Most of the acreage was flat and empty. Eventually the operation would grow immensely. Two more warehouses would be built, along with a massive pole barn capable of storing homes inside it. The existing office building and farmhouse would be torn down and new office buildings would go up. It would continue growing until the Great Recession, at which point it would begin a long, slow, and painful decline. The company finally failed about a year after Marilyn died and I had gotten out of it completely, in 2021, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were finally shuttered and mortgage financing collapsed. I was lucky. Gabriel lost his house, and John committed suicide.
Maybe I could change that. I wasn't going to work for the company, but maybe I could change things. That would be a worthy goal for the future. I would have to give that some thought.
I pointed at a yellow metal double-wide out back, in a field. "What's that building for?"
Marilyn laughed. "That's where the boys live! Come on!"
Marilyn tugged my hand forward, but I stayed where I was and kept her from romping ahead. "Hold on, hun.", I said.
"What?"
"It's just ... listen, do me a favor and don't tell anybody about my family. Have you said anything to anybody about what happened when we were down there?"
"No! That was just too weird. Nobody would have understood."
How true, how true. "Okay, so don't let it out. I'm already enough of a shock to your parents. Let's not make it worse."
"I think you're being too critical of them.", she replied defensively.
I gave her a sad smile. "Your parents are good people, but I am not what they bargained for in a boyfriend for their daughter. They already don't like that I'm a soldier. Later today they're going to learn I'm not Catholic. Let them get used to me before we spring on them that I ran away from home as a teenager."
She looked up at me sadly and wrapped her arms around me. "I love you. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks."
I hugged her fiercely. "If that was all I had left in the world, it would be enough. Just humor me on this. It will all come out eventually. Just let me tell about it first, please?"
She looked like she was going to cry on my behalf. I just grinned down at her. "If I ran away from home and joined the circus, that must be the ring with the elephants out there.", I said, pointing at her brother's double-wide. "Let's go feed them some peanuts!"
"You're awful!" She tugged my hand and pulled me along.
I remembered the building, but not very well at its original purpose. The Lefleurs had a brilliant solution to the problem of how to house their gigantic brood in a farmhouse not equipped to hold them all. They had lots of empty land and the ability to get a big trailer at cost, so they built a four bedroom double-wide trailer out back of the sales lot and put the four oldest boys out there. Then, as each boy graduated from school and went out on his own, the next oldest boy would get moved out to the second house. Since this occurred at the same rate as new kids came along, the house population remained high but stable. Ultimately it became the service building.
Marilyn walked up to the front door and barged right in. I hoped none of her brothers were in a state of undress, but we walked into a small living room. I had been in the building innumerous times, but only once when it was still a house. I had completely forgotten the layout of the place. Four bedrooms, two baths, small kitchen, central living and dining rooms, no foyer, small laundry off the kitchen. Only Matthew and Mark were out there, and neither was naked in the living room. The place reminded me of a residence inhabited by teenage boys - it was messy and smelled of gym socks.
"What's up?", asked Matthew as he came out of his room.
I was just standing there in the doorway looking around, and Marilyn answered, "I was telling Carl how Dad put a place for you guys up out here and decided to show him."
"Yeah, we were really getting packed in down there, and then you came back.", he said.
"So where do you keep the beer and women?", I asked.
Marilyn gasped and smacked me in the arm. "There's no beer or women here!"
Both Matthew and Mark, who had now come out of his room, were grinning as she said this. I just shrugged good-naturedly and said, "How do you know? You don't live out back here."
"Because they don't!" Strong on emotion, weak on logic, that was my Marilyn!
I just held my hands up in an undecided sort of gesture. "You never know, babe, you never know!" Actually I did know. Matthew, for instance was incredibly straight laced, and John was pretty serious, too. (Luke, on the other hand was a party hound, and would do it if he could!) If anything like that were to occur, the chances their parents wouldn't hear about it were infinitesimal!
Luke and John came in and I asked them where they kept the beer, which got a nice discussion going, and then Marilyn and I left. She shook her finger at me. "Don't go giving them any ideas about beer and women!"
"Honey, they're teenaged guys. All they think about is beer and women!"
"No they don't! They're good boys!"
"Then they must belong to a different species of humans than the one I know about!" I grabbed her from behind and wrapped my arms around her. "I think about beer and women, or at least just one woman!"
"They're better behaved than you are!"
"Most humans are!" I decided to punish her for arguing with me, so I started tickling her.
Marilyn is extremely ticklish, and within seconds she was shrieking and trying to escape. She managed to squirm out of my reach and ran off towards one of the warehouses. I ran after her, which made her bolt in a different direction. I caught up to her and tickled her some more, and she kept running away. Eventually I managed to trap her in one of the corners of the warehouse. "Stay away from me!", she said with a warning tone.
"Oh, I can't do that. All I can think about is beer and women, remember, and there's no beer out here." I moved closer, and she tried to squeeze to my left, but I blocked that and moved in.
She was smiling, and said, "I'm not that kind of girl!"
"But I'm that kind of boy!" She moved the opposite direction and I blocked that path as well. By now I had her completely in the corner, with my arms planted on the walls, trapping her.
"Your father would have never done this with your mother!", she argued.
I laughed loudly at that. "Where do you think us three kids came from? The stork!" I moved even closer, so that I was pushing up against her. "I think we should go find an empty trailer."
Suddenly she got a very scared look to her eye, and tried to push me back. "That would be crazy! We'll get caught for sure!"
Yeah, we probably would be. You'd think that my experience when Jeana's parents caught us would have taught me a thing or two, but hormones are powerful things! "We can be quick!"
"My parents will kill us!"
"What a way to go!" I started kissing her.
Marilyn eagerly responded, but then she pushed me back. "No way are we doing anything in the homes or out here in the warehouse. You are going to just have to wait until tonight!"
"Okay, but tonight you'd better have taken your vitamins! It's going to be a long night!"
"I hope so!" We settled back down to making out. "I missed you so much!"