Chapter 58

April 1, 1980

Tim and Lily drove up the road. Tim knew that he had gone too far when he saw the steel bridge. There was almost no traffic on the road, so he did a U-turn right there on the highway. Coming back they found the dirt driveway to Benny’s property. Tim slowed down and turned onto it. There was a cattle guard across the drive so he didn’t have to deal with a gate. The cattle guard was new.

The posts of the barbed wire fence were wood tree limbs cut to size. The barbed wire was held on with staples or as Benny called them, u nails. The fence might seem weak, but the posts were actually pretty solid. That was how barbed wire fences had been built, ever since barbed wire had been introduced. It didn’t matter, there weren’t any cattle on the place.

They drove up the dirt road towards the tree line. The road went through the tree line leading to a smaller open field. There was a second tree line ahead of them and the road lead into it. At the end of the small strip of trees was an area with a house on it. The windows still had the little paper tags on them.

It was obviously a construction site. There were four pickup trucks parked around the building. There was a stack of two by fours to the side. You could hear a circular saw from around the back of the house.

“So are we going to have to move up here to finish it?” Lily asked.

“No. Benny hired a local contractor to do the work. The poor bastard had no idea how much Benny knew about construction. Benny has been making him redo things, to make sure it is done up to our standards.”

“How is he affording it?”

Tim looked over at her. With a tight feeling in his stomach, he answered, “Benny is a multi-millionaire.”

“Really? He doesn’t act like it.”

“He is,” Tim said.

“That sure doesn’t look like a mansion.”

“Benny doesn’t want a mansion.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Let’s get out and find Benny,” Tim said.

The exited the jeep. Tim held the door open for Woody who was more than willing to get out and run around. He took off across the field at a full run. Tim laughed and then called out for him to come back. Making a wide loop, Woody came charging back. He came up and sat beside Tim.

“Let’s go in the house.”

Lily followed behind him thinking about Benny. She really couldn’t believe that Benny was rich. He could have lorded that over Tim, but he didn’t. Then it dawned on her, Tim and Benny went into everything equally. If Benny was a millionaire, so was Tim. She came to a complete stop and stared at him. Woody, used to being around construction, found a nice out of the way place to lie down. He was just watching her.

“Benny! We’re here.”

“Great. I’m in the kitchen, Tim!”

Lily watched Tim make his way through the interior, pause to look over some detail. He just seemed so down to earth. After his story about having died in the distant future and coming back to his mid-teens, she had been watching closer. There was a maturity about him and Benny that was inconsistent with their age. Still, how could he be a millionaire?

She headed to the kitchen.

“Are you having any lucking finding a grumpy cook and gardener?”

“I have a line on a couple. They’re a little older than I thought I’d find.”

“How much older?”

“Nearing retirement age.”

“That might explain the grumpiness.”

“Actually, they’re a nice couple.”

“I thought the job ad read only grumpy people need apply.”

Tim laughed as did one of the nearby workers.

Smiling, Lily said, “Let them work for you for a week, and they’ll be plenty grumpy.”

All of the workers inside the house broke out laughing. Tim and Benny joined in. It was actually a moment worth remarking on. It was the first time she had ever joked about Benny like that.

“Seriously, you found a couple?”

“Yes. They’ll be ready to move in sometime in July.”

“I better get the builder started on the second house.”

“A second house?” Lily asked.

“For the grumpy couple to live in. They aren’t going to commute to here from the city.”

“I didn’t think about that.”

She looked around the kitchen. It was large with room for a breakfast table. They hadn’t installed any cabinets yet. Still, it was pretty easy to see where things would go, based on the plumbing and vents. It was a well planned kitchen. She looked out the window at the view. You could see the river from there. The cook was going to have a very nice view.

“Do you have the plans for it?”

“Of course, I do. It’s a nice little 1,200 square feet place.”

“That’s big.”

“Not really.”

“It seems kind of big for a servant’s house.”

“They’re not servants. They’re the cook and the gardener.”

She supposed it made sense in a ‘Benny and Tim’ kind of way. She figured they viewed them as caretakers rather than servants. She’d come to know Benny well enough to know that he occasionally got lost in his head, and might stay there for days. It wasn’t any kind of mental illness. He was just thinking.

The other day she had found that Benny and Dr. Kwan Gun were co-authoring a book on some area of mathematics called meta-theory. Benny had said it was a theory about theories. She had no idea what that meant, but the people on campus were making a big deal out of it. Benny was totally oblivious to the attention he was receiving. She would’ve been surprised if he had been otherwise.

Benny led them on a tour of the house. It was three bedrooms, a large study, a dining room, a living room, and a mud room off at the back of the house. It was kind of confusing because it had three bedrooms. Two of the bedrooms had bathrooms. There was a lot of closet space.

“Why three bedrooms?”

“One for me, one for you and Tim, and one for your kids. It’s for you to use when you come visit me,” Benny answered.

His matter of fact answer took her by surprise. Clearly he was thinking about Tim and her. It was kind of strange though to hear him talking about kids. She had barely gotten her head wrapped around getting married.

“Let’s go fishing,” Benny said.

“Fishing?”

“There’s all kinds of fish in the river.”

“No there aren’t,” one of the workers said.

“Yes, there are. There just aren’t very many of them,” another of the men countered.

“There’s some sunfish and catfish. You might occasionally get a bass.”

The first one said, “You’ll be lucky to catch one fish a month.”

Shocking Lily, Benny said, “The whole point of fishing is fishing. That doesn’t mean you catch fish, just that you try.”

“That’s true, too.”

With Lily holding hands with Tim, they headed to the river. Benny stopped at a small shed and pulled out three fishing poles. He handed them to Tim.

“I didn’t know if you like fishing, but I bought you a pole anyway.”

“Thank you, Benny. That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said.

Benny went back into the shed and pulled out three lawn chairs. He set them aside and pulled out a tackle box. He handed the tackle box to her to carry. It was pretty light with a nice handle which made it easy to carry. She’d never heard of the two of them going fishing, but they acted like it was something they did a lot. The chairs, poles, and tackle box were all brand new.

Tim held up one of the poles. “Hey, you remembered the kind I like.”

“Of course, I did. You used to wax poetical about that kind of reel.”

“I did not.”

“You did too.”

“Maybe a little.”

They laughed and slapped each other on the back. She’d seen lots of young men do that, but it was a little different. Then realized that it was more like two old men doing more of a gentle tap on the back. It was a subtle difference, but it was there.

Woody appeared to have found a rabbit and took off after it. The rabbit was faster, at least on the turns. Woody came trotting back acting like he had chased away something really dangerous. Lily rubbed him on the head and told him he was a good boy. They definitely needed protecting from the killer bunnies of Texas. At least, that was Woody’s opinion.

With Benny in lead, and her following him, Tim brought up the rear. They followed a path down to the river. They weren’t under the metal bridge, but it was nearby. One of the consequences of being that close to a bridge that there was a bit of trash on the shore. Benny led them away from the bridge to a very nice place where they set out the chairs. Woody had to check out all of the smells in the area. Once he was convinced that all was well, he took a seat near Tim’s chair.

Once they were all seated, Benny went through the tackle box. He held up a packet of hooks and little container with different compartments filled with lead weights of various sizes.

“We’ve got bobbers, too.”

“What about bait?”

“There is stink bait for catfish.”

“Great,” Tim said.

Tim took care of Lily’s fishing pole. Before she knew it, she was sitting there with a fishing pole in hand watching a bobber. Benny was next to get his line in the water. Tim was the last, but he had spent most of the time getting her fishing pole set up. Now there were three bobbers in water riding the little wavelets.

Lily asked, “So how much are you worth?”

Benny answered, “About 70 million.”

She dropped the fishing pole causing Woody to stand.

“Actually a little more than that,” Tim corrected.

She slowly picked up the pole. She didn’t say a word for at least five minutes. Tim and Benny were watching her out of the corners of their eyes, but making a production out of watching the bobbers. She was trying to process just how much money that was. After about four minutes she came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. A million, ten million, or seventy million it all became the same thing. It was enough to buy what you need and some things you didn’t. Benny and Tim weren’t going to buy anything they didn’t need. For that, neither would she.

Finally, she said, “Interesting.”

“Yes.”

“Benny, are you going to continue to go to school?”

“Yes,” Benny answered.

“You aren’t going to live here?”

“I’ll live here on the weekends, holidays, and summer. I’ll live in the other house for school.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

They sat there watching the bobbers. Nothing took the bait.

Benny said, “We should have brought something to drink.”

Lily said, “Yeah.”

“I am getting thirsty.”

Lily said, “I’m getting cold.”

She was wearing a heavy jacket, but it was slowly losing the battle of keeping her warm. The temperature was in the mid-sixties and getting warmer, but the wind was gusting to speeds that seemed to cut through her jacket.

“I am too.”

“Me three,” Tim said.

“I’d say it’s about time for us to head into the house.”

“How about a late lunch? We can head into town and grab a burger or something.”

Lily said, “I packed sandwiches, but they’re back in the jeep”

“Let’s pack up.”

It didn’t take too long to get the lines out of the water. After removing the stink bait, Benny put the hook into the cork handle and cranked the line to remove most of the slack. Tim was doing the same. Lily, watching them, repeated the process. She handed the pole to Tim and picked up the tackle box. They started walking back along the river to the path.

She stopped, picked up a stick, and waved it in front of Woody who immediately gave the stick his total attention. She threw it, and he took off after it. He returned with it. She had to wrestle him to get it back. She threw it again and he took off after it.

He was a real low maintenance dog. He was happy to just settle down beside them and only occasionally begged to be petted. He played nicely, had a tennis shoe which was his favorite chew toy, and slept at the drop of a hat. It was like he knew that Tim and Lily were going to get married. He thought both of them were members of his family.