I nodded as I chewed a bite of apple. “I wanted to make sure which side won. I’d hate to find out I was rooting for the wrong side all these years.”
Rafe popped up. “General Herkimer stayed in the house!”
“Really? General Who?”
“General Herkimer! After the Battle of Oriskany!”
I nodded in understanding. The farmhouse was at least a couple hundred years old, and in dilapidated condition almost the entire time. I remembered vaguely that Herkimer died of wounds after the battle. “Did he die here, too?”
“That would be cool!” came from Rafe.
Marilyn said, “Yuck!”
I smiled at her and nodded towards her brother. “Boys!”
“Very funny.”
“Come on, are you going to show me around? I want to know all about trailers.”
“HOMES! They’re homes, not trailers,” said Harriet.
Yeah, Harriet, I know. We used to call it the T-word, sort of like the F-word and the N-word. I spent enough time in the business to call them any damn thing I wanted to. “Yes, ma’am.” I leaned over to whisper directly into Marilyn’s ear. “Trailer, trailer, trailer.”
She gave me an elbow to the ribs, and whispered back, “Behave!” I just grinned at her. When she was done with her cereal, she put her bowl in the sink, and grabbed my hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
I grabbed another couple of apples and stuck them in my pockets, and followed her out the side door. She was already describing anything and everything in sight. It was a pleasure to hear her talk. She loved her family, even though she wasn’t totally in love with the trailer business. I was the one who ended up working there full time; she never became more than a gofer.
In most ways, this was because of Big Bob. Women were second class to men. He was a very traditional sort of father and businessman. It was very curious, in a way. He often hired women for sales positions, which were the highest paid positions in the company, but it was because women were better at the touchy-feely sorts of things in house hunting. He never once promoted a woman to a management position, and his own daughters never rose higher than part-time secretary. Marilyn’s jobs were cleaning lady, trailer escort, secretary, and general gofer. Sarah and Miriam understood this immediately, and it was why they went to school and never got into the business. Ruth never had any choice; nobody else would ever employ her.
I will point out that his sons, the second generation to own the company, never had this problem. We frequently had women in various management positions. Big Bob didn’t like that, but after he sold it to us, he didn’t get a vote.
Marilyn led me on a tour of the facility. The office was a metal sided double-wide that had seen better days. There was a gigantic warehouse full of parts. There were about a dozen or so trailer homes of various sizes, and another couple of dozen used trailers further back, and to one side were three double-wide trailers. It took me back in time. These homes were state of the art in the trailer business at the time. Lefleur’s had a reputation for only carrying high end trailers, and the brand names were like a time machine for me.
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!