All Novel Sweet
159
Uncle Ted was buying them all kinds of toys and taking them places with Mommy. And Mommy was so happy and smiling and laughing all the time. I suffered the torture of a thousand small cuts as I kept smiling for the kids as they innocently told me of all the good things they had done. I reached for the gift bags that I brought back from last month fiasco and waited with expectation to see the smiles on their faces. Steven picked through his and said that Uncle Ted had bought them both iPads and iPods.
The bottom of my heart dropped out as I realized I could never compete with Ted Jefferson on that level. Still I kept that frozen clown smile on my face as the social worker warned we only had five more minutes. I grabbed them both and held them and kept telling them I loved them, over and over and over until finally it was time for them to leave.
After they left I noticed Steven hadn’t taken his gift bag so I carried it with me. When I got outside I saw Carol’s gift bag lying on top of a trash receptacle where Stella had left it. I stared at it. I walked over and put Steven’s on top of Carol’s and walked to my truck for the drive back.
Month after month I would suffer the same ignoble fate as my children slowly slipped away from me. I started to sense an undercurrent of resentment by the kids being forced to visit with their father. The tighter I tried to hold on, the more they slipped away. Then came a visit where at the end Steven asked me for a favor. I smiled and told him sure. He told me that Ted had tickets to the University of Texas Longhorns game scheduled on the same day for the next month’s visit. Would I mind if he and Carol skipped next month’s visit?
How could he not see how he had ravaged me with that question? I stammered sure it was okay, the next visit we had they could tell me all about it. Steven reluctantly allowed me to hug him as they walked away.. It became easier and easier for Steven or Carol or both to let me know they preferred to be elsewhere rather than with me during the visits. As Carol told me when I tried to put up a resistance, “It’s not like you’re really our daddy anymore.”
I should have been livid. I should have been fucking livid. I should have been over the top, take no fucking prisoners livid. And all I felt was numb.
“Do you feel that way, Steven? Are you tired of me visiting?” Steven bowed his head and nodded yes.
Well that just left one last question to ask, “Do y’all want to stop with the visits?”
Now both my kids sunk their heads down and nodded yes.
I paused for a minute and neither kid would look me in the eyes.This text is © NôvelDrama/.Org.
“Okay, this will be the last visit. I’ll keep driving up in case either of you change your mind, but, I won’t expect y’all to be here. I wish you only knew how much I love both of you and how much I’m going to miss you.” I quietly said.
For the first and only time I left first. And wouldn’t you know it I bumped right into Stella outside waiting to pick up the kids. I could tell she was panicking being face to face with me, her damn court ordered 500 yards buffer zone not being worth a fuck to her in that instant. I just looked at her and said, “You won.” And then I walked off.
The wedding announcement was in all the local papers, my girl was a little bridesmaid and my son served as Ted’s best man. I contacted my lawyer for what I thought would be the last bit of representation and told him to file for reconsideration of the alimony and request the sale of our marital home.
Finally, the court sided with me and ended the alimony. Once we showed the marital home became a rental property, the court ordered that I be awarded the difference upon the sale of the house. Too fucking little, too fucking late.
I went to my trailer and celebrated with a week long drinking binge. I was nowhere near recovering when I heard a knock on my trailer door. As I opened the door empty beer cans cascaded down around the feet of Robert Lambert, my grandparents’ neighbor who gave me my first job in razing his old barn.
He looked at the sloppy mess I had become and asked if I could come by his house tomorrow. He had a business proposition for me. I told him I would and I sat mired in the remaining rubble throughout the trailer. I was disgusted with myself and I went and collected every can and then tidied up the trailer as best I could. Then I showered and shaved and made sure I had a change of clean clothes.
When I arrived at the appointed time, he held his hand out to me for a shake and I said, “I’m sorry about yesterday, Mr. Lambert”
He reminded me that he had told me to call him Robert as he led me inside. We went into his den where a woman sat on the couch leaning over to the coffee table. She was poring over a series of maps and then typing into a laptop computer.
I couldn’t help notice the austere behavior she projected. Her auburn hair was wrapped tightly in a bun. She was wearing large reading glasses and her face was scrunched in concentration. Her alabaster complexion and lack of makeup did not conceal her attractive features. I noticed she was unusually tall for a woman. I had the totally irrational thought of what it would be like to look into those vivid blue eyes straight on while kissing her.
As though to complete her struggle to appear unattractive, her torso was adorned with a baggy Texas A &M sweatshirt, and her jeans were worn and baggy. It was as though she didn’t give a damn about impressing anyone.
“Gayle, I want you to meet John Perry”
Gayle peered over her glasses and it was evident that I didn’t impress her. I went to shake her hand and I found myself as a source of disdain as I was captured in the laser beams of those deep blue eyes as she ignored my hand.
“Mr. Perry, would you excuse us?”
And not waiting for an answer she stormed out of the room with Robert Lambert quickly trailing after her. They retired into what appeared to be the kitchen and I became aware of an argument escalating by the minute. The noises were too muffled to make any sense out of until the very end when I heard the woman yell, “Why do we need him?” To which Robert replied, “Because I said so!”
When they came out it was apparent that though a truce may be in effect, a brush war could reignite any instant.
“John, I’m sorry for the interruption let me finish introducing you to my granddaughter, Gayle Lambert.”
Gayle gave a fleeting smile but the eyes did not match the smile as Robert continued, “Gayle is a recent graduate at Texas A & M in business agriculture and she came to me with some very interesting news. So I’m going to let Gayle take over now.”
“Mr. Perry, what do you know of Shreveport, Louisiana?”
“If you don’t mind why don’t you call me John. As to your question, not much, I know they have a racetrack at Bossier City and some casinos over there.”
“Let me rephrase the question Mr. Perry” she ignored my request to calling me by my first name, “Do you know anything about the history of Shreveport?”
“No, I don’t” I replied .
“Have you ever heard of Captain Henry Shreve, Mr. Perry?”
After studying on it, I said, “No, can’t say I have.”
“What about the Great Raft, Mr. Perry? Have you ever heard of it?”
I responded, “Wasn’t that the Kon Tiki boat that Thor what’s his name sailed?”
The woman rolled her eyes in exasperation at the response.
“No, Mr. Perry, close to 800 years ago a logjam formed on the Red River. For all those centuries, trees unearthed in the Red River continued to float down to become part of the logjam. At its apex the logjam stretched 150 miles upstream and became so thick that many streams and tributaries and lakes formed as a result of it. You could actually walk on the river for miles and never see water.
As you can imagine many of those trees over time lost their buoyancy and sank to the bottom of the Red River or whatever tributary it caught on at the logjam. And remember this went on for centuries.
Eventually, Captain Shreve was assigned the task of clearing the logjam and he eventually did so to make the Red River navigable. In thanks for doing so, the town of Shreveport was named for him.”
I interrupted, “That is a very interesting history lesson, ma’am, but, I understood this was a business meeting. So why is this important?”
“Mr. Perry, have you ever seen lumber made from water stained wood? It is exquisite and more importantly, expensive. And my grandfather and your grandparents are sitting on a gold mine.”
It slowly sunk in about my grandparents and Robert Lambert’s land abutting against the bank of the Red River. When you add all the tributaries and lakes as well as the wetlands there was no telling how much timber had been buried over the years. True, the Red River was constantly being dredged, but, that would be the main channel. Off to the sides, who knew what was lying in the murky deep?
“Okay, this sounds very intriguing, but, how do you propose to get to this gold?” I asked.
“That is where you and I come in John.” Robert interjected, “I will outlay the cash to purchase a large pontoon boat, complete with three winches. Gayle will map out the areas most likely to have sunken timbers, you will pilot, and dive on the timbers and hook the winch chains onto them. Once a timber is up, it will be cradled between the pontoons and be taken ashore. We will jury rig a crane to load the timbers onto a log truck to be transported to a sawmill built where I had the old barn you razed.