As with every adversity he'd encountered since leaving the hospital, Tommy learned from his trip to Houston. He had answered the question he had about dealing with strangers, and he'd met some wonderful new friends. Sure, he'd had the misfortune to run into Roger Taylor, but his not being smart with people had nothing to do with what Taylor did. Heck, Taylor had even fooled Paloma, and his slender friend had known him for longer than a year. Ruth said that in bigger cities, more people got away with being bad like that because they were constantly meeting strangers to take advantage of. In Brantley, where everyone knew everyone else, that didn't happen so much.
Connie learned some things from the trip too, and sat down with Ruth and Rita to discuss them Tuesday at lunch at the Bluebonnet Diner. Once they ordered, Connie spoke her piece.
"This past week made me realize how much Tommy means to me. I mean. I knew I loved him before, but I didn't know exactly how empty my life would be without him."
Connie paused and took a sip of her sweet tea. Rita nodded her understanding, so Connie pressed on.
"And you know I'm not the only one who feels that way. We women who love Tommy need to band together to protect him. But we need to do it in a way that we don't smother him. And we also need to decide how our relationships with each other are going to work."
Connie had expected Rita to figure something out, but it was Ruth Silverman, the quiet librarian, who spoke up first.
"We'll make it work, I'll see to that," she said forcefully. "Next weekend, Tommy is going up to Dallas with Regina and Melody, so why don't all of us women meet up in Lafayette and work this out?"
And that's exactly what happened...
On the last Saturday in April of 1971, while Tommy was up in Dallas helping rid Regina and Melody of their pesky technical virginities, seven women met up at the Hotel Arcenaux dining room. The women were all wildly different from each other, yet all connected by their bond to Tommy.
Conchita Delgado, the beautiful and sultry actress, was one of the women, as was Ruth Silverman, the petite librarian. Becky Dierdorf, Tommy's former tutor and now a nursing student in Dallas, had also made the trip from Brantley. Paloma (Susan Compton), the hippie American Indian, drove in from Houston. Marie Arcenaux, the owner of the hotel and her cousin Desiree, a student at the University of Southwest Louisiana, were numbers five and six. The seventh woman was Rita Maude Fricke, Tommy's adopted mother, and the only one at the table not in a sexual relationship with Tommy.
Ruth had suggested the meeting, so it seemed only natural for her to take charge of it.
Next to Becky Dierdorf, Tommy's presence in her life had changed Ruth the most. His calm and unwavering support of her gave her the self-confidence to become more assertive. At work, the new attitude had bulldozed right through the bureaucrats of the state library board's objections to her expansion plans. The result was not one, but two new bookmobiles and a five thousand square foot addition to the Brantley library building. At home, she'd shed her inhibitions and discovered that she had a kinky side when it came to being the dominant partner when with another woman.
Introductions were made all around, then Ruth took the floor.
"Ladies, most people would say that Thomas Bledsoe was about the luckiest guy on earth. How could he not be, with six of the finest women on the planet in love with him, and a mother as great as Rita?"
Ruth waited for the laughter to die down, then continued.
"But I think we are the really lucky ones, because we have him and we know that he loves and respects each of us completely and without reservation or expectation.
"With a couple of exceptions, we all don't know each other very well yet, and an outsider looking at us would see six really different women. Yet from knowing Tommy as well as I do, I know we all have much in common. For one thing, I know we are all strong minded and independent women. For another, we aren't that concerned how society views us. We are who we are instead of whom society wants us to be. Having said that, society is changing and more and more people are moving away from antiquated ideas, so what we have might become the norm in a few years. Whatever happens though, a relationship based on love and respect can't be a bad thing."
With so many exceptionally bright women working on it, they quickly came up with an agreement. Tommy was best off being right where he was they decided, so they would revolve around him in Brantley. The only major change to what was going on in Tommy's life now, would be an expansion of his house to accommodate the women not living there, so they could move in. Ruth and Paloma's trust funds would pay for the expansion.
Ruth had guessed that the women had so much in common, they would all become better than good friends, and she was absolutely correct. It was amazing how quickly they bonded. And given all that commonality, it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that there were groups of them that related to each other separate from the group. Desi and Becky hit it off immediately, because they were the same age and because they both had thought themselves unattractive until they met Tommy. Rita and Marie as the oldest and mothers of grown children, had much to talk about, too.
Connie, Ruth and Paloma also had much in common, although they weren't ready to talk about it in a public forum. Connie was tickled that Paloma was practically swooning over Ruth. Ruth saw the looks, and made a point of making plenty of eye contact and casually touched the tall woman every chance she got.
That night, the seven of them dressed up and met at Boudreau and Charlene's Bar and Grill to continue their bonding in a strictly social setting. Charlene and Desiree pushed two tables together and the women sat around and talked. As they became comfortable with each other, each of them told the group what they wanted in a relationship with Tommy. There were some surprises.
For instance, Paloma was moving permanently to Brantley to be with them as soon as she finished the two courses she was attending. She was going to help Connie with her dude ranch idea.
Becky Dierdorf planned on moving to the ranch also. She was scheduled to complete the hospital registered nurse program and take the licensing exam at the end of June. Becky was crazy in love with Tommy, and was giddy with the idea that all these other women thought it wonderful that she felt that way. Her big problem was finding a job near Brantley. Connie told her not to worry about it, because she would need a person with medical training at her dude ranch. Becky would be perfect for the job, because she was an excellent horse woman, and could do double duty as a riding instructor.
Desiree planned on visiting for a month, and both she and Marie hoped Tommy could come spend a week or two in Lafayette with them.
The group split up at eleven. Marie and Rita headed out together in Marie's Bonneville, towards Marie's house on the Bayou Laveau. Marie had some things to tell Rita in private; chief among them, the fact that Rita was going to be a grandmother in about six months. Becky and Desiree stayed at the roadhouse, yakking. They were amazed at how similar their experiences with men had been. They were also thrilled to have found a best friend.
Connie, Ruth and Paloma headed back to the hotel, but they weren't leaving just so they could talk. Ruth made that clear when she pushed Paloma into the backseat of Connie's Caddy and slid in behind her. As Connie pulled out of the parking lot, Ruth crawled into Paloma's lap, grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her mouth down for a blistering kiss. Paloma moaned in lust when Ruth broke the kiss by jerking the tall woman's head back until they were eye to eye.
"I think I'm going to keep you," Ruthie growled.
Paloma's eye lids fluttered and she shivered.
"I'd like that ... a lot," she whispered huskily.
When Connie spent that wild Friday night with Paloma, she'd fantasized about Ruth, Paloma and her being together, but the reality was ten times better. Ruth seemed to know exactly which buttons of Paloma's to push, and Paloma eagerly did whatever the small librarian demanded. Hell, for that matter, so did Connie.
When the women parted ways Sunday morning, they were a family. As they said their tearful goodbyes in front of the hotel, they vowed that they would all get together at least twice a year.
Tommy returned from his long weekend in Dallas on Monday night. He'd had a great time with Mel and Gina, but he was happy to be home. Melody and Regina were his friends and he was more than glad to help them experience sex with a man before they started college, but because he did not have that special connection with them, it wasn't as satisfying for him. Tommy and both girls knew it was a one time thing.
After all the excitement in April, Tommy's life settled down into a routine that suited him just fine. He worked, tended his goats, took care of his women, and on Sundays, he hosted the special needs kids from his Sunday school class. That was enough for him.
While Tommy basked in his simple life, the people around him seemed to explode into a frenzy of activity.
Connie moved her dude ranch forward quickly during the month of May. The road between her spread and Tommy's was completed and the new gates installed. Pablo Luna had refurbished the bunk house into four, two man rooms, and a single room for the ranch foreman. He also subcontracted a plumber to install two modern bathrooms. Connie had furnished and decorated the four guest rooms in the bunk house and reconfigured the main ranch house so that she had an additional three guestrooms and a nice suite. Then she turned her attention to upgrading the stables and sprucing up the corrals that flanked it.
In town, Brantley Farm and Ranch Center was doing better than Harold's wildest expectations. Business was so brisk, he had eight full-time employees now, plus Bucky Grimes and another part time high school student. Harold was in the process of expanding the business yet again by building a rental center so farmers and ranchers could rent equipment they couldn't afford to buy. Harold's vision of providing farmers and ranchers a one stop place that met all their needs was coming to fruition.
Ruth was also busy that month as she hired an architect to design a new house around Tommy's existing one. Tommy went along with her expansion plans, because she let him think he was financing the new digs with a home improvement loan from Brantley Savings and Loan. Even though Ruth secretly backed the loan, Tommy could have afforded it anyway, what with the money his one-third interest in the expanded feed store was generating.
The remodel was centered on a huge master suite with a cavernous walk-in closet, a large bathroom with three sinks, and a separate shower big enough for six people. The bedroom would be twenty-five feet by twenty feet, so it could house the double king-sized bed Connie had ordered from a custom furniture builder in San Angelo. The living room was growing by fifty percent, and the kitchen was doubling in size with all the latest modern conveniences installed. The outside of the house was receiving a brick façade and all new windows. Ruth was also having central air-conditioning and heat installed. French doors leading out to a new patio and pool were going into the expanded living room and the new master suite.
Paloma arrived with bag and baggage during the second week of June, and moved right into Tommy's house and bed. She had been spending most weekends at the ranch anyway. Paloma's two classes at Baylor were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so she drove up Thursday night and went home Monday afternoon. Paloma had been working with Connie on the dude ranch during those visits, so when Connie took off for an acting gig in the middle of June, the conversion of the Happy Endings Ranch didn't miss a beat.
Desiree arrived a week after Paloma. She would be staying with them for a couple of months before classes started in late August. Desiree moved into one of the spare bedrooms instead of Tommy's room. She did that because she wasn't yet comfortable about making love with an audience, and she wasn't sure how she felt about sex with another woman. She wasn't inherently against the idea; it was just something beyond her experience. She had to admit, though, that when tiny self-assured Ruthie flirted with her, it made her heart beat a little faster.
Desiree turned out to have an affinity for dealing with Tommy's goats, so she helped him tend them. She went with Tommy in July when he purchased another thirty nannies from the same breeder down in Edwards County. Including the kids birthed by the pregnant nannies he bought in February, Tommy's herd now numbered sixty-one. Tommy was surprised that it didn't take much more effort to raise sixty goats than it did for twenty.
The plans for the remodeling of Tommy's house were ready by the time Paloma and Desiree moved in, and Ruth had hired the contractor her architect recommended. Construction began on the first of July. It was inconvenient living in the house while construction was going on all around them, but they managed.
The construction crews were the first people to glimpse the communal lifestyle Tommy lived, and his relationship with the women was a constant source of speculation to the workmen. Tommy and the women were careful to moderate displays of affection around the workers, but still, he lived with four attractive women and that was worth talking about.
Connie returned from Hollywood in mid July. She wouldn't be needed at the studio lot again until it was time to do voiceovers and to film any rewritten scenes. Connie was excited about her role as a major supporting character in the Warner Brother's film, because it was her first serious role for a major studio. That she received her biggest paycheck ever was icing on the cake. She won the role because of her strong performance in the Hammer Studio's Dracula movie she filmed in England. The film opened in American theaters in May, and had been an instant success at the box office.
A few days after Connie returned from California, newly minted Registered Nurse Becky Dierdorf showed up at the door, her car loaded with her belongings. Because of the construction, Becky and Desi ended up sharing a room with twin beds. Becky was of about the same mind as Desiree about making love in front of the others because she was so body shy. Even though she had lost thirty pounds and her body was fit and toned, Becky still thought her ass was too big. She was also embarrassed by her small breasts and freckles. She knew Tommy liked the way she looked, although she didn't understand for a minute how he could feel that way. The other women were a different story, though, as they were all so attractive and seemed so self-confident.
With five women in the house, it fell to Ruth to organize Tommy's schedule. It wasn't that difficult a task, because three of the five shared a bed with him anyway, and the other two simply told Ruth when they felt like having his company. For those wanting privacy, there was the third bedroom, with its queen size bed. Surprisingly, the women weren't that sexually demanding of Tommy. All of them except Paloma had very normal sexual appetites, and a couple of times a week with their man was fine for them. Ruth, Connie and Paloma also helped each other out. Ruthie was especially adept at keeping Paloma in check.
Despite the bedlam associated with the remodel, July and August were wonderful months for Tommy and the women living with him. Tommy's heath was the best it had been since he had been wounded, and he was surrounded by women he loved and who loved him right back. He also had a job that he enjoyed going to each morning, and more friends than he could count. Tommy was sincere when he thanked the Lord every morning for his blessings.
Tommy's sister Beth and her family came out to visit the first week of August. They had to wait until so late in the summer, because her husband Wayne, as the fire department's junior lieutenant, had last pick of vacation days. Because of the construction going on at home, Beth, Wayne and the boys became the first guests of the Happy Endings Working Ranch. Putting his sister and her family up at the dude ranch also avoided any questions from Beth or embarrassing situations around her sons. In addition, all the dude ranch had to offer was available to the Taylors in dress rehearsal form.
Becky Dierdorf and her livestock auctioneer father played a big part in the ranch being ready so quickly. See, Clem Dierdorf knew about every rancher in the state, so he knew who had stock for sale that would fit into Connie's plan, and Becky knew horses better than most full time cowboys. Clem would hear of someone needing to sell a few horses and tell Becky. Becky would visit the rancher doing the selling and evaluate his stock. Becky was very picky about the horses she selected, because they had to have gentleness and patience to go along with their working skills. She was picky, but by the end of July, she'd managed to find a dozen very good quarter horses.
Clem was also thrilled to take his daughter and Connie to a couple of cattle auctions. He was too ethical to interfere in the auction process in their favor, but he did point out in advance which lots they should be interested in. Connie bought a hundred head of excellent cattle for a reasonable price as a result of Clem's advice.
Becky ended up running the equine side of the operation with the aid of a stable hand. For the cattle operation, Connie hired a semi-retire cowboy, named Jacobo Rios, as her foreman. Since Jacobo was Spanish for Jacob, he went by the nickname Jake. Jake was semi-retired, because he was getting a little long-in-the-tooth to boss a big operation.
Connie told Jake to hire them one cowboy and a cook, both with personality and an easy going nature. Jake hired his nephew, a cowboy working on the huge Pitchfork Ranch up in King County. His nephew was an excellent vaquero, but he was disgruntled working on the Pitchfork because of the lack of any sort of social life. Not surprising, considering the population of King County was fewer than three hundred, and it was a fifty mile trip to Lubbock, the closest real city. To top it off, King County and every county around it practiced prohibition. Since young Julio Rios thought tequila and senoritas were a big part of being a vaquero, he was ready for a change.
Jake knew just the cook too, only he had to get him out of jail to hire him. The man's name was Bert Felton, but everyone called him Cornbread. Cornbread Felton was a great trail cook and a damned fine fiddle player. Cornbread could have been a professional chef or musician, had it not been for his penchant for drinking to much and acting like an idiot. Like Otis on the Andy Griffith Show, Cornbread had a reserved cell in the McCulloch County Jail where he spent most weekends. Cornbread was between jobs after being fired by the Bluebonnet diner for missing work two Sundays in a row.
Jake was still scratching his head over the whole concept of the weirdly named ranch owned by the beautiful Conchita Delgado. When he hired on, the señorita had him do a complete assessment of what needed to be done around the rancho. Jake completed the survey in three days, and delivered it to the boss lady.
"Miss Connie, here's your list. I rewrote it so the important stuff is at the top. I'll have me a helper in a week or so, then me and the boy can start working the list," he said respectfully.
Connie gave him a fond smile as she took the list. She liked Jake, rough edges and all.
"That won't be necessary, Mister Rios. Instead, I want you to break the list down so our guests can do some of what's needed everyday, without doing the same thing two days in a row. For instance, one day they repair some fence, and the next day they brand a few head of cattle they have to round up. I only plan for each guest being here for a week. But you should plan your work so that you are doing something different every day for ten days, in case someone stays for two weeks. The week will start on Monday morning. The first day will be for outfitting and riding lessons. Day Seven will be a trail ride up to the fire lookout tower on Bryson Hill and a picnic. The rest of the time they are your ranch hands."
Jake gave her a frog-eyed stare.
"You mean someone will actually pay to be a no-account cowboy?"
Connie gave him a rich laugh and nodded her head.
"You bet they will, Mister Rios, and the more we charge them, the better they'll like it."
True to her words to Jake Rios, the Hollywood types ponied up a thousand dollars each for the chance to actually live the cowboy life. A surprising number of her guests were women. The only difference in how women were treated was that they bunked in the main house when the group wasn't sleeping out on the trail under the big Texas sky.
Connie used Tommy's sister's family as a dress rehearsal for her staff, and the entire family raved about the experience. So Connie was feeling good when her first ten guests showed up early in the morning on the Second Monday in August. When the guests left Sunday afternoon, they were a tired and saddle weary, but amazingly happy bunch. Not a single one of them even hinted that a thousand dollars a week was too much to pay. As word of the ranch spread through the Hollywood grapevine, reservations poured in and soon they were booked solid for two months in advance.
Desiree went back to Louisiana on the twenty-fifth of August to get ready for her third year as a Ragin' Cajun of the University of Southwest Louisiana. Desi wasn't thrilled about leaving, but she put a very high value on her education, so there was never a question of her not going. She was a chemical engineering major, attending college on a full academic scholarship that was being paid for by the Texaco Oil Company. When she graduated, she had a job with Texaco as a petro-chemical engineer waiting for her.
The remodel was finally completed in the middle of September. Furnishing the house took another week, but by the twenty-second, they were all ensconced in their new digs. With the new bigger bed in place in the master suite, Tommy and Ruth cajoled Becky into spending the night in it with the rest of the family. Becky's last thought before she fell asleep snuggled between Tommy and Ruth was that this was where she truly belonged.
Summer in Central Texas grudgingly gave way to autumn. Time passed rapidly for Tommy and his family, because everyone was busy and happy. September faded into October and October gave way to November. And on Friday, the seventeenth of November, Tommy's family and all of his friends threw him a surprise birthday party at the VFW hall. Tommy was lured to the hall, thinking he was there to help plan the VFWs big Thanksgiving Dinner.
At least a hundred people crowded in the hall's ballroom to wish Tommy a happy twenty-eighth birthday. Tommy had made a lot of friends in the last two years. Even Rex was there, his tail thumping against the hardwood floor a mile a minute. Tommy had tears in his eyes as he went around the room greeting his friends. It was incredible to him that they'd all showed up just to be with him on his birthday.
It was a diverse group celebrating with him. Yet, from Irv Glickman the plastic surgeon to Jose Luna the delivery truck driver, everyone there was a better person for knowing Thomas Bledsoe. Tommy had overcome tremendous adversity and achieved more than anyone believed possible, and he did it with grace and dignity. Tommy had changed in many ways, yet he was still the kindest, most generous and humble person any of them had ever met.
Rita Maude Fricke also had tears in her eyes as she watched her son take time to talk to everyone there. When she thought back to the lost boy standing in the doorway of the feed store with the help wanted sign in his hand, and compared him to the gregarious and self possessed man talking and joking with his many friends, she had to glance skyward and silently thanked her Lord for the miracle that he'd performed.
One person very close to Tommy was conspicuously absent from his birthday party that evening in 1972. That person was Marie Laveau, who, until recently, had been using the name Marie Arcenaux. She missed the party because she was busy giving birth to me, Marie Felicia Laveau. Tommy Bledsoe was my father, and the one responsible for my middle name. See, I'm the seventh Marie Laveau and Felicia means lucky in Latin.
I'm also the reason you are reading the amazing story of my father. I wrote what you just read when I was fifteen. I interviewed dozens of people to get the story. The story is a result of a college admission essay I wrote about the person I admired most (yes, I graduated high school at the age of fifteen). I picked my amazing Daddy, of course. Writing the essay piqued my interest in his life story, so I went about finding out all I could. Daddy was reluctant to talk about himself, but Grandma Rita and all my aunts were glad to help.
I dragged this story out of storage after Daddy passed away because I thought it inspirational, and the more people who knew about him the better. Daddy was too modest to let the story see the light of day while he was alive.
Daddy died suddenly and peacefully in his sleep in 1995. He was fifty years old. It was his brain that killed him, as a blood vessel burst in his damaged left frontal lobe. The pathologist who performed his autopsy said that it was a miracle that the stroke hadn't happened twenty years earlier, given the trauma his brain had suffered. I knew the exact second he died, even though I was in Louisiana and he was in Texas when it happened. I sat straight up in bed from a sound sleep and knew he was gone.
Daddy's funeral was huge, because he had even more friends at the age of fifty than he did on his twenty-eighth birthday. Because he wanted it that way, his funeral was a celebration of his life instead of a mourning for his death.
After the graveside service, three or four hundred people jammed into the VFW hall to laugh and joke and reminisce about daddy. Grandma Rita, my aunts and my mother sat at a big table at the front of the room. All of them were sad of course, but they were also grateful for the twenty plus years they were able to spend with him. They knew from the start that his ravaged brain was a ticking time bomb.
My two brothers and three sisters were also there. The two people who took Daddy's passing the hardest were Aunt Ruth's sixteen year old son Joshua and Aunt Becky's fifteen year old daughter Katie. My other two sisters were Rachael, Ruth's daughter and Paloma's daughter Karma. Aunt Connie and my cousin Desiree were childless by choice. My second brother was Aunt Caroline's three-year-old son Tommy, Jr.
Yes, Caroline finally followed her heart and moved back to Brantley to be with Daddy. Only it took fifteen years and three husbands for her to admit that glitz, glamour and high society husbands could never make her as happy as the uncomplicated manager of the Brantley Farm and Ranch Supply Center.
My father died a very wealthy man, but he still hopped out of bed every morning and opened the store at eight. With him, it was never about the money. Daddy was rich because he still owned one third of Farmers and Ranchers Supply, and the store he managed was one of twenty scattered throughout Texas. He could have held a corporate office job or just sat back and let the money roll in; Daddy could have also lived the life of a kept man because all of his women were very well off and they would have loved him being home taking it easy, but Tommy Bledsoe wasn't wired that way.
Daddy overcame seemingly insurmountable adversity to live the life he wanted, so I know he died happy. I also know that, because he was on it for a while, the world is a better place and the lives he touched are better for it. What better legacy could any man leave behind?
Bayou Laveau
1996