Chapter Thirteen

A Freudian Slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother. I mean another.

“Now you four have rested long enough. You get up and start cleaning right now!” Crystal yelled at us like a stern task-mistress barking orders. My cousins immediately began participating in the ruse by jumping up and pretending to be cleaning in the living room.

I was still smiling and confused. Then I turned around and saw my mother with Odd-Jobs at the door.

“You are back early?” Crystal asked my mom. She turned to Conner and told him, “Get back in the kitchen and stand as you were!”

I would say Conner is not naïve but he is also not dishonest. He looked betrayed and was about to say, “But you told me I didn’t have to do that any longer.”

Crystal cut him off before he could finish saying ‘but’ and said, “But, But, But – you like looking at butts? That’s why you are on restriction. Eyes straight ahead and hands behind your back, put the cloth on your johnson.”

“Hands behind my head you mean?” Conner still didn’t seem to be getting the fact that this was all pretend for my mom’s benefit.

“Yes. Behind your head,” Crystal shook her head in disbelief and then turned to my mom, “We made a rule if one of the boys gets an erection that he has to cover it with a wash cloth.”

My mom winced at the thought of her son having an erection – an image that may never have occurred to her until just then.

“Hey, they are getting to that age where the hormones are kicking in,” Crystal offered a shrug and a ‘what are you gonna do?’ face. Then she continued “We couldn’t just let him walk around with a full erection. Then again – if you want me to, I can let them out of punishment early because you think it’s too much trouble?”

Crystal’s face offered a wicked smile as she asked the question. The question was bait for my mother to be the irresponsible one who Crystal could say insisted they stop the strict punishment.

“It does seem a little weird,” my mom said and looked at her son with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief.

“Nonsense,” Odd-Jobs laughed and held his belly like a jolly Saint Nick, “You don’t have time to chit-chat. The girls need to get ready anyway – why don’t you go get what you came here for and I will have a little talk with Crystal about washing cars.”

“Now, those girls were just cleaning Ted’s truck,” Crystal said defensively of the scam we ran yesterday. My mom went to the bedroom and shut the door.

“Relax, I am not going to take a cut of the money you earned yesterday,” Odd-jobs assured Crystal, indicating he had nothing but the best of intentions.

I was curious why he felt entitled to a cut of how much we earned anyway.

“Odd-Jobs is that you? Come on and make yourself comfortable?” Maw-Maw’s voice could sound like she was gobbling when she got slightly excited. I think that may be why normally she spoke so deliberately and without expression.

Odd-Jobs walked into the living room and greeted Maw-Maw. “I can’t stay for long. I have to cart Mrs. Patricia back up to her work after she collects a few things she needs for her new job.”

“Well that is mighty kindly of you. We do the burden of charity to lighten the load of others while extending it twice fold to our own backs.” Maw-Maw’s voice returned to her normal emotionless tone. Maw-Maw might have been a dead-ringer for Kathy Bates in the Stephen King movie “Misery” if she lost a hundred pounds - or so.

“What brings you over to the Danville household?” he asked, while ignoring the naked me and the other teenagers pretending to clean up around him.

“I will be staying here for a few days while my conjunctivitis heals up and visit with the family,” Maw-Maw lifted her flip-flop adorned foot to show her toes. They were gnarly looking with great bunions and jagged toe-nails that had not been filed down. I assumed Conjunctivitis had something to do with feet – but I wasn’t going to Google that to find out either!

Crystal sounded alarmed “What?!!”

“Oh don’t worry,” Odd-Jobs smiled blissfully and said, “It will give her a chance to get to know your wonderful niece and nephew. Ellen is it?”

He recalled my name and extended his hand for me to shake it. It was covered in dried cement and grit but I accepted it gingerly.

“Oh I am so sorry but I’ve been out burying things that need to stay buried,” He smiled jovially at me, “Your mother tells me that you earned fifty bucks yesterday for the family?”

I looked at Crystal to see if it was alright to admit that. I had heard him say he wanted a cut.

“I can see you are nervous about telling Odd-jobs the truth. The fact is I am really happy to see a go-getter like you with a can-do attitude in the family. They are generally shiftless and lazy and always late with the rent.”

“If you didn’t keep raising it and adding fees then we wouldn’t be!” Crystal sounded defensive.

“I have an opportunity for you to make plenty of rent money,” Odd-jobs smiled.

“I don’t like your opportunities – they always turn out to be oppors-crap-tastic,” Crystal sounded more than a little skeptical.

My mom emerged from the bedroom with her purse full. “I needed some things for work,” she looked at us cleaning with a critical eye. “It looks like you are just moving stuff around and not really cleaning.”

“Dammit kids, there are going to be spankings if you don’t start actually cleaning up. I told you to stop fooling around,” Crystal could scarcely pull off sounding like she really believed anything she was saying just then.

My mom looked at Conner who was still standing alone in the kitchen. His hands behind his head and a small washcloth covering his erection. She looked like she wanted to tell him something, but she was unsure of what she might say.

“I am giving Crystal a chance to earn some money by doing another car wash today,” Odd-Jobs told my mom. Crystal was about to protest that we had worked everyone on Glory Hill. She explained the spectacle of us washing cars will lose its charm if we are out there every day; and we worked over the regulars who drive up and down the street so it would be slim pickings. Then he told her that they would be working in the main lot of Seminole street near the office and the Play-N-Stop.

“You kids remember that place right? You will get to see it during the day.” he was playful but his voice had a hint of sarcasm to it.

“You want these boys to wash cars too?” Crystal folded her arms and sipped her coffee. She nearly dropped it and shouted, “Ugh that’s too bitter and cold.”

“Bitter and cold? I know that well,” Ted was obviously joking, but Crystal slapped him much the same way Savannah did her brother when he teased her.

“No, how does ten dollars an hour doing a little construction like real men sound to you?” he offered my brother and Lloyd a job and added, “But you gotta wear your britches!”

My brother and Lloyd were all for that idea – especially with the assurance they could wear normal clothes.

“This go for me too?” Nelly Jr. was camouflaged on the floor in the shadow of Maw-Maw’s beefy legs.

“No little man,” Odd Jobs smiled kindly at him and told him he would need to get a little older and stronger and then he could help out.

“Shit,” Nelly Jr. made no secret of his disappointment “Always tryna hold a brother down.” I was the only one who giggled at the adorable yet black militant tone coming out of his tiny baby face. I notice little details like that and I think everyone else just doesn’t have the time or interest.

“You don’t mind if your daughter here washes some cars to make a little cash for the family do you Patricia?” Odd-jobs asked my mom’s permission without asking me if I minded.

She looked put-off and regarded me naked, “Well if you did it yesterday,” she reluctantly agreed. “You don’t have to donate your money to the house though. It is yours – you earned it.”

Odd Jobs looked at my mom for a long moment. I know I keep reading into things but I felt there was something between them they weren’t telling me.

“I don’t have any use for it,” I said “You can have whatever I make. It beats being naked and cleaning up here all day under Ted’s rules.”

“What are these rules anyway?” my mom asked skeptically. “I know about the one about Conner’s erections. Do they have one for you?”

“For me what?” I genuinely had no idea what she meant.

“Last night,” she tried to hint at what she meant and then she just said it, “If your nipples get hard and you get wet and start to drip. Do you have to stand in the kitchen with a towel on it?” she looked angry she had to say the actual words to her question and that I hadn’t guessed.

“Yes she does,” Crystal assured my mother that was a rule, “but I think with Ted here she was in no danger of getting turned on.” It was Ted’s turn to swat at Crystal playfully when she sent that barb his way.

“Are these rules written down?” she was asking me – not Crystal. I don’t think she believed my Aunt entirely that there were actually rules for our punishment – with good cause.

“No Ma’am, they haven’t been written down,” I remembered to say Ma’am like a good girl.

“Well there is one violation!” my mom said. She didn’t look angry, but she seemed to be frustrated. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that – I had called her Ma’am. I thought that was the right thing.

“If you are supposed to call the adults Ma’am and Sir – then you forgot the first time you answered me. What is the punishment if you do that?”

“I don’t..” I was about to say that I didn’t know when Crystal cut me off.

“..want to be punished” Crystal finished my sentence for me. “But I’ve been so busy with things that I didn’t write down the rules or the punishments.” Crystal was lying – she had no intention of giving us a punishment.

I decided to play along, “I thought the punishment was to stand in the corner with bells on my nipples and if they jingle even a little bit you throw a rubber ball at my behind, Ma’am?”

Crystal had already demonstrated she was quick witted when it came to scamming someone. “That is true but we can’t do that in here or someone will knock out a screened in window,” Crystal kept a straight face, “Plus we are fixing to go wash some cars so we’ll have to suspend the discipline.”

“Now why do that?” Odd-Jobs asked “Patricia, you don’t mind if the girls get kept in line when they are washing cars? I think a little discipline might keep their mind on washing and not playing around.”

My mom agreed without hesitation that would be alright.

“Well playing around and having fun is part of how we make our money,” Crystal offered a counter-point.

“Don’t worry Crystal, when I say the girls – I mean you too”.

Crystal rolled her eyes at him and shrugged him off “Not likely.”

He chuckled, but didn’t wait for any further questions or comments from us. He told us to have our boom box and bathing suits on by the time he got back. He could be jovial, but there was a certainty in his voice that made it sound like not only was he not joking but that this had already been decided and we WERE going to do it.

He said goodbye specifically to Maw-Maw and jokingly added, “Have your bikini on too. You can be our clean-up girl.”

“Oh you know I will,” Maw-Maw joked. I had a mental image of her large blubbery boobs and ass in a thong. You could see it, or the image of it through the Mu-Mu, when she stood up. It was a mighty crack surrounded by two mountains of cottage cheese – shudder.

Crystal waited until Odd-jobs pulled off with my mom.

“Where did standing in the corner with bells on your nipples come from?” she asked me with a new found respect for my creativity.

“Yeah and throwing a tennis ball at your ass?” Ted commended me as well. He was also gripping an old rubber racquet ball.

“I was just playing along with your game,” I replied.

“What game?” Crystal asked me with a concerned look.

“You were telling my mom there were rules,” I was careful with my words. I didn’t want to accidentally offend Crystal and call her a liar – even though she was. “I knew I would not have to actually do it so I came up with an outlandish rule that might shock my mom into letting us out of having these rules. I thought the idea was like a game of Jenga. You set an object on top of an already precarious pile and then take turns to see who can set another object higher and see that it doesn’t topple over.”

She looked at me like I was speaking Chinese.

“I just came up with something creepy I figured Ted would make us do if he could and told her it was a rule so that she would say that was too much and tell us to stop.”

Crystal nodded in understanding. I got the impression that I had over-thought what she had been doing with her charade about following rules.

Crystal gave my brother back his clothes and Lloyd put on a shirt with the sleeves cut off that said “Bishop’s” on the front. He had on a pair of sneakers and some dusty stonewash jeans – which fit him like a glove.

The girls on the other hand didn’t get so much clothing in this exchange. It was however better than nothing.

“Well girls,” Crystal invited us to the bedroom, “let’s get dressed for another day of work.”

Crystal chose a ruby-red shiny mylar two piece for herself. It was a genuinely real bikini that looked expensive. “If you priced it by the inches of fabric, I am sure it would cost 10 bucks a square inch,” she remarked.

It had underwire support for her boobs like a bra and had a simple tie in the back. The bikini bottoms had cute pink and red ruffles in the front and was cut in a V-shape. There was a string that went through the back.

Crystal turned around and asked her daughter, “Can you see my pooper from behind?”

“Yes of course,” Savannah answered dismissively about the tiny thong string.

Crystal didn’t say anything as she looked for two outfits for us.

“You girls wore the best ones we had that might fit you yesterday,” she was digging through her many clothes in laundry baskets and mirrored cabinet; that looked fancy and made of marble, until you saw the edges or touched it and realized it was plastic.

“I had on two pairs of panties and a roll of duct tape around my boobs yesterday,” I joked – how could that be the best bikini.

“Well, you two are part of the itty bitty titty committee so you cannot wear my tops,” Crystal didn’t look up or acknowledge what I said, “and Savannah stopped making bikinis years ago. We have not done something like that in a coon’s age.”

I didn’t want to know what a coon’s age was – but I felt if Nelly Jr. were skulking around in the room, the way he always seemed to be, then he would have had something to say about it being offensive.

“What is Ted going to do while we are doing this?” I asked as I stood there naked and let my Aunt hold up potential bikini bottoms or tops to my body to see if they would fit.

“I guess jack off or talk to that fat mom of his,” Crystal didn’t hush her own voice and chuckled.

She finally came up with a suitable bottom for me and I stepped into it without even looking at it.

“I mean if the entire family is willing to work to make extra cash – you didn’t even want to do this for Odd-Jobs – shouldn’t he be helping too?”

She made me step out of the bikini bottom and try on another pair. I did it without even thinking as well. I had become so used to being naked in front of Crystal and Savannah I did not even think about it as nudity at this point.

“You don’t really understand, Odd-Jobs wasn’t really asking me,” Crystal said cryptically as she held up something to her daughter’s chest and then to me and tossed it aside.

“He is just the maintenance man isn’t he? I mean I get that he collects the rent, but I don’t understand.”

“We have sort of an understanding,” Crystal decided on some bottoms for her daughter and adjusted them on her while explaining to me. “You should not ask questions you don’t want answers too”

“Does this have to do with why Savannah backs down when you whisper in her ear?” I probably shouldn’t have been so nosy but I felt like since I had been fitting in so well, and that it was just us three girls in the bedroom, I could ask a question that has been on my mind for a while.

“You need to listen,” Savannah told me while wriggling into a tiny top that her mom was trying on her. “She told you not to ask questions that you don’t want the answers to.”

I did want the answer and I stood there naively wondering why this was such a big deal to them to be so secretive about. They didn’t seem to have a problem saying anything that was on their mind.

“Look Odd-Jobs and me have a little understanding,” Crystal explained as she turned her attention back to finding something suitable for me to wear. “Oh these are cute- do you remember when you got these?” she asked her daughter.

“Don’t put that cutsie shit on her,” Savannah said scornfully “She already looks like an actual virgin. Do you really want to make her look like one?”

“I AM a virgin!” I said.

They both laughed at first; and then they realized I wasn’t kidding. “Well you do dance like one,” Savannah laughed. I shouldn’t have been surprised they saw being a virgin as a negative. I had always been taught to save myself for the prince of my dreams.

“That might be a good upsell then,” Crystal stuck with the outfit she was giving me and did my hair in pigtails. I didn’t protest, even though I wanted to. I wasn’t reading into things that much, to realize the two of them had conspired to avoid my question. I reminded her about my question about Odd-Jobs and she sighed as if she really didn’t want to answer.

“Look Odd-Jobs and me have a little understanding,” she repeated herself. “He lets me be and I let him be.” She had me hold still while she tightened the back of the bikini so it wouldn’t pop off easily. Then she explained, “He can make life difficult here at the Buckman. Your stuff turns up missing or your water starts to back up, or your electricity suddenly stops working or your air-conditioner has cat poop in it. Those damned dogs we got when Lloyd was little. His real father brought them as a gift. He told me they were pure-bred wolves. They weren’t anything of the sort but, Lloyd believed they were.”

She inhaled and said, “Shit, I need a cigarette.” She sat down, lit a smoke and yelled for Lloyd to get the boom box and the lotions from the bathroom ready. “Lloyd’s real dad said he would come back one day and those wolves would protect him until he did. They grew into really big dogs who bark and shit all the time. We aren’t supposed to have them and nobody else has dogs like those. Odd-jobs could evict us out of here on our ass – and that includes you if we don’t keep him happy.”

She took a drag from her cigarette and told me that its part of the game with Odd-jobs not to seem too eager but that it was a chance to earn some cash and we’ll play along. “You don’t mind showing a little cheese out in the parking lot to wash some cars if it means some cash for the family right?”

I knew what she meant by a little cheese – I think. “I did it yesterday,” I said confidently.

“You washed, but did you wax?” Crystal was asking me one of her double-entendres.

“I think so,” I answered meekly.

“You’d know if you did,” she told me and looked at Savannah for clarification.

“She got her hand all over a rocket pop for twenty,” Savannah said while pantomiming a rapid jerking off motion. We had gone slow and gentle – nothing like the quick up and down she was doing with her hands.

“Virgin huh?” Crystal looked at me with respect and had me put on a little makeup. “This is water proof don’t worry.”

“You go with Savannah on waxes until you are ready to do them alone?” Crystal asked me in a very businesslike manner and wanted me to confirm I understood.

“You always do THAT sort of stuff when you wax a car?” I probably should have realized the answer would be ‘yes’, but I was genuinely shocked.

“We don’t do the same thing every time. It is kind of like a little dare game. Each pervert is a little different than the next. If you follow my lead you will be fine.”

Crystal told me that Savannah hadn’t started out doing waxes right away. “I am going to tell you something I told my daughter when she first started doing waxes with me,” she took a puff from her cigarette and exhaled. I had been taught smoking was disgusting, but the way Crystal did it seemed so sexy and sophisticated. “You don’t have to do ANYTHING that you don’t feel comfortable doing, or that you don’t want to do, with anyone out there.”

Her warm smile was comforting. I smiled back in understanding.

“UNLESS it is for a hundred,” Savannah joked greedily rubbing her hands together like an evil genius and we all laughed.

Ted, Nelly Jr. and Maw-Maw had their attention wrapped up in a TV show that was about a stripper who loved another stripper and wanted her boyfriend to join them, but the boyfriend refused and said he wanted her to be a good woman. “God dammit,” Ted yelled at the TV. “Why you want to go and do that for! You fucking liberals are ruining this god-damned country by teaching the young men to be total pussies!”

We sat in the living room with the boys and waited for Odd-Jobs to return to take us to the car wash. “We could just walk up,” Lloyd volunteered, but Crystal being inherently lazy pooh-poohed that idea right off.

“It’s hot as shit out there Lloyd,” Crystal warned him.

“You got sunblock and you are going to be out there all day.”

“I don’t put this shit on until I get out there,” Crystal explained and added, “Fuck, how early is it anyway?”

It was just a little after 10 a.m. “Oh fuck this,” she went to the fridge and cracked a beer. “I see you little munchers ate all the food we had in here pretty much.”

“Hey, we’ll have a shit-ton of food after we go shopping with all this MONEY!” Savannah joked and danced around with Lloyd.

“Make it rain!” Lloyd pretended to throw imaginary dollar bills over his head as he danced with his sister.

“You two are idiots,” Crystal smirked and asked lovingly, “What am I going to do with you two?”

“You could be a good and respectable mother and not walk around in a bikini thinking of ways to scam the neighborhood,” Maw-Maw scolded Crystal.

“I ain’t never heard anyone complain about one wash job we ever gave,” Savannah confronted Maw-Maw with that observation. Maw-Maw let the issue go, but mumbled to herself about girls who were too big for their britches.

“You don’t mind wearing that out of the house?” Conner asked me.

I hadn’t even looked at the bikini they had given me. I had been too busy thinking about the waxes and what that might actually include. “I guess not,” I said instinctively, “it beats being naked.”

“You sure?” Conner asked skeptically and then I looked down at what I had on.

It was a Sponge Bob bikini – it would have been an ordinary off the rack bikini that you could buy in any store. It was decorated with a lovable cartoon character. It was yellow with spots and a picture of Sandy Cheeks and Sponge Bob on the bra-top. I would tell you what the bottoms said but I couldn’t see them.

The bikini would have fit a girl about half my age perfectly. I think my jaw dropped open and I could feel my heart race.

The bikini top was so small that my nipple was all that was covered. I did not misspell that - when I say ‘nipple’ I mean the singular. If I moved it to the left then the left nipple was fully covered. If I shifted the top the right then the other one was covered, but there wasn’t enough material to cover them both fully.

The bottoms were so small that I thought I had nothing on. Lloyd made me aware that the cloth in the front bunched up right over my pussy lips and gave me 'Mega-Camel Toe'.

“You would never dress like that around the kids from Cherry Lawn,” Conner said and it was totally true.

“I am not in Cherry Lawn now,” I tried to be flippant and defiant like Savannah, but instead of a feisty rebel I sounded like a stuck-up snot.

“Aren’t you worried someone will take a snapshot with their cell phone or a video and upload it to YouTube so they see when we move back?” Conner asked.

“I hadn’t thought about it until YOU said something about it,” I tried not to panic. I didn’t have anything to say in response and he could see me getting nervous about going to the busiest part of the trailer park in THIS outfit.

“Spongetits,” Lloyd laughed at me in my pig-tails and little bikini.

“It would probably sound more like Spongeboob,” Savannah explained with a hint of exasperation at Lloyd not getting the obvious play on words.

“That makes more sense,” he chuckled. He told us that at the county fair he had seen two women wearing body paint like Sponge Bob and Sandy Cheeks dancing around and he swore they had no tops or bottoms on – just body paint from head to toe.

“During the day?” Conner asked him quizzically. I have to admit that if that were true then I was getting off lucky. There may be thousands of people at a county fair that would have seen those women.

“No at night, but you could see the younger ones clit and her nipples I think,” he said it as if this was just a quirky curiosity at a county fair.

“That seems a bit over the top,” Conner said in disbelief. “Wouldn’t the cops have stopped them from dancing around at a county fair? That’s like indecent exposure in front of families and stuff?”

“You haven’t been to one of our county fairs,” Lloyd laughed. “You see the bikinis they’ve got on? Ain’t nobody going to call the law on them.”

Lloyd pantomimed dialing a phone and made the ringing sounds. “Hello Officer? This is Lloyd Danville. I’d like to report three fine-ass bitches at the swimming pool in some tiny bikinis with their tits nearly hanging out. What’s that? Go Fuck myself?” he pretended he was talking to an officer.

He hung up his imaginary phone, “They didn’t even want to know about your sister’s giant camel toe. Don’t those cops know this an emergency?” He shook Conner playfully in mock panic, “Tell them Cops to stop dealing with fires and meth-houses – we’ve got to get those sexy-ass women into some conservative granny bikinis.”

Maw-Maw groaned, “There is something to be said for leaving things to the imagination.”

“In your case I would say that is very true Maw-Maw,” Crystal delivered a backhanded compliment without Maw-Maw even noticing she was being put down – or at least she didn’t let on that she did.

Ted spoke up finally and asked in in a sweet voice, “Do you have all your lotions packed honey?”

“Sure do!” Crystal tapped a bag full of SPF sprays and lotions.

“How about a kiss,” she bent over and gave him a kiss on his scruffy beard when he turned his cheek.

“Did you bring enough anal lube for all the fucking you are going to do?” Ted’s tone became passive aggressive.

“Oh Ted,” she tried to kiss him again but he turned his head, “This is business. You know you are my man and I am coming home to you.”

“Fuck this Crystal,” he whined like an insecure baby. He had played the confident bully earlier today, but now he almost sounded like he was going to cry. “You are doing this in front of Maw-Maw to make me look like a shit heel.”

“Baby you are a shit-heel,” Crystal’s voice was soothing and she rubbed his shoulders “But you are my shit-heel. If we make enough we’ll go down to the mall and get us some nice things and stop at Outback steakhouse,” she cooed and whispered in his ear. I saw her flutter her breath so that it teased him with a puff of air and he smiled like a happy baby.

“Can Maw-Maw come too?” he asked for reassurance.

“It depends on who we get to drive us,” Crystal said. “Your truck isn’t working and I don’t know anybody with a tow-truck strong enough to drag her down there.” She was teasing but it was a cruel joke and Maw-Maw looked offended. “I am sorry Maw-Maw,” she kissed the heavy-set woman on her head.

“Don’t put those massive fake titties on my nose when you kiss my head,” Maw-Maw protested. “You could have bought a proper house for the money that was spent to inflate those things to half the size of my own natural breasts.”

“It wasn’t my money,” Crystal admitted they were paid for – and shrugged.

“Can I make rules when you get back?” Ted asked like a pouty child asking if he could have extra ice-cream after dinner.

“If you want to make up some rules to tell Patricia we did them,” she nodded. “But don’t expect us to actually follow them.”

He seemed satisfied he could start planning his rules. There is a Beatles song I once heard about a real nowhere man making all his nowhere plans. I feel like it wasn’t written for Ted but it could certainly be about him.

I had observed that Ted seems to be someone who craves authority. I was getting the impression that when he didn’t get the respect he thought he deserved he would get angry or throw temper tantrums. He didn’t seem to go out of his way to actually GET respect and drank all day while sitting in his underwear. I hadn’t seen him actually work since we moved in.

I feel like he might be seeking approval from his mother and when he doesn’t get it – he gets particularly antsy.

I wish I was better at psychology because I’ve never met anyone like Ted and yet at the same time I feel like he is a walking cliché’ of an overgrown man-child.

I think he would look to my father to give him approval too and see him as a peer. My dad is a real-man. The kind of guy who is actually out working and hasn’t seen us for days because he is trying to get things organized for us to finally get out of here – he is nothing like Ted.

“Rules?” Odd-jobs opened the screen door and walked in just as we were all talking. “I had a long talk with Patricia in the car; she said she agreed with the ones I have for you today so I think you’ll want to pay attention when I start handing them out to the Ass Family.”

He didn’t seem his normal jovial self. He was more serious and business like.

“Ass Family?” Ted was offended. He snarled at Odd-jobs to take it back.

Odd-jobs wasn’t going let Ted’s bark intimidate him. “Yeah the Ass Family. You are the Jack Ass, Crystal is the Fat Ass, Savannah is the Smart Ass.” Each member of the family smiled when he called out someone else and made a sour note face when it was their turn.

“Lloyd is Dumb Ass,” Odd-Jobs continued, “Patricia is Tight Ass.” Crystal openly laughed a little too loud at that one. “Ellen here is the Kiss-Ass”.

That seemed a little cold. I folded my arms in front of my chest.

“Oh don’t be like that Kiss-Ass,” Odd-Jobs reverted to his outwardly friendly tone, “I gave you a nickname as a term of endearment because I like you.”

Conner asked what his nickname was.

“I don’t have one for you,” Odd-Jobs said while looking down and smiling. He waited for his little joke to sink in and then said, “If you want to make some money, hop on the cart,” he said enthusiastically and turned to leave.

He stuck his head back in the door and said, “Or sit there like a lump while we have all the fun,” directly to Ted. Ted just ignored him.

The boys carried a small cooler, a boom box and Crystal’s lotion bag. “You can leave your coffee can here,” Odd-jobs said. “It’s going to be a 20% off the top. You girls can split the rest however you like.”

“There aren’t going to be any holding fees or little extra fines are there?” Crystal questioned the deal.

“Holding those fine jugs of yours,” he went to squeeze her tits

My Aunt slapped his hands while climbing on his golf cart with her usual pluckiness “That is for paying customers only!”