by Ryan Rowland
I remember that fateful day vividly. The previous afternoon, I'd made a routine stop at Wal-Mart on my way home. While there, I ran into a friend who wanted to know if it was true that the county health department was going to shut me down because of unsanitary conditions and a rodent infestation. Of course that was total nonsense! But if such a story got around, it would cost me a lot of business even though there was no truth in it. I asked him where he heard that, and with a few phone calls, I was able to trace the malicious rumor back to its likely source. Kristi Mason! I should have known. If customers avoided my place, many of them would buy from her instead.
I'll go back to the beginning. When I was a boy, my dad opened a produce stand at a crossroads just outside of town. He started selling fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms, and business was pretty good. When I was old enough, I started helping out on weekends and afternoons after school. Dad hired a lady to help us and we opened a snack bar on the side, and also sold home-made baked and canned goods. We put up a small building and had a store in the back, with the open-air produce stand out front.
Then, when I was about fifteen, Tom Mason came along and opened his produce stand directly across the road from us. My dad was furious. There was plenty of business for one produce stand to operate, but not for two. Of course, there was nothing he could do about it. It's a free country and Mason had a legal right. But Dad went from making a good living to barely staying afloat. He asked and then offered to pay Mason to move somewhere else. After all, Dad had a permanent building and Mason only had an open-air stand under a tent. But he refused, claiming there was no other reasonable location where he could set up. He and Dad argued numerous times and became bitter rivals.
Tom Mason had a daughter, just a year younger than me, who helped him at his stand. Her name was Kristi, and she was a cute kid, kind of skinny at the time, with light brown hair and a few freckles. But I couldn't like her because she was the enemy. We would look across the road and make faces at each other. It was childish, I know. But it got to be a habit every time we'd see each other. Then she got to be a couple years older and started... uh... 'filling out', if you know what I mean. If she had been anyone else other than Tom Mason's daughter, I'd have been all over her, asking for a date. She had a really nice ass! In the summer, she'd wear short cutoff jeans, and let me tell you, Daisy Duke had nothing on Kristi Mason! Not surprisingly, when Kristi was working out front, Mason had more male customers who stopped at his stand than we did.
Speaking of Kristi's voluptuous backside, I remember one day she did something that really got her dad upset. I could hear him yelling from clear across the road. He said that when he got her home, he was going to take a razor strop to her bare butt. I knew he did it too, because the next day she was walking funny and wearing loose-fitting knee-length shorts. Oh, man! It sure made me horny to think of what it would have been like to watch her getting her sexy ass whipped. For a month after that, I'd look over across the road and get her attention, then pantomime swinging a strap. I'd laugh and she would turn red and look away.
Well anyway, things went on, and my dad passed away when I was twenty-one. I thought about closing the stand and going into some other line of work. But I couldn't let Mason win. I figured I owed it to my dad to keep the business going. I hired a couple of local teens part-time and kept at it. And then Tom Mason went and got himself killed a year later. He had wanted to lure away my customers by selling something I didn't have. So he was driving down to Florida to pick up a load of citrus when some drunken fool crossed the centerline and hit him head-on. I went to the funeral because I thought it was the decent thing to do. Kristi saw me there and it was the first time we ever looked at each other as anything other than enemies, even if she was the cutest enemy anyone ever had.
With her dad gone, I thought sure she would shut down his stand and I'd have all the local business to myself. I even dared to wonder if, with the obstacle of our rivalry removed, we might get over our animosity enough for me to get my hands on that sexy ass I'd admired for so long. But if I thought she'd quit, I underestimated her. She was one tough and determined young lady. Two days after her dad's funeral, she was back out there unloading a truck full of watermelons. She was working alone and she looked beat from the hard work and the stress of her dad's death. I hadn't had a chance to speak to her privately at the funeral, so I walked over to offer my condolences, and then offered to help her unload the truck. She thanked me curtly and said she could do it herself. But I climbed up on the truck and started handing the melons down to her anyway. When we were done, she actually smiled at me and we shook hands.
But the truce didn't last. Within a week or two, we were competing harder than ever. For the next few months, folks hereabouts got some real good deals on their produce, but the price wars dang-near put us both out of business. Something had to give. It was shortly after that I found out she started the false rumor about me. Much as I had disliked him, her dad had always played fair, and would never have pulled a stunt like that. I was mad as hell!
When Kristi arrived to open her stand the next morning, I was waiting. I told her I knew she was the one who started the false rumor. She made a halfhearted attempt to deny it, but the guilt was all over her face. Then she tried to turn away and avoid me, and that's when I let her have it.
No, I didn't physically hit her. If she'd been a guy, I'd have punched his lights out. But of course I couldn't do that to a young woman. I put my hand on her shoulder and roughly turned her around to face me. I looked her right in the eyes and said, "Kristi, I'll admit I never liked your dad. But at least he was an honorable man and ran an honest business. It's too bad you didn't take after him. What do you think he'd do if he was alive to see you do something like that?"
She opened her mouth to reply and then closed it. I could see in her eyes I'd hit the mark. Her lip quivered and she started to cry. That's when I turned and left.
It was a quiet morning and neither of us had any customers a couple hours later when Kristi came across the road to my store. She had a hang-dog look and her eyes were still red from crying. She confessed and apologized. Said she was behind on her bills and desperate to make a profit. But she admitted she knew it was a shameful thing to do, and she felt terrible about it.
You know, it's funny how fate can hinge on simple circumstances. If I had been able to keep my temper under control, things might have turned out differently. Maybe I would have accepted her apology. We might have shook hands, agreed to call off the price wars and tried to be friendly rivals. But the fact is, I was still too steamed to do that. I knew she was stubborn and proud, so I hit her where it hurt. I told her I didn't think she was capable of running a business without her dad's help.
Well then she went from being apologetic to defensive. She challenged me to name one thing she couldn't do herself. I had the perfect response. "You didn't answer my question," I told her. "What do you think your dad would do if he was here? I'll tell you what he'd do. He'd take a razor strop to your bare butt like I heard him say he was going to do that time. That's something you really need help with! You want to let me help you?"
Kristi's face turned red. "I don't need your help. I can do that too if I need to!" I could see she just blurted it out without thinking. Then she got a funny look on her face, as if she couldn't believe she'd just said that.
I laughed at her. "Oh really? You can give yourself a whipping? Well you definitely need it! If you want to do it yourself, then fine. But I want to watch to be sure you do it properly. And if you don't, then I will help you."
She turned even redder and just sputtered when she tried to answer. When she turned around and started to storm off, I yelled after her, "I'm serious. If you don't want to do that, you have two other choices. Shut down your stand, or I can get a lawyer and sue you for slander."
I didn't have the money to hire a lawyer and I knew you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. She didn't have enough money to make it worthwhile even if I won the case. But she didn't know I was bluffing. She stopped and turned back to look at me again. Her fists were clinched and I could see the frustration on her face. She knew she had gotten herself backed into a corner.
"You want to take the whipping?" I asked. "A bare-bottom strapping like you would have gotten from your dad. You know you deserve it. Are you too chicken?" I half-crouched, tucked my hands under my armpits and flapped my elbows while I strutted in a circle. "Cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck, Chick-en!"
I was being silly. I admit I never got over being childish at times. I didn't think she would really do it. But she didn't like the other options, and combined with her conscience, the taunting got to her. "All right!" she said suddenly. "I will do it myself, and you can watch. I admit I was wrong and I owe you. So you can have your fun and laugh at me, but keep your hands off me!"
I was stunned. I'd hoped she might be scared enough to shut down or move her business. But I never expected her to actually agree to the whipping. I asked her if she still had that razor strop I'd heard her dad refer to. I'd pictured it so many times in my fantasies, and I wanted to see it used for real. Grudgingly, she admitted she did. So we made a 'date' for that afternoon when we both closed up for the day. I'd follow her home and watch while she tried to give herself a whipping that would satisfy me that she'd been sufficiently punished. I didn't believe there was any chance of that and I warned her that if I wasn't satisfied with her attempt, I would take over the job.
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