Baby, Drive South. Stephanie Bond
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“Sure, when they were in Iraq and Afghanistan!” Porter blurted out. “But now that they’re back on American soil, they want to see some American beauties.”
“We’re only a few hours from Atlanta,” Marcus remarked.
“Four hours,” Porter reminded him.
“The men don’t seem to mind the drive when they caravan into the city on the weekends.”
Kendall made a thoughtful noise in his throat. “But invariably, some of them don’t come back Monday morning. They’re either in jail or in love.”
Marcus pulled on his chin. Ten crews of twenty-five men each was the minimum number of bodies they needed to keep things moving forward. Admittedly, it was getting harder to recruit new workers to replace the men who went AWOL every week.
A commotion outside the office trailer caught their attention. Kendall looked out the window, then bolted for the door. “It’s another fight.”
Marcus cursed and followed his brothers outside where a few hundred yards away, two men rolled in the red mud, fists flying, while other men stood around egging them on. Kendall and Porter rushed forward to pull the men apart, but wound up getting dragged down in the mud with them instead. Marcus rolled his eyes, then reached for a water hose coiled nearby and turned a stream full force on the fighting men. “Break it up!”
The men separated enough for Kendall and Porter to drag them to their feet and shove them in opposite directions.
“He started it!” one man yelled.
“That’s bullshit!” the other man yelled.
“Enough!” Marcus roared. “One more word and your pay will be docked!” He turned to address all the workers. “The next man who wants to fight will be fired on the spot, got it? Now get back to work!”
The men grumbled, but everyone made their way back to the mountainous pile of tires that were being sent through an industrial shredder, cleaned and bagged as mulch. It was their first viable commercial product. Porter, a natural salesman, had convinced several state parks and botanical gardens to switch from natural wood mulch to their reclaimed product that would last for decades. Everything was moving forward as planned…except for the constant fighting among the men.
Kendall and Porter walked toward Marcus, slinging mud from their arms. “It’s only going to get worse,” Porter said. “These guys are together all the time, with no way to blow off steam.”
“I have to agree, big brother,” Kendall offered, picking up the hose to wash off the worst of the sticky red mud.
“C’mon, Marcus—having women here will help the town grow faster,” Porter urged. “We’re going to need retail stores and teachers and nurses—”
“And lawyers and doctors,” Kendall broke in, giving Porter a chastising squirt with the hose.
“I don’t care what they do for a living,” Porter said with a grin, “as long as they bring skirts and high heels and perfume. I don’t blame the men—I’m tired of being around a bunch of sweaty, ugly guys, too. And that includes you two.”
Marcus pursed his mouth. “So this is really about you, Porter. You want us to import women for your own entertainment.”
“No.” Then Porter shrugged sheepishly. “But I don’t plan to sit on the sidelines, either. Unlike you, Marcus, I don’t hate women.”
Marcus gritted his teeth. “I don’t hate women. I just know that bringing a bunch of females into this town prematurely will be a disaster of epic proportions.” He gestured to the barren red-clay expanse of ground extending to a distant tree line. “Where are they supposed to live? In the men’s barracks?” The utilitarian rectangular building sat at the end of the work site, adding little to the landscape.
“We could build a boardinghouse across from the dining hall,” Kendall offered, handing off the water hose to Porter. “It could be the start of our downtown.”
“What about our dire water situation?” Marcus asked, jerking the hose out of Porter’s hand and turning it off before he could rinse himself.
“We’d need to repair the water tower sooner rather than later,” Kendall admitted.
“But the sooner we make this place civilized,” Porter piped up, “the sooner we can bring Mother back home.”
A pang struck Marcus in his chest—Porter knew his soft spot. Their mother’s pining for her hometown had fueled their decision to rebuild Sweetness. With the whiff of defeat in the air, Marcus pulled his hand down his face. “And how do you propose we go about attracting women to a place where drinking water is at a premium, and the nearest mall is a helicopter ride away?”
Porter’s teeth were white in his mud-covered face. “I volunteer to go to Atlanta and start recruiting right away.”
Marcus frowned. “At strip clubs and bars? No, thanks.”
“You have a better idea?” Porter asked.
“I think it’s a bad idea all the way around!” Marcus shouted, then glanced at Kendall, who was, as usual, standing poised to jump between them if necessary.
“But…I’ll go along with it,” Marcus announced, then silenced Porter’s shout of victory with a raised hand. “If you’ll handle the logistics, Kendall.”
Kendall’s eyes widened. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Porter can get the men started on building a rooming house and repairing the water tower while you figure out how to import the kind of women we’ll need to grow Sweetness.”
Marcus turned and strode back toward the office, his muscles tense. A palpable sense of impending doom overwhelmed him.
“Where are you going?” Kendall called behind him.
“To take cover,” Marcus yelled over his shoulder. “Because you boys are about to unleash another natural disaster on this town.”
1
Porter Armstrong stepped off the metal ladder onto the platform of the newly restored, white water tower soaring over the resurrected town of Sweetness, Georgia. “Town” was a generous description of the expanse of stark land beneath him—fields of bare red clay stretched as far as the eye could see, hemmed by stands of stunted hardwood trees that still bore the ravages of the tornado that had obliterated the small mountain town a decade ago.
Porter had happily united with his older brothers, Marcus and Kendall, in their efforts to rebuild Sweetness. With an army of strong men, they’d made great strides in clearing debris and establishing the basis for the recycling industry they hoped would provide an economic foundation for the fledgling town. One too-tall, too-perfect pine tree in the distance was actually a camouflaged cell tower erected by a communications company turned partner, eager to get in on the ground floor of the green experiment.
The project of which the brothers were most proud—the newly paved road containing recycled asphalt—was a neat black ribbon leading from the horizon into what had been established as the town center. Granted, downtown Sweetness was more of a vision than a reality since it currently consisted of a dining hall and the boardinghouse that had been built in preparation for impending visitors. But the brothers were optimistic.
Or, according to some, crazy.
Colonel Molly MacIntyre at the diner was one such person. She ruled the men and their dining hall with an iron fist, and did not cotton to the idea of, in her words, “a bunch of flibbertigibbet females” taking over the town.
Porter shrugged out of his work shirt and folded it over the railing to enjoy a rare cool June breeze. The summer heat had been brutal already, with the temperature and humidity sure to get worse before getting better. He pulled a bandanna from his jeans pocket and wiped the sweat dripping down