongst themselves.

I had been carefully sidestepping every time Anita tried to have another discussion about where she and I stood as far as our personal situation was concerned. She got very frustrated when all I would admit to was liking her very much.

I was reaching a point where I felt comfortable about my prospects for making a go of the farm. All my life I'd been something of a slow starter. I tended to be cautious about nearly everything. With my priorities, I felt like I needed to be comfortable in my surroundings before I could spare the attention that having a social life demanded. I was slowly getting to that point though. I was even starting to focus on how I wanted to begin this new social relationship I had planned with Anita.

My planning ran into a snag when Anita and Theresa announced that they were driving down to San Diego together, to visit some family, and do some Christmas shopping along the way. There were no good shopping places on our side of Barstow, and Barstow didn't have much to offer in the way shopping either. Most people went either to the mall in Victorville, the outlet mall on the other side of Barstow, or down to Los Angeles to do any serious shopping for clothes or electronics. The I-15 corridor had a number of shopping opportunities also. The girls said they planned on taking a week to get everything done.

I had no problem with Anita taking the time off. This was a good time for her to do so. The trees didn't need any special care, and we weren't doing that much irrigating during the dormant season. There was nothing that needed doing that I couldn't take care of by myself.

Theresa's parents weren't as sanguine about her going off without adult supervision. By adult, they meant someone of their generation, someone who shared their same value system. Theresa was twenty four years old, and yet they treated her as if she were still a child. By the time the girls left in Anita's pickup, there were hurt feelings on both sides. I was happy that Lupe and Maria didn't seem to place any of the blame for this on me.

I was disturbed by something Anita had said to me right before she left.

"When I get back, Kyle, you better have some answers for me about where we stand. If you don't, I'm going to have to make some changes. If I do that, you probably aren't going to like them."

I knew a threat when I heard one. I also knew I'd have to make some changes in the strategy I'd been planning for getting our social relationship started. What I'd come up with was to ask her to take all her meals with me, in my kitchen, rather than the two of us going over to the trailer at mealtime.

I figured it would give us some private time to speak with each other, in a setting that had nothing to do with farm work. I had planned to make the topics of conversation personal in nature, so that we could each start learning about the other. She had seemed insistent on something that sounded a lot more advanced than what I'd had in mind.

I'd had some sexual experiences, both in high school, and in college. That had been different though, because my sexual partners and I had only been fooling around. One of the main reasons I'd shied away from getting personal with Anita was that I'd realized I was now past the age where I could go out and continue to play around.

I was a responsible adult now, and I expected my relationships to be ones that could easily lead to something that would be permanent. In my thoughts, I had been considering Anita to be wife material. Having a casual sexual encounter, no matter how enjoyable that might be, wasn't what I was seeking.

Anita had made it very clear, some months before, that she was ready to consider having a sexual relationship with me. From the things she'd said, she had some doubts about whether or not I could satisfy her needs in that arena. I had taken it, from what she said, that she didn't want to get too emotionally invested in someone until and unless they could put those fears of hers to rest.

Rob and I had both been lucky. From the time I was fourteen years old, and he was almost sixteen, we'd had the Trillum sisters as our close neighbors. Karen, Shelby, and Corrine Trillum were sisters. Karen, the oldest at sixteen, was also the most adventurous of the trio. Whatever Karen did, both her sisters wanted to follow in her footsteps.

Shelby was fifteen, and Corrine was fourteen, when Karen's attention turned to sex. For whatever reason, it seemed she just woke up one summer morning and decided the time was ripe for her to start experimenting with boys. When I say that Rob and I were lucky, it was because Karen decided that she wanted to begin her experimenting with the two of us.

We lived close to her, we were reasonably good looking, and neither of us had a girl friend at that time. Rob had broken up with his girlfriend a month before summer started, and I hadn't even started doing anything with girls at this time. I was interested, and had been masturbating for at least a year by then, but I hadn't overcome my sense of shyness yet. Rob wasn't shy, but like me, he was still very inexperienced with girls at the time.

Karen wasn't the coy type. Once she set her mind to something, she acted on it. She had set her sights on Rob and me, and she set out in immediate pursuit. I never asked her why she decided to start off with me rather than Rob, but I was very happy for the attention she started paying me. It took her less than two days to seek me out and seduce me. Not that I tried to resist her, you understand, just that it took that long for us to progress from initial hand holding and the attendant kissing, to our first unsteady foray into an actual act of intercourse.

Once she'd had her way with me, she cast me aside and went off in search of bigger game, namely my brother. She managed to corral him in a single day, but Rob was more mature and experienced than I'd been.

Within a week, Karen's sisters were both involved with Rob and me as well. It had been them insisting on being included, rather than anything Karen, Rob, or I had done. We spent that entire summer experimenting with the three sisters. At Karen's instigation, the five of us had to do everything she'd ever heard of together. She even tried to get Rob and I to fool around with each other, but we both balked at that.

I was an attentive student, and I tried to absorb everything I could about sex. I wanted to learn, and sensed that this was a wonderful opportunity for me to develop some skill sets that would serve me well in the coming years. Unlike my brother, who foolishly insisted that he needed to spend time playing baseball and other sports with his circle of male friends, I made myself available to the sisters for any time they wanted to play. I think I ended up spending at least twice the time with them that Rob did.

As soon as school started, the Trillum sisters dropped both Rob and I like we were bad habits, and never once looked back. All three became exceedingly popular with the "A list" crowd at the local high school and never seemed to have the time or inclination to do anything more with us. In a few short weeks the three girls were referred to as the "Thrill 'Em Sisters". Rob took this change in conditions far better than I did. He told me once that we were lucky to have been in the right place at the right time. Instead of being hurt or feeling bad about it ending, he told me I should be grateful for the summer I'd had.

It took me a year or so, but eventually I put everything into a proper perspective, and came around to his way of thinking. It was that one intense summer, and how it ended so abruptly, that caused me to adopt such a conservative attitude about social relationships. What I most feared now was that I'd lose Anita before we got to really know and understand each other. Letting her into the private portion of my life wouldn't be an easy thing for me to do.

To me, my being able to meet whatever performance standards she might have in a lover seemed easily accomplished. With the experience I'd gotten that summer with the Trillum sisters, I felt confident that I had the sexual technique I'd need to satisfy her physically. What I feared was the two of us being able to mesh in a workable way given the differences in how we seemed to value social structure. We seemed to be going about building our social relationship from different starting points. I wasn't sure I'd be able to adjust the way I'd come to look at things.

Anita and Theresa stayed away for the entire week. I had expected Anita to come to me right away, to have that conversation she'd alluded to before she left. Instead of her doing that, she seemed to be going out of her way to not be anywhere that the two of us might find ourselves alone together. I found this curious, but, chose not to read anything into it. I thought she'd get around to our having that discussion as soon as she was ready.

By the time I figured out that Anita was waiting to see whether I was going to approach her with the requested answers she had asked for, she had already decided that I was deliberately ignoring what she'd warned me about.

I wasn't aware that Anita had put herself forward again as being interested in dating someone, until, on her first Friday night back from the San Diego trip, a young Hispanic man drove out to the farm and picked her up for dinner and an evening of dancing over in Barstow.

I heard Maria and Theresa laughing together as Anita and her date drove away in his car. I guess the surprised expression on my face was funny to them, but I didn't find anything about this in the least bit amusing. After I figured out this was part of what she'd meant about her making changes and me not liking them, I decided that I was lucky that I hadn't made my own less aggressive intentions known to her before something like this occurred.

I wasn't a big fan of pressuring people, or of getting what I wanted by coercing someone into going along with my demands. There were only two ways to look at this. Either Anita had decided to give up on us becoming a couple, or else she was doing this to apply pressure in an attempt to get me moving in the direction she wanted.

As I stood out in my front yard watching her date's car heading off towards Barstow, neither way of looking at it provided me with any comfort. What did provide comfort is knowing I hadn't yet gotten started in making any personal commitments of my own towards her. I hadn't lost anything, and had no reason to be upset with her for making whatever choices she had made. There was nothing I needed to do, or any reason for me to react to what had happened. If it had been Theresa going out on a date, I wouldn't have thought anything about it. I'd treat Anita's dating the same way.

With that resolved in my head, I turned and went back inside my house. Theresa stayed over in the trailer with her parents, and I used the time by myself to work on a list of things I'd be needing at the start of the next growing season. I was aware that there were going to be fresh fertilizer and soil conditioning treatments that would need to be administered to the ground around the nut trees. I spent several hours calculating the amount of everything I'd need. Afterwards, seeing an approximate cost for it all, I decided to get on my laptop and surf the internet, looking for possible bulk purchasing deals.

I hadn't been able to find any meaningful savings by purchasing over the internet. Whatever savings I found were always offset by the delivery charges I'd need to pay. The only useful idea I'd managed to come up with was to contact the manager over at the co-op to see if I could piggy back on the much larger bulk purchase they'd be making. I was certain that they'd collectively pay a lot less per unit of everything than I'd be forced to pay on my own with my much smaller requirement.

I stayed up until a few minutes after eleven o'clock, which was an hour or so later than my usual time for going to bed. Anita was still not back from her date by the time I went off to bed. She hadn't come back by three the next morning either, which was the last time I remember looking at the clock on my night stand, before I finally went to sleep. By then, it was obvious to me that I'd need to do some recalculating about how I was going to handle this new development with Anita.

When I walked over to the trailer for my breakfast, at eight the following morning, Anita was seated, along with Lupe, Maria, and Theresa at the dining table. No one mentioned anything about the previous night's activities, or about where Anita had spent the night. I ate my breakfast the same way I normally did, thanking Maria for the good food before I got up and left the trailer. Anita got up right after I did and followed me out into the yard.

"Do you have anything you want to say to me about last night, Kyle?"

"Only that I hope you had a nice time. I worked up some figures for the soil amendments I need to get ordered. I'm going to stop over to see the co-op manager to find out if we can save anything by getting what we need through them."

"That's it? That's all you have to say, that you hope I had a nice time?"