Paulines Peril II

[Setinkhan]

Pauline’s Peril

Her father asked her if she had learned her lesson and she replied that she had, but her father told her that he didn’t think so and he was sure it was just the pain talking. Pauline was blubbering trying to breathe but her sinuses were draining and she was finding it hard to breathe.
“Swish…thwack!” Another stroke tore into her young teenage skin, blending in with all the other strokes she had received so far, and sending Pauline into a fit of crying, sobering, and blubbering as she tried to breathe and talk at the same time. Suddenly she felt her fathers hand in her hair and she felt her head jerk up. She was staring right into his eyes and he wasn’t the father that she had known all her life. He wasn’t the big strong arms she had fallen asleep in as a young child as he held her. He wasn’t the comforting influence as he stroked her head and sung to her in a soft low voice. No, now he was a crazed maniac bent on the violent desecration of her body. Girl you have gone and thrown away everything. Jedediah was in the Silver Strike Saloon when that child stealer was telling everyone how him, Chacako, and Louise was taking turns on you girl Sunday after the church meeting!
“Well, daddy he said it was ok, and that he would love me all the more for that.”
Her father rose up and she couldn’t twist her head up that far to see him and then he threw something on the ground in front of her which she could see very well. It was an old sepia tone photograph of her father with his grand canyon smile holding a young girl about three years old. As she was looking at it he spat on it blotting out his face. Looking at the picture she just hung her head and the tears started to stream down her eyes from the broken heart that her childish actions caused.
Pauline realized that her father walked further away from her than before and she mistakenly thought that maybe he was done with her. Then she heard the whip as it cracked back and she tensed up, and felt the forward snap of the leather on the end of the whip as it contacted her skin.
“Oh no! This was a much different kind of pain and she could actually feel the air burn into her butt. If she could have seen she would have seen the skin that was pulled off her butt in the exact shape of the end of the whip. The whip cracked back and then forward sending her into a wail of banshee cries of pain. She tried to focus on the picture but there wasn’t anything she could see through the tears welling up in her eyes. This time the crack of the whip felt like someone was cutting her with a dull knife, which is pretty much what happened. Pauline was crying and trying to breathe, and this caused her to start to cough. The air didn’t come out just right but ran into an incoming breath which caused even more coughing. She was having a hard time catching her breath and then when the next stroke cut into her broken bleeding butt sent her into an even stronger coughing fit. She was trying to see and didn’t realize that the sides of the glow of the lantern was beginning shrink down into one spot on the floor. Her body went limp and drool streamed down from the side of her mouth in a long silvery thread mimicking the golden threads of her hair that now hung from her head.
The next thing that she felt was something jerking up against her stomach and then the coughing again and the sharp breath. Her world spun around her as she tried to catch hold of some sign post of reality. Finally she felt her starting to suck air sharply into her lungs. She coughed a couple of times and then started to feel the pain surging through her body.
“Come on child, that’s it take a deep breath”, encouraged her mother standing by her side and lifting up the back of her dress causing her to start breathing again. When Pauline was breathing and blubbering again her mother stopped lifting up her mid section and then paid attention to her bare bottom. The girl was bleeding from the strips of skin that was stripped from her butt and her mother dabbed a mixture of iodine and gun powder on the wounds to stop the blood and stop them from getting infected. This caused pain all anew to surge through Pauline.
Her mother helped her back to the house, well actually she almost had to carry her to the house. She laid her down on the sofa in the mud room. Pauline just laid there shaking and blubbering alone in the dark until she fell asleep. She never did see Chad, nor did anyone else. The next day her brother helped her mother carry her up to her room. She laid in bed for the next four days, and after that she had her meals in her room and did chores in the house.
Six weeks past and one day when she was snapping peas she told her mother that it was past her time. Two days later the doctor came out to the house and he confirmed what her mother feared, that she was in a way. Well her mother told her that next week she was going to St. Louis to attend Ms. Brookshire’s home for girls and she needed to prepare. She hadn’t spoke to her father since that evening and was really scared to try. She wanted to say something last week she was sitting in the swing when he came riding in and went to the barn, but thought better of it. She left early in the morning and never did get to say goodbye to her father.
She had been teaching school in Kerville Kansas for the past 13 years. She never did get to see or hold Chad’s baby. She looked down in her lap unable to read anymore through the tears, but still able to see the faded photograph of her father holding her. She heard the buggy pull off the road and stop by the side of the house as she rose and took the lamp into the kitchen leaving the photograph by her chair. The backdoor opened and the tall man dressed in black stepped into the small room.
“I heard you been bad child”, he boomed as he shut the door behind him. Pauline looked down and saw the sturdy hickory cane he held in his hand.
“Yes Parson, I have been very bad this past year”, she replied to his query.
The large man tapped the table with the cane saying, “bend over there child”.
Pauline bent over the table and grabbed the far edge as she felt him raise her skirt and then her petticoat and then lower her bloomers. She thought about how her daddy died only two years after she had to leave as she waited for the first stroke of the cane. She would take all the parson would give her and then hobble back to her bed hoping to be better by the time school started next month.