What Do I Do Now, Mom?
by: E Walk
(© 2009-2011 by the Author)
 

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

Chapter 46 

The Wet Hen

The troupes arrived back from the Latham spread, a little after four.  The boys split and went to take care of the animals.  I put a big pot roast with vegetables in the oven.  Sarah volunteered to make a dessert she thought the children might like.

Needless to say, the Latham girls were confused by everything that was happening.  Wanda asked, “Is it always going to be like this?  It seems as if no one wants us girls.  Why were the boys so lucky and Mr. Adler took them all, but no one wants us girls?”

Sarah put her arm around Wanda, “Wanda, it’s not that no one wants you.  It just didn’t work out with the Snowdens the way people thought it would.  Mr. Wallace and I would love to have the four of you live with us.  We don’t have the money to provide you with the fancy things, but we would be able to provide you with enough to eat. I have a sewing machine and I can teach you girls to sew, and you can make your own clothes which is a lot cheaper than buying clothes.”

“But won’t people laugh when they see the clothes that we made?”

“Believe me, Wanda, they’ll be jealous, because the clothes will fit much better and when you get really good, no one will know that you made the clothing.”

The next hurdle was to get Tim moved into Witt’s room.  Tim was reluctant about rooming with a teenager.  Randy stepped in, “Witt may be a teenager, but he is probably the most organized person here at the farm.  Can you imagine what would have happened to the Latham family if it hadn’t been for Witt?”

Randy laughed, “Witt isn’t going to cater to your needs as your brother and sister-in-law have.  You may actually need to do some work, now that your travel time has been cut by a third.  Besides your brother and sister-in-law are going to be busy taking care of four girls.”

We were finishing dinner when we heard a vehicle approaching.  Wylie went to answer the door and returned with Rob and Liz Snowden.  Liz was on the warpath, “You’ll do anything to keep the girls from getting what is rightfully theirs so you can use it to make the repairs on these rundown farms!”

 

I took a deep breath, “Mrs. Snowden, I can assure you that not one cent of Mr. Latham’s money has gone to make any repairs here at my farm.  There has been no cost to the Latham place, as yet, and the sale of the cattle should pay for the repairs that need to be made at the Latham property.”

“That’s exactly what I’m referring to.  You’re making all of the decisions of what is to happen to the Latham money.  Since we have control of four of the children, we should have a say in what happens to the money.”

Randy stood, then went and stood in front of Mrs. Snowden, “Lady, if I understood correctly, what I heard this afternoon when Judge Corn was here this afternoon, you have lost whatever chance you had of adopting the girls.  The girls have been placed in the custody of the Wallaces.”

“Then I want to be paid for the money that I spent on the new clothes for the girls.”

Sarah shook her head, “The clothes that you bought are not appropriate for a young lady who lives on a farm.”

Mrs. Snowden yelled, “I’m going to report what happened to the Child Protection Agency, first thing Monday morning.  I want to see an account of Mr. Latham’s assets.”

I had had it, “Mrs. Snowden, I have made sure that Mr. Latham’s desires have been explicitly followed.  I’ll take the girls to deposit their money he left them, in the bank, along with their share of memorial money that has been received.  In case you forgot, the memorials were to be dedicated to the children’s education funds and that’s where it is going to go.  Thanks for stopping by.  As of now, you have no say, whatsoever, in what happens to any of the Lathams.  Both Uncle Mark and Judge Corn heard you yelling when you called Rob on his cell phone, today, and told him to come and get the girls.”

She turned to go to her car, “We’ll see about that, you bastard.  Come on, Rob, I want to go home and make some phone calls and stop Adler from hogging all the money for himself.”

Rob shrugged his shoulders as he crawled into his car.

When we went back in the house, Wylie was crying, “That mean woman isn’t going to take me away, is she?”

I picked up Wylie, “Mrs. Snowden will not be taking any of you away, if I have anything to say about it.”

Witt called everyone together and started to pass out all of the money that people were owed for babysitting, selling eggs, and the money the relatives had paid for meat.  The girls were watching with big eyes.  Wanda asked, “How come we didn’t get a share of any of the money?”

 

Walt asked, “Were you here to do any of the work?”

“No, but it doesn’t seem fair that even Wylie got paid and he probably didn’t do anything.”

I was still holding Wylie, “Wylie works as hard as anybody.”

Wylie squeezed me, “Daddy made it so I can go to school when you all go to school.”

Wendy shook her head, no, “Mr. Adler isn’t your Daddy and you’re too young to go to school.  You’re only four.”

“Am to going to school, and Mrs. Wallace is going to be one of my teachers.  Daddy’s name is Daddy and Billy and Bobby’s Daddy is called Dad Randy.”

I interrupted, “Wylie is going to school in the mornings at the Building Blocks Academy.”

Winnie asked, “Does that mean that we girls have to call you and Mr. Tailor Daddy?”

“That wouldn’t make much sense, would it, since neither of us would be your father.  You could call us Mr. Adler and Mr. Taylor or Uncle Hank and Uncle Randy.  When we are at school, you will need to call me Mr. Adler.”

Witt stopped the conversation, “Dad, can we go to town and meet the guys.  We’ll be back by eleven o’clock?”

“That’s fine with me.  Make sure that you’re quiet when you come home, since you will have someone sleeping in your room.”

Tim laughed, “If you’re talking about me, I’m going with the guys to make sure they don’t get in trouble.”

Jake moaned, “Great, we’ll have two families who will be lying awake worrying.”

The guys were back early and the house was extremely quiet for there being eleven males in the house. 

Going to church after breakfast was a logistical nightmare, since we had seventeen people who needed to be transported along with the eggs for the pastors.  That meant we needed to take four vehicles.  That experience reminded me that I need to call the bus office and tell them we had eleven people who could be riding the bus on any given day.

Randy was very nervous, because it was the first day he would be teaching his Sunday school class.  The class was full; I think it was from curiosity to see how Randy was going to stretch the shortest book in the bible, Philemon with twenty five versus, into four Sundays.

After church, Tim was talking to an older man.  He brought him over to meet Randy and me.  “Mr. Adler and Mr. Taylor, I’d like to introduce a professor of mine, Dr. Lake.  He’s my interior design professor.  Would you have a problem if he followed us home?  I told him we’d feed him lunch if he would give me some advice on how we can make the space in Witt’s house work for the residents.”

Dr. Lake followed Tim’s car to the farm.  When he walked into the house, he started to look around.  “Tim, why do you want to make major changes to this house?  It looks as if it's functional as it is.”

I started to laugh, “Dr. Lake, we just finished remodeling this house.  The work to get it this far took four years.  Witt’s house needs a lot of help.  Let’s eat before we go to the Latham farm.  I have no idea what we’re going to eat.  Someone must have started something before we left for Sunday school.”

I should have recognized the smell because it was scalloped potatoes with ham which were in the oven on the timer and baked beans were cooking in the roaster oven.  Sarah had made a sheath cake and creamed lettuce salad.  The guys had pulled out the tables and benches from the garage so it was another picnic lunch.

After lunch, Tim, Witt and Randy took Dr. Lake to look at the Latham house.  I decided to stay at home, so I could watch the other boys and I wasn’t going to be physically involved in the remodeling.

Sarah took the girls to a fabric store, so they could look at materials and patterns to see if there was something simple enough for the girls to make as their introduction to sewing.

I went to one of the sheds and found a croquet set for the guys to play.  Wylie got frustrated and came and sat on my lap as we watched the other six guys play.

Sarah returned with the girls and I began to worry about how long it was taking the crew who had gone to the Latham house.  I shouldn’t have worried.  When the four gentlemen returned, Dr. Lake was saying, “Guys, if you take your time and do it right, the house can be very livable for six people.  Don’t do like most people and try to cut corners to get finished sooner.  Otherwise you will find yourselves saying, ‘Oh, if only we had done this.’  Above all, make sure you get Mrs. Wallace’s input, since she and the girls are presumably going to be living there.  Thanks for lunch and a fun afternoon.  I’m available almost any time if you have any questions.  As long as you feed me, I’m free.”

On Monday morning, we loaded up the girls and were at the bank at nine o’clock when it opened.  We filled out the forms with me as their guardian until the issue of who was going to be the girls’ guardian was clarified.  I also grabbed the folder with all the information I thought I might need that Mr. Latham had in his dresser drawer and the bank deposit box.

I left Randy and Sarah at the bank and went to meet with the new teachers at school.  I was early, and it looked as if the entire staff was standing and talking in the parking lot.  “I’m sorry if I’m late, but I thought we were going to meet at ten.  It looks as if the meeting has already started, so I’ll leave.”

Gloria was chuckling, “We figured that we'd better be here before you, or you’d get upset.  Hurry and open the door; some of us have brought goodies to eat.” 

The cipher lock had been changed by Ted on his last day, so letting the staff know the number was the first order of business.  I had the eight new people introduce themselves and then I made some announcements.  I decided to tell them the good and the bad.  “I redlined many of the items you requested on your end of the year orders because of the economic climate in the capital.  I decided to be cautious so we would have funds to purchase items that we really needed as the year goes along.”

“Gloria will need to get the information on the new people.  Gloria and I will be starting to work on the second of August.  The rest of you will be starting on the eleventh.  Open House is scheduled for the twelfth.  It is not necessary to have your rooms ready for inspection.  It is a night for you to meet your new students and their parents.  Curriculum Night will be held right after Labor Day.”

“I’m sorry to have to leave, but I have an appointment at the Air Force base, in forty five minutes.  It shouldn’t take long.  I’ll be back as soon as I can get away.”

When I went out of the building, three vehicles were lined up behind Uncle Mark’s van.  The first was Witt’s car, followed by Jake and Sarah’s car, and a third car I didn’t recognize.  It turned out to be Gwen Chamberlin from the Children’s Protection Agency.  She motioned to me, “Hank, ride with me and the guys, since I have a base sticker.  The other cars have visitor passes.”

It had been a long time since I had been on base.  The entry gates had been made significantly more secure after nine eleven and part of the gates were blocked so there was only one point of entry.  Ms. Chamberlain commented, “I’m glad that Mark called me and told me about the meeting this morning, and what has been happening with the Snowdens.  We’re lucky that we had the Wallaces so available.  It will save the CPA a lot of time, once we do a background check on the Wallaces.  In the meantime, you are going to be the girls’ guardian.”

“But Ms. Chamberlain, why can’t the Wallaces be appointed the guardians right now, so there is no question as to who is the girls' boss.  They need to be taken under wing and be told what is expected of them and what they are expected to do.  They’ll be confused as to whom they should be listening to.”

“Hank, let Jake and Sarah be in charge of the day to day control of the girls.  You should only get involved should a problem arise, which I don’t foresee happening.  There will be some papers that will need to be signed when the Wallaces are approved to be foster parents, but the money will be safe from Mrs. Snowden in the meantime.”

When we arrived at the legal office, the lady looked at us, “You have to be the Latham party.  Mr. Carver is waiting for you in the conference room with representatives of the personnel, finance and the medical clinic.  After I showed the paperwork and the will to Mr. Carver, it took less than an hour before the ten children had military identification cards.   As long as the children weren’t adopted, they would receive a check from the government.  Mr. Carver and several of the other people talked to us, but I couldn’t remember half of what they said.  Thankfully, Uncle Mark had been with us.  Between him and Ms Chamberlain, they could keep us on the right path.

As we were walking to the cars, Wylie was holding my hand, “Daddy, what was that all about?”

“We just signed the papers so Dad Randy and I could spank you if you were bad.”

“Nu uh, you can’t spank me, because I didn’t do anything bad, yet.”

“What do you mean, yet?”

“We’ve been really good because we’re afraid that if we do something bad you'll get rid of us, like those people did our sisters.”

“Silly, we wouldn’t send you away if you did something bad.  We’ll do something worse.  We’ll make you tell what you did wrong and then you will have to write about why it was wrong.”

“But Daddy, I don’t know how to write.”

“Then you have to get one of the bigger guys to help you.”

“That will make them get mad at me.  Guess I’ll have to try to be good so I don’t gotta write.”

As we were driving back to the school, I was thinking, ’I hope I’m not making Wylie paranoid.’

The parking lot was still full of cars when I got there.  I walked into the office and Gloria looked at me, “This would never have happened under Hamilton.  The teachers are all working in the media center.  They are working with their grade level partners and the specialists are trying to have them come up with themes for their units, so they can design activities to complement what the classroom teachers are doing.”

I went to the media center and got everyone’s attention. "I want to thank you all for coming today.  I suggest that you go home and have some fun before school starts again.  You are free to come as you want, but I would prefer that there be at least two of you in the building if you’re here, just for safety reasons if nothing else.”

I got caught up in doing paperwork to get ready for the fall.  It was obvious that the teachers were thinking ahead, because they had some things that they wanted to have reproduced at the central office for the beginning of the school year.  I finally pushed everyone out of the building after four o’clock by reminding them that they weren’t getting paid overtime.”

When I arrived at the farm, Mrs. Snowden was standing there, yelling at Sarah.   

To be continued...      

 Editor's Notes:  I do believe that Mrs. Snowden is one snotty ruthless, money grubbing bitch.  I hope the judge and the case worker put her in her place, which by the way, is no where near any children. 

I really wish that when people take responsibility for the care of young people, they would do so for the right reason, namely because they want to help the children grow up happy and get the best possible opportunities, and not just be interested in how much money they can manage to grab for themselves. 

I am ready for more chapters.

Darryl AKA The Radio Rancher

Posted: 01/07/11