Chapter 4: Bureaucrats & Cows

The weeks following the meeting at Casa Cavalla were hectic for everyone for a lot of reasons; and there were three major 'happenings' other than finalizing the adoption. Mer ... excuse me, Sean read my first draft of his story and asked me to include that month. He thought the month was significant and pivotal to many things that happened later in his life. In retrospect I agree. So, I included as much detail about Sean's time waiting for the adoption to be complete as I could get from interviews with the rest of his family and talking to Sean. Yes, he remembers the month but he is only human, and could only be in one place at a time. My apologies in advance if this recounting seems a little rambling and disjointed. The next five chapters of Sean's story will be about the remaining time that Sean was a ward of the Cavallas. I will attempt to put together the events and their details as close as I can to the correct chronological order. There were times while I gathered this material that it felt like I had a box of the pieces of two or three different jigsaw puzzles. All the puzzles were of the same scene but not quite from the same angle. The memories and time sequences of people don't always match so I had to piece the story of that time together as near as I could from 30 year old memories. If you think that's easy then consider this. What were you doing 30 years ago on the second Tuesday in July, in detail? See what I mean?

The Flynns split their time between the ranch and Metro Phoenix for the time between their first meeting with the Cavalla's and the finalized adoption. The needs of a ranch don't stop just because people go away. The two hands working on the ranch, BB and Pappy were good and kept most things together, but some jobs really needed all three men. BB could handle almost anything to do with horses and Pappy usually knew what cows were going to do before the cows knew it. Ranch infrastructure often needed three men to keep up with the repairs, too. A breeding stallion named Prince was too ornery for one man alone, even BB. Anytime Prince needed to be moved it was a two man job. Seth was worried about Pappy getting close to the cantankerous stallion because of Pappy's age.

Seth thought the ancient Mexican was old when he started working on the ranch when Seth was a boy. Pappy could still work circles around any two men. However, he wasn't quite as quick as he used to be and Prince was snake quick. Pappy did help with the breeding bulls and the two on the ranch were mean ones. Seth threatened more than once to make hamburger out of both of them, and use the vet and artificial insemination in the future. Pappy knew what the big, mean beasts were going to do, and was able to manage them, most of the time, with BB's help; but sometime even his genius wasn't enough.

Three of the trips the Flynns had to make to Phoenix involved adoption paperwork. The paperwork pukes at the State offices lived up to their names and the papers were wrong on the first two tries. Seth and his men were trying to get one of the bulls back in its pen when Seth got the third call to sign papers. The three men had fork lift tines set at a sharp upward angle and the tines pushed together. They had managed to get the bulls head between the tines and he couldn't get out because of his horns. BB figured that if similar setups worked for dairy cows, it should work for the big bull. The 3000+ pound bull was bellowing, and had his feet planted as BB pulled the beast toward the pen with the fork lift. The engine of the fork lift would howl in protest every time the drive wheels hit a slick spot. Those were the times the balance of power between beast and machine would shift to the bull and BB would lose 8 or 12 inches. Seth had to yell over the sound of the bull bellowing, and the engine howling when he answered the phone in the barn.

"Gordian Ranch, make it quick. I've got a mad bull I've got to get back to," Seth yelled into the phone as he watched the forklift gain 18 inches only to lose 10 of them to a wet cow pie.

"Ah, Mr. Seth Flynn?" an uncertain voice asked.

"That's me," Seth yelled over another angry bellow from the bull. "Hurry up or call back later. I need to get back to that bull."

"Oh, yes, ah, this is the State Adoption Office, and we have the papers, the adoption papers, ready to sign, sir. Can we set an appointment for you to come in and sign them?" the voice asked.

"No. I figured out it's cheaper to hire a lawyer to look them over before I drive down again. I'll call him, and ask him to get in touch with you, today, and make arrangements to make sure you got them right this time," Seth yelled.

"I'm sure the papers are correct, sir," the clerk said, defensively.