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Chuck Wagon Steak
Lunchtime promised no treat at Salvation Baptist School. Each day we ate the same variety of cheap processed beef, purchased in bulk and stored for months in the cafeteria's huge walk-in freezer. Monday's menu advertised Chuck Wagon Steak, Tuesday's Pepper Steak, Wednesday's Western Fried Steak, Thursday's Salisbury Steak, and Friday's Chicken Fried Steak. The next week the names changed but the same slab of greasy mystery meat appeared on our molded plastic lunch trays. Nutritional balance manifested itself as canned peaches one day, canned pears the next, canned potatoes the next--served from the same kind of ten-gallon containers that provisioned prisons and army mess halls.
If you worked in the kitchen, you appreciated the size of those aluminum cans. In the frugal Protestant tradition, our cafeteria staff allowed no food wastage, to the extent of serving from a partially opened can of pears that had stood uncovered and unmolested in the refrigerator room for the entire Christmas break. A single slice of unbuttered white Sunbeam bread completed the meal, along with that half-pint of white milk that the teachers required us to drink to the last drop. If you didn't, they wrote down your name and denied you the week's lone treat, a carton of chocolate milk served only on Fridays.
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The Long Invitational
Here I sit, ten years old, squirming on the hardest of hardwood pews, my Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes in shambles. My collar button ripped off during a tussle in Sunday school, where three weeks ago my only clip-on tie vanished under similar circumstances. My shirttail has been out since just before they passed the collection plate, and I've wiped my runny nose on my sleeve so often that it's drenched and sticky. Momma quit trying to make me behave an hour ago. She now acts like I'm some orphaned waif who snuck into the services. When we get home, she'll probably set my bottom on fire, but for now she pretends she doesn't know me.
I fidget restlessly as the choir begins its forty-third repetition of Just As I Am. Most are still singing, but some of their throats dried up during the thirty-ninth verse. Brother Paul begins the second half hour of his invitational, a new record for white bible-believing churches in Louisiana. For those of who don't know, we Southern Baptists focus intently on salvation. That means going to heaven, but we really stress avoiding hell.
The Sunday morning appeal comes in two stages. First, Brother Paul preaches a hellfire-and-damnation sermon, designed to scare the wits out of the unsaved. Then comes the invitational, during which those frightened into repentance receive the opportunity to walk up the aisle and whisper their profession of faith to the preacher, to which Brother Paul responds with a resounding: "Praise the Lord!" At some churches, Just As I Am lasts for only three or four verses. Our minister thinks differently, believing that sinners should receive every opportunity to wrestle with the devil. So his appeal to lost souls goes on forever, at least in the mind of a ten year old.
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Louisiana Shotgun House, circa 1950 Shotgun Houses, Stolen Childhood
Part 1 I grew up in a blue-collar suburb of New Orleans, farmland that had been subdivided in my grandparents’ youth and subsequently dotted with nondescript, shotgun-style houses. These narrow, single-story homes without halls took shape as Depression-era residents added one room at a time, as they could afford to build them without the luxury of a bank loan. As the name implies, if somebody discharged a shotgun at one end, the pellets would take out everybody in the house. In the late 1950s and early 60s, the era of my childhood and adolescence, air conditioning was just appearing in the American South. Every once in a while, somebody would install a window unit. But the builders of these houses knew nothing about insulation, making those noisy, inefficient, electricity-sucking cooling machines an expensive and wasteful luxury. For the most part, we relied on high ceilings, big wood-frame windows, and powerful whole-house fans to keep us as comfortable as possible during the muggy, suffocating, ten-month southern summers. Wide open windows and doors, and pier-and-beam foundations that raised these houses several feet off of the ground in order to escape frequent flooding, made every family’s life an open book. When a husband and wife got into an argument, everybody in the neighborhood heard the details. If a young couple’s marital passion floated on the magnolia-scented late evening breezes, the gossipy neighbor women speculated about the stork’s scheduled arrival in nine months. Likewise, when a dad’s belt landed on our juvenile posteriors, its smacks and our cries could be heard at the other end of the block. The evening’s spankings became our first item of discussion as we kids gathered at the school bus stop the next morning. ( Read more... ) | |
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Modern Electroshock Therapy uses sedatives and low voltage. In the 1950s, it was brutal.
Shotgun Houses, Stolen Childhood
Part 2 Although I lived in a typical southern working class neighborhood, I wasn’t a typical neighborhood kid. Several incidents in my early childhood marked me as distinct from my peers. The Italians, Germans, and Irish who settled our city hundreds of years ago differed in their customs, but they endured a common economic and religious environment. The hardscrabble existence that preceded Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society mandated survival before comfort. The welfare state was much less providential in those days, and if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. These were no-nonsense, hardworking people. They had no alternative. Also, the Roman Catholic Church still cast its vast influence over simple, poorly educated American parishioners. People still genuinely feared going to hell. Remarriage after divorce was a mortal sin in Catholic theology, forever prohibiting you from receiving the Eucharist. Unlike today, the Church didn’t hand out annulments like candy. A modestly educated woman had no way to support herself if she left an abusive spouse, and she faced societal condemnation if she remarried. Thus, many tortured couples simply endured bad marriages. My mom wasn’t afforded even that scant degree of protection, and that’s what set me apart from my playmates and branded me with a big question mark. | |
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| Oleanders are poisonous, but in this story they offer David a line of demarcation between
the public shame he underwent in his shotgun house neighborhood and the liberating
restoration of his childhood that Wanda provided. Shotgun Houses, Stolen Childhood
Part 3 Wanda’s back yard also provided a bit of respite from the constant surveillance by the neighborhood busy bodies. A thicket of tall oleander bushes ran along the service alley that separated the back of the shotgun houses from the Laningham enclave. From time to time, we could see Wanda peeking out from behind the curtains, but as long as I checked in with her and we followed her ground rules, she stayed out of her way. I had never before enjoyed so much freedom from prying eyes in Old Metairie. Then one sultry September afternoon after school, Joey Krebs tackled Bill Callahan too hard, and Bill came up swinging. Wanda just happened to crack open the door, to let her two daughters out to play, when Bill landed a roundhouse punch on Joey’s mouth, bloodying his nose and knocking a tooth loose. “Boys, you stop that right now!” Wanda stormed out, wooden spoon in hand. I thought Bill’s would receive a crack with the spoon, but Wanda just told them to go home for the afternoon. Then, she called me over. ( Read more... ) | |
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Do redheaded, freckled moms spank harder?
Shotgun Houses, Stolen Childhood
Part 4
I don’t know if Mom kept her job or got fired and had to find another one. Somehow she paid the ticket, continued to work, and life went on. But there was always considerable tension at home, always worry about what the future held, and preoccupation with what the neighbors might say. Often at night I lay awake listening to my mother cry herself to sleep. It broke my heart. Ordinary, common folk like us didn’t know much about clinical depression in those days, and modern drugs like Prozac and Lithium wouldn’t be marketed for a couple of decades. You were supposed to put your trust in the Lord, but the priest mom visited on Saturday evenings for the sacrament of confession could only counsel her to pray the Rosary. I was beginning to think religion may be useful in getting you to heaven, but it’s not worth a damn here on earth. One day Mom came home with a young lawyer from work, and my grandparents were cordial if not a bit cool for the hour or so they spent chatting in the living room. Then, when he departed, the crap hit the fan. | |
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Wanda's Wooden Spoon: The only old-fashioned item in her untra modern house.Shotgun Houses, Stolen Childhood
Part 5 My first impression of this imposing house flowed upward from my toes. Wanda asked me to take my shoes and socks off as I entered. Those thick, luscious carpet fibers almost tickled me. My feet had never walked on something so soft. There must have been a one-inch pad below the carpet. The shotgun houses on the other side of the oleanders might have had a threadbare rug or two. Otherwise well-worn wood or cheap linoleum floor covering greeted the soles of your feet. I had heard of wall-to-wall carpeting, but never walked on it. It was at least twenty degrees cooler in here, but the temperature change didn’t assault me as it had when I stood at her front door several months ago. Then I looked down at my skinny little arms and noticed the goose bumps. I didn’t know if they popped up because I was cold or scared. | |
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| Cassie Barefoot
Part 1 Cassie wasn’t the most attractive tenth grader at Salvation Christian School. Actually, it depended on how you looked at her. An early-childhood kitchen scalding left horribly disfiguring scar tissue on her left cheek. Viewed from her right side, her cute, vivacious adolescence charmed you. From her left, a tale of pain and social ostracism reached out and grabbed your heart.
When you saw her head on, enchanting eyes and an ever-present smile defined this spunky young lady, pleading to draw your attention from the facial mutilation that denied much-coveted popularity with her teenage peers--especially the boys.
Cassie endured a second problem. She struggled academically at the upscale, private religious school where parents pressured their children to excel in the classroom. Her difficulties with freshman algebra put her a year behind college-bound classmates. Her teacher was no help.
"Successful-students-succeed-by-working-lots-of-problems,” admonished Isidore Bartholomew Bone in his typically rhythmic cadence, pausing for emphasis between each word just an annoying fraction of a second longer than necessary.
I. B. Bone, head of the math department, had come to Salvation Christian several years ago from one of those exclusive prep schools back east. Why anyone with his teaching background would move to Oklahoma was anybody’s guess, but whispered rumors insinuated that he fled some scandal that made him persona non grata in the haughty eastern educational establishment. Behind his back, students mocked their teacher as “I Be Bone.” The parody on his name, couched in the Ebonics-inspired language of the inner city, referred to his gaunt, almost emaciated frame, his protruding cheekbones, and his scarecrow-like, carrot nose.
Bone’s coke-bottle eyeglasses never deflected his penetrating stare. If he thought you weren’t working hard enough, he’d cast a laser beam your way. He’d look right through your eyeballs to the back of your head. His verbal reprimands burned similarly: “If you don’t work extra equations for homework, you’re laaaaaa-zy,” drawing out the first syllable in a mocking tone that pricked Cassie’s heart every time she heard it.
Cassie wasn’t lazy. Each math problem frustrated her. Mr. Bone, who gave her a failing grade the year before, remained convinced of his young student’s indolence and pestered her with merciless daily criticism. He seemed unaware that Cassie spent countless late nights at the kitchen table, sometimes falling asleep with her forehead resting in the crack of the algebra book. She tried as hard as she could, but linear equations with two variables just kicked her butt.
Sometimes, after one of I. B. Bone’s cutting admonitions to try harder, tears ran down each of Cassie’s cheeks: effortlessly down the smooth skin on the right side, meandering and zigzagging over the scar tissue on her left.
* * *
Although Cassie never burned up the academic or social scenes, her lively personality and fierce competitiveness emerged when she changed out of her long-sleeve white blouse and knee-length blue pleated skirt, the standard religious school uniform, into the scarlet and gold of the Salvation Crusaders. Cassie’s role on the championship girls’ basketball team meshed with her underdog status in other aspects of life.
Standing five-foot-two in her Pumas, she was the shortest player on the district championship squad that played deep into the state tournament last season. Her American Indian heritage, three-quarters Cherokee, didn’t provide a bloodline of athletic talent that her taller, more agile African-American teammates inherited. Nor could her blue-collar father, who struggled to pay the monthly private school tuition, afford the succession of basketball camps and off-season amateur league expenses generously doled out by the parents of her well-heeled Caucasian teammates.
Instead, she learned and refined her basketball skills in the hardscrabble arena of street ball, as she competed against boys a head taller and several steps quicker. Quite often her shots flew back into her face, fiercely blocked just as the ball left her hands, bloodying her nose and knocking her to the hot, summer Tulsa playground asphalt. Busted noses and skinned elbows hardly discouraged Cassie, as she had endured physical pain and emotional turmoil for years--beginning on that fateful day more than a dozen years ago when her mother’s pressure cooker exploded.
Naturally gifted with nothing, Cassie grew a heart of gold. If her mediocre talent didn’t earn her a spot in the Crusaders’ starting lineup, her fierce demeanor made her the fans’ favorite—the proverbial “sixth girl” who came off of the bench to fire up her teammates and lead them to victory when the more talented players fell short of their potential.
Exhibiting an unrelenting determination developed while competing against the boys, her ball-handling, fierce-guarding, and boisterous leadership stunned the Crusaders’ opponents and delighted their fans. Those sparkling eyes in the hallways turned jet-black on the basketball court, intimidated opposing players, staring them down with the ferocity of a Cherokee warrior.
Her facial disfigurement, a drawback socially, became an advantage in athletic competition. It was this little Indian’s war paint. Those privileged girls reared in the comfort of the Oklahoma City or Tulsa suburbs didn’t know what to make of her intensity. She scared them. While they tried to come to terms with an opponent the likes of which they’d never seen, Cassie would steal the ball and drive the length of the court for a layup.
* * *
Self-confidence gleaned from newfound athletic success spilled over into her daily life at school, but unfortunately prompted the greatest crisis of her school days. She gregariously interacted with her fellow students on the days after big games, as her growing athletic notoriety began to overcome the social handicaps of her hallmark physical scar and her limited classroom success. Kids who had shunned her previously suddenly wanted to be her friend.
Never purposely disruptive in class or disrespectful to teachers, Cassie nevertheless began accumulating her share of small classroom disciplinary infractions for talking out of turn, arriving a few seconds after the tardy bell had rung, or giggling at an inopportune time during the lesson. School had never been so much fun!
Nobody noticed a marked change in her behavior; she was just a happy kid reaping the fruits of her hard work on the basketball court. Everyone, teachers included, understood that kids misbehave from time to time, and the system at her school included a built-in buffer for occasional minor offenses.
Discipline at Salvation Christian ran the normal gauntlet of punitive measures found in southern religiously based private schools: warnings, detentions, and the traditional “licks” with the paddle that most boys received and most girls avoided. For minor infractions teachers handed out demerits, little pink slips of paper that offending students had to sign, acknowledging their culpability. If they kept their demerits down to a reasonable number they suffered no consequences. At the end of the semester, the demerit slips that gathered in a child’s file were thrown away and the slate wiped clean, giving him another chance to “be a kid” the next semester.
It was only when demerits began accumulating that a warning system turned into a punitive one. At seven demerits in one semester, the young miscreant was summoned to the principal’s office and firmly warned about the consequences of continued misbehavior. This did the trick for most students, especially the athletes, who could hardly afford the penalty that the next step in discipline would bring.
Somehow, through an administrative foul-up or because of a rare absence from school, Cassie missed out on this warning. Hardly aware that her demerits were approaching a dangerous level, she continued to enjoy her sophomore year as she had never before appreciated school. Things were even looking up in math class, as her continued late-night study began to pay dividends and Mr. Bone noted more progress. As the basketball season progressed, the Crusaders held on to first place in the conference standings, and Cassie’s relentless hustle even merited a couple sentences in the sports columns of the city newspaper.
* * *
Then, one morning during a particularly difficult lesson on exponents, her world began to fall apart.
“Cassie Barefoot, Cassie Barefoot,” the loudspeaker blared her distinctive Native American surname. “Report to the school office, immediately!” The principal’s stern voice, coupled with that ominous suffix, portended trouble. Routine calls to the office for administrative purposes never sounded so menacing, and students leaving for a doctor’s appointment were not admonished to report “immediately.”
Math class stopped as if the Second Coming of Christ had been announced. Shocked by the summons, Cassie froze. She had never before been called to the office for disciplinary purposes. I. B. Bone, like a shark that tasted blood in the water, beamed his characteristically menacing laser-look though those coke-bottle spectacles, seeming to burn holes in Cassie’s retina.
“Young lady,” he announced with an unmistakable degree of sarcasm in his shrill voice, “I think the principal wants to have a little chat with you.” Everyone noticed how quickly he backslid from newfound encouragement to his old poisoned personality. He seemed almost delighted that his student he picked on the most was finally receiving her comeuppance.
Confused, her head swimming at this sudden ill-omened turn of events, Cassie forced her legs in motion and walked out of the classroom as thirty sets of eyeballs followed her. Down the long hallway lined with scarlet and gold metal lockers she reluctantly proceeded, then up three flights of stairs to the school office. It was the longest climb of Cassie’s adolescence. Her feet grew heavier as she climbed the steps toward the landing in front of the principal’s office. All the joy of newfound camaraderie disappeared. Cassie made this trip alone.
Mrs. Hines, assistant registrar and office manager, had seen thousands of students come to the office for discipline during her three decades at Salvation Christian School. With the dispassionate courtesy of a doctor’s office nurse, but the firmness of a school administrator, she greeted Cassie with the customary: “Have a seat, young lady. Mr. Bone will see you momentarily.”
Hamilton Bone, no relation to I. B. Bone, was also in his third decade of service to the Lord’s children. A public schoolteacher and football coach in his early years, he migrated to religious private schools because, in his view, the newfangled liberalism that pervaded the public system interfered with the job as he saw it. The public schools had to take everybody who walked in the door, and if they wanted to expel a rowdy student, the district had to first give him a second chance at an expensive “alternative school.” In the private schools, if you didn’t toe the line, you walked the street.
Cassie knew that “Ham Bone,” as students called him on the sly, earned a reputation as a fierce disciplinarian. Students in the science laboratories co-located on the fourth floor often heard their principal’s booming voice dressing down an errant student. Then followed--more often than not, especially with a male student--the unmistakable crack of his wooden paddle impacting tender flesh. Shortly thereafter, the school office disciplinary machine spat out a thoroughly chastised recalcitrant, struggling to contain the tears within his eyes while assiduously rubbing a burning posterior.
Ham Bone, like most evangelical Christians, believed in the paddle. Corporal punishment remained a fixture in the American south, especially at religious private schools. After all, it was in the Bible. Right? Parents signed a blanket authorization allowing their children to be spanked for whatever reason the school administrators thought appropriate. If they objected, they could always send their kids to the public schools. No mom or dad ever raised a fuss.
“Cassie Barefoot, get in here!” Ham Bone boomed.
The young sophomore quaked in fear. Not since that awful day more than a dozen years ago had she been so afraid. Then, Big Jim Barefoot scooped up his critically burned toddler, screaming in pain, in his steel-muscled arms and made a mad dash for the public hospital’s emergency room, fortuitously situated only blocks away from their squat, single-story, wooden shotgun-style house. This time, no strong daddy protected and reassured her. Cassie faced the principal’s scalding wrath by herself.
Hamilton Bone was the antithesis of his namesake Mr. Bone, the slightly built math teacher. Everything about the principal’s continence denoted physical strength, resoluteness of character, and an indomitable determination to run his school like the squared-away Marine Corps platoon he commanded in his youth. For all of his 57 years, as a high school and college athlete, an infantry platoon leader, and then as a teacher, coach, and principal--Ham Bone wore the same flattop, military-style haircut.
Protruding facial muscles suggested he munched on nails for a snack. A square jaw that would have rivaled Pete Rose, the Cincinnati Reds baseball legend, finished out his countenance. His steel blue eyes bore down on the diminutive young Cherokee who just walked into his lair.
“Cassie Barefoot. You have ten demerits. Do you know what that means?”
Behind Ham Bone’s desk hung the Rod of Correction. The biblical name belied its dimensions. It wasn’t a rod at all, but rather a formidable-looking paddle. Fashioned like a bottom-heavy hourglass, its ovular spanking end connected to the oblong handle by a narrow wooden isthmus. A leather cord, tied in a square knot, ran through a hole in the handle. When wrapped around the principal’s wrist, it insured that the paddle wouldn't fly across the room if he lost his grip during a particularly energetic spanking.
The Rod hung right next to a picture of Jesus. Cassie wondered if her Savior had used an implement like that when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple. She made a mental note to study the Gospel of Mark to find out. But for now, she had more immediate concerns.
“Do you know what happens when you accumulate ten demerits?” Ham Bone asked again, those blue eyes seeming to search every square inch of her body and soul.
The color drained from the right side of Cassie’s face, where the undamaged blood vessels still delivered blush to her countenance. She wasn’t afraid of that paddle. If she could atone for her demerits with swats, she’d obediently bend over Ham Bone’s desk, grab the other side with her outstretched fingers, rise up on her tiptoes, and deliver her upturned, bulbous rump for chastisement.
No stranger to spankings at home, Cassie bought into her school’s belief in the spiritual cleansing afforded by the Rod of Correction. She certainly didn’t like whippings, but she understood and accepted them. She’d had her share growing up. It was the Lord’s way. She’d gladly submit to a scorching one now, if only she could get out of this unexpected trouble.
Atonement wasn’t that easy, however.
“You have allowed a disciplinary system to turn into a punishment system,” Ham Bone admonished. You’re now on disciplinary probation, young lady. A letter will be going home to your parents this afternoon. They will be required to meet with me within one week.”
Then he dropped the bombshell.
“You are herewith suspended from all participation in extracurricular activities. No after-school clubs. No field trips. And this afternoon you will visit the athletic equipment manager and turn in your uniforms and all school-issued athletic gear. You are dismissed from the basketball team for the remainder of the season. You may neither practice nor play in the games.”
Cassie was stunned. Yes, she knew the rules. But she never thought she was anywhere near this degree of discipline. She was a good kid. She didn’t misbehave on purpose. She didn’t give the teachers any trouble, at least not deliberately.
How could this be happening? Oh, why this? She’d gladly take a blistering paddling if it would make everything better. She’d gladly study her math problems standing up, and good naturedly endure her teammates’ teasing her about her reddened and bruised backside while they frolicked naked in the locker room after practice--if only that would solve the problem.
As the stern principal continued, the tears ran down Cassie’s cheeks, straight down on the right side, meandering over the scar tissue on the left. Mucus flowed from her nose. Her chest heaved with sobs. She sucked in deep, quickening breaths.
“You have let down your teammates. You have betrayed your coaches. You have saddened your teachers. Your parents will be bitterly disappointed . . .”
Ham Bone’s lips kept moving but his words seemed to fade to silence. Cassie’s world started spinning. Her legs turned into rubber. Tunnel vision set in. Her perception became a steadily decreasing clone of light that closed to a faint pinhole surrounded by darkness.
Then everything went black. She didn’t feel herself fall.
* * *
Cassie eyes first focused on the school nurse, as she wiped the 16-year-old’s flushed face with a cool, wet towel. As the darkness receded and the room filled with light, she became conscious of another person in the nurse’s office.
A different Hamilton Bone looked down on her, this time the loving father of his own daughters and a former coach of a girls’ basketball team. The stern, no-nonsense, punishing principal seemed to have stayed upstairs in the office. When the nurse assured him that Cassie had suffered no lasting damage when she fainted, he spoke to her in soft, almost hushed tones.
“Cassie I looked over your record and found that we forgot to warn you at the seven- demerit level. Also, your infractions are of a very minor nature. I have spoken to your mother and some of your teachers. While it’s true that many small mistakes do indeed add up to big trouble, and you must indeed be punished, we’ve all decided to give you an alternative to disciplinary probation. If you follow the road to repentance we offer you and you’re good for the rest of the semester, you can continue playing basketball.”
“But it will be painful,” the principal warned gently but firmly. “Come see me in the morning. Okay?”
Then, for just a fleeting moment, he did something very uncharacteristic of Hamilton Bone in the disciplinary mode: a warm, loving smile crossed his face.
Cassie had a pretty good idea of what her principal had in mind. Tears again appeared in her eyes, but this time they were expressions of relief. She underestimated how painful her rehabilitation would be until she visited Ham Bone’s lair the next day.
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| Cassie Barefoot
Part 2
Cassie showed up before the school bell rang the next morning, ten minutes early for her appointment with the principal. “How are you feeling, Cassie?” asked Mrs. Hines, the office manager who ordinarily maintained cool distance from students facing discipline. “You gave us quite a scare yesterday,” she added tenderly. “Mr. Bone is waiting for you. Go right in.” Ham Bone was calm this morning, neither the stern disciplinarian who lectured Cassie yesterday nor the kindhearted rescuer who had carried Cassie, unconscious, in his strong arms down four flights of stairs to the nurse’s office. Cassie was surprised to see that the paddle still hung on the hook beside Jesus. She half expected to see it on his desk, ready for use on her cute little round posterior. She had mentally prepared herself for a bottom blistering that morning. In fact, she had prayed about it on her knees after awakening, asking the Lord to help her take her chastisement with courage. But she’d find the road to redemption longer and fraught with potholes. | |
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| Cassie Barefoot
Part 3
If Cassie was embarrassed to ask her typing teacher for discipline, she absolutely dreaded the confrontation with I. B. Bone. She knew Mrs. Mitchell was fond of her; her math teacher had a different attitude. Mrs. Mitchell’s spankings would sting like hell, but they’d be personal. Whippings from Bone would be a visit to a cold, dispassionate executioner. “Yes, Miss Barefoot?” Isidore Bartholomew Bone inquired. The wiry little man insisted on addressing his students as Mister and Miss, just like he did at the blue-blooded prep school in New England. The form of address belied his contempt. This Mr. Bone seemed to respect none of his students. “I’m in trouble and I need to ask your help,” Cassie gulped as she struggled to look him in the eyes. An agonizing period of several seconds passed as I. B. Bone eyeballed her from top to bottom, side to side, as if he were a warehouse manager inspecting a newly arrived pallet of freight. | |
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| Cassie Barefoot
Part 4
That afternoon in the locker room after basketball practice Cassie put her raspberry-red, swollen bottom on display for her teammates. The welts appeared darkest where the edge of the paddle contacted flesh, a disorderly hodgepodge of sometimes parallel, sometimes intersecting lines. Mrs. Mitchell had tried her best not to place one swat directly atop another, but the limited area of Cassie’s bottom prevented some overlay. A Salvation Christian tradition mandated that a spanked athlete submit herself to the additional torment of good-natured, stinging hand slaps from her teammates under the cooling flow of the shower. Cassie had been the tormentor in the past; this time it was her turn to undergo the ordeal. All fourteen of her teammates took their shots, and once again Cassie’s bottom pulsated with pain. No tears resulted this time, however. She took it like a good sport, breaking into smiles between every wince. This time her yelps were all in fun. Although she didn’t quite understand it, she derived an inner, almost sexual pleasure from having the other girls’ bare hands slap her behind. The giggles and frolicking became so loud that Coach Jones threatened to come in with her own paddle to restore order. | |
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| Cassie Barefoot
Part 5
I. B. Bone arose early on Monday morning. This was the day he had been waiting for. Sunday’s sports section only infuriated him more. Cassie Barefoot, now the starting point guard for the Salvation Christian Crusaders, scored 32 points, dished out seven assists, and stole the ball three times in the district championship-clinching game against Tulsa Episcopal. The score wasn’t even close, and all the girls got to play. When Cassie came out of the game, she did so to a standing ovation from the crowd. Only a few wondered why she didn’t take a seat on the bench. The sports writers now wondered how Cassie, a latecomer to the starting lineup, could be kept off of the all-district team. A racist and a misogynist, I. B. Bone hated Indians and he hated women. The latter had been an obsession all of his life, the product of deep-seeded sexual inadequacy. He also had another personal characteristic that would have to be explained to the parents that night, at a meeting called because of him, but which he knew nothing about. Oh, how he looked forward to paddling little Cassie Barefoot today! It would be his first spanking since being certified as a member of the Swat Team. | |
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