Chapter 18

Steve

It was already six thirty when I looked at the clock. Today was Saturday, but I could hear noises and people moving around in the kitchen.

I did my bathroom stuff and walked out to find what looked like most of Chuck's household in the kitchen. Chuck and Lisa were peeling potatoes, some pregnant women were working with dough for some kind of treat, and Gina and Mesa were making some paper thin pancakes and wrapping them around cream cheese and fruit. I wanted to try one right then. While I watched, the three new mothers put their babies down and were now filling the kitchen as well. Frieda told Chuck and Lisa, "Will you two get out of here? I know you are a good cook, Chuck, but we've planned this for the whole week."

Chuck and Lisa filled up their coffee mugs and came out to the patio with me. Glenda was sitting at her usual table, smiling at the activity in the kitchen. Tiny and Ruth came in, and after we caught our breath from seeing literally all of Ruth, Tiny was grinning as he asked, "Okay, who wants some liquid refreshment this morning? I know I'm ready."

Tiny began making Bloody Marys and had to stop every four or five for a gulp of his own before making more as people arrived on the patio. I was watching as I knew Tiny was mentally counting heads as people came in. At one of the big game tables were the twelve motor shop people. Shawna, Charlie, and their kids had not shown up yet. Chuck's musician friends were not here, as they probably played until two in the morning or later. The bunch didn't usually show up until lunch. Even Giovanni joined Chuck and the rest of the men having one of our breakfast specialties.

As seven o'clock neared, platters of food began appearing on the tables. The fragrant smells from the kitchen had everyone salivating. The crowd stopped milling around and filled the tables, with some spill over on the game tables.

The breakfast cannelloni were delicious. The girls had made a dozen coffee cakes in a variety of flavors. Along with those specialties, there were bacon, sausage, biscuits, potatoes, and eggs. No one should go hungry this morning, I thought.

I checked Donny out to see if he liked breakfast as much as the other meals. His plate was heaping as he concentrated on eating all of the good food.

As everyone finished, pairs and groups headed off to do something special on their day off. Tiny said that he, Ruth, Nancy, and Henry were taking the catamaran out fishing. He said they might even stay out overnight as the boat was so comfortable. The motor building people showed their gear head mentality as they said they needed to finish up their funny car dragster entry for an upcoming local race. I had heard they were building something, but I wondered who was going to drive it. That thing could be a coffin in a heartbeat.

While I was looking at everyone, I thought to myself, »Today would be a great day to go sailing.« Mercy and Missy came out of the house with huge grins. Mercy hugged me and said, "Yeah, let's go sailing."

Those two were always in my head.

Several people heard her and were asking, "Can we go with you? Me too! Us too!"

Sue grinned at me and suggested, "Let's let the kids get their motocross and music lessons done and we'll go out this afternoon. We can see who wants to stay overnight. If there are enough, we'll make it an overnighter."

While Sue took a poll and got the kids ready to play on the motorcycles, I checked the weather. What I saw determined we would not go out today. There was a Gulf squall coming from the northwest that looked pretty serious. I went to find Sue and Mercy to advise them. They instantly had long faces, but I told them, "We can take off early tomorrow morning and stay late. That should take care of everyone's desire to go sailing."

Chuck came over and asked, "Do you really want to go sailing with that line coming through? I warned Tiny and Henry about it, but they seemed determined to go fishing and stay out overnight."

After saying that, I hoped Tiny and Henry had sense enough to come in if it turned bad, I asked Chuck, "What are you going to be up to today?"

He said, "I have some tentative plans for the island resorts that I want to look over. We're supposed to get with the Dutchmen on Wednesday or Thursday to go over what we have been planning and any progress so far."

Chuck mentioned, "I think Lisa and I are going down to the range at the federal building. Cap is staying open on Saturdays and closed on Mondays now. If you want to come with us, come. Any of your women who want to shoot, have them come, too. Cap has range loads for just about everything in a handgun, so you don't have to buy expensive rounds to practice."

That created a stir, as several of my women and several of Chuck's wanted to shoot. Chuck called Cap, the range officer, on the speakerphone to ask if he could handle a large group today. He told Chuck, "If you don't come, I'm going to shut down early. A couple of FBI types already came in, and I've been daydreaming since."

When the motocross practice was over and the kids were off to their Saturday music lessons, Chuck and I loaded up two of the Expeditions to go to the range. Chuck had talked about the range often, describing it in a way that I thought it would be a small, narrow, room with one or two firing stations. Instead, this was a professional range with ten separated firing stations and soundproof glass between the firing range and the waiting or lobby area. Chuck's women all had nine millimeter handguns of various makes, but mostly Beretta and Smith and Wesson. My women all had nines of various makes, except for Mercy, who came with her new forty caliber Glock. I had an old military Colt forty-five that the gun dealer had reworked to near match quality and the .44 magnum that Hap had given me so many years ago.

Everyone cycled through the range while wearing eye and ear protection. Cap had a very unique conveyor just in front of the station that collected the ejected brass that fell and took it all to a sorting machine. The sorter could separate nine millimeter, forty caliber, and forty-five caliber casings into three separate bins to be used for reloading. I found out it could also separate thirty-two, thirty-eight, and a variety of rifle caliber shell casings. Any casings that found their way into the firing station booth were picked up and tossed onto the conveyor.

When we were all finished firing as much as we wanted, Cap challenged Jan and Chuck. He said, "You two may have some competition. I was watching Lisa and she has real talent. How about you three go through the combat handgun course a couple of times to see who the champ is this week?"

Jan was all for it, as was Lisa. Chuck tried to keep it from happening, but everyone else in our group prodded him into competing with the girls.

The first round was to become familiar with the positions and the pop up decision targets. Jan was first and quickly finished with a near perfect score. Lisa followed with almost the exact same score. Chuck began, and it became instantly apparent his time would be a lot faster and his hits were exact. When he finished with the three, ten round magazines, Lisa whacked Chuck on the shoulder, "You are so bad. You are always showing me up on a range."

Jan said, "Not to worry, our times will be that much better now that we've both had a practice run. Chuck usually chokes when he goes through the second time around."

Cap just laughed at Jan's sharking as the three prepared to do the course one more time. This time they wanted Chuck to go first so they had a time to beat. He grinned at me when he entered the range and set up at the first position. The bell rang and targets began popping up. These were all in a different order than the first time around. Cap explained that the targets popped up in a computer selected random order for each combat shoot so no one would know what the next target would be.

Chuck's thirty rounds seemed as if they were all from the same magazine and not three different ones. Chuck's time was awesome, he had not shot any friendlies, and his hits were all in the kill zone.

Jan was next and did almost as well, but had one dead friendly. Lisa was next and was perfect on targets and hits, but her time was way off from Chuck's.

Jan was scoffing at Chuck, "I should have been practicing more. There is no way you can beat me almost every time."

Lisa told Jan, "You know he does get some realistic practice from time to time, and we did just do a couple of evenings at a service range."

I was fascinated that we were with three of the best shooters I have ever seen. After we all used the cleaning station and were prepared to leave, Chuck was trying to have Cap charge him for the several hundred rounds we had used. Cap said, "Naw, you haven't been down here for a long time. Lisa has an allotment and Jan has been slowing down with her new agency position now. She hasn't been to a competition for months. With you guys not using the range much, your office staff has not been down much either, so I'm way under budget right now."

We all thanked the man for letting us have some fun at the range. He assured us we were welcome most Saturdays and for us to call when we wanted to come.

Chuck was happy to have had the opportunity to show us his range. He took the time to take us up to his office where Wanda gave us a tour. We stopped in at the station and almost caught the duty deputy napping. He laughed, "When it's as dead as it is today, with absolutely no activity happening, it's tough on attention spans."

Chuck suggested he look at the new releases of the training videos as it would help him at his next review. He nodded and began sorting through them as we left.

We had a nice lunch at home and split up for some honey-do chores around our individual places. As Chuck and family left, Lisa was suggesting time together in the studio.

I needed to clean up the beer refrigerator. I disconnected all of the tubing that went to the drain in the floor to wash it out. I next took the lines loose from the keg and cleaned those as they become coated with something from the beer. Once the wonderful beer box was done, I worked on cleaning the grills. There was some burned out charcoal in the natural grill, and the gas grill heat shield needed scrubbing. That chore didn't take long, so I went to find one of the women to see what else needed to be done.

I found Juanita in the laundry room. She told me that most of the women had gone shopping and wouldn't be back for a while. She said there was a fluorescent tube out over the pool table, so I went to replace that. When I finished, it looked like the table needed brushing, so I swept it before using the vacuum with the special edging tools to get it perfectly clean. As I put the cover back over the table, Missy came into the room and over to me. She hugged me while I was straightening the table cover and helped with the last tug.

Missy asked me, "Could you look at something in my room for me? It's something I'm sure you can fix."

Duh, I'm so gullible. As soon as we entered her bedroom and the door was closed, Missy wrapped herself around me and gave me a really good kiss. This had the gears quickly going and we ended up on her bed, mostly stripped, but very well connected and satisfied. Missy kissed me and said, "You know, you really do need to keep Beth and me in a better mood. It's not anything bad if you love us too. You know we both love you, and none of your ladies really mind if we get some of your attention, so you need to find time for us."

We cleaned up and were out on the patio enjoying a Saturday afternoon drink, when Tiny and Henry came in. Tiny said, "It's too damned rough out there. I thought we were going to capsize a couple of times. Those waves must have been at least twenty feet."

Henry said, "We'll have to talk to Magellan about that. The boat is supposed to able to handle gale force winds and seas. I'm going to call the Coast Guard to see if they have any estimates of what the seas were."

While Henry was making the call, Tiny drew a beer and turned the TV on to the Saturday Nationwide car races. The first thing he said was, "Wow, Gene's cars are one, two, and three. That's the first time I've see him do that."

Tiny explained, "The girls, Sandy and Mandy, just had us bill Gene for the new setups on his cars they completed this past week. It looks like they paid off. Sandy and Mandy are going to be busy as soon as Gene begins bragging about them again."

Henry came back from the phone with a fresh beer, "The Coast Guard said this was the worst for the year, and the only estimates they have made, are of seas that were over thirty feet, with some swells exceeding that."

I said to the two, "I'm glad you came in rather than having to go find you out there. Did you guys act like good boaters and put on life jackets?"

Tiny said, "As soon as the seas began picking up, I made sure that Ruth and Nancy were protected. Henry and I put ours on as it got rough, and Henry got all of our emergency gear out when it got scary. We would have made it if we capsized, but it wouldn't have been much fun."

The squall began hitting us here in the park after being cloudy and windy for an hour or so. The wind was driving the rain almost sideways as it blew through the park. We heard a tree limb crack, but couldn't see where the sound came from. We sat on the patio watching the storm until it began diminishing. The three of us got the mops and buckets out to pick up the rain water that had blown through the screen. That took nearly an hour, but the floor sparkled with the forced mopping job we did.

People began coming in for the late Saturday afternoon gab sessions and companionship. As soon as the rain totally stopped, the kids came running back to the patio, saying they had been stranded at the recreation center with their guitar teacher for a couple of hours.

I asked, "Isn't your lesson in the late morning?"

CJ told me, "Yes Sir, but our teacher brought his wife, who is as good as he is, so we went back after lunch for some extra instruction. You saw them; they were eating breakfast with some of Chuck's ladies."

I felt bad; I didn't realize we had visitors. There were too many people to try to remember.

The kids began playing some board games, with Lizzy and Bonita disappearing into the living room to play instruments in there. Bonita has told me that Lizzy is becoming a very good piano player, as well as getting pretty good with her guitar. I was thinking how nice it was to have two kids so interested in music.

I was also thinking that this was a pretty boring Saturday until the ladies came home. There were more than just Sue, Mercy, Kathy, Mickey, Gio, and Beth. Several of Chuck's women that had not gone to the range this morning were with them, along with a few of our other friends. All in all, there were three big SUV loads of women who had gone out mall shopping. Tiny, Henry, older boys and I were all commandeered into hauling in bags and bags of clothes and miscellaneous things they had purchased.

It was interesting that Donny and Gerry had gone with the mass of women, and were happily putting their purchases on a table. When Donny came over to draw a beer, Gerry was with him, sticking her hand out trying to show off a little. There was a new ring on her finger that she said was her new friendship ring from Donny. "He asked me if I would be his friend for life last night, and we went to get this to seal the deal."

When I asked if Donny got a friendship ring too, Gerry merrily said, "I got him a collar and leash so he won't stray." She hugged the big man and told us, "I'm keeping this big 'un."

I had seen their interaction, but I guess I had missed how close they were getting. I wonder how that was going to work out at the R&D center. I'll have to ask Dennis about that.

Donny stayed with the men as the women compared their purchases. Gerry came over to tell Donny, "I'm taking what we bought home to put it away. Be sure to ask Steve about what we talked about."

When the cute girl left us, Donny grinned at me.

"Okay, Donny, what do you need to know?"

The huge man said, "There are a couple of things. First though is that Gerry told me that you guys have had several weddings here. She said you all put up a big tent, like some of the Friday parties, and have an altar and everything. Could the two of us get married here? Gerry says you guys are her only real family, and mine will load up the pickup, hook up the camper, and come to see me anywhere. They love to travel."

I jokingly asked, "Is your dad the same size as you?"

The big man smiled, "Naw, he's a shrimp, probably only about six three or four. Mom isn't very big at all. I wondered how the two got together to make us kids, but I think Gerry has shown me. We kinda' jumped the gun on the benefits of marriage. We didn't wait."

Tiny said, "You name the date, and we'll make it happen. All of us would be proud to have another of our family get married out here."

Donny grinned and asked, "That brings me my other problem. I'm just too damned big for most of these trailer houses. I need to either have one built for me or to just have a house big enough for me built somewhere. If the doors at work were not extra tall, I'd have to bend over to get through them. I have to duck going into the test rooms, but the other doors are tall enough. I don't hit my head on the seven foot doors and they are wide enough for me."

I told Donny, "You're not fat, so you might not be as wide as you think."

Donny said, "I know how wide I am as I had to fly up to a convention in Chicago that the school sent the grad students to attend. I couldn't fit in the seat, and they had to rearrange people to give me two seats. On the way back, they upgraded me to a first class seat as they are a lot bigger. They told me that I would have to reserve two coach seats the next time I flew. That's fine, but my knees don't fit either, so I know I'm bigger and wider than most people."

Henry suggested, "There's a manufactured home dealer down the highway. You could go down there and ask some questions. If you don't want to do that, we could probably help you build a place up on the street where Abe, Phil, and Terrell live."

Donny said, "I'm making good money here, but Gerry and I need to be keeping some back for school right now. Grad school can get expensive."

Tiny's head came up at that exclamation, "Donny, is Gerry paying for her school? Did you already pay for the semester?"

Donny acted funny, "Yeah, we both paid our fees. We are saving and making sure we'll have more than enough for our last semester."

Tiny said, "You know we have a tuition program. It's not even a tuition assistance deal. We pay for you to get smart. Anytime an S&S employee goes to a higher level school, the company picks up all expenses for it. That's all fees, books, and even meals while you're at school. We know that if we do that, better educated people will not only benefit the company, but also make them even more loyal."

Donny looked at me, "Is that so? If we can get that paid off, we could go see that guy for a custom trailer house."

Henry corrected, "I'll have you know, these are not trailers, but manufactured homes."

Donny grinned, "You're right, that's the truth, manufactured homes with wheels."

Tiny said, "Let's go down there now. With the bad weather, the guy might be ready to really wheel and deal. What do you say, want to go now?"

Donny said, "I know I'm not married yet, but don't you think I should have Gerry help me with this type of decision?"

All of the other men around grinned at Donny. I said, "You'll survive, Donny. You have the right attitude to be a good or even great husband. Always include them for a decision, unless it's a surprise you know they can live with and like."

When Gerry came back, Donny told her about the tuition assistance, and that Tiny had offered to take them to a manufactured home location down the road.

The three, along with Ruth, left to go look at manufactured homes. I hope the couple could find something and that we have room for it out here at the park. I would really enjoy having them as neighbors.

Henry said, "Marty is going to hit you up to have either Moleson or him go down to Costa Rica to talk to that guy, Diego. He says they need to get some kind of computer program set up so they can share information between the two locations. Marty has already cornered Santana Flowers to see if he can put a software package together that can be worked with to include Mark on the islands, Diego in Limon, and us up here. You don't have a problem using Sandy to do that for Chuck's group do you?"

"Good idea, Henry. Chuck needs all of our help to get his projects over the initial humps. If I know Chuck, he'll be pushing a lot of buttons to get this island project moving faster."

Henry was smiling, "I get that impression. Chuck seems so laid back until he goes into turbo mode, then he's doing a dozen things at once. I think it's a trip the way he begins having everyone doing so many things at once that would be impossible for twice as many people to get done. Of course, he's doing as much, if not more, himself."