The Castaway Hotel - 2 - 26. Chapter 26 - I Win With A Pair

Sammy and Andrew wanted to ride in the back with the other boys, so I let Danny ride up front with me. It was another long ride and we stopped only once, for gas and a late lunch. Once again, our entrance into the restaurant caused somewhat of a minor disturbance, as they hurriedly tried to prepare a place large enough to accommodate us all. Once again, we were asked what kind of a group this was, but I didn’t have time to answer that question, as the boys starting firing their own questions at me.

“Dad, may I have this?” or “Dad, may so and so and I go to the toilet?” were the types of queries I felt were more pressing and in need of my attention.

The waitress just stared at me, before asking the obvious question, “Are these boys all your sons?”

“Yes, they are, but they are not ALL of my children,” I admitted. “I have others who are older and living on their own already.” I was getting a kick out of shocking people and just couldn’t resist adding the last part, to let them know there were even more to this brood. I know, it’s cruel, but the temptation was just too great to ignore. Once she got over her initial shock about my disclosure, I soon saw her running around, whispering to everyone about our situation. The boys were also starting to really enjoy this little game and made sure to call me ‘dad’ loudly enough for everyone else to hear, each and every time we played it on another unsuspecting group.

After we finished our meal, I took care of the tab and made sure everyone used the toilet (which took some time), before we got under way again. After another monotonous drive, we finally arrived home just before 5:00 p.m. While the older boys were unloading everything from the van, I took Sammy and Andrew up and showed them their bedroom. It was one of the two rooms we had made out of the upstairs master bedroom, the one with the twin beds in it. Both boys were very excited they would be sharing their own room, and later confessed they thought they might be in with up to four or five of the boys, in a big dormitory like room. That was because they had never seen a house with this many bedrooms before.

Ricky and Cole volunteered to help them unpack their things and organize their belongings into the dressers and closet. They finished this task quite quickly and then joined Graham to give the boys a tour of the place, while the rest of us began to unwind.

Sammy and Andrew were in awe of our house, explaining that one floor of our place had more rooms than the whole house they lived in with their parents. I told them it was because we needed that many rooms, with so many boys, and they quickly agreed.

After fixing the boys a light dinner, since we had such a late lunch, we watched a little television before bedtime. Once I informed everyone it was time to get cleaned up and ready for bed, Graham asked if he could bathe with his newest brothers. Sammy and Andrew liked that idea too, so I filled the tub with warm water and scrubbed them down quickly. He was thrilled that both of the boys were uncut, like him, and immediately bonded with them. By the time the boys exited the old master bathroom, the other boys were already parading naked up and down the hallway. Sammy and Andrew laughed and blushed when they saw them.

“They’ve got big pee pees,” Andrew observed.

“Yes, they do,” I replied, “and they aren’t afraid to be seen naked by their brothers. They tend to do this a lot, so I hope it doesn’t bother you.”

“No,” Sammy answered immediately. “We used to go without clothes at our house, too. We even took baths with our parents, in a large tub. My father said it was an old Japanese custom.”

“I’ve heard about the Japanese public baths,” I admitted, “but I didn’t know some people still followed that practice. I’m just glad you’re both okay with the fact that the boys like to run around without clothes on too, that’s all.”

“Why do some of them have different looking pee pees?” Andrew asked, looking at me bewildered, so I quickly explained to them about circumcision and why it is sometimes done. Their limited knowledge was because they had never seen any other boys naked before, as their family had very little social contact with other people. Their parents never invited anyone from work or school into their home and the mother’s family mostly shunned them. Even at the school they attended there was very little chance of seeing anyone else, even on the sly, as there were partitions between the urinals and around the commodes. Since the only place they ever went naked was in front of their parents, they had very little exposure to other cultural practices.

Now that they understood the differences and realized some of the boys were like them, while others weren’t, they gave it very little additional attention. In fact, they didn’t act any differently with the boys than they had when they were all fully dressed. It was a very refreshing transition.

An hour or so later, I sent all of the younger boys up to bed. After giving them a few minutes to get situated, I checked on them and made sure they were all tucked into bed. I gave Sammy and Andrew a kiss good night and they each gave me a huge hug in return. I told them they needed to get a good night’s sleep, because I would be registering them in school in the morning. They were excited about this and I could tell it would take them some time before they calmed down enough to fall asleep. Hoping it would help settle them down, I decided to push the beds back together, so I could crawl in between and lie with them for a while. I stayed with them like that until they drifted into dreamland and then I crawled back out and went downstairs. After chasing the older boys off to bed too, I gave in to my own fatigue and slipped off to my own room.

The next morning I fixed breakfast and then went up to wake Sammy and Andrew. They smiled at me when they opened their eyes. “I was afraid I had just dreamed this,” Sammy told me, through an ear-to-ear grin.

“It’s no dream,” I countered, before kissing them both on the forehead. “You’re home where you belong. Let’s get you two dressed and then we’ll go down for breakfast.”

We selected the clothes the boys wanted to wear for the first day at their new school and then went down to eat. It was then that I realized they were most likely accustomed to an oriental diet and much of what I had to offer them might seem strange. They had eaten other ‘American’ type foods while they were with us, for lunch and dinner, but from what they later informed me, they were mostly used to eating large quantities of rice, certain cooked vegetables and fish. They also confided to me that their mother would also feed them American dishes from time-to-time, when their father wasn’t around and without his knowledge. They also stated they also ate the cafeteria food at school most of the time too. This meant they weren’t totally unaccustomed to some of the same things we ate, but I would try to be more accommodating and offer them a blend of the various cuisines, at least until they told me it wasn’t necessary

I gave them corn flakes for their first breakfast with us and then made some scrambled eggs to go with it, figuring those might be a palatable compromise. While they ate, the boys told me how the caseworker, with whom they had been staying on a temporary basis, had handled the problem. She had a Japanese friend who worked at the college and asked him to come over and prepare meals for the boys during their stay. Therefore, they had been able to stick to nearly the same types of foods they were most accustomed to. It was too bad the caseworker had failed to mention that little fact to Ms. Getz or to me.

When we arrived at school, I immediately began to fill out the appropriate forms to enroll them. I assigned them to the classrooms of two of my finest teachers and gave the boys a tour of the building. I showed them where their classrooms were located, where the toilets and cafeteria were, and then introduced them to their teachers. They were very excited and extremely polite to everyone they met.

Throughout the day, I was pleased to see that the entire school body welcomed the pair with open arms. In fact, they were sort of curious, as we had no other oriental students enrolled. I checked on them several times during the day and they seemed to be happy and doing well.

I asked Trey, Cole and Graham to meet them after school and keep them occupied until I was ready to leave, which they readily agreed to. On the ride home, neither Sammy nor Andrew could wait to tell us about their first day. They talked as rapidly as old-time auctioneers and their hands and arms flailed about, as they animatedly spoke about the things they had done. They nearly knocked Cole out when they were telling us about a game they had played at recess, when both of their arms shot out and caught Cole, one on the chin and the other on the side of his head, at almost the same instant. They apologized profusely and Cole hammed it up by begging them not to beat him any more. We were all having a good laugh, as we pulled into the high school to pick the others up.

After dinner that night, I went into my bedroom to work on the computer. I wanted to send Ann a quick email telling her about the boys’ first day at school. I had just sent it off when Sammy asked to speak to me.

“What may I do for you?” I asked him.

“I want you to tell me about my parents,” he stated, emphatically. “I want to know how they died. I know people aren’t telling us things and I want to know what they are hiding and why they don’t want us to know.”

I was afraid this might happen and made impromptu plans for this possibility. I held out my arms toward him, so he walked in my direction. As soon as he was close enough, I reached out and pulled him onto my lap. I looked into his large, dark eyes, swallowed hard and prepared to answer his question.

“Sammy, both of your parents were shot and people didn’t want you to know everything about it, because it wasn’t a pleasant scene,” I explained. “They were only trying to protect you from the gruesome details of their deaths.” I could see Sammy thinking about my answer and possibly forming his next question.

“Who killed them?” he asked, succinctly. I looked him in the eyes and took a deep breath before I spoke.

“A very distraught man,” I told him. I didn’t lie to him, but I didn’t think he was ready for the whole truth. “He was very upset and reacted out of frustration.”

“What happened to him?” Sammy pressed.

“He’s also dead,” I answered, simply.

“Why did he do it?” Sammy continued.

“Sammy, I’m not sure that anyone will ever know the true answer to that question,” I explained. “Let’s just say that all of them were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

I wrapped my arms around his tiny body and hugged him against my chest. I kissed his forehead, stroked his hair and then spoke to him again. “You and your brother are safe with us,” I told him, anticipating his next reaction, “and you have a home here, for as long as you want.”

“Are you our father now?” he asked me directly, as he looked up at me with a sad, questioning expression on his handsome face.

“Right now I’m your foster father,” I told him. “That’s the way Mrs. Getz set it up when we left her. I’m not sure if you and Andrew want me to be more than that, but I am willing to adopt both of you, if you want me to.”

“I’ll have to see what Andrew says, but I think we will want that,” he stated, quite calmly. “After we found out our parents had been killed, we talked about how scared we were and how we were all alone. We didn’t like that at all. We don’t want to be alone.” He sat quietly thinking for a short time, before he continued. “I think we will want to be part of this family and we will want others to know that we are your sons. Me and Andrew have already talked about how nice it is to have so many brothers to help us and look out for us and they have been really nice. We like you too and we like it that we can see you all day long at school. We feel very good here, like we belong.”

“You do belong,” I confirmed. “The boys and I all agree on that.”

“We know. You’ve always made us feel that way since we first met you,” he agreed. “You treated us just like all of the other boys. You never treated us differently and you always made us feel we were wanted. Our brothers made us feel wanted too. Andrew told me at recess that we are very lucky and he loves it here. I do too.” He looked very pensive now. It was another minute or two before he spoke again. “Should we call you ‘father’ or ‘dad’ now?”

“You may call me whatever you wish, but only if you want to,” I agreed. “I don’t want to make you feel that you have to call me that or make you think that you are doing anything to dishonor the memory of your own father. Which name did you use for him?”

“We usually called him the Japanese word for father, but sometimes we would call him father, too,” he explained.

“Look, you don’t have to decide this right away and it’s probably best that you talk this over with Andrew first, before you decide anything,” I suggested. “When you two think you’re ready to make up your minds, we’ll sit down and the three of us will talk about it together. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes, I like that,” he confessed. “I’ll go and find Andrew, so I can see what he thinks.” I gave him another squeeze and kissed him on the forehead again. He smiled at me, just before he got off of my lap, and then he went to look for his brother.

I thought that went well, but I was still shaking like a leaf from answering his questions about his family. While he was grilling me, I was as tense as an anchor cable during a hurricane, trying to tiptoe with the truth about what happened. I was afraid I was going to say something wrong and make things worse for him. I’m glad I had gone over some of those responses in my head, prior to his coming to me about his feelings, as it had made it easier for me to respond.

When bath time rolled around, Cole and Ricky volunteered to give the boys their baths this time. Ricky washed Sammy and Cole washed both Graham and Andrew. I think Graham was getting a bent nose about the attention his brothers were giving to the other two and I’m sure Cole recognized that too. Cole did his duty without any fuss and you could see it made Graham feel a great deal better afterwards. They all came back to the family room, sans clothing, and walked up to me. “Can we sit on your lap?” Andrew asked me.

“Certainly. It’s definitely big enough for two… or three,” I added, when I saw Graham begin to scowl. After hearing my addendum, he cracked a smile and the three of them wasted no time in scrambling into position on my lap. Ricky and Cole then took up positions on either side of me, once the others were settled in. Sammy and Graham rested their heads against my shoulders, while Andrew rested the back of his head against my chest. It seemed as if we spent most of our time just feeling close to each other, rather than watching whatever was on the tube. They actually even fell asleep that way, long before I felt it was time for them to go to their room.

Seeing my predicament, Dustin and Trey helped me get them into position, so I could carry them upstairs, while Graham, Cole and Ricky walked up with me. They gave me a hand laying both boys down and tucking them in and then the rest of us went back downstairs for a while longer.

The rest of the week passed by very quickly and the older boys invited Brandon and Jay over for the weekend, so they could get to know their two newest brothers too. Sammy and Andrew received a great deal of attention Friday night and I got a kick out of watching Brandon and Jay carrying the pair around on their shoulders. It was as if the boys had been together for ages. I was very proud of my ‘other’ sons.

Saturday morning, I was enjoying a blissful slumber when something landed on me and made me feel like I was being mauled. I opened my eyes, looked around and found what I suspected, but there was an added surprise. It wasn’t just my trio of terrors plus one (Jay); they had also added to their membership. It looked as if Sammy and Andrew were being initiated into the group of holy terrors.

At that point, several little hands were busy trying to tickle me, as they tried to suppress their own giggles.

“Hey, what’s going on here?” I bellowed, trying to sound mad.

“It’s time for you to get up, lazybones,” Andrew announced, in between giggles.

“Lazybones! Who are you calling lazybones?” I challenged, before reaching out and tickling him in return. Once I had him laughing hysterically, I grabbed Sammy and started in on him too. I was busy tickling the pair when a total free-for-all broke out on my bed. Now, I was busy tickling any and everyone I could get my hands on, and there were multiple fingers wriggling around my neck, armpits, stomach and feet, desperately trying to do the same thing to me. I finally got my hands on the ringleader, Ricky, and set about getting even with him. I straddled his hips with my legs, used my weight to hold him in place, and began to tickle him unmercifully.

“Dad, stop. Please, stop,” Ricky begged me, but I continued to tickle him.

“I wasn’t the one who started this,” I answered him. “What’s the matter? Can’t you take it, as well as you can dish it out?”

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he said through fits of laughter. “I’ll stop and not do it again.”

“Yeah, sure. Like I believe you,” I mocked.

“Honest, Dad. I won’t ever do this again,” he promised, although I suspected he was crossing something to keep from having to keep that bargain.

“I still don’t believe you, but call off your troops and I’ll stop,” I offered.

“Okay guys, no more,” Ricky urged and the others quit, at his behest. They all stood around my bed and I finally pulled my body from over Ricky’s.

“That was fun,” Andrew chortled.

“Yeah, do you guys do this all of the time?” Sammy wanted to know.

“Far too often,” I told him. “They have a tendency to do this to me and their brothers, but their brothers have started fighting back. I guess I’ll have to start fighting back as well. We’ll see how often it happens in the future, now that we all have their number.”

Ricky looked over at me with a sly grin. “Yeah, we’ll see all right,” he challenged.

I made a move to get off the bed and he immediately fled from my room, soon to be followed by his cohorts. This made me wonder if they had merely retreated to the jungle room or were they planning their next attack?