The Free Republic of Texas 2015 (7 page)

Morning came and Sing was still wrapped in my arms, but in the king sized bed in my room, I eased away and headed for the shower where she found me a few minutes later, it’s a good thing that hotels have plenty of hot water.

We ordered breakfast and when it arrived we sat on the small deck hanging on the side of the building about a mile up or so it seemed, we were both quiet but ate with one hand while holding hands.

After the waiter had cleared the mess away we sat with coffee and looked across the distance until I said “And what is Jody going to say about this”

She smiled the big smile and said “I had a talk with him the day before we planned the trip, told him how I felt, his only concern was that neither of us would get hurt, he didn’t know how you would feel what with your wife and baby, I told him not to worry because it would all work out, so he sent both of us to do this deal when I could have handled it alone”

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She was a very remarkable woman and very astute at least where I was concerned. I asked her where we stood in this, “ I’m not making demands Sam, if you want a little R&R as Dad said you had been into in the past then that’s what we have, if you want more , as I do then I guess we decide right now where we stand”

Talk about having the ball slammed into your court!! I did not even stop to take a breath, I just smiled and said I love you and have from day one, and I’ll leave it up to you if you want to be married to a gimpy old fart like me.

She looked at me a bit and said well, I’ll think about it ok? I said sure, she kinda wrinkled her brows and then smiled and said ok! I accept!! Just like that! I said well what happened to thinking about it? She said I’ve thought about it since day one, I was just tired of waiting for you to make a move so I made it for you!

We didn’t make it back home till the next afternoon, I took her shopping for a ring but she didn’t want a diamond, as she put it, we could buy a matched team of Clydesdales for what I was trying to spend on her, we settled on a nice pair of matching rings that were less then the tax on the one I wanted to buy her, very thrifty lady.

Arriving home I was a bit worried, but Jody came out and looked at us and burst out laughing and said for god’s sake I ain’t grabbing my shotgun!! Got anything to tell me?

Sing said yes we do, the buildings and the set up crew will be here in a month or so. Now it was my turn to laugh, she got him, so all smiling we headed to the porch that had become the boardroom, after we all had a glass of tea we told him everything, well most of it, he was very and truly happy for us both and showed it. He said he could never have asked for a better man for his daughter, but that if I ever called him pop he’d shoot me! While laughing I remembered that line form a movie.

As soon as Sing and I got to the basement we headed to our bedrooms, for me it was to put some of my life behind me before starting a new part of it. I sat for a moment looking at the pictures of my wife and baby and then started packing them away, I knew I couldn’t toss them in the trash but I also couldn’t start to live again with Sing and have them any place out in the open, so I packed them all away, and sealed the box very well, then I wrote out a letter stating that upon my death the box was to be burned unopened, placing the letter in an envelope I tapped it to the lid of the box, it would go into storage. It was very hard to do and left me sad but after a bit I felt like a weight had been lifted off of me and I knew I was doing the right thing.

After going thru everything in my room to make sure there wasn’t anything left that might cause Sing to feel like she had less then all of my attention I headed out to the basement Den/TV room and waited for Sing to come out, when she did I asked her if she wanted to move or should I, since my bed was king size, we decided that would be our room, she asked how I felt about her moving in right now before the wedding was a fact? So I picked her up laughing and carried her across the threshold and tossed her on the bed. She made a come here gesture but I said no way, get your butt up and let’s go see Jody, and we did!

After rounding up Jody we talked about everything concerning the coming construction phase, he said he had a thought while we were gone and that to stop so much talk about what we were doing we were going to put out the word to all the construction types that we were opening a school/home for troubled kids and that caring for livestock and gardening would be a part of the program to help them fit into life better, that would explain the dorm buildings and the third dorm with the bigger rooms were for the large staff that would be required for the operation of the place, Now that was a great cover story!

After talking business we talked about the wedding, I had assumed that Sing would want the usual type with all the trappings but was surprised to find out that things were not to be what I had thought….at all!!

Jody said Song was heading home and would arrive in 3 days, and that the wedding would take place by tribal tradition on the first night of the full moon in all it’s Pagan glory so to speak!

There would be guests but not a lot, Miss Ellie of course and the Jonas Brothers, John Quill, the Head Master from the school where the kids had lived and learned, and many more whom I had never heard of. 

And surprising me a great deal there would be at least two dozen members of Sings clan who had all made it to America, with help I suspected from a man I was coming to admire a great deal.

I told them both I was going to just let them deal with it and I would show up at the proper time and place, which was greeted with laughter and a nudge from Sing who said it was good that I was already becoming properly trained.

We had 2 weeks before the full moon and lots to do, I just leaped head first into the work around the place, on the following Monday the crews that would be building the Mall arrived along with the plans that we had drawn up, the only real change was that after talking to John and hearing how he wanted the gun shop to have a basement we decided to build the entire Mall with basements with heavy steel fire doors between each building and each would have a complete air filtering system …just in case. Each would hold the tons of prep storage we would have stock piled, most of which would rotate into the grocery store as replacement stock, allowing a constant fresh supply of stock for the program.

After talking with the Construction Boss of the crew they got right to it, of course it would be in stages, earth work first, then the concrete work, with the plumbing in place before the floors were poured, never having been involved in this kind of an operation I found it very interesting to watch…for about two hours, then boredom settled in so I went to the café for a cup of coffee and a chat with Ellie.

I believe there was also a piece of pie involved which I had one bite of before the bride to be bounced thru the door all breathless and excited, she sat right down, took my pie and attacked it like she was starved, then asked for seconds !! I constantly found myself amazed that this small lady could and did eat more then Jody and I combined and while doing so helped herself to any choice tidbits we might have that caught her eye,

I could see life with her was going to be very interesting, I wondered if Jody was trying to marry her off or just needed somebody to help feed her!

She and Ellie started jabbering wedding talk so I may as well have been elsewhere, in fact I started to get up, but without missing a word of her conversation Sing said “SIT “. Well hell I might as well be a damn dog for all the respect I was getting, but she was just so damn cute and glowing that I just sat and watched her.

When she had eaten half the pie in the place and drank my coffee and had finished whatever it was she came to say to Ellie she smiled and said ok lets go!

Ellie laughed out loud and I felt like I could feel something getting tight around my neck, in fact I wanted to feel and see if there was a collar there but I’d be damned if I would, outside I asked her what she was doing now, she said she had come to get me because Jody wanted to have a talk about other ideas that needed starting, so off we went, her babbling a mile a minute and me just nodding and smiling like the obedient husband I was about to become, happily I wish to add.

The Wedding was rushing at me like a run away train, with less then a week before the full Moon I wondered how it would all come together.

This morning Jody had come to me and said I needed to give him 200 bucks, cash, it was for the wedding, so I gave it to him and watched him walk away chuckling out loud, I, it would seem was the only one that had no clue to what was going to happen at this little get together, but I refused to worry about it.

I did ask Jody if I needed a suit or whatever, he just gave that infuriating smile and said don’t worry it’s all being taken care of and went on about his business.

The construction crews were working like beaver, with all kinds of digging and earth moving, we had to set up a parking area for the side walk engineers who came to watch the work, it was after all a big doing for little ol Dog Trot TX.

Time was up, the moon would be full in two days or maybe that should be “Nights”, this morning several Vans arrived with Sings Tribal family or Clan whichever it was as nobody was telling me a whole lot, but Sing was floating 3 feet above the earth when she ran out to greet them, I was told I had to remain away as was the custom for the groom.

I did find out that “MY” Clan would be well represented by Miss Ellie, the brothers Jonas and John Quirk along with most of Dog Trot who would of course be there,  it seems one must have a clan or one was a lost spirit.

Well hell that’s what I was told more or less over a few drinks with Jody and John who had arrived with a 5
wheel trailer behind a big truck and who had moved right in and hooked up to the power at the mall site and was hovering over the job site like a mother hen.

Sing and her people had gone into the wooded area behind the house and opened up a clearing a bit bigger, all of course under the watchful eye of a man so old he looked like he might have been on the Ark with Noah.. I kept that one to myself as he seemed to be somebody very important.

All the women were also marked like Sing not exactly but marked with tribal Tattoos, the men who averaged a few inch’s taller then their women were also marked, but in a different pattern and mostly black colors, they had all adapted to life in Texas as all wore blue jeans and work shirts with lace up boots which looked a lot like the jungle boots of the Nam era.

The women went to work using the brush and small saplings removed to enlarge the clearing to build arbors around the area while in the middle of the clearing several men dug a fire pit under the direction of the old guy.

I thought it seemed strange that these men , many of whom had fought for us in that war needed a supervisor to dig a hole, but as I wasn’t allowed to be there I had to watch from afar.

Today is the day! The Moon will be full tonight, I’ve not seen the bride to be for 2 days and little has been said to me, but Jody told me to be in the basement by dark, so I am.

The following I’m writing after the facts of the event…

Jody walked in with a man who could only have been Sings brother, He was about 5’6” which was quite tall for these people, after shaking hands we all sat down to a cold beer and he and Jody explained to me what was going to happen.

First of all, the $200.00 Jody had asked me for went to buy the pigs and other things that the Groom provided for the feast.

Jody also said that as Sings Father, I would be giving him a Water Buffalo and 2 dozen chickens and several baskets of things of value which would be passed out to her Clan women as thanks for raising her in the proper ways of the tribe / Clan, none of this mattered between us, but on the face of it was required for the sake of traditions going back into the ages.

Sing was a valuable “property” for the Family and the village and one that I would be “Buying”, uh huh… this was not a wedding the National org. of Women “ie” feminist movement would be going for!! I would have laughed at the thought but these two were very serious so I respected their words.

I asked when I had to have the water buffalo delivered which did earn a laugh from both, Jody waved it off. The other gifts had been taken care of by my bride to be… in my name of course

Sings brother talked kind of like her as if the Boarding school English class’s didn’t take too good, I also found out he had gone to a couple of very uptown collages, getting degrees In computer science which I had already figured out, when I asked where he lived and worked he laughed and said “I can tell you but“….you guessed it, he did say he lived back east, I was willing to bet it was maybe Virginia?? Somewhere around there…

It was now time for me to dress, which I found out meant undress! Jody handed me a bundle he had brought along and picking up his said come on “son”…Song headed for Sings former room.

The first thing Jody said was Strip! Well two could play this cool guy game so I took off everything down to my jockeys, he smiled and said, all of it Tex,

How often have you heard of the groom being striped by the bride’s father? Fine, I could play this game too, so there I stood in my first suit, watching Jody start striping, he then opened the bundles and took out two white rags…. Then it dawned on me, Loin Cloths!! Now I was really ready to bolt, but watching Jody as he put his on and how it worked I thought ok I can do this.

I didn’t feel stupid, I felt naked!! We then went back into the sitting room where I was greeted by a wild painted Mountain Tribesman from a time gone by, Song had dressed as we had and was applying thin lines of paint to his face and body.