by DJ Black
The old schoolhouse, as it was known, stood below the rise above the stream almost three miles from the Stepford Ranch House. Louise Stepford snorted at the very idea, as far as she knew it was less than 30 years old, having been built by the first generation of settlers in these parts. But then that was typical. The so-called first-comers invested everything with more gravitas than it deserved, especially themselves. Like this schoolmaster of theirs, who did he think he was? Louise was furious.
It was bad enough that she didn't have a man of her own, John Stepford having passed away on the journey out from Boston, but that was no excuse for uppity westerners to take advantage of a poor widow and her daughter.
The word stuck in her heart. A widow again at 36, it seemed so unfair, Louise sighed. Her first husband had not returned from the war, leaving her with a daughter at just 18-years-old. John Stepford had been her only real recourse. Now he too was dead. It wasn't that she missed him exactly. She had never really loved him, but now Ellie was 18 too and they both had to make a living on a ranch with no man and precious little of anything else. Louise sighed again. Boston was never like this. Then she remembered the uppity schoolmaster and his outrage. No, Boston was never ever like this.
Now that the schoolhouse was in sight, Louise pulled her shawl about her shoulders and took a moment to tuck a stray strand of raven hair into her bonnet. The wind was picking up and kicked at her skirts. Damn the man, bringing her all this way out here. Didn't she have better things to do?
Louise didn't bother to knock; wasn't this a public building after all? She would be damned if... any other thoughts were wiped from her mind as she swept into the little school house and saw Ellie and what had been done to her.
"Oh my God, you barbarian," Louise gasped.
She didn't even look at the man who had perpetrated such an outrage, so she didn't see his look of angry disapproval as he glanced up at her from his desk over the rims of his spectacles. He was big man in a once grand black suit that had seen better days. If she had taken the trouble to look she would have seen the darker outline of a star on his lapel where once a sheriff's badge had been pinned.
But instead, Louise's eyes were drawn to Ellie's shameful predicament. The petite raven-haired younger copy of Louise was stood in the corner with her hands planted firmly on her head while her skirts had been tucked neatly into the small of her back. Most shameful of all was the sight of the girl's cream linen drawers in a puddle at her ankles that had left the full young curves of her womanish hips and... and bottom completely nude. Louise was still taking in the hard shine of red that marked both hind cheeks when she blurted...
"That's Ellie's bare bottom." It came out as pure indignant Bostonian. Great Aunt Aggie would have been proud.
"That's customary, ma'am, when someone gets a good sound spanking," Jonathon T Redmond drawled from his place at his desk.
"But... but she's 18 now, surely she is too old for a..." Louise swallowed down her indignation to allow her to pronounce the shameful word, "spanking."
Remembering his manners, even if his guest hadn't, Redmond got slowly to his feet.
"Ellie doesn't graduate for another month, ma'am," he drawled. "Until then she gets the same treatment as everyone else in my class."
"But this is... it's..." Louise spluttered. "Why, back in Boston a man would never... why Ellie's practically a woman now."
"Then she really ought to know better oughtn't she ma'am," Redmond said sharply and pointing out that, "Besides, we are not in Boston."
"That, you unspeakable man, has never been so clear to me," Louise all but screeched.
"Now, ma'am, I don't know what brought you here to my school, but Ellie here has to serve another 35 minutes in the corner and then I will release her. So if you would kindly..."
Louise did not believe what she was hearing.
"You expect me to allow..." she gaped. "I'll tell you what brought me here Mr..."
"Redmond, Jonathon P Redmond, ma'am." His eyes tightened at the corners and he fixed her with a hard stare as if daring her to question his methods.
Louise knew his name well enough. There were few enough names out here to learn.
"Mr Redmond, I don't know what you consider normal where you come from, but gentlemen certainly do not... Ellie repair your dress at once and come out of that corner."
"Don't you move a step, Miss Stepford, or I'll wale your behind again, only this time with a switch." Redmond's voice brooked not a hint of compromise.
Suffice to say, Ellie did not even twitch.
"When Arthur Peagreen, dreadful boy, came by my ranch saying that Ellie would be home late on account of getting a 'whooping' as he called it, well I just had to..." Louise told him, the words tumbling over each over in their haste to leave her mouth. "But I never imagined..."
"No one ever took your drawers down and gave you a sound spanking on your bare bottom, Mrs Stepford?" Redmond asked Louise casually.
The heat rose in Louise's face and it wasn't all anger now. She spluttered silently before turning to Ellie and saying, "Ellie, we are leaving. Come out of that corner at once and... pull up your drawers."
Ellie shuffled uncomfortably and then without turning her head wailed, "Oh Ma, it's alright, just go home." Her foot stamped in frustration as she spoke.
At this rate the whole town would come by and see her in disgrace. So far Louise had not bothered to ask what had prompted such action on Mr Redmond's part. Ellie fervently hoped that she wouldn't.
"Damn you, woman, you are even more spoiled than Ellie," Redmond sighed. "Life is hard out here, what in God's name did you want me to do when your daughter shoves another student's head down the outhouse?"
Louise gaped and shot a wild look of disbelief at Ellie.
Her daughter was biting her lip now and casting a desperate look over her shoulder.
"Ma, Rachel Bingham called me a bitch and a whore and said..."
"That language and the other thing is what got you a good spanking in the first place, young lady," Redmond told her sharply.
"Well that's what she said," Ellie muttered.
Throughout this exchange, Louise stood open-mouthed not knowing who was the most barbaric, this Redmond or her own daughter.
"Ellie, you can come out of the corner now," Redmond said gently. "Go home, your mother and I need to talk."
Ellie didn't need telling twice as far as her dignity went and she was halfway out the door with her bare bottom still hanging in the breeze before her drawers finally covered her tail. Then she was gone with a slam of the door.
"That is a girl that needs to be taken in hand," Redmond said sadly with a shake of his head.
Meanwhile, Louise, overcome with shock and a sense of failure, was building herself up to an old-fashioned paddy. She stood in the middle of the floor shaking with rage with her face exploring every shade of red God had given her.
"You..." she spat, "You unspeakable man, you did this..."
"I assure you I didn't, ma'am. It was definitely Ellie who pushed Miss Bingham's..."
"And for why?" Louise screamed, "Her language, her... she's a hellion. I should never have let her come to this school."
"You would prefer the other one?" he cocked one eyebrow in gentle mockery.
"You bastard," she hissed.
"I assure you, curse words are not on the curriculum, in fact I strongly discourage such utterances as you may now gather," he offered gently. "You came out here on the wagon train didn't you? Tough times, I know. Here a young woman... grows up fast. She just needs some guidance is all."
How dare this man blame her for her daughter's descent into hooliganism? She seethed for a moment longer and then, stepping forward, she slapped Redmond hard across the face.
He blinked twice and staggered back a step. The woman was small, but she packed a big punch.
"You utter, utter bastard." Her eyes flashed and her face took on a look that suggested that it had been her face shoved down the outhouse.
"I can see that it is not only Ellie who needs a lesson," Redmond sighed and began to remove his jacket.
In truth, Louise no longer heard him and let out a long hard sigh of disappointment at this latest twist in her life. She didn't know who she was anymore. She certainly didn't know Ellie. In a moment of insight she realised that she could never return to Boston now. Ellie for one did not belong there. John's death and the long hard trail had burned it out of them and left something alien in its place.
Redmond put his jacket over the back of his chair and began to roll up his sleeves to reveal his powerful forearms. Then, sitting on an armless chair used by an older student, he sat down and crooked his finger at Louise.
"Mrs Stepford, please come here," he said quietly.
"What?" Louise murmured as she remembered he was still there.
"Mrs Stepford, you will come here or when I am through with you I will send you out back to cut a switch too." Redmond's voice was diamond hard now. The kind of voice he used only on very difficult students now, but it had been hard-learned on town toughs and gun-toting punks.
"What?" Louise shook her head.
And then as if returning from a long trip she suddenly took in the small schoolhouse room and realised what he was about to do.
"You wouldn't dare," she challenged him, but the scorn had an uncertain edge.
Redmond was not a man who made idle threats and he knew this woman was in serious danger of biting off more than she could chew with him. If that happened it would put a wall between them forever. If he wanted to build on the changing rapport between them, and he did, then he had to be decisive. So instead of waiting for the quiet obedience that her daughter already offered him, he reached out his long powerful arm and seized her by hers.
"Oh no, no, no, no you don't." She offered the words, but even to her own ears there was some half-heartedness to her protest.
Redmond pulled her easily towards him and across his lap where she floundered and kicked up her heels like a vaudeville cliché. But he had been married once and her heavy grey cotton skirts and lighter white underskirts were no mystery to him. He piled them easily into the small of her back to expose the knee-length dainty lace bloomers.
"Oh come on now," she said in a tight voice as if being asked for a reluctant dance. "You really can't..."
Redmond considered sparing her modesty for just a beat, but then remembered his only defence with Ellie was quite rightly that this was how it was done. So, after a heartbeat longer he tugged at the string at her waist and let the snowy drawers tumble like an avalanche of cotton down the woman's pale thighs.
Louise's hips were full and round, not like the alabaster statues he had seen in a museum once, but despite the hint of blemishes that any real woman had, they had nobility not found on a dancehall girl or one of the women who occupied Kathy William's upstairs room.
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