I'd never gotten a whipping from my Uncle Jesse before, and the thought that I was about to had me spooked.
Our dad (Jess's brother) generally used a paddle on Josh and me, except for when we were inrealtrouble, when he'd make us go out back and cut a switch.
I knew, though, from my cousin Trace, thathisdad (my Uncle Jesse)almost alwaysgave him whippings, and usually used his belt to give 'em with.
Listening to the stories Trace told, it wasn't hard to gather that his dad's beltwas not pleasant and Josh & I counted ourselves lucky that Dad had never used one on us.
So, up to that day, which had come during the summer I was 10 years old, I'd never been whipped with anything but a switch before, and the threat of a switching alone was enough that I'd been known to nearly pee myself on a few occasions when I was told to go and cut one.
I'd had yet to experience a whipping like the one's my cousin Trace had described...and could have gone my whole life without it.
Josh and I had gone to stay on the farm with Uncle Jess and Aunt Kate for a month that summer, while our parents went out of town to deal with business that had come up as the result of the sudden death of a family member...a distant relative known to me only by the silly-sounding title of "Great Aunt Violet" (my amusement at which had earned me 10 hard whacks on my bare tail from Dad the morning we'd left, for giggling and making stupid jokes everytime someone said her name...)
It'd been made clear to us when we were dropped off that Uncle Jess hadfulldisciplinary rights over Josh & I.
If either of us needed our butts blistered, Uncle Jesse had not only been given permission to do so, he'd been encouraged to, using whatever means of punishment he felt necessary.
He was told this in front of us, to make perfectly certain that we heard it and understood.
Nevertheless, I'd been there foralmost2 weeks when I had managed to land myself in trouble.
Considering what I'd done (took eggs from the hen house and smashed them against a stone wall in a fit of sheer boredom) it was about a sure bet I was gonna get a whippin' from Uncle Jesse, and the fact that I'd been told to stand in the yard with my nose against the clothes-line pole and wait for him had only increased my skittishness.
I'd had a good case of the jitters for an hour, ever since Aunt Kate had stood me there and told me not to move til Uncle Jess got home and decided what my punishment would be.
They'd kicked in hard when I'd heard his truck-tires bite the gravel of the driveway...but it wasn't til a few minutes later when he burst out of the house and headed toward me that my belly'd really started to shake.
By the time he was halfway across the yard, my bottom lip was quivering right along with it.
With out so much as a word, he took me by the back of the neck and turned me, steering me with a firm and implacable hand toward the barn doors 30 feet ahead of us, that now yawned like the mouth of a dungeon in front of me as I trotted along ahead of him, helpless at the end of his arm.
His silence frightened me...the same way as the swift efficiency of his movements and the calm, brisk certainty in his step as he hustled me forward...propelling me determinedly toward the dark interior of the barn and the punishment that awaited me there.
It unnerved me, I think, because I was familiar with those same movements and gestures from my Dad, and what they would have indicated in a similar situation.
The knowledge deduced from that insight was unsettling.
Basically, Uncle Jess had reasoned (quite rightly) that I knew what I had coming.
Therefore, as far as he was concerned...there was nothing to talk about.
He marched me into the barn and stood me in the middle of it.
The air was hot, humid and hazy, dimly lit by narrow spears of sunlight stabbing here and there through cracks in wood and gaps between wall-boards.
It took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of it.
He'd grabbed up one of several dozen bales of straw, stacked in rows beside the stalls on either side of us, and dropped it on it's end in front of me.
"Peel those britches down and bend over it." he snapped.
They were the first words he'd spoken.
I looked up at him, meekly...a silent, wide-eyed plea for mercy as I watched him angrily yank open the buckle of his belt and with one quick movement jerk it free of his pants.
The look on his face told me instantly; there wasn't going to be any reprieve.
Blinking back tears, I fumbled with the button on my jeans, working the zipper down slowly...trying to hold off the inevitable moment when I'd be standing there in front of him, pants down, ready for a whippin'.
Carefully, I hooked my thumbs inside the top of my jeans and started to pull.
I hadn't worked 'em down an inch before Uncle Jess barked at me again.
"Take your shorts down, too, Jake." he said sharply.
I looked at him, speechless, lip quivering, as the knowledge slowly sank in that I was gonna take this whippin' bare-assed.
I knew better than to argue.
Struggling not to cry, I reached back up, slowly, and slid both thumbs inside the waist-band of my underwear.
Once past my hips, my trousers and shorts slipped down, suddenly, faster than I'd expected, coming to rest just a little below my rear-end.
I held my hands over my privates, blushing, and waited for what was to come.
"All the way to your ankles, Jake!" he'd shouted.
The impatience in his voice made me jump.
Tears no longer at bay, I bent down quick and shoved my pants and underwear to the floor.
I'd no sooner straightened up than he looked at me and jerked his chin toward the straw.
"Bend over it..." he said, his voice as plain and blunt as the thud of an old tire landing in the bed of a pick-up truck.
The straw was about 2 feet in front of me, which meant I had to take 3 or 4 steps forward to reach it...but with the movement of my legs restricted by the shorts and jeans tangled around my ankles, it was 5 or 6 small steps or "scoots" before I actually got there.
Barely able to see for tears, I reached out and felt for the straw with both hands...connecting with it about waist level and slowly lowering my body across it.
My legs were shaking.
For several moments, I'm not even sure I breathed.
All the emotions I'd felt the first time Dad had given me a whippin' came back to me, full-force; embarrassed, frightened, ashamed... resentful at being forced to offer my bare butt for a whipping.
The fact that it was Uncle Jesse made it even worse...I was humiliated to have him see me like this!...backside bared, upturned, waiting for him to punish me...
I'd not had more than a moment to reflect on this before the whipping began.
The first crack of it rang out like a gunshot.
It startled me; my initial jump being more an instinctive response to the soundthan the sensation of it.
It wasn't until a moment later that I felt the pain...a sharp, eye-watering burn that seemed to flare all at once from the spot where the belt had landed...spreading across the middle of both cheeks like a river of napalm.
I imagine my eyes must've nearly popped outta my head!
I'd not even had time to react to it before the second lick came...louder and lower than the first one, landing across the section of skin just below the cheeks, where butt turns into thigh.
I'd let out a short, involuntary yelp.
I remember this distinctly, because it had struck me at the time how utterly instinctive that yell had been; an action my body had taken, completely independent of my conscious control.
I felt as though I couldn't havenotyelled at that moment...there was no other possible reaction to it.
It was several moments before I was even able to catch my breath to cry.
About the time I did, and the first real sob started to escape from me, he drew back his arm for the third swing.
This time, the tip of it caught me square in the middle of my butt, on the tender strip of flesh right along the edges where the cheeks meet.
This pain was almost indescribable; raw and nerve-edged, like I'd been scalded.
My body came up off the bale before I knew it had happened.
I stood, sobbing uncontrollably, legs pumping like twin pistons, trying to shake off the burn.
Eyes a mile wide, I looked up at him in wordless disbelief, unaware that a whipping could hurt that bad.
Uncle Jesse laughed.
"You're gettin' your tail lit up, aren't ya, Jake..." he grinned, "Now, pop that little bare hind-end back up here for me!"
I couldn't believe my ears!
My backside was blazing like a bed of coals!
Surelyhe wasn't gonna whip me any more!?!
But the look in his eye said different.
He nodded toward the straw and stared at me, expectantly.
"Please don't whip me again, sir!" I heard burst from me, between sobs.
(I'd given up hope of leaving this situation with any dignity some moments before, when I'd felt that strap set fire to my rear-end. All that mattered now was putting an end to it...even if it meant I had to humble myself and beg.)
"Oh, no..." Uncle Jesse shook his head, "you've got a whippin' comin', Jake...and you're gonna bend over and takeevery lickof it, if we have to stay here all day."
There was a blunt finality in his tone that caused my belly to flip-flop,
I fought to regain composure, only to have it break down a few moments later into incoherent sobs.
"Go on, son..." the cadence of his speech shifted to a calm, almost playful, banter, "You might as well turn your tail up here to me and get it over with." he said
There was something in his voice which, under other circumstances, I might have identified as "kindness" (which was ironic, since, while this was theworstwhipping I'd ever taken, it was, at the same time, theonlyone during which I'd had any sense that the whipping mightactuallyhave hurt him "as much as it did me", as adults will so often tell a child who's being punished.)
I grabbed on to this "kindly" tone as though it were a life preserver, hoping it meant he was gonna go easier on me for the rest of the whipping.
Forcing my torso and legs to cooperate against the will of my gut, which had just turned over for another churn, I bent myself back over the straw.
"Arms up over your head, Jake."
That tone was unmistakable; it wasn't a request, it was a command, and one I was expected to obey immediately.
I thrust my arms upward so that my hands were dangling in the air about 3 feet to the other side of the bale.
Suddenly, I felt a hard bump and the world moved beneath me.
Uncle Jess had lifted his right food and half-pushed, half-kicked the bale, with me on it, about a foot forward and to the right, in the direction of a thick, wooden post supporting one of the rafters in the hay-loft above us.
I looked up to see it square in front of me, with bits of old, red paint peeling back from the wood.
"Grab hold of that pole." he said "that'll help ya keep still while ya take the rest of this whippin'."
Like a man at the gallows, I stretched toward it, tear-blind, groping the air in front of me til I felt the wood under my fingers.
I grabbed it, and held on for dear life.
The next 4 licks came fast and hard...as though Uncle Jess was trying to get 'em in quick before I started to buck again.
Every stroke caught me dead on the tail-end...each in a different spot.
The four subsequent eruptions of fire that spread across my backside took on lives of their own...distinct from each other and yet all of them merging into a single, scorching pain that seemed to be all over my butt at once.
I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet, knees pumping furiously, like I was pedalling at top-speed on an invisible bike.
My hands slipped once on the pole, but I kept my grip.
My shoulders and torso shook with sobs.
"3 more licks, Jake." I heard him say behind me.
A fresh eruption of tears came...cut short by the swift, sharp crack of the belt.
This one took the wind right out of me.
I caught it dead center of the underside of my cheeks, where the skin was already screaming-raw from the second lick he'd given me; on top of which, the tip of his belt had snaked around in such a way as to catch mein-between, on theinfinitelytender lining of flesh inside them; a pain I cannot easily render into words.
For a timeless moment, the outraged cry gathered in my lungs was held there, impotent; unable to find enough breath behind it to give it voice.
Finally, it came wailing out of me like a siren...loud and piercing...leaving me shaken, sobbing, gasping for another breath to follow it.
My hands had left the pole that time, for sure; both arms shot straight back on reflex, trying to fend off the belt.
It didn't matter that I knew I couldn't...my body had a will of it's own.
(Ironically, I think the only thing that kept me bent over was the pain...standing up would have brought the scalded underside of my butt-cheeks into contact with my thighs; the thought of which, at that moment, was unbearable to me.)
"Hands on the pole, Jake!" he barked.
He hadn't said so, but I somehow knew the whipping wouldn't continue until I had my hands on the post...and wouldn't end, of course, without continuing until I'd taken all 10 licks.
Anxious to have it over with, I reached out, sobbing, and took hold of the pole.
The next stroke came thunderously loud...an explosive "pop" that echoed off the walls of the barn and then hung there, leaving the air ringing with a dull, reverberating throb.
A wide tongue of pure fire licked the backs of both thighs, just below cheek level..the upper edge of it overlapping the lower edge of the 2 welts that had already been layed there.
I let out a series of yiping, high-pitched howls, sounding something like a dog who'd just been yanked up on a short leash.
Then I'dreallystarted to bawl...big, deep, gushing sobs that exploded from my mouth and nose in violent bursts, flecked with a warm, salty mixture of snot and tears.
I heard the belt hiss again, followed by a thunder-clap as it connected with my upturned rear.
Both cheeks jumped involuntarily...the outraged nerves causing the muscles in them to tighten into a contraction...like the ass-end equivalent of clenching your jaw and not being able to relax it.
It felt as though every muscle in my backside, from cheeks to thighs, was trying to leap up and run away.
I heard my uncle chuckle under his breath.
"That belts' got ya jumpin', don't it, son?" he laughed.
This had started me in crying even harder, reminding me that he could seemy butt jerking and quivering...my rear-end doing a dance for him in time to the tune he set with his belt.
"Please don't whip me no more..." I sputtered, so breathless I wasn't sure he'd heard me.
"One more comin', Jake" he said.
A cascade of frightened, little-boy boo-hoos tumbled out of me...I began literallycrying like a 6-year-old.
I felt no sense of relief in knowing that the whipping was almost over with. Like the pessimist who sees the glass half empty while the optimist sees it half full, my mind was focused not on my immanent release but on the much more immediate prospect of that one lick I still had coming.
I screwed my eyes shut, sobbing, and prayed for the floor to open underneath me.
It seemed like an interminable amount of time passed before I heard the belt's singing "whoosh".
When it finally came, a bellowing yelp shot out of me, instantaneously.
To this day, I'm not sure if I yelled before or after the belt had actually hit me. My nervous anticipation of it had been more than enough to provoke it the instant I'd seen the shadow of his arm move to take a swing.
Which ever way it had happened, it was followed immediately by another yelp just like it as a searing blast of pain leapt across the underside of my rear-end...spreading it's borders to include an as-yet untouched area of skin along the outside of my thigh...now annexed by the general conflagration that raged over the scalded skin of my backside.
I came up off the bale dancing a jig.
I leapt, yiped, howled, bellowed, bawled...cried my eyes out as I pranced on the tips of my toes...cupping my throbbing, burning butt with the palms of my hands.
I looked at Uncle Jesse with a mixture of fear, resentment, relief and, whether I cared to admit it or not, a newly-deepened and very humble respect.
Without either of us saying a word, we both knew with absolute certainty that, from that moment on, I would be at pains to avoidevergetting such a whipping again...which, of course, was it's purpose.
Clearly, Uncle Jesse knew how to whip a boy's hind-end every bit as well as my Dad did...perhaps even better...a lesson I'd not soon forget...and one I'd recall with a wry grin many years later when dropping my own 2 sons off to spend a week on the farm with their great-uncle Jess.
I drove away wondering if I'd return to collect 2 deeply humbled little boys.